It was 1978 and I was about to experience the most horrifying moment of my young life.

Mother and I had traveled to Nashville so that we could visit with her sister and get a little shopping in before Christmas. The trip was a special treat for me because I would be attending my first big city church service. The glamour of it all was terrifically exciting.

As we made our way through town that fateful evening, the streets confused us. The darkness was enveloping. In no time, we were lost. And then, around a corner, there was a strange hum. It beckoned, that dull roar of feet and tambourine clatter.

I often tell myself that that was the night I became a man. Before, I had merely been a boy, a good-natured teenager with a fondness for faith and football. But what I witnessed next forever changed me.

I know now that what we encountered around that corner was the prelude to a concert by the hippie rock band, the Grateful Dead. At the time, I truly believed I was staring into the angry, sweaty bowels of hell. And that Satanic realm glared right back.

The Intestines of Depravity

Bare-naked bodies, draped in rotting flowers and pagan beads, surrounded Mother and me. Countless, boundless eyes explored my figure with insatiable lust. They loomed close, their emaciated arms aching to touch and feel. I never knew another human being could smell so foul. Drum beats and woeful howls harmonized as thick, jaundiced clouds of marijuana smoke disoriented us. The people seemed oblivious to their own suffering as they danced and danced that wretched dance of the spiritually dead.

This was demonic possession. It was the condemnation of the fallen to a life of sin. At some point in their lives, these creatures had forsaken the love of their own mothers. They had given up on their families, their communities and their churches. Instead, hardcore rock music had become their religion. The drugs and rampant sexual liaisons became acts of worship. Their altar was a concert stage and upon the special blood-red rug there, they placed their souls in sacrifice.

Faith Hewn From the Dead’s Rock of Darkness

I became a man that night because I looked into the face of Mephistopheles and did not flinch away. I was only a child of 19 years, but I pushed this crowd of mythic gargoyles and medusas aside, like Moses parting the Red Sea. I raised my Bible aloft and recited Psalm 23.

Mother wept openly. I clutched her hand and pressed on. Whether it was minutes or hours, I will never know, but eventually we crawled free of that cursed labyrinth of cackling harlots and decaying automobiles, greasy stalls and gruesome desperados touting hallucinogenic drugs and baby t-shirts in the same rancid breath.

I have since learned that this Grateful Dead “scene” was not a random occurrence, but rather a regular feature of this rock band’s yearly recruitment tours. Inspired by the wisdom of Pastor Jacob Aranza, and his book Backward Masking Unmasked, I vowed to devote my life to protecting my family and my hometown from such hellaciousness. When I was reborn in the Blood of the Lamb, I knew my mission was to protect all my nation’s hometowns from the hippie vice.

It was a long and bitter battle. But that was the past. For the last decade, I felt that I had won. The Grateful Dead were no more. People in America once again appreciated our traditional, patriotic values.

But recent revelations have challenged me into battle mode once again. The Dead have risen and all of America is now at grave risk.

This is Part I in a three-part series. For Part II, click “Those Who Forget the Lessons of the Grateful Dead May Be Doomed to a New Reign of Terror.” For Part III, click “Is the Grateful Dead’s Anarchist Legacy Threatening the Future of America’s Internet?”