Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb. Hey, I'm Christian Seger guest
Speaker 1: toasting Yes Christians, filling in for Julie. She's on a
Speaker 1: vacation this week, and uh, she took this opportunity to
Speaker 1: dive into a couple of darker topics. We talked about
Speaker 1: Gromore's and in this episode we're talking about a little
Speaker 1: thing called Satanic panic. And uh, I feel I feel
Speaker 1: like depending on where our listeners are in terms of
Speaker 1: of age and the geographical location, they're gonna have varying
Speaker 1: levels of of intersection with this topic. Based on our
Speaker 1: previous conversations, I believe we both have varying degrees of
Speaker 1: contact with the Satanic panic of the nineteen eighties, especially
Speaker 1: time in which there was a lot of moral panic
Speaker 1: and outrage over the perceived threat of secret Satanic cults,
Speaker 1: which sounds crazy. It may sound crazy to you, but
Speaker 1: this was a very real atmosphere. Yeah, I mean, the
Speaker 1: peak of Satanic panic was between nineteen eighty five and
Speaker 1: around nineteen two, although I think you can probably trace
Speaker 1: it even a little further back into the late seventies probably,
Speaker 1: and that for me, I'm thirty seven, I'm about to
Speaker 1: be thirty eight, So I grew up that was the
Speaker 1: period of time when I was growing up. You know. Okay,
Speaker 1: well we're the same age, so okay, yeah, so so yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I was in elementary school while this was going on,
Speaker 1: and it was a it was something that my parents
Speaker 1: weren't necessarily as afraid of it, but I had friends
Speaker 1: whose parents were afraid of it. Uh, And then um,
Speaker 1: we talked about this off air. But I had an
Speaker 1: experience where for a year I had to go to
Speaker 1: a private religious school and there was a lot of
Speaker 1: Satanic panic within this school, and in particular about demon
Speaker 1: possession and being the need to be exercised or even Uh.
Speaker 1: We had a classmate who was ostracized by our teacher
Speaker 1: because he was purported to be possessed by the devil.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I mean I I definitely grew up as
Speaker 1: well in a in a family environment where a lot
Speaker 1: of there wasn't a lot of of of emphasis on
Speaker 1: satanic panic. It wasn't really a thing in my family.
Speaker 1: But would go to church and you would you would
Speaker 1: hear about the thread or read about the thread in
Speaker 1: various youth of publications that were that were aimed at
Speaker 1: us about the dangers of say, horror literature, about of
Speaker 1: course heavy metal music, and and then there were I
Speaker 1: remember also having having friends who were really heavily involved
Speaker 1: in our youth group and being at a youth coffee
Speaker 1: house and being asked to come into a back room
Speaker 1: to sit in on an exorcism. Uh. You know, it
Speaker 1: was this whole atmosphere, uh, you know, it was especially
Speaker 1: attractive to teens in which these these demonic forces were real.
Speaker 1: There was this there's this war between the forces of
Speaker 1: good and the forces of evil, and your soul, your
Speaker 1: mind is kind of the battle ground. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: it's satanic panic are also you know what what the
Speaker 1: claimed practices are generally termed under the phrase satanic ritual
Speaker 1: abuse UM or s r A. For sure, we might
Speaker 1: say that throughout the podcast. But there there was this
Speaker 1: mm hmmm uh sort of chaos about the general chaos
Speaker 1: about growing up as a human being in the world,
Speaker 1: especially as an adolescent, when you're trying to figure things out,
Speaker 1: you're trying to make sense of the world, and then
Speaker 1: along comes this narrative that's basically like you are at
Speaker 1: the center of this and either um, these underground mysterious
Speaker 1: heavy metal cults can transform your soul into into darkness,
Speaker 1: or you you can be guarded and uh you know,
Speaker 1: come out on the side of right business. Uh and
Speaker 1: it you know, it sounds silly, it sounds very um
Speaker 1: black and white. Um, but yeah, having lived through it,
Speaker 1: like it's especially like going back and then doing the
Speaker 1: research on this and being like, oh, yeah, I remember
Speaker 1: when that happened. And but but but my little ten
Speaker 1: year old brain, you know, seven couldn't couldn't exactly make
Speaker 1: sense of it, you know. Uh, yeah, it's just some
Speaker 1: fascinating stuff. But largely satanic panic was a combination of that.
Speaker 1: There was this idea of repressed memories being brought back,
Speaker 1: and a lot of these repressed memories were supposedly of
Speaker 1: interactions or torture within satanic underground organizations. There's secret organizations
Speaker 1: that are worshiping the devil and as part of their rights,
Speaker 1: they are abusing, often sexually, very young children, and that
Speaker 1: that is sort of where the moral panic comes in.
Speaker 1: That gets everyone involved, at least in the children. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The again, the this is kind of ironic as I
Speaker 1: wrote a comic book called this But Think of the
Speaker 1: Children as where you always they always comes back to
Speaker 1: these moral panics, is that something is going wrong with
Speaker 1: the children. And in this particular case, it was actually
Speaker 1: true in a lot of these incidents that there were
Speaker 1: children that were being physically abused and sexually abused. But
Speaker 1: there has not been by and large evidence that there
Speaker 1: ever was an underground Satanic network or cult that was
Speaker 1: operating and performing these these acts. Yeah. I mean, certainly
Speaker 1: there are there their individuals out there that self identify
Speaker 1: as Satanists, but Fatanist of the type that are vilified
Speaker 1: in Satanic panic. Uh, And in this movement, they never existed,
Speaker 1: and that's something that's key to teep in mind. But
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that's so fascinating about it
Speaker 1: is that there is no actual religious group that this
Speaker 1: is Bay surround. It's all based on on hearsay and
Speaker 1: myth making and fear. Yeah, and it's um that myth
Speaker 1: making largely came out of media sensationalism in the eighties too,
Speaker 1: And in particular, there was one hallmark that we both
Speaker 1: watched and kind of kind of went back to, which
Speaker 1: was Horaldo Rivera and had a uh an expose that
Speaker 1: was called where is it the title of this thing,
Speaker 1: uh Devil Worship, exposing Satan's underground And it was this
Speaker 1: two hour talk show that he did, interspersed with various
Speaker 1: you know, on the scene reports of Heraldo talking to
Speaker 1: victims of Satanic ritual abuse. But then in the studio
Speaker 1: he was talking to Ozzy Osbourne via satellite. And then
Speaker 1: he had um a Catholic priest on stage, and he
Speaker 1: had members of the Church of Satan Anton LaVey's Church
Speaker 1: of Satan, not to be confused with the Satanic Panic
Speaker 1: Satanist cults that we are supposedly operating. Uh FBI agents
Speaker 1: were in the room or on stage who were supposedly,
Speaker 1: you know, tracking down these underground cults uh it rewatching it.
