Terror Talk: True Crime, Serial Killers and Horror

The Conjuring universe keeps asking one question: why do we need the devil to have done it?

⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode includes discussions of murder, the deaths of children, possession, and allegations of child sexual abuse and domestic violence. Listener discretion is advised.

In 1981 in Brookfield, Connecticut, Arne Cheyenne Johnson's lawyer wanted to tell a jury the devil made him kill. Ed and Lorraine Warren were ready to back him. The judge said no, and forty years later the defense became the title of The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It.

Therapists Shannon and Cathy put James Wan's Conjuring universe on the couch: possession as a language for trauma, the Warrens as a secure base, and why it's easier to fight a demon than face what's inside us.

CHAPTERS:
0:00 The devil made me do it
0:48 Why we need evil to be outside of us
3:03 The Perron family and The Conjuring
3:38 Enfield, the Hodgsons and The Conjuring 2
4:51 What a supernatural explanation gives a family
8:32 Possession as a language of trauma
9:53 The Nun and The Nun II
12:27 Children and the failure to protect
13:46 Annabelle, Annabelle Creation and Annabelle Comes Home
15:25 Ed and Lorraine as a secure base
19:22 Why do we believe the Warrens?
21:41 The Judith Penney allegations
24:10 Valak and evil that wears the face of goodness
31:11 Why James Wan makes films about needing demons
32:34 Malignant: the one time the monster was inside

IN THIS EPISODE:
• The Conjuring (2013), The Conjuring 2 (2016), The Devil Made Me Do It (2021) and Last Rites (2025)
• Annabelle (2014), Annabelle: Creation (2017), Annabelle Comes Home (2019), The Curse of La Llorona (2019), The Nun (2018) and The Nun II (2023)
• Andrea Perron's account of the Perron haunting in Harrisville, Rhode Island
• Janet Hodgson and Guy Lyon Playfair on the Enfield poltergeist
• Arne Cheyenne Johnson and the possession defense a judge refused to hear
• William Weber, the Lutzes and the Amityville "bottles of wine"
• Judith Penney's 2014 sworn declaration about Ed Warren, never tested in court
• The Nun's release weeks after the 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report on clergy abuse
CLINICAL TERMS: externalization, possession and dissociation, therapeutic alliance, validation, Bowlby's secure base, emotional attunement, trauma response, institutional abuse, covert narcissism, protective factors, introspection, shame
CORRECTIONS:
• Lindsay Clancy's children were strangled, not drowned, and her defense was postpartum psychosis, not possession. Her trial ended in a mistrial in September 2026.
• The denial of Judith Penney's account came from Lorraine Warren's attorney, not the Warrens' daughter and son-in-law. No criminal case was brought; the claims surfaced in 2017 through litigation over the franchise, after Ed Warren's 2006 death.
SERIES: James Wan Part 2 of 2. Part 1: PROFILE: James Wan, Saw, Insidious & The Conjuring Part 1.
SOURCES: People (September 1979) · federal court ruling (1979) · The Hollywood Reporter (2017) · Pennsylvania grand jury report (2018)
Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes.
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How does James Wan turn an ordinary family home into the scariest place in the movie, and why does it work on audiences who think they've seen everything?

Spoiler warning: we discuss endings, including Saw's.

James Wan, the Malaysian-born Australian filmmaker behind Saw, Insidious and The Conjuring, redefined 21st century horror on budgets that started with a puppet built in his own apartment. Cathy leads this Part 1 on the craft: how Wan builds fear like architecture.

Therapists Shannon and Cathy break down why we sit down to horror wanting to be manipulated, and how Wan does it to a jaded modern audience the way a panic attack does it to the body: never the same way twice.

