Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, I want to share something special with you
Speaker 1: this week. It's an episode of a new podcast I'm
Speaker 1: pumped about, called The Devil You Know. In the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties and nineties, Satan and his followers were accused of
Speaker 1: brainwashing children, sacrificing babies, and infiltrating North American society on
Speaker 1: a massive scale. Yet these thousands of alleged Satanists were
Speaker 1: nowhere to be found. Even so, the narrative became embedded
Speaker 1: in our cultural memory, wharping everything at touched, including the
Speaker 1: lives of innocent people, and it never quite died out.
Speaker 1: You may know Sarah Marshall as the host of You'r Wrongabout.
Speaker 1: In her new show, The Devil You Know, she explores
Speaker 1: the tangled web of the Satanic Panic, a journey that
Speaker 1: will take you everywhere from Victoria, BC to rural Kentucky
Speaker 1: to San Antonio, Texas. This is a show about the
Speaker 1: people who experienced the Satanic Panic in real time, the believers,
Speaker 1: the skeptics, the bystanders, the wrongfully convicted. What was it
Speaker 1: like to be a psychologist told to look for Satanists?
Speaker 1: In every case? A mother slowly recovering memories of supposed
Speaker 1: satanic abuse, a teenager accused of conspiracy to murder. The
Speaker 1: stories of these eyewitnesses point us toward the real underlying problems,
Speaker 1: and you can probably guess the problem wasn't the Satanists,
Speaker 1: but us. Okay, here comes the episode. You can find
Speaker 1: the devil, you know wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: I didn't have any clue what that was all about,
Speaker 2: but now our teacher made it clear that I should
Speaker 2: get the hell out right away.
Speaker 3: This is Diane. She's a photographer. Diane is not her
Speaker 3: actual name, but what I've given her for her privacy
Speaker 3: and also in honor of one of my favorite women
Speaker 3: of the eighties, Diane on Cheers.
Speaker 2: I'm an artist, photographer, designer, art educator, digital designer, and more.
Speaker 3: Diane was telling me about a project she was working
Speaker 3: on in the late nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2: I planned and I arrived in the full.
Speaker 3: It had her traveling around Kentucky.
Speaker 2: I wasn't staying permanently then, but I was there to
Speaker 2: kind of establish the program, find a place to live,
Speaker 2: and kind of get things going.
Speaker 3: She was photographing locals and also teaching them photography.
Speaker 2: The first time I went, we had this little after
Speaker 2: school club of girls who were really interested in photography
Speaker 2: and very enthusiastic. And they went home and told their families,
Speaker 2: and their families were really friendly, and they were inviting
Speaker 2: me over for dinners and stuff. So when I left
Speaker 2: there the first time after a two week residency, I
Speaker 2: left with a really warm place in my heart for
Speaker 2: the town and its people.
Speaker 3: She worked with people of all ages, including local high schoolers.
Speaker 3: That's what brought her to this particular small town.
Speaker 2: So it was a pretty old town. It was really
Speaker 2: scenic and beautiful, kind of nestled in the hills or
Speaker 2: maybe there were mountains. I don't know.
Speaker 3: But before Diane could really settle in and get to work,
Speaker 3: something happened that made her want to get the hell
Speaker 3: out of Dodge.
Speaker 2: And the art teacher turned to me, looked at me
Speaker 2: real seriously, and he said leave right away. So I did.
Speaker 2: I mean? I arrived in the town hopeful and optimistic,
Speaker 2: ready to like work hard and do good work. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And when I left, I couldn't drive fast enough. It
Speaker 2: was just pedal to the metal. I just couldn't put
Speaker 2: the miles between me and that place fast enough. I
Speaker 2: didn't know if I'd end up in a jail or
Speaker 2: if I would end up, you know, thrown in a cave.
Speaker 3: Diane, a stranger in a small town, had unwittingly become
Speaker 3: the target of a conspiracy.
Speaker 2: You know. At the time, I remember hearing about, you know,
Speaker 2: pentagrams on the floor of barns and all kinds of
Speaker 2: stuff like that. I mean, I thought maybe it could happen,
Speaker 2: but I really didn't believe it. Where could all these like,
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, all these devil worshipers pop up.
Speaker 3: What happened to Diane was a microcosm of a larger
Speaker 3: conspiracy sweeping the nation throughout the nineteen eighties. It was
Speaker 3: a conspiracy about a conspiracy. It was a story where
Speaker 3: rumor became panic, and eventually that panic became legend. That
Speaker 3: legend has always fascinated me. But to see it only
Speaker 3: from the distance of the present is to not see
Speaker 3: it at all. The grand sweep of the narrative turns
Speaker 3: it into something that happened to a country or a culture.
