DAYS OF DARKNESS
ESCAPING THE TRAP OF CONSPIRACY THEORIES THAT HAS ENSNARED MILLIONS OF AMERICANS
By DAVID KLEPPER
A
t first Don’s stories seemed harmless.
Tales about secret organizations trying to take over the world, about the good guys working to save it, and about the evidence that, if you knew where to look, was hiding in plain sight.
To Ramona, it all sounded like a movie. A way for Don to boast about what he had read online.
The pair met while Ramona was still in high school and they both worked at a fast-food restaurant in their small town in rural Tennessee. Don was a big guy, with skilled hands that could fix anything with an engine. Ramona had always dreamed of being a teacher. She sometimes struggled with anxiety, and Don made her feel protected and safe.
The couple moved in together just as COVID-19 swept the globe. Ramona was 19, and Don was 23. To him, the pandemic was evidence of a dark plot against America, orchestrated by the country's leaders and the media. Theose people hated freedom, and the vaccine was part of their final plan to dominate the world, he believed.
Ramona hadn't listened to Don's stories that closely before the pandemic. But after the world shut down, with a mysterious virus on the loose, his tales started to make more sense. At a time when questions outnumbered answers, Don's stories filled in some of the blanks.
“I have a lot of fear about what I can’t control,” Ramona, now 23, said of her vulnerable mindset as COVID spread around the world. The Associated Press is not using Ramona’s full identity to protect her privacy. “The stuff he was telling me, it made me feel like at least we understood. He had an explanation for what was going on. I didn’t realize what I was getting into.”
The COVID-19 pandemic, and the conspiracy theories it nourished, would change Ramona’s life forever, sending her down a dark path of paranoia and isolation that derailed her career and spun her personal life into turmoil. Consumed by visions of an apocalyptic battle between good and evil, convinced by her boyfriend that a New World Order would begin at any time, she fell into a trap that has ensnared millions of Americans and even, at times, hijacked our national politics.
Though he seldom used the word, Don was a believer in QAnon, the conspiracy theory that claims Donald Trump is working to counter a Satanic sect comprised of world leaders and celebrities who control world events, traffic children for sexual exploitation and drink blood in order to extend their lives.
The loosely organized movement was inspired by an anonymous online poster who claimed, without evidence, to have insider government information.
Don told Ramona that a final clash between the forces of good and evil — known as the Storm — was looming, and that they must prepare. The military might try to put them in concentration camps. If so, they had to be ready to flee, to leave everything behind.
Throughout the first year of the pandemic, Don spent much of his time scanning the internet for clues. When would it all happen? What would be the first sign? He didn’t trust the news media – they all lied about everything – but sometimes stories contained bits of valuable information that could be pieced together. He also updated their go bag – the collection of survival gear they kept ready in case they needed to leave quickly. He spent their combined savings on guns and ammo.
One cold day in January 2021 Don read about a power outage in Vatican City. He figured it meant that the White Hats – a QAnon term for the good guys – had arrested the Pope. Or maybe it was the bad guys, who were using the outage to smuggle child sex victims into the Vatican. Either way, Don knew, it meant something big was about to happen.
In the world of conspiracy theories, there are no coincidences, only clues.
Later that night, the lights in their Tennessee home flickered. Ramona was in the bedroom when the electricity went out completely and Don started yelling.
“He comes running into the bedroom,” Ramona recalled. “He says, “‘Honey, we gotta go, this is it!’”
They loaded their guns and the dog into the truck and drove into the darkness.
DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
The Associated Press spoke with more than a dozen people whose lives were disrupted by conspiracy theories — either because they believed them or because a close loved one did.
Male, female, old, young, each one spoke of the social isolation that can come with spending time on conspiracy theory websites. They talked about money lost to scam products that claimed to reverse aging or cure COVID-19; they talked about a mounting sense of paranoia, distrust and dread as they began to lose faith in their community, their nation and their fellow Americans.