CHAPTERS:
0:00 James Wan and the architecture of fear
1:18 Sundance and the Saw screening
2:05 Who is James Wan?
4:48 Horror like a panic attack
7:15 Saw, Dead Silence, Insidious, The Conjuring and beyond
10:34 Fun facts: the Splat Pack and how Billy was built
14:36 Bringing back 70s torture horror, with characters you care about
16:16 Haunted houses and haunted dolls
18:49 Doing more with less
20:11 The house as a trap
23:08 Which house would you refuse to sleep in?
27:30 Suspense like a blueprint
28:44 Long shots, silence and The Changeling
30:07 Lighting, and fearing what you can't see
33:02 The geometry of a James Wan jump scare
36:02 Halloween's schoolyard scene and false safety
37:36 The Insidious demon reveal
39:28 Lightning round
42:08 Coming up in Part 2

IN THIS EPISODE:
- Saw (2004), Dead Silence (2007), Insidious (2010), The Conjuring (2013), Furious 7 (2015), Aquaman (2018) and Malignant (2021)
- Saw II's needle pit and the reverse bear trap
- Leigh Whannell, Tobin Bell, Lin Shaye and Donnie Wahlberg
- The Splat Pack: Eli Roth, Rob Zombie and Alexandre Aja
- The real Raggedy Ann behind Annabelle
- Why Wan starts every haunting in comfort: the cinematic equivalent of love bombing
- Long takes and the micro delay versus rapid cuts and the fake-out jump scare
- Misdirection, negative space and the threat outside the frame
- The Changeling (1980), Black Christmas (1974), Se7en (1995), Poltergeist (1982) and John Carpenter's Halloween (1978)
- Which household object would haunt you in a Wan film

CLINICAL TERMS: fear response, panic attacks, panic disorder, habituation, hypervigilance, love bombing, abusive dynamics, projection, safe and sacred space, psychology of horror

SERIES: James Wan Part 1 of 2. Part 2 takes on The Conjuring universe through six psychological questions.

Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes.

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If knowing about cognitive bias could protect you from a cult, why didn't it protect the Zizians?

⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode includes discussions of murder, the murder of children, suicide, sexual coercion and branding, coercive control and cult trauma. Listener discretion is advised.

Lori Vallow Daybell in Idaho and Arizona, Keith Raniere's NXIVM in Albany, New York, and Ziz LaSota's Zizians in the San Francisco Bay Area: a cult of two, a self-help company and a network of rationalists who believed they were the smartest people in any room.

Therapists Shannon and Cathy close the Cults series by asking whether anything about modern cults is new, or whether it's the same mechanism in a new costume, and what actually protects you.

CHAPTERS:
0:00 The most rational people in the room
0:59 Cults Part 3: same mechanism, new costume
2:28 Bounded choice: why didn't they just leave?
4:23 Coercive control, Biderman and a sheriff's department case
10:31 Hillman's soul loss and open door moments
13:55 Lori Vallow Daybell: the cult of two
20:08 NXIVM and Keith Raniere
29:09 The Zizians, and two corrections to Part 1
37:43 Why knowing about bias didn't help
40:57 What changed and what didn't
42:33 What actually protects you

IN THIS EPISODE:
- Janja Lalich's bounded choice, from inside the Democratic Workers' Party
- Evan Stark's coercive control and Biderman's chart of coercion
- Cathy on coercive control at a systemic level in the LA Sheriff's Department
- Why cults recruit capable people at open door moments, not weak ones
- Zombies, JJ Vallow and Tylee Ryan, and spiritual reclassification
- DOS, collateral and the brand as the point of no return
- Therapy speak as moral justification, and a Teal Swan callback
- Vegan anarcho-transhumanism, unihemispheric sleep and a leader with no title
- Six deaths: Vallejo, Chester Heights, Vallejo again and Coventry, Vermont
- Why marginalization, not identity, is the vulnerability
- Keep one relationship the group does not control

CLINICAL TERMS: bounded choice, coercive control, entrapment, chart of coercion, DDD syndrome, thought reform, loaded language, doctrine over person, milieu control, commitment and consistency, moral disengagement, dehumanization, cognitive dissonance, mana personality, participation mystique, soul loss, escape from freedom, love bombing

CORRECTIONS TO PART 1:
- The six deaths linked to the Zizians were three in 2022 and three in 2025, not 2025 and 2026.
- We've retired "undead" and "p-zombie" as descriptions of Zizian doctrine until they're better sourced.
- Everyone charged in the Zizian cases is presumed innocent.

