 Welcome back to esoteric Atlanta. Of course. My name is Bryce back by popular demand We've got rocker Mike back this morning. How you doing today Mike? I'm doing well. How you doing Bryce? Glad to be here. I know you just did a fan of this is a we're recording this It's about 10 30 on Tuesday morning But you just got off with shanti our friend shanti over from Aquarius rising up. What a fantastic episode that was guys I will link that in the description box below so you can also make sure to check out Mike on shanti's channel And this is the thing shanti and I were talking about this off-camera yesterday like the son of Sam case There's so many layers to this case like you had a podcast for two and a half years Just top there's so many corners and crevices and shadows to this case that is absolutely Fascinating and Mike something I kind of wanted to talk about because off-camera you and I've had a lot of Conversations off-camera and you say things sometimes that I like quickly write down because it's stuff that I have not heard In this case before and I kind of wanted to focus on some of that today Which is just basically the occultism in New York City in the 1970s and again guys if you're new to the channel if this is your first time clicking on welcome I'm so glad you're here. I will be placing all of our prior episodes down in the description box below in case you Don't know why occultism would have anything to do with son of Sam I would say you might be living under a rock But but yeah, cuz you're a New Yorker born and bred and that is such a Like a superpower you have with this case because there are certain cultural things that you're just gonna know And good and I've said this multiple time and pick up on that someone who's not from New York Probably might not know or whatever pick up on So where do you start with this Mike? Well, I'll just agree with you. I'll write there. I'll agree with you that it's you know a New York story Okay, by every definition of the word And it takes place in the boroughs Okay, not Manhattan. Okay, burrow for people because that's a very specific New York Word so for people who are not familiar with New York or the United States What would a burrow in a city be? Well, well, okay There's five boroughs in New York City. You have Manhattan Brooklyn Queens the Bronx and Staten Island and that Encompasses what's known as New York City now Wasn't always that way you go back to the 1800s. These things were all separate. Okay, but they became one city I think in the late 1800s or so Brooklyn at one point was its own city Okay, but the five boroughs encompass what's known officially as New York City now You know New York is there's one kind of phenomenon that people don't get when they're outside of New York Is that if you're from Brooklyn or you're from Queens? A lot of times you'll say if you're going into Manhattan I'm going into the city Yeah, okay. Yeah You know people people don't understand. Why aren't you already in the city? Well native New Yorkers don't view Brooklyn Queens Staten Island the Bronx like really the city Okay, we're in the we're in the the burp. We're in the boroughs. Okay now Manhattan is a borough, but it's also really considered the heart of New York City New York New York, okay and With son of Sam These been in the Bronx Queens and Brooklyn Didn't happen in Manhattan Right. Okay, probably probably couldn't have given the amount of hustle and bustle there. Okay. He tended he they tended to pick You know quieter areas and stuff like that, but you know what what created the fear So much was that it it was happening in these in the boroughs Okay, it wasn't happening. I mean if it had happened in Manhattan It probably would have created fear too, but I think he they would have been caught a lot quicker It's probably a little bit more expected to like maybe yeah, maybe it's no way to look at it, you know And and also these people were not from the city They were from the outskirts burrows. Okay Yeah, the boroughs and even Yonkers, which is not a borough It's a little bit north of the city. Okay. It's its own city. Okay, so You know, it's it's it's interesting from a New York perspective. Yeah, and that's exactly exactly that's something that You know, I'm familiar with the layout of New York, but I'm not a New Yorker and again That's something so yeah I always think of the boroughs as being like neighborhoods and that's kind of the same thing that happened in Atlanta Atlanta has a lot of different neighborhoods that all kind of came together as the city started to expand to turn into one So that makes sense to me like if if someone was being killed up in Alpharetta, which is a suburb of Atlanta It might on the news be advertised as an Atlanta murder, but it's Alpharetta's a sub it's like a suburb It's like, you know that crime doesn't happen there, you know It's it's um So yeah that and you know, I don't know if you notice this Mike But people have said on my on my shows with you and on Aquarius Rising Africa They remember being in fear living in fear during this time I don't know if you were aware of those comments when I was moderating even people who weren't in New York But we're watching the news at this time We're getting nervous because there was no rhyme or reason to these kill it was just There was no motive. No assault There was no it was just you know run-of-the-mill salt of the earth young people that were just shot for no reason No, it didn't seem to be a reason for exactly exactly you created, you know, the fear was created through the randomness Yeah Yeah Yeah, you see that if you guys haven't seen the docu series on Netflix There's great clips from from people even in the 70s of women changing their hair Cutting their hair bleaching their hair There's even a funny clip where a woman says even if the haircut is it becoming on them They do it anyway. Do you suck it up be ugly for a summer just to stay alive, you know, so I mean, you know My mom changed her hair, okay And and you know cut it and enlightened it because he was going after brunettes, okay? um One thing too is is that you know, I always say that the the real New Yorkers are in the boroughs. Yeah, okay You don't get you know, I mean in Manhattan, of course, there's people born and bred in Manhattan Rob Rossi on my podcast is born and bred out of Hell's Kitchen. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah But less and less of that these days, okay What you have in Manhattan and even in Brooklyn and some other areas you have this like very transient transplanted crowd In the 70s you had less of that there were more native New Yorkers, right in the city in those days But Manhattan was always a place that there were transient people To get the I would always, you know, I've had people over the years say, you know, where do I go when I come to New York? Well come to Brooklyn come to Queens Queens is the most diverse borough At a wall five. Okay. You know, you could take a ride on the seven train and One subway stop to the other is a different kind of neighborhood different kind of food different kind of culture Okay, and we all live together packed in like sardines and You know, it's it's just how we do it, you know, and you'll always get the flavor of New York in the boroughs more than Manhattan That makes sense. It's so international nowadays and it makes sense too because you know The world's so much smaller than it was in the 70s people probably, you know, if you were going to travel Even in within the United States, it was a bigger deal than it is now people who just hop a plane, you know Every day, you know, we're pretty quickly and so that that does make a lot of sense to me again Atlanta is a lot of people that live outside of Atlanta don't consider Atlanta to be a city in the south They consider it to not be part of the south because there's so many different But you do have those old-school people that are Atlanta born in Bradbury, Southern So that makes sense to me in New York has such a rich history. I love the New York history I love studying about the like we were just talking about the child strike of 1899 where these freaking Cocaine addicted smoking eight-year-old shut down the freaking city like that's pretty incredible to be the descendant of that Like you can't if you're a descendant of one of those kids No one's gonna mess with you, you know, so that's the blood you got run through your veins So there is quite, you know, and I often think as an American even though I'm not from New York as an American New York City is kind of like a Pride it's a source of pride for many Americans because it's such a powerful city And there's so it's a wealth of opportunity. It's it's it's um, it's a beautiful You know that the thing with the lights and the energy and so even for people who aren't from cities from New York City as Americans Will take kind of pride in that being ours, you know as as Americans and so yeah, it's um It's it's I love the history of New York and so I can understand what you're saying though that these boroughs There's there's a different flavor when it's coming from the boroughs versus Manhattan exactly Yeah, and so you were telling me I've got I mean I was like scrambling down notes. Should we talk about is it the magical? Child store. Was that what it was called? Okay, well, I'll give you a little background on that. Okay. Um, the magical child was a was a store in Manhattan, okay owned by a gentleman named Herman Slater. Okay He prior to that store that this store opened in the mid 70s Okay prior to that he had an occult store in Brooklyn called the Walach shop Okay in Brooklyn Heights area Now just to go back to that for a second that was in the early 70s All right, it was an occult bookstore and at the time there was a heavy occult presence in Brooklyn Particularly that area Brooklyn Heights, okay? Brooklyn Heights. There was certain Cummins. There was also a process church of this final judgment Presence there, okay And it was a hangout for for places for people that were into this stuff now, you know Occultism has always been around in New York City. It's nothing. No, okay You can go back to the podcast I did on Samuel onto Meyer and the connections he had with ours to Crowley, okay? Who came to America in 1914 on the Lusitania? Okay, two years before it was sunk and Basically came here with books to sell on the occult Starting the OTO and being a member of the Golden Dawn prior to that He was a force to be reckoned with in New York City in the occult world, right? Okay Check out my Samuel at the Meyer podcast on that Then you know through the you know through the rest of the 20th century there was all kinds of things on Harry Houdini for instance Okay, Harry Harry Houdini the famous magician had interest in the occult and Also when he died His wife spent years Yeah, doing seances. Yep. Yep. Yep to him. Now. I've actually I've actually been to his grave. Okay in Brooklyn Okay, and it's very cool because his last name was Weiss Okay, and the grave says Weiss and then there's a little thing underneath that says about Harry Houdini Yeah, right. It's like a big family grave that says Weiss and it's right off of Cypress Hill Street in Brooklyn in a big cemetery right there That whole area is nothing but summaries. But anyway I've sat at his grave. I remember with a buddy of mine. We drank a six-pack Just talking about Harry Houdini, but what used to happen is He died in the 20s and going for years after he died