Whisper Down the Lane

 Whisper Down the Lane by Clay McLeod Chapman is the ultimate horror novel, a genre that I generally avoid. However, this story was inspired by the real and most ugly McMartin Preschool drama of the 1980’s. Two issues led to me fighting my way through a story that is so difficult to read as the result of very real human trauma involved. One of those issues is that I knew a family that sent all three of their sons to the true McMartin Preschool (which had first opened in 1956 and closed in 1984 after allegations of horrific child abuse) in Manhattan Beach, California, so those three  boys were never part of the trauma that was to follow. The second issue was the belief at the time that recovered childhood memories of sexual trauma were always true. I am a part of the mental health personnel that struggled with the reality of such claims of abuse and the fallout that occurred in families as the result of the wide publicity that came as the result of such claims.

At the end of the story which occurred after extensive investigation and legal action, all charges were dropped against most of the accused employees of the preschool, and no one was convicted of any wrongdoing. The mental health practitioners that pried stories from the preschool children were known to have used manipulative methods to pull out false information they thought were true.

I thought the author captured the essence of some of the trauma. He touched on Satanic rituals, the issue of multiple personalities, and without labeling it as such, he described dissociative identity disorders. I continue to feel embarrassed by those professionals who fell victim to the mass hysteria that underlied the McMartin Prescrhool trials.

I really can’t recommend this book to anyone because of it’s content. It’s just too terrible.