213: Devil on My Shoulder

Ira Glass

From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life, distributed by Public Radio International. I'm Ira Glass. One day, when I was 14, coming home from junior high school, I saw my across-the-street neighbor, [? Mark Nasdor, ?] and he was riding his 10-speed down this big hill near our school. I was near the bottom of the hill. And I had one of those-- you know those three-ring binders that you use when you're in school, those loose leaf binders? I had one of those, with all my school papers in it.

And as [? Mark Nasdor ?] sped down the sidewalk of this very steep hill, I got this idea. And to explain this, I need you to picture for a second what a loose leaf binder looks like when you lay it on the ground. it looks like a little ramp, right, with the highest point of the ramp being the fatter side, the side with the rings. And I thought, I could throw my loose leaf notebook in front of Mark's moving bicycle, positioning it perfectly so his wheels would roll up the ramp. And it would serve as a ramp. He would fly in the air like Evel Knievel.

Now, I want to say [UNINTELLIGIBLE] about speed. This idea popped into my head. And then in a second, too fast to actually think this through-- if there were time to think about this, I don't think I would have done it-- the idea pops into my head, and then there is [? Mark Nasdor, ?] moving fast down this hill. And I threw the binder in front of him.

Now, in case you're wondering what the actual aerodynamics are when a moving bicycle meets a junior high school binder, and how high the bike flies, and how far it goes, I can tell you, because I was there, I saw this. What happens to a bicycle in this situation is it flips on its side at a very high speed, throwing the bicyclist off and bruising the bicyclist. The bicyclist then gets up, curses at you, and asks this question, "Why did you do that?"

It's a good question. It's a really good question. And I had no answer at the time. I do now, because I heard some things lately that shed some light.

Ira Glass

This is Wendy.

Ira Glass

Her sister was furious. Her parents were furious. And they kept asking her, over and over, one simple question.

Ira Glass

Most of us have an idea of what the devil's supposed to be like, red skin, horns, a tail. Sometimes he disguises himself as a dapper gentleman. Often, he loves to sing. And the way that he actually gets you into hell, in the movies, and in operas, and stuff, is that he actually shows up in person. He makes a personal appearance with you, and he tries to talk you into it. He tempts you with stuff that you want.

Well, there's a way more interesting version of the devil out there in this book by C. S. Lewis called The Screwtape Letters. And the idea of the book is that it's a series of letters from this older, very experienced demon named Screwtape to a much younger demon. And he's giving him advice. And at one point, Screwtape says to the younger demon, if you want to commit somebody's soul to hell for eternity, don't try to reason with them. You don't want to be arguing with somebody about what's good for them or bad for them, because you could lose an argument. What's better, what works way, way better, is to simply banish reason from the room.

Screwtape tells this story to the young demon about this atheist who one day is in the library. And in the library, the atheist starts mulling over some godly thoughts, very threatening for Screwtape. But rather than engage this guy in an argument over God and goodness and all that sort of stuff, Screwtape simply plants the thought in his head, "It's time for lunch."

The guy heads outside. The battle's won. If you want to lead people into darkness, you don't want reason to even come into play.

Ira Glass

This is Dave. One night, he was walking home late from campus down a quiet street, an ordinary night.

Ira Glass

Sometimes these stories are about big, life-changing things, sometimes about the tiniest things. [? Jonifer ?] was sitting on her couch in Madison, Wisconsin, as her neighbors from across the street walked by outside.

Ira Glass

Lisa had just learned the Heimlich maneuver from a pamphlet, and was visiting her boyfriend.

Ira Glass

He must have asked, why'd you do that, right?

Ira Glass

It's hard to believe that there are demons and devils urging us to do wrong. But how many of us have done something bad or wrong or just random, totally random, and have no good explanation for it at all? Well, today on our program, with Halloween approaching, the Devil on Your Shoulder, stories of people who are trying to convince you that the devil is there, and stories of people trying to deny that he's there, against, I have to say in these cases, some heavy evidence.