Speaker 3: But that also means it happened to individuals, and each
Speaker 3: of them saw something a little different. I thought, could
Speaker 3: this have happened? You know, I mean, it questioned it
Speaker 3: because it's like we had such a strange childhood.
Speaker 4: Anyways, the first version of it was that this was
Speaker 4: somehow wrapped up in the mafia. And then the next
Speaker 4: iteration I heard was that there were some group of
Speaker 4: people at the school called the Group, especially some goth people.
Speaker 5: I remember two days later, maybe even a day later,
Speaker 5: I received a call from Detective Majeca.
Speaker 2: You know, would you come in and come and talk
Speaker 2: to me or.
Speaker 3: I'm sure you know I have nothing to hide.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, that was the worst thing I could have ever done.
Speaker 3: So what did it look like to the individuals who
Speaker 3: got caught up in this panic, often in ways that
Speaker 3: they could never have imagined. Today, we're going to see
Speaker 3: it through Diane's eyes. Come with me as I traced
Speaker 3: the development of one small strange rumor, a rumor involving
Speaker 3: virgin sacrifice, grave robbing, and Patrick Swayzee. I'm Sarah Marshall,
Speaker 3: and this is the devil you know, Welcome to the eighties.
Speaker 3: Here's what's in legwarmers, Madonna, phones that look like Star Wars,
Speaker 3: trili gy and government initiative. Michael J. Fox, the de Laureate.
Speaker 3: I'm Gohay Fox, Si Cha Koozi vcrgumic, cyndy, lauper, aquanett, fishnets,
Speaker 3: and also apparently Satanism.
Speaker 6: Good morning everyone, I'm Richard chair and welcome to people
Speaker 6: are talking on this Monday. We are live on Television
Speaker 6: Hill and as you know by watching previous programs on
Speaker 6: people are talking that Satanism seems to be on the
Speaker 6: rise here in the United States.
Speaker 3: People, especially Americans. We're getting this information not from the fringes,
Speaker 3: but from mainstream sources like local morning news shows and
Speaker 3: unnationally syndicated daytime talk shows like the Uprah Winfrey Show.
Speaker 5: In every state in the nation, authorities are investigating some
Speaker 5: form of what they call botanic activity, which is covinar.
Speaker 3: Reportedly, people also heard these stories on primetime news, like
Speaker 3: in this investigation by ABC's twenty twenty.
Speaker 7: Dardling sobering results of a twenty twenty investigation, Satanism, devil
Speaker 7: worship is being practiced all across the country.
Speaker 8: We have all types of perversion going on as.
Speaker 7: Affecting America, perverse hideous acts, DeFi belief, suicides, murders, and
Speaker 7: the ritualistic slaughter of children and animals.
Speaker 3: Satan has been in North America for a long time,
Speaker 3: at least according to some, began to enjoy a new
Speaker 3: level of notoriety. In the nineteen sixties and seventies, Anton
Speaker 3: Levy was freaking people out with his Church of Satan
Speaker 3: in San Francisco, a church that, if you read the literature,
Speaker 3: was about worshiping not Satan, but yourself and your ability
Speaker 3: to do whatever you wanted. The public reeled from news
Speaker 3: of the Manson family murders in the wake of their
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty nine crime spree, a case in which teenage
Speaker 3: girls ran away from home and ended up in the
Speaker 3: thrall of a man who commanded them to kill. Surely,
Speaker 3: just some guy couldn't be responsible for such horrific crimes.
Speaker 3: Surely it had to be Satan, and members of the
Speaker 3: growing evangelical Christian movement began arguing that the Age of
Speaker 3: Aquarius was really affront for Satan. One day you're reading
Speaker 3: a horoscope, the next day you're sacrificing a goat. But
Speaker 3: it's hard to know if Satan would have become quite
Speaker 3: the American obsession he was if he hadn't also been
Speaker 3: such big business.
Speaker 8: Satan his father, that guy, he came up from Hell
Speaker 8: and beget a son, a mortal woman.
Speaker 7: Pale Haydans his father and his name is Adrian.
Speaker 3: That was Rosemary's Baby from nineteen sixty eight. It established
Speaker 3: a market for devil movies, and there was no devil
Speaker 3: movie bigger than The Exorcist in nineteen seventy three, which
Speaker 3: told the story of an adolescent girl possessed by a
Speaker 3: demon and the two noble Catholic priests who saved her
Speaker 3: from evil.
Speaker 7: An excellent day an excitator.