Former believers said conspiracy theories offered them meaning when they felt empty — even if those promises fell flat.
“I was suicidal before I got into conspiracy theories,” said Antonio Perez, 28*, a Hawaii man who became obsessed with Sept. 11 conspiracy theories and QAnon until he decided they were interfering with this life a year ago. Back then, when he first found other online conspiracy theorists, he was ecstatic. “It’s like: My God, I’ve finally found my people!”
“I think I got a sense of self-importance" from conspiracy theories, Perez said. He believed that he alone "was figuring everything out. It all ties into wanting to be a hero.”
Some family members of conspiracy theorists and ex-QAnoners have bonded on forums on sites like Reddit where they share how online fantasies have upended their lives. Many of the posts mourn lost relationships, and the dark fantasies that slowly consumed their loved ones, sometimes costing them their money, their career and their families.
“I’ve really been missing my mom lately,” reads the title of one, about a woman whose mother had fallen into QAnon. “I want to cry! My kids have fallen down the Q hole,” reads another. Another post from a woman talks about her brother’s descent into QAnon: “I miss his goofy laugh most of all.”
Kristin Barnett, an Illinois woman whose parents refused to take the COVID-19 vaccines after falling for conspiracy theories about the pandemic, said she was fearful for her own her family’s health, and stopped her parents from seeing their grandkids.
"They would say, ‘we are entitled to our opinion...It is like trying to talk to a brick wall,” she said in an interview. “I just wish it didn’t have to be like this. I want to say, ‘I’m sorry’ to them, but it’s hard to say I’m sorry for trying to protect my kids.”
Belief in conspiracy theories is common, and usually harmless, part of our instinctive drive to identify threats and explain the unknown. But certain people seem to be especially vulnerable to the social isolation, paranoia and distrust that can occur when an interest in conspiracy theories turns into obsession.
“My dad never trusted the government. He always figured he knew better than anyone about anything,” said Skyler Manley, a Montana woman whose father Cliff's obsession with conspiracy theories started when he got into HAM radio in the 1990s. “He was always convinced someone was out to get him, and that he alone knew the secret.”
RAMONA'S STORY
Ramona was six when she first decided she wanted to be a teacher. Her father was working as an auctioneer and one day he brought home an item that didn’t sell – an antique child’s desk, decades old, from one of the one-room schoolhouses that were once so common in rural America.
When Ramona’s friends came over, they would play school, with Ramona pretending to be the teacher. When they left, she’d line up her stuffed animals and “teach them whatever I had learned at school that day,” she recalls.
When the pandemic hit Ramona was studying for her education degree and living in the dorms. Don was four years older and hadn’t gone to college. He had left the fast-food restaurant and was now doing engine repairs.
Ramona’s classes went online, and Don urged her to drop out. He was making good money, good enough for Ramona to quit her job and leave college. Ramona didn’t want to give up on her dreams, but she did agree to transfer to a smaller, local college so she could be closer to Don. Soon, she moved in with him.
Alone and isolated, Ramona heard more and more of Don’s conspiracy theories. Before the pandemic, she hadn’t given them as much weight. But he was relentless, showing Ramona story after story about the dark forces in the government and the media that he said were deceiving and manipulating ordinary people. He said Ramona and others were foolish to believe what they were told, to go along with the charade.
“He told me I didn’t need my degree, that I needed to learn to live off the land, how to fix a vehicle, stuff like that,” she said. She now thinks that because she didn’t have a college degree, he was “mad that I was getting one. I don’t know how I didn’t realize that back then, but they make you think that what they’re telling you makes total sense.”
Ramona’s anxiety grew. She worried about her future, and what the pandemic would mean for it. She worried about her aging father’s bad lungs, and whether he could survive a bout with COVID. The stories that Don told her, slowly but surely, began to offer answers. She visited conspiracy theory websites and joined likeminded groups on Facebook. She had had many friends in college but because of the pandemic and her relationship with Don, she spoke with them less and less.