Act One of our show, It's Fun to Make Hell on Earth. In that act, the story of a Christian youth group in Texas that, for three weeks every year, acts out the worst, the meanest, the most despicable behavior possible, all in the name of saving people from hell. Act Two, Sixteen Candles Can Lead to a Lot of Fire. A young Amish man explains why it is that, after being set free to drink and drive and party at the age of 16, most of his friends choose to go back to the church and back to the Amish lifestyle. Act Three, Devil in Angel's Clothing, or Is It the Other Way Around? the story of a man who did something terrible as a teenager, and then tried to pretend that it never happened for 20 years, and then tried to do something about it, or people tell him he tried to do something about it. He can't remember himself. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

Act One, It's Fun to Make Hell on Earth. In 1999, documentary filmmaker George Ratliff read about a church in Cedar Hill, Texas, which is a suburb of Dallas, that was staging a re-creation of the Columbine Massacre. That church, Trinity Church, was putting on a haunted house called Hell House. They'd been doing it every year for years, each Halloween.

The Columbine scene was just one scene of about a dozen. There was also an abortion scene. There was a scene where a gay man dies of AIDS, and a scene where a mom meets a man on the internet and then deserts her family for that man.

In each scene, a demon eggs on the sinner. The demon is right there, egging on the bad person. And the point is, devils are around us, trying to trip us up, every day. Sin is real. The devil's real. So you better get right with God.

George Ratliff made a film about it, and he agreed to pull some of his footage to play here on the radio for us. Here he is.

George Ratliff

I showed up at Hell House with my cinematographer friend, Jawad Metni. We were herded around the place with a group of 40 teenagers clinging to each other and laughing nervously. A large man dressed in a black hooded robe and a skeleton mask was assigned to our group as our tour guide.

George Ratliff

We'd line up against the back wall of the Columbine School scene, which is basically just a room with a card table stacked with books and a few school desks scattered around. Among a dozen or so student actors, two squeaky clean church girls sit at the card table, talking. Behind them, an angry demon, also dressed in a black robe and mask, paces back and forth, wringing his hands.

George Ratliff

Their conversation about Shakespeare turns to Carrie's recent conversion to Christianity. She says she used to hate her parents and especially hated God. "I'm a Christian now," she says. "That's why I'm always so happy."

George Ratliff

Two teenage boys in black trench coats explode into the room, followed by another demon. To my surprise, the boys are waving real handguns and real shotguns as they charge through the scene, kicking over tables and chairs.

[SCREAMING]

The whole scene is so violent that you forget about everything that reminds you of a bad high school play. And what makes it scary is the look of real teen angst on the shooters' faces as they cock and aim their guns at the heads of all the cowering students. You can see how they love waving around their firearms. And part of what's so shocking is you wonder, who are the good churchgoing adults who came up with this idea and helped the kids finance and organize and stage this? Remember, we're filming just six months after the real Columbine killings.

One of the trench coat boys grabs Carrie, the Christian girl, by the hair.

George Ratliff

After the boys shoot Carrie in the head, the demons perform their final task, egging the boys on to kill themselves. Then, the lights turn to strobes, the music swells, and a teenager in a white choir robe enters.

It's Jesus. He's come for Carrie, the Christian girl. The shooters are dragged off to hell, kicking and screaming, and pleading to Jesus for a second chance. But he doesn't give it.

George Ratliff

Then, our tour guide reappears. He shuffles us off to the next room, the family violence scene, as another group of 40 shuffle in.

Two days later, Jawad and I went home to New York and watched what we'd filmed. We were both a bit shaken up by what we had seen. I grew up in Amarillo, Texas, where one of the only ways to meet girls was to go to Christian youth meetings. And there were so many. There was Young Life and K-Life and Campus Crusade and Fellowship of Christian Athletes, not to mention that every one of the hundreds of churches had their own youth groups, hustling out to schools to compete for an ever-decreasing number of unsaved souls.

I honestly thought I had heard every evangelical Christian trick in the book. But Hell House was different. The special effects, and the music, and the real guns, and the crowds and crowds of people lined up to get in, I'd never seen anything like it. So in August of 2000, we went back to Cedar Hill.

George Ratliff

Two months before Hell House opens each year, they have auditions at the church. The casting directors sit at a long table in front of a stage. One after another, nervous kids read for the drug dealer, the satanic worshipper, the school shooter, or the abusive father.

George Ratliff

The girls all want to be the suicide girl or the abortion girl, because those are the roles where you get to scream and cry and emote the most.

George Ratliff

Nearly everyone wants to play a sinner. Nobody wants to play a saint. Not one person auditioned to play Jesus or an angel role. Maybe it's just more fun to be evil on stage than good. Maybe playing a churchgoing, god-fearing Christian is just not that interesting if you are a churchgoing, god-fearing Christian. The organizers usually have to go out and recruit some hapless kids to play the good Christian roles.