Speaker 1: I expected to be very skeptical, and instead I found
Speaker 1: myself saying, Okay, I know about this. I know that
Speaker 1: this is largely a a moral hysteria that happened thirty
Speaker 1: years ago, but it's compelling. I could see why people
Speaker 1: fell for it at the time, and we're you know,
Speaker 1: deeply concerned. Um so, yeah, it's just really interesting. But
Speaker 1: so ultimately Satanic ritual abuse falls under the following claimed
Speaker 1: practices that were being acted out by these groups. Supposedly, uh,
Speaker 1: there was human sacrifice, sexual depravity make of that what
Speaker 1: you will, or perversion uh, and that these were actual
Speaker 1: statistics that the law enforcement officials were throwing out. Fifty
Speaker 1: thousand or more people were eyeing a year in the
Speaker 1: United States of America from Satanic ritual abuse, supposedly, and
Speaker 1: uh during their torture or murders, they were forced to
Speaker 1: consume urine or feces or blood. And there's just you know,
Speaker 1: basically anything that you can think of as being like
Speaker 1: depraved acts were placed upon uh at the at the
Speaker 1: foot of these mythological groups. I mean, I don't know
Speaker 1: if mythological is the right term to use here, but
Speaker 1: they were fantastic. Yeah. And it's it's interesting when you
Speaker 1: start looking back, um through history, like how we got
Speaker 1: to this point because I kind of think given in
Speaker 1: terms of of a bonfire, right um, in which you
Speaker 1: have all this kindling that's built up and it gets
Speaker 1: it's to the point where you all you need is
Speaker 1: that additional spark to to really just send it ablaze,
Speaker 1: and the spark being of course, threats a threat, a
Speaker 1: threat to the children or you know, a threat to
Speaker 1: you know, a real personal threat to yourself. Now, if
Speaker 1: you you go back far enough in time, you'll find
Speaker 1: plenty of accounts of for instance, blood Libel fourteen seventy
Speaker 1: five assignment of print blood Libel, in which an entire
Speaker 1: Jewish community was tortured over the death of a two
Speaker 1: year old Christian boy. There were, you know, the claim
Speaker 1: being that there was a ritual murder of the child. Um.
Speaker 1: You can you can find parallels and uh in which
Speaker 1: hunts and which person persecutions throughout time. But when you're
Speaker 1: looking particularly at the twentieth century. Um, there's a historian
Speaker 1: by the name of Philip Jenkins who wrote a fabulous
Speaker 1: piece called Satanism and Ritual Abuse. And this is collected
Speaker 1: in the Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements. You believe
Speaker 1: it's one of the last chapters in the book. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really interesting piece, and I think it's one of
Speaker 1: the best things that I've read that sort of encapsulates
Speaker 1: the whole hysteria of the time and sort of points
Speaker 1: to their being similar themes within the Satanic panic hysteria
Speaker 1: to the rhetorical themes that were going on with fringe
Speaker 1: religions throughout history too. You know, there's an empathy emphasis
Speaker 1: on protecting endangered children, as we already talked about. There's
Speaker 1: also this idea that religions are shaped by mass media.
Speaker 1: Yeah indeed, and um and yeah, it's the only this
Speaker 1: is the only chapter in the book that deals with
Speaker 1: a non existent religion. Like there's all deal with actual
Speaker 1: faith and splinter groups, but this is one, as we
Speaker 1: pointed out, never actually exists. Now you have culturally resonant
Speaker 1: concepts of the Black Mass, ritual magic, uh, the witches,
Speaker 1: Sabbath all kind of merged together, and and just just
Speaker 1: setting back there in the public consciousness on on top
Speaker 1: of that, you have you have en you have tales
Speaker 1: of Alistair Crawley's Black Masses and Exotic London. Uh. They
Speaker 1: were published, they were published stories about this in the
Speaker 1: New York World. Uh. So already you have this idea
Speaker 1: that there are there are people out there in the
Speaker 1: world that are engaging in these dark rights. Uh. You
Speaker 1: have of ninety seven Herbert Gorman's tale The Place called Dagon,
Speaker 1: which is a work of fiction about Satanist or Satanist
Speaker 1: like cults that were descended from Survivors of Salem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was a fascinating find for me in the research
Speaker 1: because I am a fan of weird fiction, I'm a
Speaker 1: fan of horror fiction, and obviously a lot of that
Speaker 1: traces back to HP Lovecraft's work, and HP Lovecraft was
Speaker 1: apparently influenced by this book, and it's something that I
Speaker 1: had never heard of before. I mean, or if I did,
Speaker 1: it just never resonated with me. Yeah. Same here he
Speaker 1: because he apparently mentions it in Supernatural Horror and Literature,
Speaker 1: which I've read, but he throws out a lot of
Speaker 1: authors and titles that, especially the modern reader is not
Speaker 1: going to be deconnected with. But apparently it's a big
Speaker 1: influence on on Lovecraft, Block, Henry Kuttner, Dennis Wheatley, various
Speaker 1: other individuals who who definitely resonated at the time and
Speaker 1: affected the weird fiction world and then the larger pulp
Speaker 1: pop culture world to emerge from it. Yeah. And one
Speaker 1: of Jenkins arguments in this piece is that you can
Speaker 1: trace almost all the elements of the nineteen eighties Satanic
Speaker 1: panic back to this nine seven story, the place called Dagon,
Speaker 1: which ultimately you know it's summarizes being like it's a
Speaker 1: thriller that's set in western Massachusetts, which is where I'm
Speaker 1: originally from. Uh, and that descendants from Salem, Massachusetts, which
Speaker 1: if if you don't know, Salem is on the east
Speaker 1: coast of Massachusetts. Uh, practice the you know, which is
Speaker 1: famous for the witch trials and for for witchcraft. These
Speaker 1: descendants moved out to Western mass and essentially we're performing
Speaker 1: the same satanic rituals and and uh, you know, usage
Speaker 1: of it actually ties back to what we talked about
Speaker 1: in a in a previous podcast about grimoires. The the
Speaker 1: idea of this sort of ritual magic being used and
Speaker 1: in these texts being used to perform it, it's energing.