Speaker 3: But this pervasive fixation on Satan, both religious and secular,
Speaker 3: achieved a new level of urgency in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 3: Now stories of Satan tanic activity were no longer just
Speaker 3: in the movies. They were happening in your very own town,
Speaker 3: or at least that was what people were saying.
Speaker 9: And we have essentially in a moral panic, a somewhat
Speaker 9: regressive movement that it's trying to restore old moral lines
Speaker 9: or old cultural habits, you know, kind of like the
Speaker 9: good old days, that the social change was really threatening
Speaker 9: to upend.
Speaker 3: That is Mary to Young, professor emeritus of sociology at
Speaker 3: Grand Valley State University. And according to Mary, many of
Speaker 3: these fears tend to center around children and teenagers. And
Speaker 3: the harms that might befall children, both physical and moral.
Speaker 9: I mean, there was a lot of anxiety about what
Speaker 9: was going on in the family during that period of time.
Speaker 9: That was it's one of the sources of social stress.
Speaker 9: There was a higher rate of divorce, a higher rate
Speaker 9: of what were referred to them as non traditional families.
Speaker 9: We also were dealing with the consequences of a recession.
Speaker 9: We had more and more women going to work, and
Speaker 9: you had a lot of social commentators who were talking
Speaker 9: with one degree of expertise or another about what the
Speaker 9: consequences were of so called latch key children and unsupervised children,
Speaker 9: and children, particularly boys who were not growing up with fathers.
Speaker 3: And is there this idea that the nuclear family must
Speaker 3: stay together to word off Satanists and therefore, you know,
Speaker 3: don't get divorced?
Speaker 8: Right?
Speaker 9: Well, you know, historically, the family has always been the
Speaker 9: moral foundation of society. And when you begin changing that
Speaker 9: moral foundation, and consequentially, other things are going to happen
Speaker 9: that are either going to, depending on your belief system,
Speaker 9: invite evil influences however you define evil, or somehow make
Speaker 9: it much more difficult to resist those.
Speaker 3: This panic across the board was one whose proponents and
Speaker 3: alleged victims were largely white and middle class, in part
Speaker 3: because it affected white America the way so many moral
Speaker 3: panics do by giving a monstrous face to the changes
Speaker 3: that the future might bring. Those accused of being in
Speaker 3: league with the devil were, as you might imagine, a
Speaker 3: more diverse group than their accusers. The weight of false
Speaker 3: accusations fell most heavily, as always, on those without the
Speaker 3: money or the power to crawl out from under them.
Speaker 3: It feels like so many structural problems can be ignored
Speaker 3: when we say, well, these things. Bad outcomes happen because
Speaker 3: people wake up in the morning and sort of dis direction,
Speaker 3: do their affirmations and are like, I'm evil. I'm going
Speaker 3: to do something evil today.
Speaker 9: Right right? I mean, throughout history, there's always been something, someone,
Speaker 9: some group of people, some ideology, whatever that's been labeled
Speaker 9: as evil and evil. The word itself is an extremely
Speaker 9: powerful word. Throwing it into a sentence really begins to
Speaker 9: change the whole narrative about the problem that you're taking
Speaker 9: a look at.
Speaker 3: De Young tells a story where the Satanic panic emerged
Speaker 3: not just from the fears of everyday people, but from
Speaker 3: a whole class of professionals.
Speaker 9: All of a sudden, we had experts popping up on Satanism,
Speaker 9: on cults, on Satanic cults, even on ritual abuse, which
Speaker 9: was a brand new term.
Speaker 3: Self appointed experts who could tell you how to find
Speaker 3: evidence of Satanism in a patient or at a crime scene,
Speaker 3: and who turned around and trained more experts, who trained
Speaker 3: more experts. Across North America, social workers and therapists were
Speaker 3: urged to look for the devil in their client's memories,
Speaker 3: and teachers, parents and children were told that secret Satanic
Speaker 3: messages were hidden in heavy metal songs, comic books, and games.
Speaker 9: Virtually every state that I've taken a look at has
Speaker 9: had its own version of the Satanic panic. For example,
Speaker 9: in Kentucky, where rumors that were going around that a
Speaker 9: Satanic cult was going to kidnap blonde haired, blue eyed
Speaker 9: girls and sacrifice them meant that on one day in
Speaker 9: one community in Kentucky, four hundred and fifty kids were
Speaker 9: kept out of school by their parents. That's a manifestation
Speaker 9: of a belief system.
Speaker 3: By the time we got to the late eighties, the
Speaker 3: idea that Satan and his followers have infiltrated North America
Speaker 3: is thoroughly embedded in our culture. Satanists, you are told,
Speaker 3: are a threat to your children, your town, your country.
