This is going to be a short post but I had to stop in and recommend this podcast episode. This episode explains my experience with this film series perfectly. He also explains what Christian parents were thinking and doing at the time when this film series was released.
Category: Anti-Christ
Apocalypse Comes Calling
***Trigger Warning*** Rapture, Endtimes, TITN
My parents were married around 1968. They appear miserable in all of the photos from their wedding day. In each one, they stare back at the camera with somber expressions made all the more depressing by the black and white color. They don’t appear to be at church. It’s just the two of them standing by a Formica table. Some of the photos include a small cake. My father is wearing a suit and my mother is wearing a simple white dress. They both appear to be there against their will as if someone is holding a gun to their backs just outside of the frame. My father, Amando, seems steely and looks to be clenching his jaw tightly. My mother, Marla, seems sad and resigned. Neither of them ever talked about their wedding day or courtship but they did seem to love each other even if that love was toxic and almost killed them. It may have been the time period. There are photos of my aunt from the same time and she appears equally unfriendly and gloomy. My aunt is probably not the best example because she is gloomy and unfriendly by nature. I was born in June of 1970 and luckily there are some photos of my parents smiling with me. My favorite photo from that time period features my mother in a summer dress, hair wrapped in rollers, cradling me in her arms. She looks relaxed and happy. My father remains serious in most of the photos from that year but there are a few from time to time where he looks like his guard might be down, in those moments a smile creeps in. Like many little girls, I adored my father. I think I spent most of my childhood chasing after his love, time, and acceptance. I loved my mother too but I saw her as fragile and in need of someone to look out for her. I could never really be a child around either of them.
I have lived in the Madison Wisconsin area all my life. It hasn’t been until the last couple of years that I could really imagine living anywhere else. Now I dream of Colorado or somewhere in the desert. There is a lot to love about Wisconsin. There are beautiful parks and lakes. I am a nature lover and so I would miss this for sure if I ever relocated. I am an empty nester and it almost feels like I’m starting a new life filled with all sorts of possibilities. I have a love-hate relationship with my home town. While it is a great place to live it also holds some truly awful memories for me. Part of me knows that these memories will follow me wherever I go because they live inside of me, the other part just wishes to not be reminded every day of my past. For now, most of my children are here and so this is where I intend to remain. In the wee hours of the morning when I’m staring at the ceiling, I have to wonder if the ghosts would continue to haunt me if I slipped away in the middle of the night. Madison has and always will be a haunted place for me, filled with the monsters of my childhood.
When I was very little my parents lived on Main St. I can see the street in my mind’s eye but I couldn’t tell you which house we lived in. My earliest memory is from the time when we lived there. I was sitting in a highchair. I’m in the kitchen and people are bustling around me. I am watching the dust fly around in a sunbeam streaming through the window. This memory, although brief, is warm and vivid. When I think of that memory it makes me feel peaceful inside. When I close my eyes I can still see it.
The next memory is shrouded in darkness. My father is quickly carrying me out of the church sanctuary. I’m around toddler age. I am crying hard and he is trying to quiet me. The noise coming from the sanctuary is loud and there is screaming. Our little Assemblies of God church is screening a movie and the congregation is emotional. The screaming could have been from a congregant or from the film. The film was “A Thief in the Night.” I remember looking down through my tears to my black patent leather shoes. That church had a soundproof glass viewing window and a speaker out in the vestibule. This way parents could take their children out if they needed to without missing any of the services. So even though my father took me out I could still hear the scary sounds coming from the sanctuary. To this day whenever I think of that church it sends chills down my spine. Now, as far as I know, I have no other reason to be scared by that church other than the spanking I might get if I wasn’t quiet during the services. Even now when I drive by the building something in the pit of my stomach clenches. In my mind, it represents the rapture, being left behind, and everything that comes with that. My parents thought the whole incident was humorous. They liked to brag about how I never cried or misbehaved in church. My father would brag about spanking me until I learned to be quiet. “We never put our child in the nursery”, they would boast. That one night was seen as an oddity when I cried so hard they had to take me out. Thankfully they did not spank me for being scared. My parents loved that church but before long they felt they had to leave. Their beloved pastor left and they did not like the new pastor.