Speaker 1: Jenkins points out that by the nineteen thirties, uh, the
Speaker 1: roots were already there fictionally, but you also saw a
Speaker 1: few instances here and there of law enforcement actually beginning
Speaker 1: to at least entertain the possibility of sacrificial cult activities
Speaker 1: in some crimes. Yeah. I think that that's one of
Speaker 1: the really interesting things that probably helped popularize it too, right,
Speaker 1: is that, um, these various law enforcement officials, and I
Speaker 1: don't think that they necessarily had malicious intent. They probably
Speaker 1: thought that they were They had come upon, you know,
Speaker 1: actual leads in these stories. I mean, you know what
Speaker 1: I kept thinking of when I was reading this stuff
Speaker 1: was True Detective, the first season of True Detective, And
Speaker 1: I was like, you could look at the first season
Speaker 1: of True Detective as being about, uh, these misguided uh
Speaker 1: police officers who think that there's a secret uh ritualistic
Speaker 1: cult somewhere that's you know, running things and abusing children,
Speaker 1: which which ultimately you know, that's that's what that fictional
Speaker 1: story is about. But ultimately that was the same narrative
Speaker 1: that these FBI agents or police officers or whomever were,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of on the hunt because the thought
Speaker 1: thought was going on they they wanted to be doing
Speaker 1: their jobs basically, Yeah, because I mean, in one hand,
Speaker 1: you have this fictional world, but then you have in
Speaker 1: these fictional accounts of Satanic rights. But then you also have,
Speaker 1: you know, in the back of everyone's mind this idea
Speaker 1: that black Mass and ritual mass, magic and the witches
Speaker 1: Sabbath was real. You have these stories, uh that that
Speaker 1: you're you're reading about when in which there are people
Speaker 1: they're self identifying as Satanist. For instance, uh, nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: that's when Anton LaVey founded the Church of Satan, and
Speaker 1: obviously that makes the that makes the media rounds. People
Speaker 1: are outraged about that, even though at heart um LaVey's
Speaker 1: Satanism was really more grounded and to a certain extant
Speaker 1: satire and also uh cultural commentary and as well as
Speaker 1: sort of Carney hijinks and fun. Yeah. I think like
Speaker 1: this is one of the really important distinctions that we
Speaker 1: should make here in the podcast that there isn't confusion
Speaker 1: for the listeners is that the Anton Lavay Church of
Speaker 1: Satan is uh an entirely different philosophy organization. They refer
Speaker 1: to themselves as a religion. Uh, then what was even
Speaker 1: being imagined as these underground Satanic cults? And to sort
Speaker 1: of summarize it, I'm not I'm not the best at
Speaker 1: Anton LaVey uh philosophy, but my takeaway from it is
Speaker 1: that ultimately it was just about a philosophy of individualism
Speaker 1: and that Lave's thing was that each individual as their
Speaker 1: own God. And so they used quote unquote Satan as
Speaker 1: a metaphorical expression right of of having pride in yourself
Speaker 1: and being enlightened because you were your own God. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it was ultimately about and They refer to this
Speaker 1: in the Heraldo Special Rational self Interest, But you're right,
Speaker 1: it was very a theatrical and it had like elements
Speaker 1: of datas them to it. I guess that this performance
Speaker 1: were like Llvey dresses up in these robes and has
Speaker 1: you know, his his eyebrows waxed so that they look villainous.
Speaker 1: You know, he was playing up to it, and he
Speaker 1: was using terms like Church of Satan or Book of
Speaker 1: Satan in order to provoke people. But then they were
Speaker 1: sort of appropriated again, uh for this this panic about
Speaker 1: Satanic ritual abuse, and we're often conflated. It's really fascinating
Speaker 1: when you watch that Heraldo Special to see members of
Speaker 1: his church. I think at the time Love was dead,
Speaker 1: but like his daughter and another member of his church
Speaker 1: who at the time was an army colonel. We're on
Speaker 1: stage and answering Horaldo's questions, basically trying to say, you
Speaker 1: know what we're talking about here, that they're completely two
Speaker 1: separate things. This, you know, Church of Satan is a
Speaker 1: ironic performance philosophy piece essentially, whereas like the the accusations
Speaker 1: of ritual abuse had nothing to do with them rights.