Speaker 3: And out of all this fear come people who are
Speaker 3: primed to look for Satanists whenever something a little bit
Speaker 3: out of the ordinary occurs.
Speaker 9: I found training sessions where hundreds of Kentucky police officers
Speaker 9: were attending training sessions on Satanic ritual abuse in what
Speaker 9: was generically referred to as a cult crime. You begin
Speaker 9: to look at those kinds of relationships again, and you
Speaker 9: see that you can have a community that really is
Speaker 9: primed for an allegation, prime to believe it, prime to
Speaker 9: proceed on it as if it were a credible allegation.
Speaker 10: Rumors of devil worship have spread like wildfire across a
Speaker 10: large section of eastern Kentucky, stumping police officers who have
Speaker 10: fielded thousands of telephone calls from terrified line.
Speaker 5: Satan worshippers are looking for blonde, blue eyed children to
Speaker 5: kill in a sacrifice to the devil. Some versions implicate
Speaker 5: vacuum cleaner salesman.
Speaker 11: Vandals painted six sixty six Satan rules and occult symbols
Speaker 11: in the city park.
Speaker 10: Similar incidents or of a portacle on the floor of
Speaker 10: a mobile home the defendants are alleged to have used
Speaker 10: for Satanic ceremonies. The words Satan rules were inscribed outside
Speaker 10: a circle around their time months.
Speaker 5: Noble met with parents who were considering keeping their children
Speaker 5: home because of fears of devil worshippers.
Speaker 11: Videotapes and books on the occult were confiscated, along with
Speaker 11: some heavy metal rock tapes.
Speaker 5: The rumors during migrated into Leslie, clay, Lee, and Ousley
Speaker 5: Counties to the southwest, and Wolf, Powell and mcgoffin counties
Speaker 5: did All.
Speaker 10: Of the law enforcement officials surveyed last week said they
Speaker 10: believe the stories were false. Most agencies reported investigating the
Speaker 10: rumors and finding no supporting evidence.
Speaker 5: The state journal Frank the Messenger Inquirer owned the Louisville Courier,
Speaker 5: Kentucky New Era Lexington Herald Reader September twelfth, nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 3: September nineteen eighty eight, that is the very same month
Speaker 3: a certain photographer travels to rural Kentucky. Remember our friend
Speaker 3: Diane from earlier when.
Speaker 2: We were at school. We had a lot of fun
Speaker 2: just running inside and outside because in the pinhole cameras
Speaker 2: called you could only put one film in at a time,
Speaker 2: so you would load it up in the dark room,
Speaker 2: run outside, take a picture, and then run back into
Speaker 2: the dark room and develop it. You know, it was
Speaker 2: this frantic, great release of energy as opposed to sitting
Speaker 2: in one of those little school desks.
Speaker 3: You know, for hours, she was working in small towns
Speaker 3: across the state teaching photography to kids and teenagers.
Speaker 2: I was part of an artist grant program through the
Speaker 2: Kentucky Arts Council, So as one of those artists, I
Speaker 2: packed up my car with all kinds of photo gear
Speaker 2: and I would travel around the state doing these residencies.
Speaker 2: I think most of them were about two weeks. The
Speaker 2: town would like find a place for you to stay,
Speaker 2: and you know, you were just kind of on your
Speaker 2: own with the students and the specific group of teachers
Speaker 2: or one teacher. Maybe I would show up with dozens
Speaker 2: of cardboard boxes that the students would make into cameras
Speaker 2: and then photograph with them, and we made school newspapers
Speaker 2: where they would write and publish their photos. We made
Speaker 2: photo books and had exhibits, and we made videos where
Speaker 2: they would write the story and star in it and
Speaker 2: dance in it. And they'd write original music.
Speaker 3: What was it like to be working with teenagers artistically
Speaker 3: and specifically working with young adults in that part of
Speaker 3: the country in that time.
Speaker 2: Once they were on board with it, they really got
Speaker 2: inspired by it, which I really enjoyed because it's so
Speaker 2: hard to sometimes get people interested or teenagers interested. But
Speaker 2: I think it was so different than regular school for
Speaker 2: them that they kind of latched onto it. It was
Speaker 2: a real for them. It was a real opportunity I
Speaker 2: had for years after. Some of the teenagers writing me
Speaker 2: and sending me photos and you know, asking me questions
Speaker 2: because they just wanted to keep going with it. So
Speaker 2: that was pretty amazing. I think most people were happy
Speaker 2: to have a visitor that was going to like shed
Speaker 2: light on something brand new.