[CONSTRUCTION SOUNDS]

Every day for six weeks, as many as 75 volunteers will show up to help build Hell House. It's an enormous construction site that they have to tear down and rebuild every year. There are people everywhere carrying wood, swinging hammers, and painting signs. An enthusiastic volunteer named Thad Trober took us on a quick tour during construction.

George Ratliff

And then we arrive at the room that's Thad's baby.

George Ratliff

Thad, who wears a goatee and techno clothes, has seen what goes on in raves firsthand, the sex, the drugs, the alcohol, back in the old days, before he was a Christian. Thad told us that he'd only gone to raves to hear the music. But then it became too hard for him to ignore what was going on around him. So he had to stop raving. But now, every October, Thad gets to create his own rave at Hell House.

George Ratliff

Before Hell House opens in early October, Tim Ferguson brings everyone together for a pep talk. Tim has an intensity about him that reminds you more of a football coach than a minister. He squeezes the microphone and stares at a roomful of church kids. Behind him, three young men are noodling backup music on their electric guitars.

George Ratliff

And just when everyone's getting really worked up, they start speaking in tongues. Trinity Church is an Assembly of God church, which is a branch of the Pentecostals. Pentecostals are known as the church that speaks in tongues, and they're the fastest-growing Christian church in the world. They started less than 100 years ago in Los Angeles. And they've always been able to put on a good production for large audiences. They were the first church to use electric guitars, one of the first to break into TV evangelism, and the first to think up Hell House.

Hundreds of teenagers are lined up to go into Hell House. It's a pretty diverse crowd, large groups of Hispanic and African-American kids mixed in with the suburban white crowd, all paying $7 each for a ticket. It looks to be the same demographic as at Six Flags. But in fact, most of these kids have been bused here by youth leaders from the area.

Once they get inside, they see kids committing suicide, being killed by drunk drivers, and being sacrificed to the devil. In the hospital scene, the abortion girl sits in a pool of fake blood. She's wearing white sweat pants, and her crotch is completely soaked in red. Next to her, a gay teenager dies over and over from AIDS. He dies every 7 to 10 minutes, every night, for three weeks straight.

George Ratliff

Outside the house, in an area visitors don't have access to, I ran into a group of performers that had just knocked off from their shift at being tortured in hell. It's obvious they've been having a good time. I asked them what was the most fun scene in Hell House.

George Ratliff

Even though you get to dance, the rave scene does not end well. The girl in it sips her spiked drink, freaks out, gets gang-raped, and ends up killing herself, after admitting that her dad had molested her as a child.

George Ratliff

So once a group of visitors makes it all the way through the gory scenes, they come to what is called the "decision room."

George Ratliff

Of the 40 people in this group, about 10 go to pray with the counselors. The 30 others are held back a minute, and then they're marched to the exit. But it turns out that the damned have to exit through the same door as the saved. There's only one exit, and it's on the other side of the room of crying and praying Christians and counselors. The 30 shuffle through guiltily, with their heads down, trying not to catch anyone's eye.

George Ratliff

About 13,000 people went through Hell House this year alone. Trinity Church claims that as many as one out of five people that go through Hell House become Christians or recommit themselves to the church.

George Ratliff

If you ask the teenagers at Hell House straight up if they have fun pretending to shoot their classmates or do drugs at a rave, they're all good Christian kids and know better than to admit that they enjoyed themselves. "Our goal is to save souls and make money for the church," they'll tell you. And they'll mean it. But Hell House is the biggest event of the year for Trinity Church.

After three weeks of performances, after Halloween comes and goes, the kids all get dressed up to the nines for an event that is the equivalent of prom night for them. They call it the Hell House Oscars. On stage at a podium, in front of a table of Oscar-like trophies, presenters banter and give awards for best tour guide, best abortion girl, best drunk driver, best gremlin, and best archangel. Remember, three to six teenagers play each part in the house.

George Ratliff

Liz Simmons, in a floor-length gown, pluckily hops out of her seat, hugging friends, waving to photographers, and makes her way to the stage.