Her love of children was another hook that ensnared her. When a QAnon website told her children were being trafficked from one abuser to another in the shipping boxes of a popular furniture retailer, she was horrified. The horror made her read more and more. Someone had to protect these children, she came to believe, and their abusers had to be exposed.
The world of online conspiracy theories offers community: A place where believers can gather and share the latest clues. Somewhere to speculate and swap information without worrying about the mockery of outsiders. A virtual club where, for a few hours at least, the unseen forces behind the headlines can be seen and understood.
“The world is scary enough without conspiracy theories,” she said. “But when you believe them, at least they can give you answers. If you’re scared of the unknown,” conspiracy theories offer “an answer, no matter how farfetched it is.”
RAINING FOR ARMAGEDDON
For much of the pandemic, Ramona and Don prepared for a grim future. According to QAnon lore, all power and communications will be cut – either across the country or perhaps the world – as the forces of good and evil waged a final battle for the fate of the world. It’s a period they call “the 10 Days of Darkness” and its coming has been foretold by believers for years.
Don insisted they needed to stockpile food and supplies and create an evacuation plan for when the military tried to seize civilians’ guns or send them to camps run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
He used the couple’s shared savings to buy a gun and ammunition, so they’d be ready.
“Everyone knows the world isn’t a perfect place. But Q makes you believe the world is out to get you specifically. The world is against you,” Ramona recalled. “That’s not good for a person to believe.”
The couple began conducting drills, or training exercises, designed by Don to test their readiness. When Don gave the word, they would see how quickly they could assemble their essentials and load them into the truck. Don’s brother was living with the couple at the time. He didn’t believe the conspiracy theories, and sometimes made fun of his brother’s fears. But he’d go along with the drills, dutifully filling up water canteens alongside Ramona.
Often, Don was set off by something he read on a QAnon forum or another one of the other conspiracy theory websites he visited so often.
“Sometimes I’d just be laying there on the couch and he’d say, ‘I think we need to get the stuff ready,’” she said. “Usually he’d have been scrolling on his phone before and he’d seen something that would make the lightbulb go off.”
Don was surfing the web the night the power went out. After rousing Ramona and his brother, they loaded the go bag into the truck. Their plan had been to drive to Ramona’s parents’ home before deciding where to go next. When they got to the main road, they saw blue lights flashing up ahead. Three police cruisers were parked by the side of the road.
Don stopped the car and got out, to ask the officers if they knew what was going on.
“Stay inside,” he told Ramona. “Don’t get out of the car. I’ll be right back.”
After a quick exchange, he returned, his face set in a grim expression. The officers had told Don a semitruck had hit an electrical transformer. Power was out for a good chunk of town.
“Does this mean we should go home?” Ramona asked.
No, Don said. He didn’t believe the officers’ explanation. It was too much of a coincidence.
“That’s just what they’re telling us,” Don said. “That’s just what they want us to believe.”
He started up the car and they drove on toward downtown. As they rounded a bend, they could see the neon lights of a nearby shopping center, cars lined up at a fast-food drive-thru. People were getting cheeseburgers for dinner, as she and Don were driving off to meet the end of the world.
Don finally turned the car around. He would later make excuses about false clues, or say the whole episode had been a surprise training drill. But a voice in the back of Ramona’s head spoke up: Why would the police lie about a power outage? Why would the government cut power in rural Tennessee anyway? And if Don was wrong about the power outage, what else might he be wrong about?
“I started to think: Mmaybe this is all a hoax,” she said. But when she’d confess these creeping doubts to Don, he would shake his head and tell her to stay strong. “‘Keep the faith,’” he’d said. “The storm is coming.”
