Devil Tales

I have to thank Loren Coleman for sending me a notice of the nude statue of Satan found, ahem, erected on a pedestal in Vancouver formerly occupied by a statue of Christopher Columbus. Loren and I  were discussing tridents, a devil-shrine in Detroit, and the unfortunate woman in Chicago killed by a falling gargoyle head, and, well, one thing led to another and suddenly in my e-mail, there was His Satanic Majesty, painted red, and larger than life. The statue was taken down by the city since they had not commissioned it, but now residents are petitioning to have the statue re-erected. Evil is so seductive.

As I am being prematurely buried by The Victorian Book of the Dead, this devilish train of thought is as good an excuse as any for proposing that my readers revisit two popular posts about the Devil.

The first is The Devil Went Down to Craigslist in which a suburban Chicago housewife is terrified by an apparition of what appears to be the Devil: tights, pitchfork, and all…

The second is  Sympathy for the Devil in 1905 Detroit, in which Mr. Herman Menz, a free-thinking, blaspheming stonecutter carves a shrine to the devil in front of his house, to the dismay of his church-going neighbors. Apparently some modern Satanists are making plans to build a temple in Detroit, home, of course, to the notorious “Devil’s Night.”

And on Saturday, look for a post here on the surprising theme of “Where the Devil Got His Face.”