In 1972 A Thief In The Night was released. It is the granddaddy of many of my childhood nightmares. It is also the first in a long line of rapture themed films. I see it as the scarier, more traumatizing version of the Left Behind films. It has not waned in popularity over time probably due to how effectively it delivers its message. A Thief In The Night was never shown in theaters but it was passed around from church to church. This made it possible for the film to skirt the rating system. It has been shown all over the world but it is best known in the American south and midwest. You could find it at Sunday night church services, youth groups, Bible camps, and Sunday school classes. Because it was shown in churches parents could expose their children to it’s dangerous message with no oversight. From what I’ve heard it seems that many churches used these films to target teens in particular. I am so glad streaming from the internet was not a thing when I was a child. Now parents do not have to wait for their church to gain access to this series, they can stream it from the internet for free and bring its horrors right into their living rooms. I have C-PTSD for multiple reasons but I believe the seeds of it all lie within this series of films.
This film series was written by Russell S. Doughten Jr. and directed by Donald W. Thompson. Russell S. Doughten also worked on “The Blob” in the 1950s and has a producer credit. The original film was made in Des Moines Iowa and snaked its way through the Bible belt. The imagery and the theme song created an unforgettable experience. To this day the theme song of that film lives in my head. All I need to do is read a snippet of the lyrics or hear a tiny part of the melody to have it stuck in my head for days. Even as I’m writing this it is playing in my mind and I will have to try to do something to dig it out so that I’m not riddled with anxiety later. My mother liked the theme song, “I Wish We’d All Been Ready” and would play it on her accordion. She would sing it over and over. I was surprised to learn that song was really popular at the time and a big part of the Jesus movement. For me, it is like hearing the chimes of hell.
There are four films in the series, A Thief In The Night, A Distant Thunder, Image of the Beast, and The Prodigal Planet. The first was released in 1972 and the last in 1983. I saw the first one when I was a toddler, probably around age 3. All of the churches we attended following that first church showed these films. My mother would sit on the bed and sing that song not understanding the trauma she was causing in my young mind. Every year following our viewing of these films I would go through a period of time when I could not sleep alone. I would have nightmares about government officials coming to get me to be beheaded. I would go through periods when I was afraid to be alone and that was a problem because I was almost always alone. If you watch the films now having had no experience with them they might seem dated, campy, and just plain weird. If you see them as a young child and all of the people in your life believe that these things are actually going to happen you will most likely be traumatized. The internet is full of people who were traumatized during childhood because they were made to watch these films in school, church, camp, or at home on video. Many horror fans embrace them as true horror films and consider them to be classic B movies. I have also seen people write about them being a gateway to their love of the horror genre. I experienced them as truth and a certain future.
As horror films, they might be fine but as tools to scare children into salvation, they become something much more sinister. As a side note, these films are often still used for evangelism but I feel their true purpose is to keep people who are already Christians in line. Patty the main character is a Christian throughout the whole film but she isn’t the right kind of Christian. She believes in god’s love but not all of the rapture theology people keep trying to tell her about. Its message doesn’t focus on God’s love, it focuses on fear and keeping yourself on the right side of an angry vengeful god. Being a Christian is not enough. That lesson followed me through my whole childhood. The reach of these films is greater than you might think. It has been estimated that over 300,000,000 people have viewed these films. It can be a hard thing to get good estimates about because they are not shown in theaters but in church basements. One thing is for sure the memory of this series haunts the dreams of many adults who grew up in the ’70s and ’80s to this day.
My mother believed the message introduced in these films wholeheartedly. It bled into every part of my life. Believing her heart was never quite right with god she would spend hours shut away in her bedroom crying and speaking in tongues. I would stand by the door and worry about whether or not she was going to be ok. She didn’t want me to make a lot of noise while she was praying so I couldn’t even use the television to drown out her wailing. I recall those nights as being very lonely. If she came home and couldn’t immediately locate me she would worry that I had been raptured leaving her behind. One day I was playing with my plastic sled and I fell asleep under it. She came home and searched the apartment high and low for me and when she couldn’t find me at home or at the neighbors she started screaming and that woke me up. I jumped up from under the sled and saw our neighbors and my mother standing there looking down at me. She grabbed me and held me tight to her chest. I could feel her heart racing and her face was wet with tears. On that day I got a very clear idea of how real all of this was to her, and it became even more real for me. From that day on the thought of being left behind haunted my dreams and my waking hours. I worried about what small sin or act of childhood would keep me from flying up to heaven with my mother. I constantly asked Jesus to forgive my sins even asking him to forgive sins I might have forgotten about. In my mind, Jesus was a scorekeeper. He was keeping track of every thought and action, and he had no problem at all with sending a little girl to the guillotine.
