TIMES UNION: "The Upstate Occult: An Interview with Writer Mitch Horowitz"

Recommended Reading: Will Solomon's 10-25-22 TIMES UNION piece entitled "The Upstate Occult: An Interview with Writer Mitch Horowitz":

Mitch Horowitz, a New York-based writer and historian, has written widely on the occult, including the alternative spiritual history of the U.S. As the author of “Occult America,” and a forthcoming book of essays, “Uncertain Places” (which, full disclosure, I [Will Solomon] copyedited), Horowitz has paid close attention to historical and contemporary trends, and particularly to the geographic significance of upstate New York.

The Times Union sat down with Horowitz to discuss this esoteric history of the region. The interview has been edited for length and clarity [...].

Q: Early America, and particularly these parts of New York, allowed space for religious experimentation. But that freedom was often borne out of religious persecution. We still see upswings of sometimes-violent religious intolerance today, including to alternative religious traditions: In 2021, an arsonist destroyed the “Halloween House,” a popular gathering spot for members of the Church of Satan, in Poughkeepsie’s so-called Witchcraft District. Can you talk about the incident and the apparent intolerance we’re seeing today?

A: I think that with the advent of QAnon, we may be a whisker away from a new Satanic Panic. That movement swept the United States and Britain in the 1980s and early ‘90s on account of a cultural myth and canard that child-sacrificing Satanic cults were at work. In time, and after some really tragic and disruptive criminal trials and false accusations, media coverage exposed the Satanic Panic as a widespread hoax and a kind of cultural spasm. It may have been a reaction against changes in the workforce and the economy, in particular women entering the workforce en masse, and people turning to childcare centers and other alternative forms of daycare.

This theme has reasserted itself through the work of Alex Jones and people adjacent to the QAnon movement, and it’s now commonly encountered online. And despite the news coverage and the widespread debunking of the Satanic Panic, we seem to be going through this cultural amnesia in which we’re revisiting it. The attempted homicidal arson in Poughkeepsie is an unfortunate case in point.

To read the entire interview, click HERE.