The Beautiful Side of Evil

The Beautiful Side of Evil is a 1982 Christianity-themed memoir by American author and self-proclaimed occult expert Johanna Michaelsen. It tells the story of Johanna's childhood and young adult life as she explores the occult, psychics, and mind control in search for answers about life. Eventually, Johanna rejects these techniques and fields of study as the works of Satan, ultimately recommitting her life to Jesus Christ. The last fourth of the book attempts to persuade the reader of the dangers of everything from Ouija boards to yoga because Johanna believes them to be instruments of the Devil.

As the novel opens, Johanna is in her 20s and eagerly awaiting a meeting with a renowned psychic named Pachita. Upon their meeting, Pachita informs Johanna that Johanna has the potential to be an equally powerful psychic. The narration then backtracks and will spend the next three-fourths of the book explaining how a Christian woman came to put so much stock into a self-described "psychic healer" like Pachita.

This part of the story actually begins before Johanna is even born, as her narration discusses her family's Great-Great-Aunt Dixie, a famous psychic who lived around the turn of the twentieth century. Before Dixie died, one of her predictions was that a descendant born around the time of Johanna's birth would inherit Dixie's extensive battery of spiritual powers.



The following chapter is set when Johanna is a child. While awaiting her parents return at the family's house in Mexico one night, Johanna hears evil laughing in her head, causing the young girl to consider that she might be the family member Dixie had mentioned in her premonition.

As an undergraduate student at Wesleyan College in Georgia, Johanna ramps up her interest in the occult, significantly. This coincides with a time in her life when she wants desperately to become an actress and, thus, majors in theater. Johanna claims that the university theater is haunted by the malevolent ghost of a dead woman. She also begins frequent use of a Ouija board and contends that she successfully uses the board to contact the dead on numerous occasions. Later on, Johanna transfers to the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill where she continues to explore what she believes to be her connection with the world of unseen spirits—a connection she contends is very strong and growing stronger all the time. She is in regular contact with a spirit there that, as before, is a dead woman who supposedly haunts the theater where Johanna and her classmates rehearse. Johanna names the spirit, “Professor Koch.”

Johanna also relates a number of relationships she enters into with men, including one named Beck. In an act that shows how much Johanna cares about the opinion of her father, she breaks up with Beck because her father disapproves of their being together. She also takes drugs, including mescaline, in an attempt to strengthen her psychic bond with the spirit world.



After she graduates, Johanna realizes that majoring in theater is a huge mistake and that she does not want a career as an actress. At this realization, Johanna spirals into a deep depression and seeks any respite she can from her mental anguish. This includes participating in a program called the Mind Control Method. This technique involves harnessing neural oscillations in the brain known as Alpha Waves. Although there is science to support the existence of Alpha Waves, there is no evidence that they can be used to increase one’s psychic abilities. Nonetheless, Johanna soldiers on through this program.

By Chapter 10, which has the same title as the book itself, “The Beautiful Side of Evil,” the narration catches up to where Johanna is at the beginning of the book, as she arrives late to a meeting with the psychic Pachita. Over the next few weeks of meeting with Pachita and observing the healing “operations” she conducts, Johanna believes herself to be forging a metaphysical connection with the spirit world unlike any other she’s achieved in the past. More and more, she begins to sense the role of her Christian God in these proceedings. She is continually awestruck by what Pachita is able to accomplish when possessed by a spirit who goes by the name of Hermanito, especially when Hermanito is able to replace someone’s vertebrae without cutting into the skin or using any other kind of surgical procedure.

Johanna begins to question her faith in the abilities of Pachita/Hermanito however, after one of her patients named David is killed in the wake of an operation. To reflect on whether or not she’s doing the right thing by learning Pachita’s mystical trade, Johanna leaves the country to spend some time in European countries including Switzerland. While there, she experiences terrifying visions that convert her away from the work of people like Pachita, which Johanna now characterizes as the work of the occult and Satan.



At this point, the book shifts tones dramatically to become a cautionary tale about Satanism and the occult. This makes sense in the historical context of the era during which the book was released, coinciding with the height of the Satanic Panic movement in the United States. Like many Americans in the early 1980s, the author believes that a growing worldwide interest in the occult is a signal that the apocalypse is nigh. Johanna also espouses a very broad view of what she considers the occult, arguing that yoga, Eastern spirituality, astrology, a huge number of classic books, films, and music albums are all the work of the Devil, paving the way for the coming of the Antichrist. Finally, Johanna establishes a set of parameters for readers so that if they witness or feel something that seems to defy the laws of science—something the religious would classify as a “miracle”—they can know whether it’s the work of God or Satan.

The Beautiful Side of Evil went on to become an international bestseller. However, its influence on contemporary thought helped amplify the Satanic Panic of the 80s which resulted in, among other travesties, the wrongful conviction and incarceration of the West Memphis Three. In this way, the book has a legacy that is mixed, at best.