Robson's next chapter covers Baron Ungern, the White Russian warlord of Mongolia. Robson calls him a Satanist but really he was an esoteric Buddhist, a psychotic nobleman drawn to the bloodthirsty corners of that sprawling and intricate tradition. He meant to return the Bogd Khan to the throne and rule Mongolia as an anti-communist, anti-Jewish bulwark. Robson invents lurid details such as Unger’s permanently bloodstained lips, the result of vampiric attacks on his victims, but there really wasn’t a need for such salacious fabrications. The real man was loathsome enough, slaughtering with impunity until the Bolsheviks closed in and he was suddenly alone. Deserted by his men, abandoned by his allies among the Mongolian nobility, Unger was captured, tried, and executed like so many on the losing side with equally bloody records, albeit less colorful personalities. His Mongolian fiefdom had lasted less than a year. The "Bloody Baron" is relatively well known nowadays, thanks to a popular biography by author James Palmer and numerous clickbait articles that borrow from Palmer. It’s interesting to look into this midcentury text on Ungern, concerning a subject as fraught as the Russian civil war and full of invented details and true facts selectively plucked as fodder for occult atrocity reading.
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| The Bloody Baron |
A very basic account of the death of Rasputin follows, and we all know how that went: poisoned, shot, stabbed, and finally dumped into a freezing river. Up next, French serial killer Martin Dumollard was an unpleasant fellow, to be sure, killing young women with the help of his wife the Madame Lafayette in 1850s Lyons. Johann Georg Faust has a perfunctory chapter on his mythic devil dealings, while the intriguing historical character George Pickingill is said to be head of an Essex witch cult ... an idea which "has failed to receive any scholarly support," per wikipedia.
Robson's playing fast and loose now, throwing in whatever creepy crawly rumors he can. This includes some devil worshippers who may not have ever existed in the first place! The excellent occult book blog Nocturnal Revelries features a review of this title and notes that satanic killers Raoul Hannah, Raoul Plessy, and Gustav Labahn all seem to be fabrications on Robson's part. More's the pity, because these are three of the most in-depth and interesting chapters! Hannah's an Irishman who travels to Ethiopia as a missionary, only to succumb to the thrill of black magic and be reborn as a slaver witch! Plessy meanwhile is a mystery man who sets up shop in interwar Paris as a satanist most foul, his obscene black masses earning him the nickname of La Bete - the beast! He's exposed only to escape into the invading Nazi war machine, ending up as a death camp torturer, and then further still after WWII as an assistant to the grotesque Lavrentiy Beria, head of the NKVD! Labahn is another satanic priest, this time in 1890s Munich. He seduces and slaughters his way through the high society there until the devil comes for his due during a midnight mass. It truly does seem that Robson padded his book out with these made up characters.
Moving on to more documented tales, satanic panic grips the 17th century Swedish villages of Mohra and Elfdale, as children are whisked away by witches to a magic land called Blakolla. Also in the 1600s, Scottish Covenanter Thomas Weir can no longer hide the dark secret behind his standup life: he's pledged his soul to satan! He and his sister are executed for incest, bestiality, and black magic.
Bringing us forward in time, two tales of witchcraft in modern 1960s Tanzania follow: the "devil's mother" Nyamseni is killed for her death curse crimes, while the hapless Mahalo Petikite is deemed rehabilitatable after eating his whole family! Heavy hitting historical fiend Gilles de Rai is put through his paces, as is John Dee, last seen in Robson's Dialogue With the Dead attempting to talk to the other side. His chapter here is fairly straightforward biography. Robson jumps to modern times again with Papa Doc Duvalier, the brutal dictator of Haiti. Robson singles him out as the only modern tyrant to rule through black magic threats. A modern apocalypse cult in Switzerland is called the Seekers of Mercy, led by one Joseph Stocker. They beat a young girl named Bernadette Hasler to death while attempting to exorcise the devil from her, though Robson blurs the lines between their extremist Christian cant and generic satanism.
The four bloody Valenzuela sisters are another group of modern killers, sex trafficking young girls and torturing them to death at their satanic ranch when they were no longer profitable. Robson spells their name "Valuencela."
We jump back to the 1890s for Joseph-Antoine Boullan and his black magic war against rival witch, Stanislas de Guaita. The Marquis de Guaita wins out against the ex-priest, though wikipedia notes that Boullan went to his grave proclaiming his unwavering fealty to Christ. Further back still takes us to the 1600s and the Court of the Sun King, Louis XIV, as Catherine Deshayes poisons her way around until she steps on too many royal toes and is executed. Next Robson tells us a wild tale of the Comte de St. Germain, that supposedly immortal raconteur - Robson has him disappearing into a snowstorm as two of his castle guards watch in shock, unaware that this is the last time they'll ever see their master. Robson would have us believe the Count was a werewolf and that the walls were closing in after one too many bloody killings. I don't know about that ...
A voodoo trial in 1880 Haiti, an Obeah curse in 1930s Jamaica attested by an author named Russell Wilson, and the story of Mamina the Zulu witch close out the book before the final, infernal chapter on Karl Haushofer, one of the marginal men on Hitler's periphery, and - if Robson's to be believed - the source of occultist Nazism.
But wait just a minute. Before we barrel on to the finale, one final note. When I was trying to dredge up any corroboration at all for that Haitian voodoo case, I found an intriguing footnote which led to an in-depth appraisal of the trial - which took place in 1864, not 1880, by the way. It seems the case might have been a frame up, as another footnote quotes:
"The prisoners were bullied, cajoled... (...) I can never forget the manner in which the youngest female prisoner, Roseide Sumera turned to the public prosecutor and said, 'Yes, I did confess what you assert, but remember how cruelly I was beaten before I said a word' – Spenser St John, British minister to Haiti who witnessed the trial."
Close reading, though, shows that there are only two other “firsthand” accounts of vodou ceremonies involving cannibalism: one from a French priest during the 1870s, and the other from a white Dominican a decade later. Both are unsupported; both are suspect, not least for the claim that both supposed eyewitnesses penetrated a secret religious ceremony undetected, wearing blackface. Unfortunately, both were also widely disseminated.
Above, another Ace edition. The final verdict? Reading through the 25 accounts herein of satanic evil becomes numbing, making this an exhausting ride in just 158 pages. Mercy, Robson.
Ace Books, 1969
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