Years ago, I wrote about Bill Schnoebelen as part of the Cult of Before Stories series. The Cult includes that vast collection of fake, bombastic Satanism-and-witchcraft-themed testimonies that hucksters peddle for attention and profit to evangelicals. These fake testimonies hit their peak around the late 1980s before petering out in popularity by the mid-1990s.
Bill Schnoebelen is no exception to this trend. He recently found a YouTube channel hosted by possibly the most gullible human being I’ve ever encountered. There, Schnoebelen spun his wild old tales of being a real live Satanic vampire before the power of Jesus overcame him. Today, we’ll check out his totes-for-realsies testimony—and talk about the critical questions to ask to blow these fakers’ stories out of the water.
(This post and its audio ‘cast first went live on Patreon on 5/30/2025. They’re both available now!)
SITUATION REPORT: “The True Life Story of a Former Satanic Vampire”
In late April, YouTuber Almost False uploaded two videos as part of an interview called “The True Life Story of a Former Satanic Vampire.” His interviewee was veteran Satanic Panicker Bill Schnoebelen. In his 70s now, Schnoebelen still peddles his story of being a respected grandmaster in every secret society evangelicals can imagine.
In the first video, Schnoebelen claims to have been a high-ranked Freemason. This second focuses more on Schnoebelen’s claims of being a “Satanic vampire.”
This video is a perfect example of Christians’ eternal fascination with bombastic testimonies. Years ago, I called them a Cult of Before Stories: hooked on miracle-laden conversion testimonies as both a show of dominance over other religions and as a bit of evidence they thought supported their claims. The Satanic Panic gave them both with its nonstop claims of a huge, influential, well-connected bunch of evildoers seeking control of the entire world. I call this common Satanic Panic trope the Cabal of Satanic Wiccans (or Wiccan Satanists, Whatevs) (CSWWSW), since none of the Panickers really differentiate between them.
A quick rundown of the Bill Schnoebelen story
Bill Schnoebelen was born in 1949, according to the German Wikipedia site. Though his family raised him to be a fervent Catholic, he says Vatican II put him off that faith. Nowadays, Catholics pissed about Vatican II just become tradcaths. Instead of doing that, Schnoebelen went full wackadoodle, claiming his search for spiritual answers drove him into telepathy and Wicca. No kidding.
Like Forrest Gump, this guy has galumphed his way through most of the New Age. In 2002, Kerr Cuhulain summarized his journey:
- 1968-1973: Warlock in Alexandrian Wicca. Claims he reached the 2nd or 3rd degree; belonged from 1973-1984.
- 1971: BA in music and education from Loras College, Dubuque. It’s a Catholic liberal arts college.
- 1973: “High Priestly rank in the Druidic Craft of the Wise,” a Wiccan offshoot that Schnoebelen sometimes calls “the Druidic Craft of the Wise.”
- Late 1960s-1970s: 16 years total leading Wiccans in Milwaukee.
- 1975: “Card-carrying” member of the Church of Satan for seven years. (On Jack Chick’s site, Satanist between 1976-1980)
- 1976: Master Freemason. He claims to have reached the 90th degree in it.
- 1978: A Catholic Bishop in “an ‘Old Catholic Order'” that wasn’t officially Roman Catholic.
- 1979: Palladium Freemason.
- 1980: Master’s degree in Catholic Theology.
- Also 1980: Mormon. In five years, he achieved a remarkably high rank and served in numerous high-end roles.
- At some point: 4th circle (out of 7) in the Church of All Worlds. Kicked out for “power tripping.”
- At some point: 30 years of UFO conspiracy theorizing.
- At some point: Certified naturopathic doctor (ND). Typically, NDs require years of study and clinical training, but he gives no dates.
- At some point: Raging cocaine addict, but don’t worry: Jesus cured him.
- 1984: Left Milwaukee and became a TRUE CHRISTIAN™. He’s claimed he converted on the basis of a Chick tract. (Of possible interest, so did my Evil Ex Biff.) Jack Chick liked him enough to feature one of his essays about D&D on his website.
- 1990: Master’s degree in consulting from Liberty University.
Despite the obvious problems with his timeline, Schnoebelen hit it big with his Satanic Panic testimony.
A quick note about Bill Schnoebelen’s vampire claims
The vampire claims threw me off quite a bit. I didn’t remember Schnoebelen ever saying he was a vampire. Freemason, Catholic, Wiccan, Satanist, sure, but not a vampire! You won’t find any mention of vampirism in Kerr Cuhulain’s writeups, either.