Speaker 1: It is interesting that they were kind of dude to
Speaker 1: a certain extent, they were riding the wave of of
Speaker 1: the the the sort of Satanic culture, if you will,
Speaker 1: but then also end up falling falling into the trap
Speaker 1: of satanic panic as well, because you had, of course
Speaker 1: satanic elements in rock music, you had satanic exploitation cinema
Speaker 1: that you know, really came into its own, especially in
Speaker 1: the nineties seventies, UM. And then on the other side,
Speaker 1: and do you also have some real life stuff that's happening,
Speaker 1: uh that that either has overt shades of Satanic culture
Speaker 1: to it or some some you know, more subliminal content,
Speaker 1: or even just media shades cast on it, such as
Speaker 1: Charles Manson, right right, Yeah, So Charles Manson obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: associated himself with quote the Devil or Satan, even in
Speaker 1: a looser fashion, I would say that Anton Leavey did,
Speaker 1: and again I suspect Charles Manson. For Charles Manson, it
Speaker 1: was largely theatrical purposes. I believe that he had a
Speaker 1: quote where he said Satan and Christ will come together
Speaker 1: at the end of the world to judge humanity, and
Speaker 1: he is actually in that Haraldo special he had I
Speaker 1: think Carldo had done like a previous special year earlier
Speaker 1: murder where he'd gone and visited Charles Manson interviewed him,
Speaker 1: and he's like, you can't even like gather any kind
Speaker 1: of coherence from their conversation because Manson is just rambling
Speaker 1: the whole time. But uh, but Haraldo is able to
Speaker 1: kind of take that and manipulate it through edits and
Speaker 1: footage to seem like he's at the heart of the
Speaker 1: Satanic virtual abuse. And in around nineteen seven you see
Speaker 1: child abuse really becoming a trending topic in the media
Speaker 1: with years of media expose is to follow on child murder,
Speaker 1: child pornography, kidnapping very much. Though you know the stranger
Speaker 1: danger elment of of moral panic um that that really,
Speaker 1: I mean existed before the Satanic panic and survived well
Speaker 1: after connoones to survive in many many ways. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's understandable now to look back
Speaker 1: on it and to see why parents are probably terrified
Speaker 1: at the time. You see real life things like the
Speaker 1: Jonestown incident happened, where there's a massacre that included many
Speaker 1: children that were killed by a cultist activity, and so
Speaker 1: that really takes on a prominent role in the media
Speaker 1: coverage of threats to children and in this this case,
Speaker 1: religiously themed threats to children. Uh. Then of course you
Speaker 1: have you have other murderers who end up taking elements
Speaker 1: from this moral outrage and incorporating it, incorporating it into
Speaker 1: their their crimes, or at least there uh the way
Speaker 1: they end up talking about their crimes after the fact.
Speaker 1: Richard Ramire's the night stalker murderer between of eighty five. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was. He was certainly more overt in it than
Speaker 1: Charles Manson. He would mention Satan during his crimes. His
Speaker 1: first court appearance, he shows up with a pentagram drawing
Speaker 1: on his hand and he yells, Hail Satan. Uh. And
Speaker 1: of course that's just that just throws more kindling on
Speaker 1: the fire, this idea that there there's a danger here
Speaker 1: with with the with satanic individuals and they want to
Speaker 1: hurt us. And then there's this there's a danger president
Speaker 1: culture for our children. Yeah, sort of that behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: that there there's a Richard Ramirez or a Charles Manson. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they could be anywhere. Basically, it's it's sort
Speaker 1: of an invasion of the body snatchers all over again.
Speaker 1: You know, it's this idea that anybody could be part
Speaker 1: of these networks, anybody uh could lure your children into
Speaker 1: danger or you, uh, and that you should be on
Speaker 1: heightened alert at all times. This explains a lot about
Speaker 1: me as an adult now having grown up in that period.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, yeah, now I understand why that was
Speaker 1: so hammered into my head. You know, don't accept candy
Speaker 1: from strangers that one or like the old Is this
Speaker 1: an old wives tail or not? I don't know about
Speaker 1: a girl scout cookies with needles in them? Do you
Speaker 1: remember that? I never heard that one. Of course, I
Speaker 1: always heard the the the trick or treating uh story.
Speaker 1: You know that you need to be careful because there
Speaker 1: might be razor blades in the apple. Yeah. We used
Speaker 1: to have to um after we were trick or true
Speaker 1: to bring all the candy home, and if it was
Speaker 1: big enough to have a razor blade in it, my
Speaker 1: my parents would, you know, break it down into smaller
Speaker 1: pieces to make sure it was safe. You gotta be
Speaker 1: you gotta be careful. I mean there was when I
Speaker 1: was growing up, there was one house in the neighborhood
Speaker 1: where the guy would put um razor blades in the
Speaker 1: candied apples every year. But they were really good candied apples,
Speaker 1: so nobody said so we just kind of ignore it
Speaker 1: because you knew it's in there. You just know to
Speaker 1: take it out and enjoy the treat. Yeah, it's part
Speaker 1: of it's part of the experience. Um. And now another
Speaker 1: another experience. It's another activity that's often thrown into the
Speaker 1: the the into the Satanic Panic culture of course, is
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons. Um. I specifically remember getting into Dungeons
Speaker 1: and Dragons. And this is in the nineties, so this
Speaker 1: was after the Satanic Panic had died away for the
Speaker 1: most part, but I still received, uh I think a
Speaker 1: chick lit, a chick pamphlet. Oh yeah, jack chick track. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I received it as part of a birthday present from
Speaker 1: an ant one year anti Dungeons and dragons. Really. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's fascinating. So so for listeners who don't know, a
Speaker 1: chick track is a very small comic book that is
Speaker 1: uh usually like a fundamentally Christian in nature um warning
Speaker 1: about the perils of pop culture and how they can
Speaker 1: draw you into uh not I don't know, necessarily satanic practices,
Speaker 1: but just you know, not being a good person and
Speaker 1: sending you to hell. Yeah, basically, damnation was always the
Speaker 1: threat and it and it would often include a little
Speaker 1: you know, exploitive or grizzly kind of image read to
Speaker 1: really grab particularly young reader's attention. Yeah, they're fascinating because
Speaker 1: they incorporate elements of like the early nineteen fifties horror