George Ratliff

She lifts her fake Oscar and walks off stage. In the dozen years since Trinity Church invented Hell House, the idea has spread all over the country. No one knows how many Hell Houses are out there now, but a church in Colorado has sold over 500 Hell House franchise kits with layout designs, scripts, and a video, for $200 each.

George Ratliff

These church kids aren't supposed to drink. They aren't supposed to party or sleep together. But tonight, they glitter like sinners. Unlike the real Oscars, no one complains that this ceremony lasts too long.

Ira Glass

George Ratliff, you can find his movie Hell House online at hellhousemovie.com. The church George mentions in Colorado has now sold over 800 Hell House starter kits to churches in every state and in 24 countries, as well as to secular theater companies in New York and Los Angeles. In Los Angeles, Bill Maher played the devil.

[MUSIC PLAYING - "THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO GEORGIA" BY THE CHARLIE DANIELS BAND]

Ira Glass

Act Two, Sixteen Candles Can Lead to a Lot of Fire. Faron Yoder lives in Amish country, in Indiana. And I interviewed him from his parents' house, where he lives. For this to happen, somebody had to go there with a cell phone.

And he talked to me from his room. I was in our radio studio. Faron lives differently from everybody in his family. And his room is different from the rest of the house.

Ira Glass

We heard about Faron through a movie called Devil's Playground, which is about the Amish rite of rumspringa. Rumspringa has been in the news a bit lately, partly, I think, because all of us regular Americans like stories where the Amish sink as low as we do. In case you've never heard of it, rumspringa works like this. At 16, Amish teenagers are told they can drive, they can drink, they can use modern electronics. They can try all the things the outside world has to offer. And then, after a few years, at 19 or 20 or 21, they will be in a position to decide what they want to do with their lives.

If they want to live like regular Americans, they are free to go. If they want to commit to the church and the Amish way of life, they get baptized. And they're expected to stay in the Amish community until they die. In short, they're asked to make a decision that most of us make gradually every day about how we're going to live our lives in these few years, when they're teenagers.

Faron is 21, and after his rumspringa, he has not chosen the church. During that time, as the film Devil's Playground shows, he got into a lot of trouble. Not only did he develop a $100-a-day crystal meth habit, he sold drugs. He got in trouble with the law. Right now, he's facing 14 months in prison for all that. He says that before he turned 16, back before his rumspringa began, he had a whole list of things that he knew he wanted to do.

Ira Glass

Faron Yoder, the film he's in is called Devil's Playground. You can find copies of it online. Coming up, if you do good, but you do not remember it, and maybe you did not even intend to do good in the first place, does it count? That's in a minute, from Chicago Public Radio and Public Radio International, when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose some theme, bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's program, Devil on My Shoulder, stories of people who believe that the Devil is talking in their ear, and of people who deny that, despite massive evidence to the contrary.

We have arrived at Act Three of our program, Act Three, Devil in Angel's Clothing, Or Is It the Other Way Around? This is the story of what it means to have a conscience. A man kills another man on the street and then tries to pretend that it never happened for 20 years. And it's a story about what that does to him. Sarah Koenig reports from Baltimore.

Sarah Koenig

Sterling Randolph Willis told me his story over the phone from prison. As you'll hear, the phone line is terrible, but it was the only way to get him on tape. The prison doesn't allow recording equipment inside the facility.

When he was 17 years old, Randy lived with his mother and did construction work. He'd been kicked out of school for fighting. He was tall and quiet. And like a lot of kids from his neighborhood, he carried a serious knife.

His girlfriend, who was 16, lived miles across town, and Randy liked to walk to her house, rather than take the bus or a cab. It gave him time to be alone, he says, and to think about things. He was on his way there on Christmas night in 1982. He cut through a back way in the dark and stopped at some bushes to pee.

Sarah Koenig

He didn't know whether the guy was dead or alive. He just took off running to his girlfriend's house.

Sarah Koenig

Randy had killed Arnette Hubbard, a 44-year-old man who had no fixed address. Police had a hard time notifying his relatives. His wallet revealed to detectives that he was a military veteran.

Sarah Koenig

Eventually, Hubbard's murder fell into the department's cold case files. In that sense, Randy had gotten away with it. But in his mind, he carried the stabbing with him.

Sarah Koenig

Randy felt guilty about what happened, and says that if he had to do it over again, he wouldn't have killed Arnette Hubbard. But he didn't feel that guilty. He was molested as a child, he says, and he thinks the guy he killed was a pervert waiting for a victim. What if someone else had taken that shortcut, a girl who couldn't protect herself, say?