once a year usually on halloween His wife would would have a public seance. It would be on the radio Okay, this was before television That's competence to do that on the radio. You got to have some You know, I think it went on until she was old and couldn't do it anymore. Okay, and you know, this was something that you know People were like into this. They're like, oh, we're gonna speak to the dead, you know spiritualism. Yeah, spiritualism was big at this point Yeah, yeah, it's from spiritualism exactly and um uh You know the 1960s Saw kind of a resurgence Of occult occultism across the world. Okay, and some of it was tied into music All right, uh, some of it was tied into uh, certain people celebrities things like that You know, if you look at uh Some music out there in the 60s Then going into the early 70s bands like blue oyes to cult Talked about the occultism in them in their lyrics a little bit uh there were people into this and um By the 1970s in new york city It was it was I don't want to say mainstream, but it was definitely You know a little a little bit below that it was it was something that people were into now You you brought up the magical child when when the wallock shop closed Herman slater opened it that was in brooklyn. He opened up the magical child in Manhattan and uh I actually had been to this place. Okay in the in the early 90s um You know, I knew people that I were into tarot card readings and things like that And that was a place you would go to buy that stuff But they had an area in the back Curtained off that was always mysterious Okay, people would come in there sometimes from the outside you might be in that store buying a candle Okay, and somebody would walk in off the street looking pretty strange Okay, that were headed right back to that back room Okay, um I had nothing to do with that stuff but but but people did and uh it was a hangout in the 70s for people into the occult and This where it comes into play a little bit with son of sam couple of things, um When david berkowitz met the car brothers He was introduced to I think he knew about the occult but was introduced to it And particularly he was told to buy a satanic bible He was told where to get it. He asked where can I get one? I don't know. Oh, well try the magical child in the city Okay, so he went there and got it Okay. Now. This is documented. I believe with mori terry, but it's also documented in a book called dead names okay, and uh Also in in in dr. Mike caporelli's new book monster mirror I think it's discussed a little bit. Maybe not so much the magical child But it's mentioned that he was being introduced to the occult um So it was a hangout the magical child and um Um For instance the perp the person that's uh one person that you could look at who's got some interesting books on the occult is peter levenda All right peter levenda Went to the same high school as david berkowitz. He was a little bit older in the Bronx, okay and peter levenda Uh hung out at the warlock shop and eventually had a job. I believe at magical child So he You know and he has said In interviews you could look them up on youtube that people knew about what was going on That's where you know Yeah, so they knew that and that's what's so fascinating to me and it was a different time because I think You know, we of course I think every place like we have the phoenix the dragon here in atlanta I go to the phoenix the dragon all the time for things like candles stuff like that But I think especially in like the 70s people, you know a cult the word occult just means hidden You know, and so I think people it was so much easier to get people So obviously there's a cult stuff. That's not bad and there's a cult stuff That's really wicked and I think sometimes people would get manipulated just by this kind of almost this oddity this this this um Sensationalism when it comes to and they would when you know today into 2024 I think so mike I think about the phoenix the dragon someone can go into the phoenix the dragon And they're not going to see a lot of dark stuff because People are more educated now on what what the occult is whereas back then Yeah, like they they and they but they could suck people and especially I'm thinking about you know, of course I was born in 1983, but I'm thinking about like You know you look at going from like the 1950s through to the 19. Let's say begin in 1980s culturally as a world We went through a huge Pivot in our um, you know from the 1950s where you had the standard We knew who men and we we knew who what a female wasn't a male was we had the standard You know mom was at homework mom was at home taking care of the kids to leave it to beaver You know the you know the the the berries of the world and then all of a sudden you've got the um The summer of love and what 1969 you've got like the whole hippie I don't want to say um revolution because revolutions are are land I think this was a rebellion and I think it was a rebellion created by by the three letter agencies my my personal opinion that kind of brought people into this Place of just being completely wackadoo in there and deranged in their perspective And so it makes sense that in the 70s You know, and that's the thing too. I think in today's age like everything has this perfect time We we just don't my light just flickered. We just don't um, is that you got no, so he just we we God's god's joining them. God's joining us guys. The light just flickered. Um You know, we we are so used to seeing so many weird stuff that we don't really not not things that were sensational Then aren't sensational to us anymore. And so I feel like we're desensitized now. Yes. That's a good way to put it. Yes But okay, and that's that's intentional. Yeah price. Yeah