However, I found an ancient video called “Exposing the Illuminati from Within.”
The video is from The Prophecy Club, a ministry devoted to Endtimes fearmongering. Long-lost traces of search-engine descriptions suggest it’s possibly linked to a 1991 tour with Ron Wyatt, a once-popular pseudoarchaeologist. If that’s true, then the internet has all but forgotten this tour ever happened.
In his speech, Schnoebelen talks about reaching a very high rank in one group (the Masons, maybe?). At that point, his superiors forced him to choose between becoming a werewolf or a vampire. He decided to go vamp because his werewolf pals had told him the doggo transformation was painful.
So yes, in case you didn’t know: Freemasonry is like careers in the Sims. Once you hit a certain level in a career, for example music, you have to become either a rock star or a classical player.
Obviously trying to grab some Twilight money, Schnoebelen ended up publishing a book about vampires in 2012.
And now: Interview with a Vampire
First, we get a catchy lead-in snippet of Schnoebelen’s career specialization choice, then him claiming he totally bit pretty women’s necks and drank their blood. He says he was at serious risk of “discorporating,” which meant dying and becoming a vampire forever.
Surprisingly, Schnoebelen doesn’t stray far from the biographical details he’s given in the past, though details do change. The Ambrosius spirit guide at 2:53 is new: Ambrosius is the one he says told him to become a Catholic priest in order to get further along with his occult studies.
That’s the same weird career counseling Schnoebelen claimed in the 1991 Illuminati video starting at 15 minutes in, but Ambrosius isn’t mentioned at all in it. No source is in fact named, and there the requirement is part of advancing within Satanism.
In both stories, however, Schnoebelen balks at the suggestion. He was married, you see. But aha! A wild heretic Catholic offshoot org shows up! And through ordination with them, he can fulfill the letter of the law in both stories! The actual teachings of the Roman Catholic Church don’t matter, just a priestly ordination with the magic word “Catholic” on it somewhere!
Just whizz it all together in the blender and drink it down!
Overall, Bill Schnoebelen’s basic claim is that by blending together Catholicism, Wicca, Satanism, Freemasonry, and eclectic occult practices, he gained enormous magical powers.
But his life dispels that illusion almost immediately.
He constantly bounced around religious groups, not lasting anywhere for long, never achieving anything of real note, always chasing the fastest, easiest way possible to become powerful. But it never happened—not with the New Age/neopagan groups at least. Whenever he realized one organization wouldn’t give him what he wanted, he left in search of another that might. Only evangelical Christianity in full Satanic Panic mode did the trick, which is why he’s stayed there all this time.
Not only that, but the entire idea of “blending” all these religions is sheer crank magnetism. Most of these faiths hold mutually-contradictory beliefs, despite Schnoebelen’s claims to the contrary. Wiccans don’t usually believe in Satan or Yahweh, and they certainly wouldn’t sell their souls to anyone. They also tend to be crunchy-granola nature types who’d consider Satanists kinda tryhard. Satanists are more individualistic, and they don’t tend to respect Wiccans much. So there’s simply no way Wicca could be a front for Satanism without that fact being loud and clear—particularly from Satanists! And that’s before we get into the differences in beliefs between Mormonism, Catholicism, and various kinds of Masons.
Hell, even within Wicca, different traditions snipe at each other for not witching correctly. And all of the traditionalist Wiccans tend to look down on eclectic ones that pick and borrow from many traditions. There’s just not any way to blend these together without destroying their essential character.
PROOF YES PROOF of Bill Schnoebelen’s claims
As evidence of his occult badassery, Schnoebelen spends a long time in the interview (from 9-18 minutes in) describing a dream that he calls “The Cathedral of Pain.” He claims he had this dream a few days after consecrating his soul to Satan. It’s literally just a dream sequence.
Schnoebelen claims he got a scar from something a demon did to him in the dream. I’m not kidding. No, he does not show the scar on the video. He’s wearing a newsboy-style cap which shadows his forehead (probably to cover baldness). He points to the location with his finger; it’s in roughly the “Third Eye” location New Agers talk about, but I see no scar at any point in the video:
The host claims in the comments that he’s seen the scar, just it’s super-faint. Well, here’s a photo from a 1999 capture of Schnoebelen’s website. I still don’t see a scar:
I looked at a ton of photos of Schnoebelen (all from the 1990s and later), and none have a scar where he points. The Illuminati video does not even mention the scar, the Cathedral, or talons poking him anywhere. Nor does Kerr Cuhulain mention any of this stuff. It seems likely that Schnoebelen created this dream sequence sometime after the 1990s.