After the stabbing, Randy tried to get on with his life. He and his girlfriend got married. He worked at different jobs, and they started having children. But he was still tormented by that night.

He would break out crying sometimes. He was terrified people would find out what he had done. The scene would play over and over in his mind. He went to psychiatrists, who gave him medication, but he never confessed the source of his anxiety. Pretty soon, he started taking harder drugs, mostly heroin.

Sarah Koenig

While he was going through all this, his wife was changing. She had found the church and become passionate about it. Randy wasn't interested.

Sarah Koenig

Randy was so bothered by what happened that on his third trip to church, he did something sort of crazy. He actually decided to rob the place during the service. He didn't so much want the money, he said. He just wanted to control the people who were making him feel so strangely. He tucked a gun in the waistband of his pants and waited for the moment he could grab the collection plate. But a deacon figured out Randy's plan and confronted him.

Sarah Koenig

He started attending regularly. He opened up services by leading songs, assisted the ministers, and eventually became president of the church's Brotherhood Association. The church even made him lose his craving for drugs, he says. He quit cold, and stayed sober for about eight years.

He describes that time as good and clean, among the best years of his life. He started his own landscaping business called Sterling Service. His brother-in-law was one of the church leaders, and they became close.

As Randy began to worry about his own salvation, he actually told him and a church deacon about murdering Arnette Hubbard. They said he'd be forgiven, which relieved him. The visions and nightmares eased, and he appeared to be conquering his past.

But toward the end of that period, his father died. Then he lost a lot of his landscaping equipment in a fire. Winter came, and his clients fell away. He needed money, so he started selling drugs, and then taking them. Pretty soon, he was addicted to heroin again.

Sarah Koenig

Like, the church van.

Sarah Koenig

His wife threatened to leave him if he didn't clean himself up.

Sarah Koenig

He ran off to his customers. And when he came back, the U-Haul truck was gone. He asked his brother-in-law if she went to the store or something. He said, no. She had gone to South Carolina.

Sarah Koenig

On June 14, 2000, handcuffed to a steel table in an interrogation room, and throwing up into a garbage pail as the heroin left his system, Randy confessed to the murder of Arnette Hubbard. A detective taking notes during the conversation wrote, "Has been selling coke and dope, selling for anyone he could, tired of game. Feels guilty about doing murder."

Randy described the killing down to the smallest detail, the checkered shirt Hubbard had been wearing, the knife that was six or seven inches long. He does not remember telling them a word of this. Not long after, in district court, he waited for his case to come up.

Sarah Koenig

Randy initially fought the charges, but ended up pleading guilty to second-degree murder. Baltimore Circuit Judge William D. Quarles sentenced him to 12 years in prison. At the hearing, he said to Randy, "I guess you reassure me, in a sense, of my belief in human nature, because you are obviously someone who developed a sense of conscience. Because you had actually gotten away with it." But if you come clean, never intending to come clean, and not remembering afterwards you've come clean, does that really count as an act of conscience?

Sarah Koenig

It wasn't a relief to tell police, he says. He didn't feel like he'd gotten something off his chest. That feeling came when he told the people who meant something to him, his wife, the members of his church. That feeling came when he squared it with God.

But somehow the decision to tell police about that night wasn't exactly his. With heroin as its unwitting ally, Randy's conscience, the angel on his shoulder he remembers from childhood cartoons, commandeered the interview, flooring everyone involved. In prison, he's still hearing that voice, and another voice, too.

Sarah Koenig

There's another way to see this whole story, that it wasn't his conscience that made him confess to the police. Randy's sisters see it more as a suicidal act. His wife had left him. He was back on drugs. He had sunk so low that some part of him, and not the angel part, wanted to do something self-destructive. So he told the police.

What's odd is that Randy himself hasn't figured out whether he's a good person who needed to clear his conscience once and for all, or just a drug addict who gave up and ratted himself out. After thinking about it every day for two years in prison, Randy still can't decide.

Ira Glass

Sarah Koenig.

Ira Glass

Production help today from Flawn Williams and the charming Jorge Just and Aaron Scott. This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International. WBEZ management oversight for our program by our boss, Mr. Torey Malatia. He's feeling so good ever since he came back from the hairstylist at the mall. Here's why.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.

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