SERIES: Cults Part 3 of 3. Part 1: CULTS: Heaven's Gate, the Zizians & Jonestown Part 1. Part 2: CULTS: Charles Manson, the Solar Temple & Adolfo Constanzo Part 2.
Related Episodes:
Season 3 Episode 9 Published Sept. 30, 2020• CULTS: Lori Vallow Daybell & Chad Daybell — The Doomsday Couple

RESOURCE: If you recognize yourself or someone you love, the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) lists therapists experienced with former members.

SOURCES: Lalich (2004) Bounded Choice · Stark (2007) Coercive Control · Biderman (1957) · Farber, Harlow & West (1957) · Hillman (1975) Re-Visioning Psychology · Moore (1992) Care of the Soul · Sottile (2022) When the Moon Turns to Blood · US DOJ · The Vow (HBO) · San Francisco Chronicle. Full APA list on Patreon.

Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes.

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Why would members of the Order of the Solar Temple kill a three-month-old baby they had never met?
⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode includes discussions of murder, ritual killing, the murder of an infant and of children, mass death, cult trauma and coercive control. Listener discretion is advised.
In 1994 the Order of the Solar Temple, led by Joseph Di Mambro and Luc Jouret, killed a baby in Morin-Heights, Quebec because his name made him the Antichrist, then left 53 dead across Switzerland and Canada. Cults Part 2 follows the same question through Adolfo Constanzo's Narcosatánicos in Matamoros, Mexico and Charles Manson's Family in Los Angeles.

Therapists Shannon and Cathy ask what changes psychologically when the killing is the ritual, and why the victim in a ritual murder is never really the target.

CHAPTERS:
0:00 A baby called the Antichrist
1:02 From Part 1 to ritual murder
2:03 Ritual as the delivery system for moral disengagement
5:04 Expressive or instrumental: where ritual murder fits
11:20 Milgram, participation mystique and Hillman
20:18 The Order of the Solar Temple
28:30 Adolfo Constanzo and the Matamoros killings
35:16 Charles Manson and the Tate-LaBianca murders
46:35 What makes ritual murder different
49:34 Coming up in Part 3

IN THIS EPISODE:
- Three ways ritual moves agency, turns a victim into a symbol and dissolves the self into the group
- Milgram's obedience variations: 65%, 92.5% when someone else throws the switch, 10% when two peers refuse
- Gina Perry's archive work and Haslam and Reicher's identification reading
- Jung's participation mystique, from stadiums to robes in a circle
- The Solar Temple: Cheiry, Salvan, the cosmic child and 74 dead by 1997
- Constanzo, Sara Aldrete, Mark Kilroy and the checkpoint that broke the case
- Palo Mayombe as a legitimate Afro-Cuban tradition Constanzo distorted
- Why Manson was not at Cielo Drive, and why that matters
- The Stanford Prison Experiment and what survives the critiques
- PIG on the door: dehumanization that happened in language weeks before

CLINICAL TERMS: ritual murder, moral disengagement, displacement and diffusion of responsibility, dehumanization, expressive and instrumental homicide, obedience to authority, participation mystique, soul loss, thought reform, social proof, cognitive dissonance, mana personality, self-dissolution, situational evil

CORRECTIONS:
- Luc Jouret was the Solar Temple's co-founder and public face, not Emmanuelle's mother. Her mother was Dominique Bellaton.
- The Solar Temple member was the mayor of Richelieu, Quebec, not the mayor of Quebec.
- Le Texier's critique of the Stanford Prison Experiment ran in American Psychologist in 2019, not 2007.
- Bugliosi and Gentry's Helter Skelter (1974) is nonfiction, not a novel.