Speaker 3: I'm curious about what this town was like, what it
Speaker 3: was like to drive into it, and kind of what
Speaker 3: it you know, the experience of it.
Speaker 2: It was pretty small, but when you drive in, you know,
Speaker 2: you see hills and beautiful scenery. It's like one road
Speaker 2: through the town and some other little neighborhoods around. The
Speaker 2: woman who was the teacher that I stayed with initially,
Speaker 2: she was living in the old one room schoolhouse and
Speaker 2: she used to find like arrowheads in the front yard.
Speaker 3: Was there like, was it like a dairy queen town?
Speaker 3: Was there like a.
Speaker 2: Yes, there was this. There was this great dairy queen
Speaker 2: and I was always just amazed there was this. One
Speaker 2: of the kids had a baby and they would put
Speaker 2: the baby through the order window, you know, place their orders.
Speaker 2: They would like push the baby.
Speaker 3: Through and you have to hold the baby upside down
Speaker 3: like a blizzard to make sure that he's thick enough. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It was like a one everything town, one doctor, one
Speaker 2: dairy queen, one movie theater. I was staying at a
Speaker 2: local motel. The doctor across the street. He offered a
Speaker 2: room in his building. I could use it as a
Speaker 2: studio slash dark room, and I'd run around the town
Speaker 2: as I was doing all this, meeting people, and when
Speaker 2: I did, i'd tell him about the project, and with
Speaker 2: their permission, I would photograph them, and I was using
Speaker 2: a Polaroid camera so I could give them the photo.
Speaker 2: The outcome was always really friendly, and in doing my recognisance,
Speaker 2: I scheduled a meeting with the high school principal and
Speaker 2: the high school art teacher. Day came for our meeting
Speaker 2: and I met the principal. I thought it went fine,
Speaker 2: and then I went to meet with the our teacher,
Speaker 2: and halfway through our meeting, the principal's voice booms out
Speaker 2: of the loud speaker and he said, if anyone sees
Speaker 2: the photo woman, escort to my office immediately. And the
Speaker 2: art teacher turned to me, looked at me real seriously,
Speaker 2: and he said leave right away.
Speaker 9: So I did.
Speaker 3: But during her drive through town, Diane spots a friend
Speaker 3: traveling in the opposite direction.
Speaker 2: I was thinking of finding her anyway, but our paths
Speaker 2: crossed in our cars, and so we stopped. You know,
Speaker 2: people used to, like in a small town that'd stop
Speaker 2: in Mill Street and have a conversation. So we kind
Speaker 2: of stopped in the mill Street and you know, going
Speaker 2: in two different directions, and rolled down our windows and
Speaker 2: I told what had just happened, and she looked at
Speaker 2: me and she said, leave town right away. She said,
Speaker 2: people have disappeared or are disappeared, like abducted, and often
Speaker 2: end up in nearby caves or mines, never to be
Speaker 2: heard from again. So then I really freaked out. And
Speaker 2: she said it in such a way too, that I
Speaker 2: knew it was no joke, you know, And It wasn't
Speaker 2: like a horror film where you might just stay anyway,
Speaker 2: you know. So I was really shocked and upset. I
Speaker 2: went back to the motel and I just grabbed all
Speaker 2: my stuff and threw it in the car and left.
Speaker 2: And for some reason, I remember, like for some reason,
Speaker 2: I decided to change my shirt, and I wasn't hysterical,
Speaker 2: but I was definitely panicky, because I remember I had
Speaker 2: the hardest time trying to button the buttons. Later, I
Speaker 2: found doubt that the sheriff was waiting for me in
Speaker 2: the principal's office, and later I found out that he
Speaker 2: had just missed me at the motel.
Speaker 11: Wow.
Speaker 2: So I was just so glad that I had left.
Speaker 2: I didn't know if I'd end up in a jail
Speaker 2: or if I would end up, you know, thrown in
Speaker 2: a cave.
Speaker 3: When okay, and so you got out of town, and
Speaker 3: so where did you had? Two? From there?
Speaker 2: I just drove back to Cincinnati the next day, and
Speaker 2: you know, nobody here really really understood. And my phone
Speaker 2: started ringing off the hook, just constant phone calls from
Speaker 2: all kinds of different media, including like People magazine, and
Speaker 2: all these people just kept calling and calling and calling
Speaker 2: I really didn't even know what to say. I was
Speaker 2: still trying to process what happened and why. But yeah,
Speaker 2: that's when I found out what I was being accused of.
Speaker 2: Or you know.
