ghoodessay1

geraldh

Gerald Hood Mrs. Laurenscot Non-fiction essay My book __Cults That Kill: Probing the Underworld of Occult Crime__ by Larry Kahaner, is about various occult groups, crimes they have committed, and stories from police who have dealt with occult crime. The author felt this topic was important because of the lack of information about the subject, since law enforcement has rarely encountered them they were ignorant on how to deal occult crimes. Law enforcement know how to handle drugs, theft, and murder because it is something they understand, but something like occult crime is so strange that some deny it exists and won't change their mind. Others like Sandi Gallant and Dale Griffis, after they came across crimes that were occult in nature, decided to learn about such things in order to understand them and be able to do something about it.

This book can teach readers that within our "normal" society there is another, a world that people rarely see without becoming part of it. This world, for the most part, is inhabited by law-abiding citizens, but there are some who go beyond the law for their beliefs. The book tells people this difference and how to discern whether a member of the occult underworld is a criminal or not. It also tells people that this underworld has existed for possibly centuries, going underground because of the Inquisition. Throughout history there have been stories of people who wield power and the book tells that the members of the occult try to capture that power. To them, material goods are not important only knowledge, so for them books are the most important of their possessions. The things I learned while I read this book are that the surface is not always the real thing and that within our society there are others within it that are hidden.