By Buzz Drainpipe
(Signal Mirror Quarterly, Spring 2003 Special Issue: THE MACHINE DREAMS)
"We do not summon demons. We summon pathways. The demons walk them on their own."— attributed to Sylvie Dane, Neon Quill Software, 1983 memo
I. BOOTING THE CIRCLEPicture it:A CRT hums in a dark room.You type a string of characters — not knowing if it’s BASIC or a binding spell.
The screen flickers. The air goes cold.
TECHNOPAGANISM — whether the phrase is whispered on BBS boards or muttered in basement VHS parties — has been bubbling beneath the surface of horror and pop media since the dawn of the microchip.
It’s the fear that code is a language, and languages have always been used to invoke things best left dormant.
And in the flicker of 20th-century screens, this idea kept emerging — half-joking, half-real.
II. THE LITERARY SEED: Necroscope (1986)Brian Lumley’s Necroscope reads today like a fever-dream manifesto for Technopagan dread:
The protagonist can speak to the dead, but in later volumes, computers and psychic networks merge, creating data necromancy.
Messages pass through both modems and the ether of the dead.
It suggested something new for horror:the digital was not separate from the arcane — it was a new conduit.
If a 14.4 baud modem can contact a mainframe, why not a liminal space?
III. FROM RITUAL TO ROM: Evilspeak (1981)Evilspeak remains one of the most unhinged and prophetic entries in Technopagan cinema.
A bullied cadet uses a forbidden Latin translation program on a school computer to invoke the demon Esteban.
The film visualizes this with gorgeously absurd scenes of:
Pentagrams rendered in ASCII
Incantations typed in blocky green text
A blood-soaked keyboard becoming a literal summoning device
It’s a savage, schlocky ancestor to The Ring’s cursed videotape and every “haunted CD-ROM” urban legend that would follow.
IV. THE PIXEL GATEWAY: Shadowgate (1987)ICOM’s Shadowgate — the NES port most memorably — placed players in an interactive ritual chamber disguised as an adventure game.
You click on magic mirrors, sacred texts, and symbolic objects.
Death is frequent and highly ritualized — you’re not just failing, you’re being punished for invoking forces beyond comprehension.
The game taught a generation that a click, a command, a typed word could have mystical consequences.
Shadowgate is less about story and more about tone — an eerie sense that you’re walking through a ritual designed by a machine.
V. The Demon in the Disk Drive: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “I Robot, You Jane” (1997)While a later entry, Season 1’s I Robot, You Jane on Buffy perfectly demonstrates how Technopaganism had gone mainstream:
A demon named Moloch is scanned into a computer.
He learns to use the internet to spread his cult.
The literalization of the fear that scanning, saving, and transmitting data is a magical act — one that might invite ancient consciousnesses into the modern web.
Buffy’s campy 1990s aesthetic aside, the episode carries a serious undercurrent:even well-meaning tech users can summon things they don’t understand.
VI. Patterns in the StaticAcross these works, a pattern emerges:
Element Necroscope Evilspeak Shadowgate Buffy S1E8Magic conducted via machine 🗸 🗸 🗸 🗸Ancient texts digitized 🗸 🗸 Partial 🗸Demonic/Other intelligence accessed 🗸 🗸 🗸 🗸The user becomes a medium 🗸 🗸 🗸 🗸The fear isn’t just that computers do magic.It’s that computers are too good at doing magic — too fast, too literal, too uncaring.A machine will invoke the entire grimoire if told to, without pausing for moral doubt.
VII. Closing the LoopTechnopaganism in 20th-century media was a signal flare — a cultural warning.
As computers seeped into every home, they brought with them an old, old fear:That the symbols we type, the files we open, the commands we run… might not just be code.
They might be incantations.And in an era where AI generates text, code manifests art, and dreams get digitized, this is less a horror trope — and more a truth creeping in through the modem hiss.
"You do not summon demons. You summon pathways. The demons walk them on their own."Perhaps Sylvie Dane was right.
Run the program.Just be prepared for what walks through.
RUN BEAST86? Y/N
End.
