I admit it. I’ve been a little hard on the boy wizard lately. Unfair, perhaps. For the record, from my limited knowledge of the books, I don’t think J.K. Rowling is introducing evil into the lives of unsuspecting children. I do; however, have one specific concern regarding books dealing with any aspect of the occult that find their way into children’s eager little hands. Before anyone freaks out, let me explain. I’m not condemning J.K Rowling or anyone else. I do have a vested interest, seeing how I have two wee ones in my household, and I’ve put a lot of thought into this. I just want to state my position. Nothing more, nothing less. If you agree, that’s fine. If you don’t agree, that’s fine too. Everyone was given a brain to reason things through on their own, and completely rational and well-informed people can support diametrically opposed positions. Just look at Washington DC. Wait…bad example.

Anyway, let me tell you about life when I was a child. Let’s say it’s 1979, and I’m an impressionable young lad of 11. I’m sitting at home on a lazy Saturday afternoon, idly flipping through the five television channels available to me. It takes a while to complete my task, since I have to buzz through umpteen clicks on my UHF knob. Finally, I stop on channel 43. It’s the afternoon Creature Feature and the 1931 version of Dracula starring Bela Lugosi is on. I sit down and watch. I’m scared, but intrigued. Vampires seem pretty cool to me. The movie ends, but I’m not satisfied. My thirst for knowledge leads me to the library and one lame little book about legendary monsters that has a two page section about vampires. I read it and move one. I’m scared to sleep the next few nights, but my days are filled with a black cape, slicked back hair and fake plastic teeth in my effort to emulate Lugosi and scare other kids in the neighborhood. In a weeks time, I’m over it, and I move on to the next thing that peaks my interest. Sound plausible?

Okay, fast forward to 2007. A child of 11 is sitting at home cycling through the 100+ channels available to them on DirecTV. As is the case with too many children in America, no parent is around to supervise them. They come across Interview with a Vampire, and they stop. They watch the entire movie, think that vampires are kind of cool - heck even that creepy little kid vampire played by Kirsten Dunst was neat. They want to know more. They stand up and walk over to their computer. They google vampires and start scrolling through the results. They read something on Wikipedia, find other occult websites and soon stumble into a chatroom filled with adults who think they are real vampires. The child types in, “Hi everyone, I’m 11 and I want to know more about vampires.” Seventeen deviants respond instantly offering to “help” this child learn more. Sound plausible?

The slogan for the internet should be “DEVIANTS UNITE!” I contend that back in the day, people with deviant thoughts pretty much thought something was wrong with them. They had very little opportunity to “mingle” with other deviants, outside of prison, and they didn’t have a lot of “material” to feed their deviance. With the advent of the internet, deviants had a way to connect to each other anonymously and provide “support” for other deviants. It has gotten to the point where you can find someone into just about anything out there, and people start to think, “Hey, somebody else is into this too, so it can’t be totally wrong.” Take NAMBLA for instance. You have a bunch of sick individuals out there that think boys actually need the kind of love they can provide. Is there anything sicker or more deviant than that? Unfortunatley, the answer seems to be yes.

Just a few months ago, a young girl met an older man in a vampire chatroom like the hypothetical one I created earlier. She started chatting with this lunatic, who obviously knew how to prey on her insecurities, and the whole sordid mess ended up with them killing her parents and running off together. Sad, sick and true.

I worry that things dealing with the occult will seem cool to kids, and that they’ll look to quench their insatiable thirst for knowledge in all the wrong places. I don’t want my kids googling “witchcraft” and linking to a chatroom filled with adults who take it seriously. Fortunately for me, my wife and I watch what our kids do, and we actually talk to them about issues like this. Unfortunately, most families in America don’t seem to have the same core values. Those are the kids I worry about.

I’m not saying that disenfranchised kids won’t find bad things without innocent books or movies about witchcraft or vampires on the market. I’m just saying that the hype and over-glamorization of all things occult in our society can have deliterious effects on our children. Am I overreacting? Possibly. That’s just how I feel. You don’t have to feel the same way, but at least think about the kids out there without proper supervision. With the right parents, and I hope that my wife and I are just that, points like this are moot. Then again, not all parents do the right thing.