Speaker 1: comps into these these comics that are ultimately against that
Speaker 1: kind of pop culture. Yeah. I love those things. You
Speaker 1: can actually go online and look at like the whole
Speaker 1: library of them. They're fascinating. Yeah. The D and D
Speaker 1: thing for me, I uh, it must have been the
Speaker 1: late eighties early nineties when I probably started playing Dungeons
Speaker 1: and Dragons as a little kid, and shortly thereafter I
Speaker 1: had that experience where I went to the religious school
Speaker 1: that I mentioned at the top and was sort of
Speaker 1: terrified that that this box set of Dice and monster
Speaker 1: Manual and and uh, you know, the silly stuff about
Speaker 1: elves and dwarves and gnomes was somehow going to lead
Speaker 1: to my demise and satanic ritual abuse. But I did
Speaker 1: have some pretty heavy demons in there, and the orcs
Speaker 1: and elves and then Dice. You know, there's something kind
Speaker 1: of arcane and uh yeah, and and of course, you know,
Speaker 1: like we mentioned this before when we talked about Remois
Speaker 1: in the other episode, but there's there's a lot of
Speaker 1: connections between the system of Dungeons and Dragons world of
Speaker 1: magic and the Grimoire cult world of magic. You know,
Speaker 1: they're they're they're connected. And obviously people who weren't familiar
Speaker 1: with either of those things kind of saw them as
Speaker 1: being one and the same and subsequently associated them with
Speaker 1: satanic ritual abuse. But it's really interesting, Um, the D
Speaker 1: and D thing, there was a group that was formed
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties called Bothered about Dungeons and Dragons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there the acronym was bad and I was serving
Speaker 1: the acronym then yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, uh And I
Speaker 1: believe that they filed a lawsuit against whomever owned D
Speaker 1: and D at the time. I don't know if that
Speaker 1: was Gary Gygax or they had gone to TSR at
Speaker 1: that time or not. But this group then joined forces
Speaker 1: with this guy who's a psychiatrist named Thomas Rodecki um,
Speaker 1: because they wanted to raise the social awareness of the
Speaker 1: dangers of dungeons and dragons. Uh. And they basically associated
Speaker 1: it with the idea of that in psychotherapy that you
Speaker 1: act out role playing as a way to sort of
Speaker 1: you know, recover, uh. And that but that within the
Speaker 1: game they were using role playing for violence and sex
Speaker 1: and fantasy, and that it would ultimately be the have
Speaker 1: the opposite effect. It would it would lead them down
Speaker 1: the wrong path. Uh. And it was linked with heavy
Speaker 1: metal music, which we've talked about earlier. And the demons
Speaker 1: within think that this is what's fascinating to me, is
Speaker 1: it all comes around again. After this whole satanicchanic movement
Speaker 1: kind of fades away in the mid nineties, Um, you
Speaker 1: start finding out that that a lot of this, you know,
Speaker 1: their accusations weren't true. And then academics started doing a
Speaker 1: real research on dungeons and drags and they found that, Uh.
Speaker 1: For instance, one of the accusations that bad made about
Speaker 1: dungeons and dragons was that increased the chance of, um,
Speaker 1: your kid committing suicide. In fact, I believe the founder
Speaker 1: was the mother of a of a teenager who committed suicide,
Speaker 1: and she blamed it on dungeons and dragons. Um. But
Speaker 1: there was empirical research that proved that that, in fact
Speaker 1: was not the case, and that rate of suicide were
Speaker 1: lower in kids who probably Dungeons and Dragons, and there
Speaker 1: was also no measurable negative impact on their psychological functioning
Speaker 1: emotional measures, or reality testing. This is all from an
Speaker 1: article in Psychology Today that was published in fourteen about
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons Satan in Psychology uh and uh So
Speaker 1: their final conclusions here basically that the leaders of this
Speaker 1: group bad had completely exaggerated their own credentials. They cherry
Speaker 1: picked their data for convenience obviously of you know, making
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons look bad. And then this is the
Speaker 1: real interesting fact. So the sec chiatrists that they associated with,
Speaker 1: Riddecki uh he in particular, was arrested in for sexually
Speaker 1: exploiting his patients. Uh he was treating basically um medicine
Speaker 1: for sexual favors from his patients. So this same guy
Speaker 1: who is accusing Dungeons and Dragons of being responsible responsible
Speaker 1: for sexual abuse himself was a perpetrator. Alright. So so
Speaker 1: far we've discussed the cultural kindling for the most part
Speaker 1: that leads up to the moral panic of Satanic panic.
Speaker 1: Uh that as uh, as historian Philip Jenkins points out
Speaker 1: in his peace, Satanism in which will abuse. Um, you
Speaker 1: can you can really trace a lot um of the
Speaker 1: the s R a Satanic which will abuse outcry to
Speaker 1: this particular book that comes out in nineteen eighty titled
Speaker 1: Michelle Remembers, UH comes out and it really cements this
Speaker 1: notion of ritualized sexual abuse by Satanic cults. Everything we've
Speaker 1: been talking about, black robes, UM, you know, vile rights, UH,
Speaker 1: the the abuse against children, and it entails UH so
Speaker 1: called Michelle's memories that are called during therapy in the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies of her sexual abuse in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: in Vancouver. So we're talking Ozzie and Harriet Era here
Speaker 1: and that One of the interesting things about Michelle Remembers,
Speaker 1: which again this was a book that I was not
Speaker 1: familiar with before we governed any research for this UM,
Speaker 1: is that Michelle Smith, who was the patient that underwent
Speaker 1: the therapy and was the subject of this book, her
Speaker 1: therapist later became her husband. So this man who helped
Speaker 1: her uncover these memories, they also began an intimate relationship together.
Speaker 1: But over the course of the years, many people have
Speaker 1: discredited the claims that were made within the book. UM
Speaker 1: both psychologists and I believe people from her actual past. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think literally all of the charges that that come
Speaker 1: out of her personal accounts of this abuse comes from
Speaker 1: West African secret societies accounts of them anyway, they were
Speaker 1: imported into Canada in the nineteen fifties. But this narrative
Speaker 1: becomes really popular and and it has two key things
Speaker 1: that does here. It leads to other survivor accounts that
Speaker 1: spring up, other people that are that are writing books
Speaker 1: about their their reclaim memories of Satanic abuse in the past.
