Henry Zebrowski

And it's open 24 hours.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Now I am.

Now, the inevitable backlash against the Church of Satan started getting dangerous by 1974.

While the Black House was among the world's first satanic tourist destinations, the crowds of looky-loos and admirers also included people who genuinely wanted to hurt or kill Anton and his family.

It does.

Very much so.

LaVey and his family, therefore, moved to a house in Sonoma, north of San Francisco, after enduring a barrage of bricks, eggs, spray paints, bullets, and even a bomb.

LaVey became reclusive, fortifying the Black House with surveillance cameras and a 10-foot-tall electrified fence, even though he wasn't even living there anymore.

The Black House basically became like the Church of Satan's office.

Yeah.

Then, around the Halloween of 1974, LaVey went public with his dissatisfaction.

He said in an interview that he wanted to be nowhere near San Francisco during Halloween.

He didn't want to be the center of attention for a bunch of Satanists he didn't like or respect, further explaining that for him, which I totally fucking get, Halloween was like New Year's Eve to a bartender.

I want to meet the Pope of the Church of Satan on April 14th.

Actually, not April 14th back, because he's in preparations for Volpurgisnacht.

Yes.

Yeah, I want to meet him sometime in, like, June.

LaVey also announced that in an attempt to steer the church back to a dignified place, he was done doing performative satanic rituals.