In both videos, Schnoebelen talks about the day-to-day details of his life as a brand-new vampire (15 minutes in for the interview, 19 for the Illuminati vid). Our super-high-level Mason/Satanist/Wiccan/Catholic/medium slung newspapers on the night shift for the Milwaukee Sentinel. He could no longer eat or drink anything but blood, and he couldn’t go out in sunlight or get near any garlic.
However, he also noted in the Illuminati that he couldn’t dissolve into red mist or become a bat. Aww. Dude got all of the slaps and none of the bennies of his multiclass! I’d have respec’d, personally.
The depressing reality: Bill Schnoebelen as a cocaine addict
Everything Schnoebelen says about himself sounds much more like a story of serious drug addiction than a wild ride through the freaky-deeky New Age.
At his newspaper job post-Satanic consecration, he talked in both videos about often seeing prostitutes nearby as he worked and having to force himself not to attack them for blood. It seems all too plausible that he actually felt violent urges toward these women, but it was likely fueled by his cocaine addiction.
Along the same lines, he also claims at 35 minutes into the interview that his post-consecration saliva contained the same cocaine he thinks vampire bats have in their saliva. Yes, he thinks his entire biochemistry changed to that of a vampire bat! Apparently his dentist had to wear thick gloves while treating him because his vampire saliva numbed the dentist’s hands!
Of course, obviously vampire bats do not have anything like cocaine in their saliva. We’ve known for a long time that their saliva contains draculin, an anticoagulant. Some scientists theorize that it also contains a numbing agent. Again, it’s way more likely he showed up to his appointment so coked up that the dentist realized it’d be safer to wear gloves.
Later on in the interview (at 46 minutes), he claims his vampire biochemistry gave him super-bad breath. That detail also sounds consistent with drug abuse. But don’t worry, friends. Somehow, conversion to TRUE CHRISTIANITY™ re-altered his biochemistry to remove that agent from his saliva, improved his breath, and let him eat again. Hooray Team Jesus!
Don’t ask to see objective evidence of anything, though. It doesn’t exist, just like the totes-for-realsies demonic scar on his forehead.
The amazing conversion of Bill Schnoebelen
In the Illuminati video (at 22 minutes), Schnoebelen says that every year he sent a check to the Church of Satan—probably for membership dues. He apparently talked more about this incident in the first Almost False interview video, but he and the host allude to the story in the second (at 25 minutes, then more in detail at 43 minutes).
NOTE FOR YOUNGER MILLENNIALS AND ZOOMERS: Back in Ye Olden Dayes, checks were like Venmo. They told their bank to send money to the recipient’s bank. After each withdrawal took place, banks “canceled” the check so it couldn’t be used again. Every month, banks sent these canceled checks to the account holders for their records. Just remembering this whole process is exhausting.
In both videos, Schnoebelen says that a very unprofessional TRUE CHRISTIAN™ bank worker wrote on one of the canceled checks that she was praying for him. Though he was a coke fiend, he was a responsible checking account holder, so he saw the note.
SECOND NOTE: Christians know that if they don’t tell you they’re praying for you, you won’t know it otherwise. No independent signs will tell you so!
Around this time, he began noticing his aura looked very sickly. Some young women missionaries showed up with Chick tracts and comic books, and that finished off his time as a prodigal son.
Why Bill Schnoebelen does what he does
Last week, we talked about the YouTube apologists re-treading old, bad arguments for the modern day. This interview belongs to that same trend.
I’ve noticed that everywhere Schnoebelen goes, he achieves leadership ranks in blinding speed—and gets treated like a well-respected elder wherever he apparently goes. In the D&D essay, for example, he claims that the game’s creators came to him “in the late 1970s” to learn about authentic magic.
Sure, Jan. Pull the other one—it has bells! D&D came out in 1974, not “the late 70s.” It was derived from Chainmail, a medieval mini wargame system. First edition D&D wasn’t an intense roleplaying experience, but rather a wargame with way smaller armies. If you read its sourcebooks, you’ll see that right away. Additionally, even in the modern day, most Game/Dungeon Masters ignore spell components for all but the most important spells. Authentic magic was never part of D&D’s formula.
As with all of his other big claims, Schnoebelen has never presented evidence concerning this meeting, and it flies in the face of D&D’s history. So it sounds to me like Schnoebelen invented this story to make himself sound authoritative on the topic of magic, just like he’s exaggerated or invented credentials in countless organizations over the years.