SERIES: Cults Part 2 of 3. Part 1: CULTS: Heaven's Gate, the Zizians & Jonestown Part 1. Part 3: a brand burned into a woman's skin, a mother who decided her children were zombies, and the full story of the Zizians.

SOURCES: Milgram (1974) Obedience to Authority · Perry (2012) Behind the Shock Machine · Haslam & Reicher (2012) PLoS Biology · Salfati (2000) Homicide Studies · Le Texier (2019) American Psychologist · Reicher & Haslam (2006) British Journal of Social Psychology · Zimbardo (2007) The Lucifer Effect · Bugliosi & Gentry (1974) Helter Skelter. Full APA list on Patreon.

Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes.

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Have you ever left a relationship more confused about yourself than about the person you were with?
⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode includes discussions of emotional abuse, coercive control, gaslighting and intimate partner violence. Listener discretion is advised.
Therapists Shannon and Cathy open Season 9 with the question everyone asks and almost nobody asks clinically: what does it actually mean to call someone a psychopath, and what does it feel like to be in a relationship with one?
This is not a diagnostic checklist for your partner. It is a map of a pattern, from the inside.
IN THIS EPISODE:
- Why psychopathy is not a DSM diagnosis, and what antisocial personality disorder actually covers
- Robert Hare and the PCL-R, the Hare Psychopathy Checklist Revised
- Factor 1, the interpersonal and affective traits: glibness, charm, grandiosity, shallow affect, no remorse
- Factor 2, the antisocial lifestyle traits: need for stimulation, impulsivity, irresponsibility, early behavioral patterns
- Prevalence: under 1% of the general population, roughly 25% of incarcerated populations
- Subclinical or "successful" psychopathy, and Snakes in Suits by Paul Babiak and Robert Hare
- Why corporate, legal, political and even mental health environments show elevated rates
- The honeymoon phase: love bombing, mirroring and future faking
- Why mirroring works, and why it is a performance rather than recognition
- The shift: devaluation, intermittent reinforcement, gaslighting and isolation
- The slot machine effect, and why unpredictable reward builds anxious attachment
- What gaslighting actually is, and how "you should get some therapy" gets weaponized
- Why an outsider can see it and the person inside cannot
- Trauma bonding as a neurobiological response, not a weakness
- Why couples therapy is contraindicated, and what to ask a couple's therapist before you start
- Safety planning, and why leaving is the most dangerous period even without physical violence
- Trauma informed care, somatic approaches, trauma focused CBT and EMDR
- Karin Huffer's work on Legal Abuse Syndrome, and litigation as a tool of control
- The closing thought: the grief is real, even though the relationship wasn't
CLINICAL TERMS: psychopathy, antisocial personality disorder, PCL-R, Hare Psychopathy Checklist, narcissism, sociopathy, coercive control, love bombing, mirroring, future faking, devaluation, intermittent reinforcement, gaslighting, isolation, triangulation, trauma bonding, anxious attachment, betrayal trauma, plausible deniability, safety planning, EMDR
RELATED EPISODES: Stalking, Surveillance and Coercive Control Parts 1 and 2 · How to Identify a Narcissist · Spiritual Narcissism: Twin Flames on Fire · CULTS: Heaven's Gate, the Zizians and Jonestown
Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes.
🎧 LISTEN TO THE FULL PODCAST APPLE PODCASTS: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/terror-talk-true-crime-serial-killers-and-horror/id1435529687
SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/07JEm5Qm7cohukkEUOYt7P
PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/cw/terrortalk
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrortalkpodcast/
📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/newterrortalkpodcast
🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dark.psychology.girls?_r=18_t=ZT-99iWlxm05in
🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising