Satanic sex abuse rings, child sacrifice coverups, grotesque cult-like depravities of various stripes — why get too bent out of shape if people still believe in this stuff circa 2026? It’s “nothing new,” right? Humans have always believed lots of weird stuff — including the most gnarly, demented stuff. Given the seemingly limitless human capacity for superstitious thought and harebrained fantasy, beliefs of such kind may simply be an unalterable fact of life.
Well, maybe. But the collateral damage from the “ritual child sex abuse” mania of the 1980s and 1990s is genuinely staggering, and kind of speaks for itself in terms of the prudence of being on the lookout for any signs of its potential re-emergence.
Enter Epstein.
The more lavish, demonically-oriented beliefs were not especially prominent features of “Epstein Mythology” until earlier this year, upon the mass-release of “Epstein Files,” and the resultant rapid mainstreaming of every extreme, fantastical theory you could ever hope to conjure as to what those “files” supposedly signified. Almost invariably, the wildest of the theories were inspired by snippets of de-contextualized DOJ records that spread like wildfire across social media. From there sprung the utter avalanche of monumentally crazed “content,” often from “creators” you’d never heard of, but who are nonetheless astoundingly popular. Such people argued, for instance — and with supreme earnestness, it appears — that when you really drill down to the heart of the matter, the movie “Eyes Wide Shut” (1999) had just been proven resoundingly real by the “Epstein Files.”
I’ve still never seen the movie myself, but it became a widespread meme that the bizarre occult sex rituals it depicts, apparently carried out by cabals of twisted elites, have been shown not only to be a true representation of our terrifying new reality, but also to accurately portray how society writ large, and perhaps the entire world, is fundamentally governed in furtherance of hidden pedophilic interests. Scenes like these, we were informed, might as well be documentary footage:
Or at least that’s what the masses were told by a fellow named “Volksgeist,” who gravely intoned it in a February 23, 2026 “video essay” which has now received 6.4 million views on YouTube. Set to ominous background music, this fellow declared:
The masked parties, the trafficked women, the implication that anyone who looks too close will be silenced, the idea that the real world operates on a set of rules that ordinary people are never allowed to see. It’s not fiction anymore. If anything, the reality appears like it’s probably far worse.
He goes on to surmise that the most unthinkable of all “narratives” has been gruesomely confirmed: that “powerful people involved in the systemic abuse of children were communicating using words for food as a code.” Much as some tried to dismiss these theories in the past, we now know for sure it “wasn’t crazy at all. In fact, it’s exactly what was happening.” The evidence, he says, is plain as day: “Pizza is far from the only word that gives credibility to this theory. In fact, there are others that are way more suspicious.” He goes on to list these pedophilically implicative foodstuffs: “jerky,” “frozen white tuna,” “grape soda,” “Chinese cookies,” etc.
Presumably, an outsized share of the 6+ million viewers who’ve consumed this incredible content must be younger-ish people, perhaps on the slightly impressionable side, who actually take this guy to be some sort of truth-telling online sage:
And let’s not forget the flurry of TikToks on approximately the same theme, like this one that garnered more than 10 million views in the span of a single month, for blaring out claims such as OMG, SIT DOWN Y’ALL — we’ve just made the wrenching discovery that “babies were killed and eaten” by Epstein and his sick pedo friends. Even worse: they’ve gotten away with it! The proof is in the “Epstein Files”! Or rather, a tiny subsection of files in which mentally ill people are shown calling up the FBI tip-line en masse after Epstein’s death. The mind-bending claims these people made were then duly transcribed by the FBI intake agents, as standard operating procedure — with zero expectation that any of the memorialized ramblings would ever be released indiscriminately onto the internet for TikTok stars to herald as bombshell BREAKING NEWS to pliable teens.
If you happen to have different media-consumption habits, and never would’ve organically come across this kind of stuff, I think it can be difficult to appreciate how ubiquitous it really was, and to some extent still is. And to therefore underrate the effect it’s been having on how large swaths of the public process information about the world. Which then goes on to inform how they develop political views, etc.
It’s probably also worthwhile to cognize this stuff as forming the cultural ambience in which insane, ridiculous things keep happening. Which gets me to the “point” of this article.
Last month, I filed a FOIA request to the Sheriff’s Department of Grand Traverse County, Michigan. Why did I do this? Well, I read a “report” that had just been released by the Interlochen Center for the Arts. The unhealthily Epstein-brained among us will recognize Interlochen as the school that Jeffrey himself attended as a 14-year-old bassoon player, and then went on to donate a bunch of money to as an adult. He was a donor and semi-regular visitor from 1990 to 2003, during which time, prosecutors later alleged, he was also running the most prolific child-sex trafficking operation in recorded history. As you might imagine, this apparent revelation caused a fair bit of disquiet over at Interlochen.
Before this year, school administrators had already conducted multiple “reviews” related to Epstein — in 2009 and 2019 — and made all the obligatory PR statements renouncing him, expressing solidarity with survivors, pledging cooperation with law enforcement, and so forth. But by 2026, this was of course deemed to be nowhere near sufficient. Another “review” was desperately needed — and far more extensive this time. For justice. And accountability. Leave no stone unturned! The preliminary findings were published on July 27, 2026, in a document entitled “Investigation Report: External Investigation of Historical Abuse.” Ultimately, matters pertaining to Epstein (and Ghislaine Maxwell) comprised only a relatively small portion of the “report.” The “investigation” had since broadened out to any and all claims of “historical” sexual misconduct tied to the school and its current or former students. An outside law firm was retained for this weighty endeavor.
“Importantly,” the report notes, “the Investigative Team did not determine whether the conduct occurred as reported.” Right. So from the very outset, the purpose of this “investigation” was never to determine whether anything in particular actually happened. Rather, its purpose “was to seek and document historical reports of abuse in a candid and comprehensive manner, to give voice to the experiences of alums, and to learn from those past experiences.” Whatever that means.
This peculiar investigative effort was overseen by Elizabeth Sanghavi, who describes herself as a onetime “civil rights attorney” for the US federal government — specifically the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. To establish their bonafides, Sanghavi and colleagues made doubly sure to stress the “extensive experience” they’ve accumulated “investigating historical abuse in a trauma-informed and sensitive manner.” If you’re still unfamiliar, the term “trauma-informed” can be considered code for “deliberately empirically non-rigorous” — or “as a matter of principle, accepting at face value anything anyone might care to claim, without the trouble of overly-cumbersome corroboration procedures.”
To assist this grand undertaking, Interlochen administrators promulgated large-scale invitations for all persons ever affiliated with the school to “come forward” and make allegations about stuff. Accordingly, the investigation dealt with alleged conduct that “spanned from the 1950s to the 2010s.” Testimony was sought in relation to “any form of sexual misconduct by an adult affiliated with Interlochen, including physical conduct, non-physical conduct, and/or potential grooming or other violations of professional boundaries.” Lots of time was therefore spent getting to the bottom of “potential grooming” activity that might have occurred multiple decades in the past. Among the “non-physical” conduct that was investigated — a very strange category unto itself — were purported emotional sensations such as “feeling uncomfortable around certain adults.” Over the course of these inquests, the concept of “grooming” — already amorphous enough to begin with — was apparently expanded even further, to encompass “Conduct Characterized as Grooming, Uncomfortable, Inappropriate, or Odd.”
Here are just a few examples of the “conduct” chronicled for historical posterity by these seasoned (and undoubtedly well-compensated) investigators:
Alum 6, who attended Interlochen in the 1960s, said that she, along with other students, ate lunch with Respondent 1 in the cafeteria. Alum 6 indicated that she did not recall Respondent 1 acting inappropriately towards her or kissing her while she was at Interlochen. Alum 6 noted that after she graduated from the Academy, she and Respondent 1 kept in touch, and they began a sexual relationship when she was in college.
[…]
Alum 11 said that when she was at the Camp, Respondent 5 asked her out on a date, took her to his apartment, and then tried to take Alum 11’s clothes off. Alum 11 stated that Respondent 5 “got aggressive,” undid her bra, kept putting his hands on her breasts, took off her dress, and wanted to remove her girdle but that she told him not to and he did not. Alum 11 said that she dressed herself and asked Respondent 5 to take her home.
[…]
An alum stated that starting when she was a camper in the 2000s, an arts faculty member groomed her by being close to her emotionally, “narrowed in” on her, and made a comment in front of her mother that she was really special and was mature beyond her years. In addition, several alums indicated that they perceived certain adults at Interlochen as “creepy” or as “creeps,” without providing specific information about conduct that led to this perception. In addition to the conduct described in this section, although at the time it was standard practice for some arts faculty members to make physical contact with students in class and/or during private lessons to assist with instruction, some alums indicated that this type of touching made them uncomfortable.
It goes on and on like this. Some instances of outright sexual contact are also alleged, mostly from the 60s and 70s, involving music teachers who are now mostly deceased. In terms of Epstein, though, the best investigators could evidently come up with were two conspicuously vague, anonymized claims:
Investigators interviewed six people, including two alumni who reported meeting Epstein at Interlochen more than five years before his first criminal conviction. One alumna reported meeting Epstein and Maxwell at Interlochen and being invited to the Epstein Lodge (later renamed Green Lake Lodge), and that while there, Epstein brushed against her body over her clothes.
We’re not even told the year in which this conduct allegedly took place, because that would be far too “identifying” of the anonymous claimant — a risk no “investigator” dare take. Even though the person making the claim would now have to be in their 40s, at minimum. The authors even refrain from using generic “identifiers” for Epstein-claiming individuals, because “given the national conversation around conduct by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell… it could be clear who these identifiers referred to.” Consequently, “the Investigative Team provides limited details regarding them and the reported conduct.”
However, the report does state that whoever alleged Epstein once “brushed against her body over her clothes” — at the lodge on school grounds he’d funded the construction of — also subsequently went on to accept several plane rides to New York paid for by Epstein. Three of these allegedly occurred while she was still a student at the school, although she accepted at least one more after she graduated. On the trips to NYC, this person “described being in Epstein’s home and massaging his feet and rubbing his back.” However, she describes no explicit sexual contact with Epstein, aside from one instance, on the post-graduation trip, when she allegedly performed a massage, and “he may have asked her to remove her top.” Evidently this episode was not seared enough into her memory that she could be sure of her toplessness one way or another. Indeed, the person “indicated that she did not tell anyone about Epstein’s conduct towards her until decades later.” Perhaps that’s because she never found it particularly remarkable or memorable, until it was impressed upon her, long after the fact, that her forgotten interactions were of such allegedly earth-shattering legal and political importance?
Here’s the real kicker:
Finally, although many individuals who participated in this investigation shared concerns related to Epstein and Maxwell and their engagement with and connection to Interlochen, most of these individuals did not report knowing, encountering, or engaging with Epstein and/or Maxwell… Others reported that although they did not have firsthand experiences with Epstein and/or Maxwell, learning that Epstein and Maxwell were present on Interlochen’s campus at the same time as the alum impacted them and caused them to rethink certain events that occurred there.
Right. As to those who might have “rethought” certain events that occurred at Interlochen, in light of the latter-day public consternation, a plausible candidate could be Nadia Bjorlin, who the Epstein-brained among us will know was one of the four government witnesses called to testify (under a fake name) against Maxwell at her 2021 criminal trial. Bjorlin’s origin story centers on Interlochen: that was where she allegedly first met both Jeffrey and Ghislaine as a young, musically precocious teen. (Her late father was an accomplished violinist.) The timeline gets a bit fuzzy from there, but prosecutors ultimately alleged Bjorlin had been heinously “sex trafficked” from around 1994 to 2002. Where the timeline gets considerably clearer is after Epstein’s 2019 death. Because in 2020, Bjorlin — by then an established actress on the soap opera Days of Our Lives — demanded a combined $75 million from Epstein’s estate and Maxwell. In an August 28, 2020 submission to the mediator disbursing payments from the estate, pursuant to a class-action settlement, her Los Angeles-based personal injury attorney, Robert Glassman, touted that both he and Bjorlin had “been actively involved” in the government’s then-pending prosecution against Maxwell. With the idea being that all the valuable help they provided should entitle Bjorlin to the maximum possible payout. And indeed, she did receive the max of $5 million. (Tax free.) While not yet divulged in any public documents, it’s a virtual certainty that Bjorlin would go on to receive many more millions from the additional settlement funds that were subsequently made available, courtesy of JP Morgan and others.
The dogged Interlochen investigators never specify if they spoke to Bjorlin, but it would seem inexplicable that they wouldn’t have at least attempted to do so, given her unique notoriety as an Interlochen-affiliated Epstein accuser. Shrouding whatever account she might’ve given to these investigators in continued chronological mystery would’ve been imperative to preserve the narrative the government had presented at Maxwell’s trial. Recall, the jurors in that trial spent six days deliberating, so it was hardly an “open and shut” case; some were reportedly skeptical of Bjorlin’s veracity. This would’ve been a big problem for prosecutors, as much of their prosecutorial theory hinged solely on the testimony of Bjorlin, regarding events 25+ years earlier. But as deliberations wore on, the mood shifted when one juror stood up and delivered a dramatic oration to declare that he too had been a victim of child sexual abuse, and implored his fellow jurors to join him in “believing” the government witnesses. (He had falsely claimed on his pre-trial jury questionnaire that he’d never been a victim of any childhood sex abuse. Because if he’d replied in the affirmative to that question, he would’ve been tossed right off the jury.)
In any event, this thespian juror was evidently quite effective with his heart-felt exhortations. Even if it meant convincing the other jurors to set aside whatever lingering doubts they might’ve harbored in view of the slightly awkward evidence that’d been presented at trial, such as that while Bjorlin was an adult actress in LA, she mailed a glamorous “headshot” to Epstein, inscribed with the caption: “Jeffrey — Thanks for rocking my world! You’re the best!!!” Or that until 2002, at age 22, she admittedly continued to take free flights aboard Epstein’s private jet. Or that she initially told the FBI on February 27, 2020 that she “did not recall specific abuse that may have occurred” at Epstein’s storied ranch in New Mexico; she only recalled “going hiking” and “not doing too much… just sitting around mostly.” Only to have the memories suddenly rush back a year and a half later, on the witness stand in November 2021, when she did purport to recall specific abuse in New Mexico. Incidentally, this miraculous recovered memory was very helpful to the government to establish an “interstate” nexus for the “trafficking” charges it was trying to prove against Maxwell.
Anyway, in 2026, Interlochen had arrived at the conclusion that further measures were sorely needed to cleanse itself of the lasting institutional taint of its past association with Epstein. They’d already renamed his donor-funded namesake lodge in 2009, but even the continued existence of that fateful structure was enough to reverberate throughout time with untold traumas. Or something. Thus, it was determined that a ritual sacrifice would be held. For final absolution, the entire lodge would have to be razed to the ground. “The lodge had, over time, come to carry associations that were not reflective of who we are as an institution or the values we strive to uphold,” administrators announced. Due to “associated risks,” which were not specified, as well as “the broader impact on our community,” which was also not specified, the school’s Board of Trustees made the decision to demolish and repent. Have no fear though, because “the demolition was done in close collaboration with local authorities, who visited the lodge prior to demolition to take photos and survey for any evidence.”