All that said, I can easily believe someone kicked Schnoebelen out of a New Age group for “power tripping.” In fact, I bet it happened more than once. Like so many liars-for-Jesus, Schnoebelen aches for power and dominance—but he lacks the real-world charisma and skills needed to get it.
The borrowing of Satanic Panickers
When one looks into Satanic Panic hucksters, one notes a great degree of crossover and cooperation between them. For instance, at 50 minutes in the interview, Schnoebelen talks about a “Feast of the Beast” that he says occurs every 28 years in Satanism. During the feast, participants murder untold numbers of victims. He claims he met a werewolf at this feast.
Obviously, no such holiday exists in Satanism. It is the creation of the writers of Michelle Remembers, the book that kick-started the entire moral panic in 1980. In 2002, Kerr Cuhulain offered more details about this supposed feast. It’s ridiculous.
According to Kerr Cuhulain, Schnoebelen himself claims to have shown up at a Mike Warnke revival, where he threatened Warnke with a lawsuit! Yes, he apparently led “200 black robed witches” to the revival to intimidate the Christians there. Not a single news story of the time mentions this happening, of course.
It’s just neat to me to see these hucksters constantly wandering into each other’s paths.
The questions nobody asks Bill Schnoebelen
Liars-for-Jesus prey on evangelicals because they know evangelicals won’t ask them tough questions. Like these:
- Why hasn’t he ever offered a complete timeline of all these swift rises to leadership in these organizations?
- Why hasn’t he turned in all these supposed murderers and whatnot that he’s known? For that matter, why hasn’t he turned himself in to the police?
- Why doesn’t he have any evidence of the wilder claims? He doesn’t have his canceled checks or his Satanist membership card. What he does have is pedestrian, to say the least, and doesn’t indicate the status he claims he cultivated in these groups.
- Why are there so few pre-conversion names in his testimony, when they’d be such powerful corroboration for his story?
- Why are there no photographs of him, especially as a vampire?
- How does he explain the number of people who’ve flat denied his claims, like Harold Moss of the Egyptian pagan group Church of the Eternal Source? Moss told Kerr Cuhulain that his group didn’t do correspondence courses and never gave Schnoebelen any credentials.
- What evidence does he have that Jesus cured his cocaine addiction? Is he willing to take a piss test or does he have past ones that support his claim to be clean through Jesus Power?
Satanic Panic testimonies are very easy to debunk. They’re too full of lies to hold up even as exaggerations. Often, they describe Wicca, Satanism, and other faiths in ways that nobody belonging to them would ever recognize—but which fit in well with evangelical folklore about them.
These testimonies are told to get attention, not to be historical accounts of stuff that really happened. You know, like the Bible itself.
The end of the Satanic Panic—and of Bill Schnoebelen as an influencer
By the mid-1990s, the Satanic Panic gravy train came to a complete halt. Blame Mike Warnke, the Cult’s inaugural member. The 1992 Cornerstone expose on his lies devastated the industry. Most evangelicals realized these stories were very obviously false and leapt ahead to the next big trend. Very quickly, they forgot that this massive moral panic had ever happened.
After their grift train fell apart, these liars-for-Jesus found themselves at loose ends. Much later, QAnon and Trumpist politics have lapped those fusty old testimonies. In just the past few years, Donald Trump promoted QAnon accounts over 1000 times.
But nothing ever actually fades entirely from Christianity. No Christians claims can ever be supported with objective evidence, but since most of those claims are unfalsifiable anyway, there’s not a way for Christians to definitively reject them. So Satanic Panic testimonies are simply part of the architecture of evangelicalism now. And so are the onetime Panickers who so held evangelicals’ attention.
It just amazes me that out of all the ladder-climbing this guy has done with all these organizations, he’s obviously still doing very poorly in life. He’s not popular or rich. He appears on whatever little channel or podcast will have him, and he tells the same old stories he’s always told—just with updates and trims here and there. His pre-conversion associates, whoever they might be, don’t seem to think highly of him.
His position within the Satanic Panic is really all he’s ever achieved, and that train stopped about 30 years ago when everyone tacitly accepted at last that the entire panic was pure bullshit from top to bottom.
Really, the very worst thing that could have happened to Bill Schnoebelen has already happened: He spent his life grifting off a fake moral panic and lying to millions of people, and now he simply isn’t fit for any other purpose.
NEXT UP: Hardliners are once again attacking the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). We’ll check it out next time! See you soon! <3
Please support my work!
Thanks for reading, and thanks for being part of our community! Here are some ways you can support my work:
0 Comments