Speaker 1: And it also really pushes into a certain example, legitimizes
Speaker 1: the theory that traumatic memories can remain dormant only to
Speaker 1: be recalled later by a therapist. Yeah, it's really the
Speaker 1: common theme that runs throughout most of the Satanic panic hysteria.
Speaker 1: Is uh, this this this scientific idea of repressed memories
Speaker 1: being a psychological phenomenon that certain therapists are going to
Speaker 1: be able to dig deep enough and pull out this
Speaker 1: traumatic memory and make you, you know, realize what what
Speaker 1: truly aige you the way that you are? What, what
Speaker 1: is what is actually causing your problems? Um, And it
Speaker 1: was everybody from psychotherapists to child welfare advocates, and they
Speaker 1: didn't you know, again, like the law enforcement officials that
Speaker 1: were involved, I don't think that they necessarily had malicious intentions.
Speaker 1: Maybe some of them saw some profit. I would imagine
Speaker 1: that the author of Michelle Remembers saw some good paychecks
Speaker 1: out of that book's popularity. But uh, you know, basically
Speaker 1: they thought that this was evidence of these satanic cults
Speaker 1: actually existing, and they wanted to protect small children. That
Speaker 1: was essentially what they saw from it, um. And so
Speaker 1: they used hypnosis or different kinds of psychological protocols to essentially,
Speaker 1: you know, save people from Satan, to save people from
Speaker 1: these past traumatic events, and to dig up uh dirt
Speaker 1: on on the actual you know, threat that was still
Speaker 1: out there, um, which which led to a lot of
Speaker 1: finger pointing and and um in some cases which we'll
Speaker 1: talk about later with like West Memphis three uh accusations
Speaker 1: that send people to jail unjustly. Yeah, I mean, you
Speaker 1: can certainly see the attractiveness of it both on the
Speaker 1: the treat the treatment side, and the patient side. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're you're feeling like you're out of sorts in
Speaker 1: the world, like you have some problem, and if only
Speaker 1: you could you could just tear out the root cause
Speaker 1: of it, right, and then if there is this, uh,
Speaker 1: this narrative that's presented to you that well, perhaps in
Speaker 1: the past you were abused, uh, perhaps you were abused
Speaker 1: by this nefarious organization and all the main thing we
Speaker 1: need to do, or at least the first step, is
Speaker 1: to get those memories out of the dark, out of
Speaker 1: the you know, the closet of your mind, and pull
Speaker 1: them out to where we can dispel them and to
Speaker 1: give you an idea of just how prevalent this was. Uh.
Speaker 1: An organization formed in around this idea of repressed memories.
Speaker 1: It was called the False Memories Drum Foundation. And here's
Speaker 1: some statistics I found from a USA Today article at
Speaker 1: the time when it was first formed and they were
Speaker 1: interviewing them, uh, they said that, um uh, they had
Speaker 1: done a survey where they interviewed three thousand of families,
Speaker 1: and their preliminary findings were, of just these three thousand people,
Speaker 1: twenty of the children within these families said that they
Speaker 1: people who are adults now but who had been children,
Speaker 1: say that they had been tortured in Satanic rituals. So
Speaker 1: of the three thousand people that they interviewed that that's
Speaker 1: huge to me and sounds uh like like an astronomical
Speaker 1: number when you apply that kind of generalization to the
Speaker 1: entire American population. Uh. And then there's this also interesting study.
Speaker 1: A group psychologists at the State University of New York
Speaker 1: at Buffalo looked further into it, and they found that
Speaker 1: of eight hundred therapists UH had at least or Sorry,
Speaker 1: they interviewed thirty thousand therapists, and eight hundred of them
Speaker 1: said that they had at least once in their sessions
Speaker 1: with their patients, had come across cases of Satanic ritual abuse.
Speaker 1: So this, I mean, there was hard evidence as far
Speaker 1: as people I saw that this was happening, that it
Speaker 1: was pervasive and it needed to be stopped. Yea. And
Speaker 1: of course, these narratives that they're pulling out there obviously
Speaker 1: informed by the the established narrative in the culture that
Speaker 1: that of the retrieve memories. But also um, all of
Speaker 1: these influences we've talked about before the culture of black
Speaker 1: Masses and Sabbaths, every Devil movie that came out but
Speaker 1: in the nineties, sixties, seventies, and eighties, all of it
Speaker 1: coloring your perceptions, UM of the adults. Anyway, Now, what
Speaker 1: happens when you attempt to pull these uh, these these
Speaker 1: types of memories from from a small child, though, from
Speaker 1: someone who hasn't seen Rosemary's Baby, who who doesn't listen
Speaker 1: listen to who has heard Heraldo on television talking about
Speaker 1: the dangerous of death metal. It's well, we see that
Speaker 1: in UM in a very pivotal nineteen four case to
Speaker 1: make Martin Preschool UM sexual abuse case in southern California.
Speaker 1: And this is a case where prosecutors charged that a
Speaker 1: ring of teachers were sexually abusing hundreds of small children
Speaker 1: in rituals that involved robes and masks and pentacles and
Speaker 1: church altars. And the case now is regarded as completely focused.
Speaker 1: But at the time it sent out these waves of
Speaker 1: fear just through throughout the society, got picked up on
Speaker 1: the media and just you know, boosted, uh, you know, tenfold.