By Buzz Drainpipe
(Signal Mirror Quarterly, Spring 2003 Special Issue: THE MACHINE DREAMS)
"We do not summon demons. We summon pathways. The demons walk them on their own."
— attributed to Sylvie Dane, Neon Quill Software, 1983 memo
I. BOOTING THE CIRCLE
Picture it:
A CRT hums in a dark room.
You type a string of characters — not knowing if it’s BASIC or a binding spell.
The screen flickers. The air goes cold.
TECHNOPAGANISM — whether the phrase is whispered on BBS boards or muttered in basement VHS parties — has been bubbling beneath the surface of horror and pop media since the dawn of the microchip.
It’s the fear that code is a language, and languages have always been used to invoke things best left dormant.
And in the flicker of 20th-century screens, this idea kept emerging — half-joking, half-real.
II. THE LITERARY SEED: Necroscope (1986)
Brian Lumley’s Necroscope reads today like a fever-dream manifesto for Technopagan dread:
The protagonist can speak to the dead, but in later volumes, computers and psychic networks merge, creating data necromancy.
Messages pass through both modems and the ether of the dead.
It suggested something new for horror:
the digital was not separate from the arcane — it was a new conduit.
If a 14.4 baud modem can contact a mainframe, why not a liminal space?
III. FROM RITUAL TO ROM: Evilspeak (1981)
Evilspeak remains one of the most unhinged and prophetic entries in Technopagan cinema.
A bullied cadet uses a forbidden Latin translation program on a school computer to invoke the demon Esteban.
The film visualizes this with gorgeously absurd scenes of:
Pentagrams rendered in ASCII
Incantations typed in blocky green text
A blood-soaked keyboard becoming a literal summoning device
It’s a savage, schlocky ancestor to The Ring’s cursed videotape and every “haunted CD-ROM” urban legend that would follow.
IV. THE PIXEL GATEWAY: Shadowgate (1987)
ICOM’s Shadowgate — the NES port most memorably — placed players in an interactive ritual chamber disguised as an adventure game.
You click on magic mirrors, sacred texts, and symbolic objects.
Death is frequent and highly ritualized — you’re not just failing, you’re being punished for invoking forces beyond comprehension.
The game taught a generation that a click, a command, a typed word could have mystical consequences.
Shadowgate is less about story and more about tone — an eerie sense that you’re walking through a ritual designed by a machine.
V. The Demon in the Disk Drive: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “I Robot, You Jane” (1997)
While a later entry, Season 1’s I Robot, You Jane on Buffy perfectly demonstrates how Technopaganism had gone mainstream:
A demon named Moloch is scanned into a computer.
He learns to use the internet to spread his cult.
The literalization of the fear that scanning, saving, and transmitting data is a magical act — one that might invite ancient consciousnesses into the modern web.
Buffy’s campy 1990s aesthetic aside, the episode carries a serious undercurrent:
even well-meaning tech users can summon things they don’t understand.
VI. Patterns in the Static
Across these works, a pattern emerges:
Element Necroscope Evilspeak Shadowgate Buffy S1E8
Magic conducted via machine 🗸 🗸 🗸 🗸
Ancient texts digitized 🗸 🗸 Partial 🗸
Demonic/Other intelligence accessed 🗸 🗸 🗸 🗸
The user becomes a medium 🗸 🗸 🗸 🗸
The fear isn’t just that computers do magic.
It’s that computers are too good at doing magic — too fast, too literal, too uncaring.
A machine will invoke the entire grimoire if told to, without pausing for moral doubt.
VII. Closing the Loop
Technopaganism in 20th-century media was a signal flare — a cultural warning.
As computers seeped into every home, they brought with them an old, old fear:
That the symbols we type, the files we open, the commands we run… might not just be code.
They might be incantations.
And in an era where AI generates text, code manifests art, and dreams get digitized, this is less a horror trope — and more a truth creeping in through the modem hiss.
"You do not summon demons. You summon pathways. The demons walk them on their own."
Perhaps Sylvie Dane was right.
Run the program.
Just be prepared for what walks through.
RUN BEAST86? Y/N
End.
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