Customer Reviews

Satan's Underground: The Extraordinary Story of One Woman's Escape

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

Folks, do yourselves a favor and type +"Lauren Stratford" +cornerstone into Google's search engine. The very first link you will probably see is one to Cornerstone magazine's website, there you will see an updated expose of this author.

Finding the truth is that easy.

It simply amazes me that I'd already seen this story exposed by Cornerstone around 15 years ago, the book was consequently dropped by her publisher, and she was able to go on to concoct yet another tale (again debunked by Cornerstone - see the link) AND get this old story republished!!

She's a victim of a Satanic cult and NOW a holocaust victim as well!

But the joke's on you, folks. You paid for it...

This book, published in 1988, was shown to be almost entirely fabrication by an investigative report published in 1990 in the Christian magazine Cornerstone (copies of this article have circulated the net). The book was reissued in July 1991 by a different publisher: Pelican Publishing Co., a small Louisiana publisher. This new edition features cover blurbs from such people as Hal Lindsey and Johanna Michaelson (who helped get the book published in the first place, but who I thought accepted the Cornerstone criticisms) and Mike Warnke (whose claims of being a "former Satanist High Priest" have also been shown to be false by Cornerstone).

What is most galling about the new edition of the book, however, is its afterword, by three Los Angeles clinical psychologists, all women sporting either an M.D. or Ph.D. after their names. The two-page afterword does not address *any* of the Cornerstone criticisms, but alludes to them by saying that (paraphrase) "some critics state that this book should not have been published unless every single fact within it could be verified and documented." It goes on to say how unreasonable these critics are, and that numerous other people have reported stories "like" Lauren Stratford's. I suspect that the "some critics" referred to do not exist; that no one has made any such claim about Stratford's book. The Cornerstone criticism thoroughly documented the fact that the book is almost entirely a fabrication by Laurel Wilson (the real name of "Lauren Stratford"), a very disturbed young woman whose story has changed radically over time.

Surely both the publisher and these clinical psychologists must be aware of the details of these criticisms. To go ahead and republish the book is the height of irresponsibility.

Since its 1988 publication, this book has twice been revealed as false. In late 1989, Gretchen and Bob Passantino and Jon Trott exposed Lauren Stratford as Laurel Willson in an article in Cornerstone, still available on the web.

By 1998, Willson had morphed into a "Holocaust survivor." Some time earlier, she presented herself as Laura Grabowski to a group of child Holocaust survivors, who accepted her claim to be a Polish Jew, a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau and a victim of Dr. Joseph Mengele. She pretended to have been liberated to a Krakow orphanage in 1945 and brought to the United States, where a Gentile couple adopted her at nine or ten. In 1998, her poem "We Are One" appeared on the web. But like the story here, this appears to have been completely untrue.

In 1997, Willson/Stratford contacted Binjamin Wilkomirski with her story. He had published Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood in Europe in 1995. Schocken Books translated and published his story in the U.S. In 1997. Then in 1999, 60 Minutes broadcast a segment on Wilkomirski: He seemed to have been born in Switzerland as Bruno Grosjean, and later adopted and renamed Bruno Dossekker. Also in 1999, Philip Gourevitch wrote on Wilkomirski in The New Yorker, as did Elena Lappin in Granta. All three outfits believed Dossekker/Wilkomirski's story to be false.

Unfortunately for Willson/Stratford, she had already wound herself tightly to the Dossekker/Wilkomirski story: She claimed to be Lauren Grabowski, whom she said had known him in a Krakow orphanage. He, in turn, used Grabowski to corroborate his story. But the respective publications in 2001 and 2002 of The Wilkomirski Affair (Stefan Maechler) and A Life in Pieces: The Making and Unmaking of Binjamin Wilkomirski (Blake Eskin) blew her cover as well.

Gretchen and Bob Passantino and Jon Trott revisited the Willson/Stratford story laid out in this book in Cornerstone in October 1999 (also still on the web). This time, they discussed her apparent fakery as Grabowski, and suggested that Grabowski was actually an American Christian who since her youth had fabricated stories about her alleged victimhood, the most well-publicized case being in this book.

Alas, Dossekker/Wilkomirski's unraveling also involved that of Stratford, whose Social Security number, according to Maechler, is one and the same as that of Grabowski, the claimed survivor. He also suggested that Satan's Underground and Fragments contain startling similarities.

Unfortunately, this book obscures an ongoing and real-world problem of child abuse. However, I for one, don't believe that Stratford was a victim of anything but her own fantasies.

--Alyssa A. Lappen

"Satan's Underground" is a good example of a very specialized genre of literature. Along with such infamous volumes as "Michelle Remembers," by Michelle Smith and Lawrence Pazder, Stratford's book claims to be the testimony of a survivor of Satanic ritual abuse.

Unfortunately for the marketers of this genre, every book of this type (to my knowledge) has been exposed as a hoax. Sociologist Jeffrey Victor, in his 1993 study "Satanic Panic," offers a rational critique of the title phenomenon and of the bogus "survivor" stories that were so prevalent in the late 1980s.

Readers of earlier editions of "Satan's Underground" should have been suspicious from the start. The book is filled with unverifiable information. Although the author mentions being hospitalized, attending college, and moving from city to city, the names of these institutions and cities are never mentioned.

But beyond being an apparent hoax, "Satan's Underground" is also a bad piece of writing. Stratford's hysterical, melodramatic prose reads like an inept parody of a horror novel. A typical passage: "Horror seized my mind. Terror froze my heart. The purest sacrifice, the most pleasing sacrifice--the one sacrifice I could never make unless my mind and will were completely broken--was the sacrifice of a child to Satan!" (p. 99).