Speaker 1: UM in this case, like cases to follow, uh, it
Speaker 1: followed a particular flow. You had a limited plausible accusation
Speaker 1: of abuse that emerges at a school. Then you haven't
Speaker 1: have an investigation, and you interrogate the child and then
Speaker 1: you get this therapist derived account from from an impressionable
Speaker 1: young child child regarding what happened. And since these kids,
Speaker 1: for the most part, they have no knowledge of adult sexuality,
Speaker 1: but they but they can tell that this this concerned
Speaker 1: adult authority figure is trying to get something disturbing out
Speaker 1: of them. So what does a small child bring to
Speaker 1: the table, what can they possibly pull out? They start
Speaker 1: talking about, well, well, they made me drink peepee, they
Speaker 1: made me yeah. Yeah. It's basically like they go for
Speaker 1: their version of whatever the worst taboo possible thing could
Speaker 1: be at the time. And you know, so of course
Speaker 1: they think of it as being things like that, uh
Speaker 1: it's the word copperphilia yea, yeah, yeah. And that McMartin
Speaker 1: incident was one of many. Yeah, there's I believe in
Speaker 1: the Heraldo special as well that they talked about a
Speaker 1: Presidio daycare center that had a very similar kind of
Speaker 1: uh incident that was that was labeled as being potentially
Speaker 1: attached to Satanic ritual abuse. And there's an interesting part
Speaker 1: two where they talked about the mcmartins school abuse scandal,
Speaker 1: I believe, and they started comparing that their idea of
Speaker 1: Satanic rituals as being somehow associated with the Episcopal Church,
Speaker 1: which I thought was interesting. It felt like this strange
Speaker 1: smear campaign against episcopals, as if it wasn't like a
Speaker 1: a valid form of Christianity. It was, it was brief,
Speaker 1: It was kind of interesting. And so in both of
Speaker 1: these cases we see this established in the media and
Speaker 1: the increasingly in the public mindset, uh that Satanic ritual
Speaker 1: abuse is a threat to our children as well as
Speaker 1: to the child that we used to be, that we
Speaker 1: all could have been conceivably sexually abused by Satanist in
Speaker 1: the past, and we have only to to pull that
Speaker 1: out of our out of out of the closet of
Speaker 1: our memory. But the thing is, it's it. It goes
Speaker 1: beyond just Heraldo Rivera right. It becomes a part of
Speaker 1: it becomes disseminated outward through professional organizations, through police, therapist,
Speaker 1: youth workers, seminars aimed at the discovery of new Satanic
Speaker 1: abuse histories. And so you reach the point by the
Speaker 1: by the nineteen eighties where the panic is spreading outward
Speaker 1: into the UK and Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, South Africa,
Speaker 1: anywhere that American therapeutic and criminological literature is read. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's so the Netherlands part is one of the
Speaker 1: ones that's interesting to me. Uh. So Uh, I am
Speaker 1: a fan of heavy metal music. Uh and uh uh.
Speaker 1: The Netherlands and Norway in particular are are known for
Speaker 1: as being the home of black metal, this particular genre
Speaker 1: of metal, which was largely associated with this sort of
Speaker 1: traditionalist movement of burning down Christian churches, and some of
Speaker 1: their members were accused and tried for murder. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so even though they didn't necessarily have I don't even
Speaker 1: think like possibly their their song lyrics have anything to
Speaker 1: do with Satan or devil worship, but because they were
Speaker 1: against Christianity again, the Satanic panics hysteria sort of spread
Speaker 1: over there. Yeah, so that the cultural kindling was perfect
Speaker 1: for that spark to fly across the ocean and take root. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: it's interesting to uh like how much of the messaging was,
Speaker 1: of course aimed at parents, but also a teenager's about
Speaker 1: the dangers of all this stuff about dungeons and dragons
Speaker 1: and the music. Uh. And you know, when you're a teenager,
Speaker 1: of course, all you want to do is is is
Speaker 1: find the significance in your life and and at times
Speaker 1: lash out against the authority figures in their expectations, so
Speaker 1: you actually end up fleeing to that stuff. Like I
Speaker 1: I definitely had a copy of both that fake Necronomicon
Speaker 1: and the and the Satanic Bible, nice paperback versions of both.
Speaker 1: Satanic Bible was a bestseller. Yeah, I mean lot of
Speaker 1: I think there were a lot of both adolescence and
Speaker 1: adults with that same experience. They were like, oh, by
Speaker 1: this is you know, it's kind of a I imagine
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that you would find it urban
Speaker 1: outfitters nowadays or something near the checkout one. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I remember having both those books listening to Marylyn Manson. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very much engaging in that, you know, in the in
Speaker 1: the in the on one level, in the possibility that
Speaker 1: there was something to do all this darkness, but also
Speaker 1: just in the you know, need to stand apart from
Speaker 1: the adult world. Yeah, it's the traditional sort of adolescent
Speaker 1: anti authoritarian reflex, right combined with the um the hysteria
Speaker 1: at the time moving around uh Satanic ritual abuse. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I could see whether two would be conflated. I mean,
Speaker 1: especially in a if you're if you grow up in
Speaker 1: like a Christian or even just vaguely Christian environment in
Speaker 1: which you have the the the economy of good and evil,
Speaker 1: of God and Satan, and uh, you're gonna have a
Speaker 1: tendency to sympathize with the villain in that piece. And
Speaker 1: then uh and and by his book, yeah it is,
Speaker 1: it is right exactly. And so like my experience growing
Speaker 1: up was literally being in one of these uh private
Speaker 1: Christian schools where I was told constantly, if you do
Speaker 1: the wrong thing, uh, then you're going to be possessed
Speaker 1: by a demon and you'll possibly murder your family. I
Speaker 1: mean this was like an actual thing that our pastor
Speaker 1: would tell us in class every day. Um. And so
Speaker 1: you know, I mean this is probably around I don't know,
Speaker 1: so so towards the tail end of this stuff, but
Speaker 1: but you know, uh, they fill fill your head with
Speaker 1: this enough. It's it's as bad, if not worse than
Speaker 1: Ozzy Osborne, ser King Diamonds. You know, Yeah, because you
Speaker 1: know that stuff is just largely engaging in fun and theme.