Speaker 3: I've been fascinated by Diane's story ever since I stumbled
Speaker 3: across it. I first saw it in a book from
Speaker 3: the eighties about police officers who became experts in cult crimes.
Speaker 3: So when I finally got the chance to sit down
Speaker 3: and talk with her, I had to read her this passage.
Speaker 3: A Cincinnati photographer traveled through rural Kentucky taking photographs under
Speaker 3: a grant from the Kentucky Arts Council. By coincidence, quote,
Speaker 3: rumors that devil worshippers were searching for blonde, blue eyed
Speaker 3: victims for sacrifices reached the town from surrounding counties about
Speaker 3: the same time. The photographer, however, had taken photographs of children,
Speaker 3: prompting the rumor quote that a woman was taking pictures
Speaker 3: of blonde haired, blue eyed girls potential victims for devil worshipers.
Speaker 3: After receiving threats and after the local high school principal
Speaker 3: chased her from school yelling get out, get out, the
Speaker 3: photographer fled.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't remember. I don't think that happened. I really,
Speaker 2: I don't think that happened. I think that was like
Speaker 2: some fiction that he made up to make it sound good,
Speaker 2: because I really I just kind of left. You know,
Speaker 2: nobody was around. I just got in the car and left.
Speaker 2: I do want to tell you that right before I
Speaker 2: went to Kentucky, there were rumors reported in Lexington. I
Speaker 2: think they reported it in the newspaper about a theater
Speaker 2: group that was suspected of dealing in witchcraft because they
Speaker 2: ordered yards and yards of black material. You know, and
Speaker 2: anyone who's been to the theater knows that probably black
Speaker 2: material was used as backdrops and blockout curtains and all
Speaker 2: kinds of stuff.
Speaker 3: Right, Probably they had to put on private lives, and
Speaker 3: they needed it for like the night sky.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it could be so many different things,
Speaker 2: so you know. And there was another another little silly
Speaker 2: incident like that reported too, but I can't remember.
Speaker 8: What it is.
Speaker 3: I think that's the part of to me, the really
Speaker 3: compelling thing about this story, and also the way it
Speaker 3: compares to sort of the QAnon logic of today, is that,
Speaker 3: you know, it would be funny if it wasn't so dangerous,
Speaker 3: and if it didn't affect so many people's lives, because
Speaker 3: the sort of are sort of again, it would be
Speaker 3: comical if there weren't real lives at stake.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it was not funny at all, you know.
Speaker 2: And as a matter of fact, it's going to take
Speaker 2: me days to get over this now, I think, you know.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, I'm sure. I think the kind of
Speaker 3: the nervous system response of remembering something like this, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. I made some notes to kind of get
Speaker 2: it straight in my head, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: I started like getting upset.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like, no, I'm not the victim here, but I
Speaker 2: think also, I don't really know how much my experience
Speaker 2: had to do with Satan Satanic in it, but I
Speaker 2: do feel like it was part of the zeitgeist of
Speaker 2: that time and they needed some excuse, you know, they
Speaker 2: needed some label for it. Even if it was you know,
Speaker 2: anti Semitism, they weren't going to say that, so they
Speaker 2: had to label it something, and that whole Satanic business
Speaker 2: was timely.
Speaker 3: I find it kind of very depressing that we find
Speaker 3: ourselves in a worldview where people find it more believable
Speaker 3: that somebody is going to come from another town all
Speaker 3: the way to your town to, according to the cover story,
Speaker 3: at least try and sacrifice a virgin rather than just
Speaker 3: being interested in teaching them photography.
Speaker 2: Yeah, why would anyone go all that way, go to
Speaker 2: all that trouble, Yeah, just to like try and infiltrate
Speaker 2: their lives for some other evil purpose.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 3: It just doesn't make any sense either way. This is
Speaker 3: the story that was left on the record and that
Speaker 3: we have now. Satan is in the news. It's just
Speaker 3: a matter of time until he shows up in your town.
Speaker 3: There's a detail of Diane's story that I haven't been
Speaker 3: able to get out of my head. The Black fabric
Speaker 3: and the theater group. How in the world did something
Speaker 3: so small fuel a rumor that engulfed an entire state
Speaker 3: To answer that, we have to go to another small town, Hazard, Kentucky.
Speaker 8: People around here we band together. You mess with us,
Speaker 8: we'll mess you up.
Speaker 3: That is Patrick Balch. He's in his forties now, and
Speaker 3: he grew up in Hazzard.
Speaker 8: About four bars on my and they had a store
Speaker 8: called Dollars and a dime store. Oh my god, that
Speaker 8: brings back so many memories. Hazard was just like a
Speaker 8: ghost town when I was a kid.