Even after my parents moved on to other churches we lived within eyesight of the little Assemblies of God Church until about 1979. For much of my early childhood, I could see it from our front picture window. We had neighbors who attended there and my mother was close with them. Whenever they showed the “Thief in the Night” film my mother and I would go to service with them. My mother had a weird fascination or maybe obsession with the film. She and her best friend Gail were always excited to see that it would be showing again and they would pack up us kids and drag us to it. Afterward, we would all enjoy a meal together and my mother and her friend would recount everything that happened in the movie and talk about how close to the end times we were. I have never been able to understand how someone who feared the rapture so much would want to torture themselves by volunteering to watch that movie. As sequels came out we went to see all of those as well. My mother would complain about my fears, my fear of the dark, of being alone, and especially of sleeping alone but she never seemed to really get what she and my father had done by exposing me to that series of films. There were so many nights when I would lay awake worried about missing the rapture. I would dream about being chased by soldiers and being beheaded. I would flee to my mother’s bed and she would let me sleep with her but not without being pretty grumpy about it. Over the years these fears grew. I feared loud noises, especially anything that sounded like it might be a horn, white vans (because of the movie), bar codes, and men in uniforms. Later when I was older that fear would spread to credit cards, computers, and anything automated. I even grew to fear the television. My mother and her family would talk about how someday the government would be able to watch us through our television set and even see-through walls. They would talk about how after the rapture there would be no place to hide. Even as a very young child, I took their words very seriously. I would lay awake at night making sure that my right hand and forehead were covered by the blankets at all times.
Revelation 13:16-17 King James Version (KJV)
16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
I am sure this all sounds very strange to you if you have never encountered these beliefs before. I am also sure that some of you have shivers running down your spine right now because you know exactly what I’m talking about. The fears caused by all of this would only get louder as I got older. It wasn’t until I was in my 40’s that I figured out how to deal with them. Even then I can only deal with them, the CPTSD makes sure they are never far away.
Lonliness and Punishment
Part 4
Violence was not uncommon in our home. It wasn’t just the big altercations between my parents but all of the little everyday things that happened. The worst spanking I ever received was when my father spotted me standing close to a man outside. He was standing near the fence that divided our yard from the grassy field above. He was watching a softball game. I was outside and when I saw him I went to say hello. What my parents did not know is I had been talking to this man for a long time. He lived down the hall from us. One day I spotted his open apartment door when I was exiting out the back door of our complex. He had just moved in and so I stopped by to say hello. Yes, my parents had taught me not to talk to strangers but I was desperately lonely. He chatted with me and was always friendly. I know I was actually in his apartment at least once. I have no idea what this man was actually like. I do not have much memory of him but I remember his apartment and I remember his figure standing by the fence watching the game. My father spotted me outside with this man he did not know and he came out to fetch me. Once in our apartment, his anger boiled over and he started to interrogate me about the neighbor. He yelled about talking to strangers and I remember crying very hard. I don’t remember what I said to him but I know that I attempted to explain and that only made him angrier. I was in elementary school at this point, maybe 7 or 8 years old. My mother seemed unconcerned until he reached for the dog collar to spank me. He was not wearing a belt and the dog collar was the closest thing within reach. I lurched to get away and my mother yelled at him. The collar had metal notches in it and a metal clasp and she thought it was too dangerous to spank me with it. He did not listen to her and started swinging at me hitting whatever he could, mostly my legs. It was expected that I would sit still when being spanked, if I moved they would hit whatever was where my butt was supposed to be including my hands. In this case, I tried to get away because I could sense the fear in my mother’s anger. He grabbed my arm and let me have it. After he was done my mother and father argued about what he had done and I cried alone in my room away from their fighting. I believe the big concern to be whether or not someone might notice and call social services. Eventually, they tried to make peace with me by giving me a flour tortilla. As weird as this might sound, they often tried to comfort me by handing me a tortilla or banana. They explained why talking to strangers was dangerous and life went on. As angry as my mother was with my father she was often the more violent of the two of them. She spanked me but she also pinched me and twisted my ear when she wanted my attention. She would pull my hair when she was really angry and that hurt the most. It amazes me that they would believe that a child left alone for 10-12 hours a day would have the self-control to not talk to strangers given how lonely I would naturally be. My mother cried over her loneliness all the time and my father sought out other women to keep him from being lonely. I feel like they did not see me as a real person. They seemed unaware that I was a human and not a doll. I had needs and emotions. I felt all the same things they did. To this day I wonder if they did not understand or did they just push away that understanding because had they acknowledged it they would have had to change how they were interacting with me.