Don came up with new drills to harden Ramona. He would wake her and tell her they needed to pack the car and leave immediately, only to tell her it had all been a test to keep her on her toes. He would hide in closets and jump out when Ramona walked by. He got mad if she yelled in panic, telling her she must toughen up if she was to survive the end times.
It happened so often that to this day Ramona is easily startled and hates practical jokes.
“What are you going to do when the military comes to put you in a FEMA camp?” he asked her after one of his drills made her cry.
ESCAPE
At first, conspiracy theories had helped Ramona make sense of the world. But now her anxiety was increasing. The constant drills, the steady stream of content about child sex trafficking and Satanic sacrifices were too much.
Sometimes Ramona couldn’t catch her breath, and felt filled with dread about the future, and what it would mean for her and Don. She felt tense throughout the day and her sleep was troubled.
“For hours at night, I’d just be scrolling and searching and reading. The more I read the more anxious I got,” she said.
Watching funny videos on TikTok had long been a way for Ramona to relax, but that diversion no longer worked. Seeing people laugh and be silly just made her upset. “I’d just think: Does this person know what’s coming?”
Sometimes, Ramona would go back over Don’s past predictions. None of them had come true. Donald Trump wasn’t re-elected in a landslide. Vaccinated people weren’t turning into zombies. The 10 days of darkness never arrived. The storm hadn't come come.
Don and Ramona were arguing more too. About little every day things, and about Ramona's interest in finishing her degree and becoming a teacher. If she ever wanted to be hired as an educator, she would likely have to get the COVID-19 vaccination. Don believed they were poison, designed to reduce the earth’s population to a level that could be easily dominated by the world’s overlords.
Besides, Don said, public education is a tool used by the cabal to indoctrinate the masses. There was no reason she needed to work.
About this time, one of Ramona’s friends mentioned that she planned to take a temporary break from social media – a ‘cleanse’ she called it – to see if it affected her mood. Ramona was curious. She knew her social media habits were tied to her mounting dread. On a whim, she decided to join her friend.
“Doom scrolling is how I used to cope with it (her anxiety),” she said. The cleanse stretched from days into weeks, and Ramona soon found her mind loosening up. Her thoughts wandered. She says now that she felt more present, though she and was also able to think about the future – the real future – for the first time in a long time. About hHer dreams of becoming a teacher returned. And she was able to laugh again.
But Hhabits are hard to break, and after weeks of ignoring her feed, Ramona logged back on to Facebook. She said she missed some of the people she had met in QAnon forums –, the community, not their beliefs – and wanted to say hello. It was as much the community that brought her back as it was the conspiracy theories.
But the Facebook group had vanished. By this point, QAnon had been linked to incidents of real-world violence, as well as Trump’s efforts to overturn the will of the voters in the 2020 election. After giving the conspiracy theory a free platform for years, Facebook had decided to purge its site of QAnon- related material. Ramona never even got to say goodbye.
“There was nowhere to go, it was just gone,” she said. “But aAt that point, I think I’d decided that I didn’t need it anymore.”
Don wasn’t happy when Ramona told him what she’d done. They argued that night and were soon arguing more and more frequently. Ramona announced plans to go back to college to finish her degree. That only made Don angrier. They finally broke up a few months later after Ramona’s car broke down and Don, anthe engine repairman, refused to fix it.
Ramona moved out and finished her degree. She started hanging out with old friends. One was a boy she had known in high school; after a few months, they started dating and. T they were married last year. Don also got married and now has kids. Ramona last spoke to him about a year ago. She told him she had recently been vaccinated. Ramona could hearre him crying softly over the phone.
‘He told me: “Well, you’re going to die within a year,’” Ramona recalls. In August, she started her first year teaching fifth grade. Now, she worries about lesson plans and student progress, not sudden power outages, or secret clues predicting the end of the world. She still deals with anxiety, of course, as so many do in our tortured digital age. But she’s excited about what comes next.
“At this point I’ve survived five ends of the world,” she says with a laugh.