Speaker 3: In nineteen eighty eight, when Patrick was about eight years old,
Speaker 3: Hollywood came to town.
Speaker 8: They had an open casting call for locals to come
Speaker 8: in at the Holiday Inn and hazard. My mom just
Speaker 8: took me because she was interested. She wanted to meet
Speaker 8: Patrick Swazey because she basically thought he was a god.
Speaker 8: But ironically, when we went to the casting call, he
Speaker 8: was sitting in the hotel bar. You've seen dirty dancing
Speaker 8: ass and do you know the sleeveless shirt that he
Speaker 8: wore in it. He was wearing that shirt. And we
Speaker 8: go into the hotel bar and I immediately located and
Speaker 8: She's like, that's not him. I was like, yes, it is,
Speaker 8: and I walked up to him. I said, hey, Patrick,
Speaker 8: he's turning around and started talking to me, and Mom's.
Speaker 7: Joll just like.
Speaker 3: Liam Neeson, Helen Hunt, Patrick Swayze, all of them were
Speaker 3: there to film scenes for a movie called Next of Ken.
Speaker 3: Patrick Swayze is Detective Truman Gates.
Speaker 2: He's a country boy. We are gonna find Gerald's killer.
Speaker 3: But he's got some unfinished business in the city.
Speaker 8: Howdy brothers who've been separated for a while. One of
Speaker 8: them gets murdered. The other one dressed to salve it
Speaker 8: because he's a Chicago police officer, and he gets in
Speaker 8: trouble and then his other brother comes to help to
Speaker 8: get revenge more or less, so they're kind of fatten
Speaker 8: with each other. End of it is the best part.
Speaker 8: If you haven't seen it, I'm not gonna tell you,
Speaker 8: but the end of it is. The cemetery scene is
Speaker 8: the best part of it. It shows you how family
Speaker 8: comes together. And Whoop says he.
Speaker 3: Ended up with only one line in the theatrical cut,
Speaker 3: but he basically got to spend a couple of weeks
Speaker 3: hanging out with Patrick Swayzey.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I was little Patrick. He was big Patrick on
Speaker 8: the set. Patrick Swayzy actually is the one that taught
Speaker 8: me how to shoot the bow and arrow, and he
Speaker 8: taught me in about fifteen minutes. I was doing great,
Speaker 8: but at the time that I actually shot for the scene,
Speaker 8: I missed the haystack by probably half a mile. I
Speaker 8: guess I was nervous, but I completely missed the target.
Speaker 8: It's a wonder I didn't shoot somebody in the background,
Speaker 8: but luckily no one was hit.
Speaker 3: In the end, it was one of the high points
Speaker 3: of his childhood and looking back on it now, he
Speaker 3: says that it changed his life.
Speaker 8: Just kind of opened my eyes the fact that the
Speaker 8: world was a lot bigger than what I thought it
Speaker 8: was at the time, because I didn't know there was
Speaker 8: anything beyond hazard. I mean, you know, I was eight
Speaker 8: years old, very naive. Here all these big Hollywood actors
Speaker 8: come in. It just kind of woke me up and
Speaker 8: made me realize that there's mortal life than just Perry County.
Speaker 3: There's another way. Next to Ken left to Mark in Kentucky.
Speaker 3: Patrick talked to my producer Mary.
Speaker 12: Do you remember a scene where a lot of people
Speaker 12: would have been wearing like black dresses.
Speaker 8: The funeral scene when I was doing the funeral and
Speaker 8: having the wake. It's in the deleted scenes. It's also
Speaker 8: the one where I got my handslapped for stealing cookies
Speaker 8: or something off a plate.
Speaker 3: Remember Diane mentioning the theater group buying the black fabric. Well,
Speaker 3: just like the story of her being chased through the school,
Speaker 3: this is a detail that suffered from some historical mistranslation to.
Speaker 12: Okay, I'm going to read you something from this newspaper.
Speaker 12: And this was in the Louisville Courier Journal on September twelfth,
Speaker 12: nineteen eighty eight. It was also reprinted in a lot
Speaker 12: of other places, like papers across the state because it
Speaker 12: was originally from the Associated Press. And the article is
Speaker 12: called devil Worshiped Rumors keep officials busy in Eastern Kentucky,
Speaker 12: and it says rumors of devil worship have spread like
Speaker 12: wildfire across a large section of eastern Kentucky, stumping police
Speaker 12: officials who are fielding thousands of telephone calls from fearful residents.
