Torey Hayden "Ghost Girl" ( a pagan response)

Torey Hayden, Ghost Girl - True crime. I'm half way through and alarm bells are beginning to ring and I wonder if it's one of those 'satanic' scare books of the 1990s - which is scarey if true as there are forty-one copies still in Oxford libraries alone. I'm nearly finished and guess it's one of the post scare books, i.e. slightly more subtle but still full of the same unsourced and vague accusations aimed, indirectly, at the pagan movement. So it acknowledges that there never has been any proof of the more lurid accusations but leads the readers to suspect that it did actually happen. So the poison is still there which is a shame as Torey Hayden is obviously an enlightened being in many other ways.

At the core of the book is the suggestion that the eight year old protagonist (Jadie) has been abused by a murderous, 'satanic' coven masquerading as characters from Dallas. The main proof is the presence of a 'well known' 'satanic' symbol, the equal armed cross within a circle. The manager of a local new age bookshop, a self styled 'white witch' confirms all this, but fails to observe that it is more widely known as a fairly innocent symbol of the elements within Wicca. Incidentally I have so far failed to find any incidence of this symbol within avowedly satanic organisations such as the Church of Satan - but maybe I missed it??

Our white witch then discusses the 'black' arts and the use of Voodoo dolls. You wonder if she ever read any of the books on her shelves - if so she might have learnt that the use of dolls within Voodoo is a myth, whereas they are fairly ubiquitous within wicca and 'white' witchcraft! Perhaps this is the reasons that we are never given any citations for any of the sources used in this author's 'research'. So given the poor quality of Torey Hayden's research - it's difficult to trust the other material in this book.