A Satanic prayer hotline that was originally launched as a joke has been flooded with genuine calls from people in need. The Satanic Missionary Society reportedly modeled the hotline on the many Christian phone-ins that are available, whereby people leave voicemails requesting prayer for certain things in their lives.
However, according to a radio episode of NPR’s “This American Life” the man behind this bizarre operation does not believe in God, or even Satan, for that matter. Chris Allert was simply frustrated by Christians who he says constantly attempted to evangelize him, so he decided to set up a prank Satanic phone line to see who, if anyone, would ring in. Almost immediately, however, he started fielding a huge number of calls.
The messages, a lot of them quite bizarre, often ended with the ominous words, “Hail Satan.” With the caller’s permission, the contents of the messages are then posted to a public forum so that others can present the requests to the Devil.
“Hello, satanists everywhere. I’m calling to put a hex on the 1230 Club in Olympia, Washington,” one message read, according to The Christian Post, “[b]ecause they start blasting the music really early every night.”
“Please make the 1230 Club go out of business, but make sure everybody that works there goes deaf, like, from playing their music so loud first. Hail Satan,” the caller added.
Many others repeated similar pleas to have curses placed upon those they dislike. Others call-ins were even more sinister. One young woman, who suspected that she was pregnant, even casually requested that Satan kill her unborn baby.
“I need you guys to pray against the pregnancy,” she said. “And if there is a baby inside of me, for Satan to kill it. Because I can’t have a baby right now. So I’m turning to Satan, and he is the only answer I have right now. So I’m just overwhelmed. So call me when you get the chance. So thank you so much. Hail Satan, right? OK, thank you. Goodbye.”
Other requests were much more trivial in nature.
“Hello. Hail Satan. I’m calling for you to help me. I have an interview tomorrow,” said one young man. “I’m trying to get my first job ever. I’m 16. So please pray to our Dark Lord, and hopefully, I might get this job.”
As NPR host Ira Glass noted, there were many callers who “don’t seem to understand the difference between the stuff you should be asking Satan for, and the stuff you ask God for.”
Allert noted that he cannot seem to let go of the prayer line, but is also unsure about what to do when people, like the young pregnant girl, call in and are clearly in need of serious help and advice.
“I still think about that,” he said. “And she’s a teenager or something, too.”
Allert added:
“When people put their faith in something, you don’t want to let them down. But then you don’t actually have any way to help them.
That might be part of the reason I haven’t really kept up with the calls. I mean, I still listen to the people. I still get, like, 20 calls a day. I’m not saying– I listen to them as much as I can. I haven’t had time to really keep the website up-to-date.”
“The problem,” Glass suggested, “is that for some people, Satan is real. It’s no joke.”
“He is out there. Nothing could be more serious,” he added.
According to its website, the Satanic Missionary Society was founded on Feb. 14, 2012, and aims to “make the world a more Infernal place, and to cater to Satanists who enjoy proselytizing.”
“We are followers of Satan devoted to sharing our message and way of Satan with all people,” the group claims. “We follow the Dark Lord by embracing and living the Five Satanic Virtues. We are Selfish, Lazy, Insolent, Lustful, and Vain.”