"Satan's Underground" is a significant textual artifact for scholars interested in the "Satanic panic" phenomenon of the 1980s. But as an alleged autobiographical work, the book lacks credibility. And as a piece of literature, the book is a failure.

Too bad I didn't research the author of this book before wasting my time and money total nut job, crazy christian wacko chick, I read that she wrote another book under another name and claimed to be a concentration camp survivor, anyone who would write and publish such lies has to have more problems that dealing a little bit of satan stuff, anyway don't waste your time on this trash. Makes me upset that someone could have done this for attention, money or who knows why!! freak!!!!

I'm not denying that SRA exists, or claiming that all victims are liars...however, I can say with absolute certainty that Laurel Wilson (a.k.a. Lauren Stratford, a.k.a. Laura Grabowski) is an accomplished liar. And no, I'm neither a Satanist or Pagan (in fact, I'm a church-going Lutheran), and I doubt anyone on this page is, all of whom (like myself) most likely saw the hard-hitting expose by Cornerstone - a Christian magazine, mind you. Their findings? It seems that Wilson:

- Had a history of repeatedly lying about sexual abuse that never happened (the claims were refuted by her sister, of all people...funny how she never mentions having one in the book, and another friend claims her abuse stories were taken directly from the book/movie "Sybil")
- Later claimed her aforementioned sister wanted to either kill or institutionalize her, when in reality, her sister (whom she had no contact with since 1978) was a missionary
- Claimed her mother operated a large "kiddie porn" ring that she was forced into, yet such filth was virtually non-existent in the 40s and 50s, and her mother was a deeply religious woman
- Claimed to have been pregnant 3 times in her late teens/early 20s (all of the children having been killed in snuff films or rituals), yet no one who knew her then recalls seeing her pregnant at the time
- Feigned blindness to gain sympathy from an evangelical Presbyterian couple she once lived with (all while consuming much of their time, leaving little for their children)
- Was kicked out of said couple's house for attempting to attack the wife w/a piece of broken glass (after first cutting herself w/it)
- Repeatedly moved in w/numerous Christian friends, only to manipulate and take advantage of their generosity every time
- Attempted suicide and inflicted injuries upon herself more than once (so much for her scars being the result of torture by her mother and the alleged Satanists)
- Claimed to have inside info on the Kern County, CA abuse cases all over the news in the early 80s, yet provided no substantial evidence

Did she learn anything? Apparently not...after her book was initially withdrawn from publication, she later claimed to be a Holocaust survivor (adopting the aforementioned "Laura Grabowski" alias, said surname actually being that of her maternal grandparents) and torture victim of the infamous Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele (thus providing a new phony explanation for her self-inflicted scars), hooking up w/another phony survivor, Binjamin Wilkomirski (a.k.a. Bruno Dossekker) and accepting donations intented for REAL survivors.

The SRA phenomenon was laid to rest by the early 90s, let's leave Willson's legacy to die along w/it...God knows how many lives were already ruined by these wildly untrue allegations.

I'm staggered by the number of readers who continue to defend this con-woman. For heaven's sake people, Laurel Rose Wilson (aka Lauren Stratford, aka Laura Grabowski) was exposed by Cornerstone 20 years ago (and to preempt claims that this expose was a secular smear campaign, Cornerstone is a Christian magazine).

After Cornestone's damning description of her long history of mental illness and false abuse allegations, Stratford/Wilson's publisher withdrew her books from the market. However, Wilson was not about to give up on the fame and fortune she had enjoyed, and reinvented herself as a fake Holocaust survivor, Laura Grabowski.

It's hard to say what combination of mental illness, lust for fame, or criminal greed motivated Wilson's exploitation of past victims and present suckers. But every self-deluded Christian who buys her books is essentially funding a campaign of fraud and deception.

This book is a hoax. Moreover, Lauren Willson/Stratford also has claimed to be a Jewish girl, Lauren "Grabowski", who knew Bruno Grosjean Dossekker/"Binjamin Wilkomirski" in a children's home in Krakow as a fellow Holocaust victim, corroborating his book "Fragments". The Holocaust, of course, did happen, but when "Fragments" was exposed as complete fraud, Lauren's story fell apart, too. It appears that she makes a life of falsely portraying herself as the victim of atrocities, with the result, after her inevitable eventual exposure, of damaging those others who truly ARE such victims.

This book has facts that are true and people need to know what is really happening. I wrote a book about my deliverance and saved by the Lord. The name of my Book "JESUS cast them devils out"

I have a number of problems with this book, surprisingly, and I'll tell you why. Using Satan to sell Jesus and exploiting a serious problem in this country is an egregious violation of the trust of those among us who need it the most. I do believe that "Satanic" ritual abuse exists, in the USA and worldwide, and there are far better research materials to say so. I'm not so sure this writer is a survivor - in that her story makes next to no sense. She lost me when she said she was exploited in the pornography industry - on weekends - while she went to college and took care of her father during the week. Excuse me??? Who paid for her college? She certainly wasn't on scholarship, since she admits that she wasn't getting the grades.



Then I consider all the information at the end, which is helpful and, for the most part, true in terms of what to look for and how to help - except that none of it dovetails with her own story!



She also seems to be very confused about brainwashing and mind control, and never bothers to mention those players in high power - in government and corporate industry, of which there are many, and how their manipulation plays into the "Satanism" game.



This book is badly written and badly researched, and I was surprised to find names referred to that I have a high regard for. If you are a survivor, don't read this book. It will do you more harm than good. If you are a researcher, it is important to know this stuff is out there, for the very same reason.



TRANCE FORMATION OF AMERICA the True Life Story of a CIA Mind Control Slave