Speaker 12: Police in Hazard said employees of a department store were
Speaker 12: frantic after someone bought twenty black dresses. Authorities later learned
Speaker 12: the dresses were sewn together for use in movie lighting.
Speaker 12: During the filming of Next of Kin last month in
Speaker 12: Jackson and Perry Counties, a dispatcher said people believed Satan
Speaker 12: worshippers were looking for virgin girls and blonde, blue eyed
Speaker 12: children to sacrifice to the devil.
Speaker 8: Pardon my French, but what the fuck? I don't know
Speaker 8: about nothing like that.
Speaker 12: I mean, yeah, I mean, what do you think about that?
Speaker 8: That's hazard. If somebody goes and takes a ship their
Speaker 8: breast and knows what color it is by the time
Speaker 8: they get out of the bathroom, it's a rumor meal.
Speaker 8: The second you walk out the door, they'll be talking
Speaker 8: about you behind your back if you do anything that
Speaker 8: alarms them. There's so many Bible thumpers and hazard I mean,
Speaker 8: you know the ones that wear the golong denim skirts
Speaker 8: that goes down to their ankles. If you came in
Speaker 8: and bought black eyeliner and a black dress, they'd say
Speaker 8: he is a satan worshiper. You know, No, there weren't
Speaker 8: no Satanis around. Patrick Swazy definitely was a Satanist, and
Speaker 8: Elimnson wasn't a Satanist. And I see no evidence of
Speaker 8: any satan worshiper or anything like that. I didn't see
Speaker 8: anybody naked dancing around a fire at night or anything
Speaker 8: like that. No witches.
Speaker 12: I mean, if you did see something like that, would
Speaker 12: you immediately think, oh, it's Satanists.
Speaker 8: No, I would have joined them.
Speaker 3: Really, So there we have it. Women scared out of
Speaker 3: nearby town because Hollywood movie set bought twenty black dresses
Speaker 3: for an elited scene doesn't really have the same ring
Speaker 3: to it as the other headlines, does it. But in
Speaker 3: any case, when the devil is hard to find. You
Speaker 3: can always displame Patrick Swayze. The activities of a Hollywood
Speaker 3: production crew being mistaken for Satanic ritual is just one
Speaker 3: of many very sketchy pieces of evidence that people pointed
Speaker 3: to as some kind of a smoking gun throughout the
Speaker 3: long decade of the Satanic Panic. And I bring up
Speaker 3: all these details and I bring you the story of
Speaker 3: Diane in this our first episode, because I think the
Speaker 3: story of the Panic itself, the story of a many
Speaker 3: headed hydra that seem to reach into every part of
Speaker 3: North American life, can seem like too big of a
Speaker 3: concept to wrap your head around when you try to
Speaker 3: take it in in its totality. I've been studying it
Speaker 3: for the past ten years or so, and every day
Speaker 3: I feel like I find some new detail that I've
Speaker 3: never encountered before. The Patrick Swayze thing, for example. In
Speaker 3: any case, the story of the dresses, the story of Diane,
Speaker 3: and so many of the other stories that we're going
Speaker 3: to talk about in this series are really about people
Speaker 3: encountering something just a little bit unusual and being stirred
Speaker 3: into such a state of anxiety that they assume not
Speaker 3: just the worst that they can imagine, but something even
Speaker 3: worse than that. This is a scary story because it
Speaker 3: hasn't gone away. Maybe it doesn't need to be out
Speaker 3: all the time. Maybe sometimes it retreats underground, takes a nap,
Speaker 3: and then returns to feast again, like Pennywise and Stephen
Speaker 3: King's it. And of course you can't really personify a
Speaker 3: panic and blame it for the way it recurs. There's
Speaker 3: no panic without the people panicking. Maybe with a phenomenon
Speaker 3: like this, it doesn't come down to us smarter as
Speaker 3: a people, but to us just getting tired of a
Speaker 3: certain story, craving novelty, moving on to something else for
Speaker 3: a while, until Satanists once again seem fresh and shocking, like, oh,
Speaker 3: say about now. What I'm most interested in and what
Speaker 3: I want to share with you are the voices of
Speaker 3: the individuals who found themselves within this larger story. Some
Speaker 3: of them are like Diane. They never thought it could
Speaker 3: happen to them, and some of them thought they knew
Speaker 3: what to expect, but discovered that reality was even more bizarre.
Speaker 3: And some of them had no idea they were even
Speaker 3: part of the story until they were already trapped inside it.
Speaker 3: These are the people and the stories we want to
Speaker 3: look at to understand what happened, but also so we
Speaker 3: can understand together where we're going. I hope you'll join
Speaker 3: me for this season on the Devil you know,