That’s where the Grand Traverse County Sheriff’s Department comes in. I was curious what possible “evidence” these law enforcement officials might have obtained from a nondescript cabin that Jeffrey Epstein hadn’t set foot in for more than twenty years, and which in the meantime had been used for routine “lodging” purposes. This symbolistic “healing” exercise — knocking down a perfectly serviceable residential dwelling — is exactly the type of thing that could only be made possible, or perhaps made to appear sensible, by the wider climate of internet-fueled mania bellowing at such intensity around Epstein. This had given rise to the vague, yet unavoidable impression that any structure which might have once bore his name, or in which he’d spent any time at all, must necessarily be the site of unfathomable atrocities. So it needed to be “razed” — and extirpated for good. Not dissimilar to how Germans purified their lands by razing Nazi-related landmarks after WWII.
I got the police report, photos, and bodycam footage from the bizarre series of visits the Sheriff’s Office made to the frightful lodge on June 4 and 8, 2026. The “incident” to which these officers were responding is categorized in the report as a “Suspicious Situation.” Which is probably true on some level. Their point of contact for the visit was Ned Hartwick, “Director of Campus Safety” for Interlochen, who appears to have been tasked with liaising for this strange side-quest. “I was advised this venue was scheduled for demolition,” writes Detective Luke Anderson in his incident report. “This venue was formally [sic] known as the Green Lake Lodge and prior to this, it was named the Jeffrey Epstein Scholarship Lodge. At this time, this report does not have an identified victim from this venue.”
NOTE: The police report is notated as having been created on August 28, 2026 — three days after I filed my records request. One has to wonder if the officers involved never even bothered to generate any sort of “incident report” concurrent with their actual visit, almost three months earlier.
If you want, you can see the police report here:
On the June 4 visit, Detective Anderson apparently walked around taking iPhone photos of the cabin’s interior and exterior. He then went back on June 8, this time joined by Detective Deborah St. Croix, to take additional pics with a more professional camera setup. None of the images I received seem very remarkable, other than to show a perfectly normal, well-kept cabin that it would seem utterly ridiculous to just randomly tear down. But such are the modern superstitions run amok, and given official credence, in solemn recognition of any and all Epstein-related sins, real or imagined. (Semi-amusingly, a few of the photos catch the officer taking selfies of himself in a mirror. Whether this was intentional or not, I don’t know. I choose to assume it was intentional, for amusement’s sake.)
The bodycam footage I was given, filename “Suspicious.mp4,” likewise reveals little of obvious import. It was recorded June 8, apparently on the big return visit. Present that day was the accompanying female officer, Detective St. Croix, who the Grand Traverse County website describes as a “Crime Lab / Evidence Technician.” So this probably would’ve been quite an unusual expedition for her, as the nature of the “crime scene” she was supposed to be inspecting, or even the “evidence” she was supposed to collect, was quite enigmatic. Nonetheless, she diligently unloaded a bunch of heavy-duty audio/visual equipment from her car, which she rigged up to an iPad. The twosome of detectives then casually stroll around the premises for about 10 minutes, cracking jokes and chatting. At one point, the male detective does mention he was “creeped out a little bit” by a bedframe he saw propped up against a wall in the basement. The onsite liaison, Ned Hartwick, clarifies this is just “storage.” He also adds that Interlochen had been using the fabled lodge as a “hotel”-type facility for the past several decades. The detective comments: “It’s real easy, in something like this, to let the mind wander.”
Soon enough, mission accomplished — the structure was promptly “razed” on June 16 or thereabouts. Hopefully a ceremonial dance was performed, the earth salted, and any debris thoroughly incinerated, with the ashes spread across nearby Lake Michigan.
So… there you have it. Congrats to all involved. Another timeless example of your tax dollars hard at work, pursuant to whatever weird nationwide ritual is going on here.
Brilliant report again. There is something undeniably humorous about this - your article made me laugh multiple times.
These people are all mentally ill. They shouldnt be allowed to have kids. If you fall that hard for a psy op that broke containment and can't discern bullshit from possible truth your a danger to everyone around you