Here's a legitimately creepy story for Halloween.

I haven't been watching much in the way of news lately, so I dunno whether what I'm going to talk about here has been widely reported, or if it's gone relatively unnoticed. I'm guessing the latter, but with the Jeffrey Epstein stuff still so fresh in people's minds, I might be wrong about that.

The FBI has a website where they publish declassified information, and of course, there are now podcasts and YouTube channels which specialise in going through that information with a fine-toothed comb. The other night, I tuned into what turned out to be a 4hr long live-stream of a bloke reading through the latest data dump, and occasionally pulling up old newspaper stories as corroborating evidence.

The dump in question, is a twenty-five year old dossier which the FBI compiled on a shadowy organisation known as "The Finders". Basically, what was going on is that members of the organisation would get pulled over with van-loads of kids; the local police would investigate; they'd find that the kids had been starved, malnourished, mistreated, and sexually abused; after a few days, CIA agents would show up and get involved with the investigation; then, mysteriously, all charges would be dropped, the suspects released, and the children released back into their custody. This same pattern of events would play out half a dozen times, in different parts of the country.

Starting to get chills yet?

In the middle of this dossier is a report, which is basically the FBI pulling together all of the information they had, and having their best go at explaining what the fuck was going on. What they reckon is that this group started out in the '60s, as a bunch of rebellious, anti-establishment uni students from wealthy families, who—as you might expect—got into psychedelic drugs, sexual experimentation, anarcho-communism, and anti-christian woo—such as paganism, the occult, witchcraft, and satanism. Fast-forward to the '80s, and "The Finders" had morphed into a fucked-up Manson-Family-style cult (led by a guru calling himself "The Game Caller"), that specialised in trafficking flesh for wealthy elites who liked to indulge in both the sexual and non-sexual abuse of children.

So, why were the CIA protecting these lowlifes, you might ask. Well, before I get to that, let me just remind you that all of this was taking place against the backdrop of the cold war. Let me also remind you that a lot of these cultists were communist-sympathisers who had come from wealthy backgrounds … and as it turns out, quite a few of them were making regular visits to places like China, Vietnam, and The Soviet Union - and acting as go-betweens for those countries' intelligence agencies and various pro-communist groups in the United States. And, as you've probably already guessed, The Finders had also been infiltrated by the CIA, which was using them as both a source of intelligence, and as a means of funnelling disinformation back to their communist rivals.

To sum that up: In 2019, the FBI have released a dossier containing a report that speculates that for a period of more than 20 years, the CIA protected a child-trafficking ring, because they saw them as a valuable tool in battling the spread of communism.

I've downloaded a copy of the dossier, but haven't read it yet; and given that it's hundreds of pages long, and I'm currently in the middle of reorganising my life in an attempt to better manage my time, I don't think I'll be getting around to it at any point in the near future. In other words, I'm putting my faith in some bloke on YouTube to have given this document an accurate reading, without making shit up along the way. If you're less time-poor than I am right now, and you'd rather read it for yourself, the link is here.

Oh, and before I forget, here's the REALLY creepy bit: Remember the McMartin preschool trial? It was that bizarre case in the late '80s, in which it was alleged that satanists had taken over a preschool in Southern California, where they were systematically grooming and molesting children, and then forcing them to participate in ritualistic animal sacrifices, in a secret underground bunker beneath the school building. Authorities investigated but found no physical evidence to corroborate the stories. The trial went ahead, based solely on the testimony of the children involved, and the defendants were ultimately acquitted. The preschool was closed down and demolished, and the whole incident became known as the best example of mass hysteria in recorded history, and is often referenced as the pinnacle of unhinged puritanical delusion know as the "satanic panic" of the 1980s.

Yeah, well, according to the dossier, when authorities investigated McMartin preschool, what they actually found was dozens of animal carcasses buried in the school grounds, and an underground bunker filled with occult paraphernalia—just like the children described. So, the official story was a complete cover-up.

Good luck sleeping tonight.