Glenwood Springs Masonic lodge tagged with pro-Satan graffiti

Glenwood Springs Freemasons discovered Monday morning that their lodge had been tagged by servants of the dark lord over the weekend. And investigators suspect the perpetrators of multiple taggings in downtown.

One door of the 86-year-old building had been spray painted with a large red star, which Wayne Horak, a Mason and the building’s property manager, believed was supposed to be a pentagram. A second-story exterior door had also been spray painted with a blue pentagram, along with the words “Hail Satan.”

“Obviously we do not appreciate this,” said Horak. “We are Glenwood Springs’ oldest nonprofit organization. We give two scholarships per year, and we are [a partner organization] of the Shriners Hospitals for Children.

“We are not a Satan-worshiping organization,” said Horak.

Spray-paint graffiti around Glenwood Springs is fairly common, but satanic graffiti is rare, said Police Chief Terry Wilson. The police don’t have any suspects in the vandalism yet, but Wilson said he saw a garage tagged only a block or so away from the Masonic lodge over the weekend.

“So it sounds like someone’s playing with paint in the downtown area” and investigators will need to follow up, said the chief.

If caught committing this kind of vandalism, a suspect could be charged with criminal mischief. The degree of that charge would depend on the level of damage and could reach the felony level, said Wilson.