When you are a kid there is so much to worry about. I worried about losing my keys and being locked out of our apartment. I worried about people breaking into the house and strangers. It was the 70’s and stranger danger was a big deal. Then there was the alarm clock! I was always concerned with being late for school or oversleeping. So I developed little rituals around checking the clock and checking the locks on the doors. I looked over my shoulder when walking down the street alone and always checked the back seat of the car when I got in. The keys around my neck were like a security blanket. At various times during the school day I would feel for them just in case they might have fallen off of me at some point. I learned all of this from my mother. She was never diagnosed with OCD but she definitely displayed some of the behaviors. She drove me nuts checking the knobs on the stove and having to go back and check to be sure the door was really locked. She planted this worry into me. No amount of checking and rechecking life was enough for her. She was always preparing for doom. I would stare off into space as I waited for her to check and recheck. I was trying desperately to be somewhere else.
When I left for school in the morning my dog Muffy was the only one there to see me off. She was also the only one there waiting for me when I returned. She would be watching at the window when I left for school and waiting for me there when I came home. Every day I would run home after school and feel for the key around my neck. Sliding it in the lock I would fight to turn the stiff deadbolt. Immediately a walking cloud would come bounding towards me. Her fluffy white tail curled over her back and I would bury my face in her neck. The apartment was always silent. After putting my things down and taking off my coat anxiety would wash over me. With Muffy by my side, I would wander through each room checking for who might be hiding and waiting for me to come home. I checked every closet, under the beds, and behind the shower curtain. There was never anyone physically there, just me and fear. Dread would wash over me and I would remind myself that you can’t see the devil.
The devil or Satan as he was sometimes called was a part of my daily life. He was as present as any person I could see with my eyes. God felt like light years away but Satan felt as close as the breath in my lungs. All of the adults in my family seemed to be very concerned about him. I knew one thing, he was tricky. I was taught that he and God had some kind of falling out and now he was the enemy of God. Because God created me the devil wanted to steal me away and take me to hell with him. Some day the devil was going to burn for all eternity and if I chose him over God I would burn too. In Sunday school we learned a lot about how the devil might try to trick us. He might tell me lies and I had to question every thought, action, and emotion, to see if they were of God or of Satan. This was tough because the devil was so manipulative and how would I know if I was right? The adults in my life made it sound like Satan was always lurking around every corner, under every bed, and in every closet just waiting for a chance to deceive me or worse yet drag me to hell. Later in life, I would learn about the AntiChrist and in many ways, he was even scarier than Satan. He would be in human form and as the church and my family would often say, “He might be alive right now!” There was much speculation about who he might be. The Pope was always a popular candidate but some people said that Ronald Reagan might be as well after all his name added up to 666 just like the Bible said to look out for. As an adult, I look back on those teachings with disgust. I have raised four children and thankfully none of them have had to deal with fear the way I did, I am 50 years old and it has taken me decades to let go of that fear. I cannot remember any time in my childhood or up through my 40’s when I have not been afraid. My childhood was soaked in teachings about an angry God and so much of what I endured during childhood is wrapped up in those teachings. Fringe religiosity and mental illness do not go well together and my family had equal amounts of both. I am descended from a long line of very religious people. My mother’s roots pass through both the Assemblies of God and the Church of God organizations. Eventually, she ended up attending a United Pentecostal Church. It was this church, Calvary Gospel United Pentecostal, that had the biggest impact on my life. The combination of the end-times theology of the 1970s and on through the ’80s and untreated severe mental illness created a childhood full of uncertainty, worries about abandonment, and child neglect. I did not come through this childhood unscathed but I have managed to survive and I keep leaning into the hope that I can continue to get closer to being whole and healthy. Most people who know me see me as a driven and fairly successful person. I have a devoted partner and I’ve raised 4 children. I am politically active, and I participate in volunteer initiatives within my community. Some might tell you that I am creative, a lover of furry creatures big and small, a collector of books, and driven by a desire for transformation. If they know me well they might tell you that I never sleep, have to be reminded to eat, and that at times my anxiety is crippling, and sometimes depression follows me around like a fog threatening to swallow me whole. If they know me even better they might tell you that when I do sleep I tend to be plagued by nightmares complete with guillotines and often involving me running from some sort of One World Government authority figure. Writing this book is one way I am trying to heal myself. As you continue on this journey with me, I will tell you about the other ways I am working on healing and helping others to heal. None of this is easy but it feels necessary.
Debbie McNulty 