Speaker 1: It's theatrical. Yeah, yeah, I don't Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: As a as a person who's into heavy metal, I
Speaker 1: don't know of a lot of people are famous metal
Speaker 1: musicians that are serious members of a Satanic organization. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think of like some of the interviews
Speaker 1: I've seen with metal that I enjoy, and if you
Speaker 1: just listen to their their their their lyrics and their music,
Speaker 1: you get, you know, very much the the theme they're
Speaker 1: going for, and this is the dark, the heavy, the
Speaker 1: you know, industrial disturbing nature of the thing. But then
Speaker 1: you see an interview with them and they seem like
Speaker 1: like goofy guys their music, and yeah, absolutely, I mean
Speaker 1: I think that that's that was probably the case with
Speaker 1: Ozzy Osbourne as well. He's in that Geraldo thing and
Speaker 1: it's it's hilarious watching him be interviewed. He's much more
Speaker 1: lucid than the later Ozzy Osbourne of reality TV the
Speaker 1: probably Yeah, but he uh, you know, he obviously wasn't
Speaker 1: articulate enough to kind of argue on his own behalf
Speaker 1: of why he was just using these elements, this imagery
Speaker 1: and symbology, uh, theatrically as part of his stage persona, uh,
Speaker 1: rather than you know, it being directly impactful on teenagers
Speaker 1: in America committing crimes against other children or their or
Speaker 1: their their peers. Even um there, yeah, there there were
Speaker 1: moments in that in the Haraldo special where they they're
Speaker 1: interviewing kids who were in prison for having killed uh,
Speaker 1: their their peers in school. Like uh. I can't remember
Speaker 1: the name of the particular um guy. He'd probably be
Speaker 1: a little older than us now, probably in his forties,
Speaker 1: but um, there was an interview with him and he just,
Speaker 1: you know, straight up blames it on heavy metal and
Speaker 1: satanic uh participation. I have a feeling it was Sean
Speaker 1: Seller's repete Rowland Roland. That was it. That was the guy. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's um. You know, I think it was also
Speaker 1: easy for people like that who had committed these attra
Speaker 1: just crimes, to say to put the locus of control
Speaker 1: externally onto something else and to say it wasn't me,
Speaker 1: it's not inside of me. I didn't mean to do this.
Speaker 1: It was because of heavy metal or Dungeons and Dragons
Speaker 1: or and they're just yeah, they're just taking the excuse
Speaker 1: that the media is has crafted for them and presented
Speaker 1: them and say, hey, it's not your fault. It's because
Speaker 1: you've got involved in this this thing that has a
Speaker 1: viral component, that that if you just start rolling the
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons dice, if you start listening to savy
Speaker 1: metal music, that it's just a slippery slope to just
Speaker 1: violent outbreaks in demonic possession. Yeah, and that leads us
Speaker 1: to the West Memphis three. You want to talk about
Speaker 1: them now? Yeah, because I think that's certainly a case.
Speaker 1: Even though it kind of it tends to fall towards
Speaker 1: the end of the life cycle of satanic panic. Um,
Speaker 1: it represents some of the worst, um, the worst residual
Speaker 1: effects of satanic panic, at least on you know, individual level.
Speaker 1: So this happened in between I believe was the the
Speaker 1: the actual murders happened in ninety three, I think. And uh,
Speaker 1: the trial lasted or there are multiple trials I believe
Speaker 1: for two years. Um. But essentially, if you if you
Speaker 1: want to know more about this, I highly suggest that
Speaker 1: you go watch these documentaries that they're called Paradise Lost,
Speaker 1: Is that right? Uh? Yeah, And and they're really well
Speaker 1: put together by a crew that was basically they're shooting
Speaker 1: from the minute these guys were on trial. Uh, and
Speaker 1: it and it sort of documents the the cases throughout
Speaker 1: the twenty years. Maybe I don't know, does the I
Speaker 1: don't I haven't seen the last one. I don't think
Speaker 1: I've seen. I don't know if it goes up to
Speaker 1: the when these guys were released, but essentially, to boil
Speaker 1: it down to its simplest terms, these three teenagers in
Speaker 1: West Memphis, Arkansas were accused of tr I and convicted
Speaker 1: from murdering three younger boys and it was supposedly part
Speaker 1: of a satanic ritual. Uh. These these three guys were
Speaker 1: all fans of heavy metal. They looked the part UH,
Speaker 1: and it was easy to to place the blame on them. However,
Speaker 1: in eleven UH they were able to make a plea
Speaker 1: for their innocence based on DNA that was recovered from
Speaker 1: the scene, and they were released. Essentially, the judge said, UM,
Speaker 1: you're you're you're guilty up to time served. UM, so
Speaker 1: the time that they had served from until eleven and
Speaker 1: and they're out. Now you've probably seen there's UH fictional
Speaker 1: feature accounts of of this story. What's the movie that
Speaker 1: does yet? It has a Reese Witherspoon in it as
Speaker 1: one of the mothers of the victims um and UH.
Speaker 1: Colin Firth I believe plays a private investigator who's working
Speaker 1: on their behalf to try to find evidence that that
Speaker 1: proves their innocence. It's a complex case and it's it's
Speaker 1: an extremely complicated Yeah. That's why I don't feel like
Speaker 1: we can really do it justice here without doing an
Speaker 1: entire episode. If you have bungled investigations on one hand,
Speaker 1: you definitely have Satanic Panic and play. Yeah, and there's
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff to weird stuff that goes on
Speaker 1: between some of the parents and the people making the documentary,
Speaker 1: where the the filmmakers themselves sort of become part of
Speaker 1: the story, and there's implications that maybe one or two
Speaker 1: of the parents might have been involved in the actual
Speaker 1: murders themselves. It's it's really confusing and disturbing, but ultimately
Speaker 1: it comes down to that the three teenagers who were
Speaker 1: convicted of these crimes were in fact innocent, uh and
Speaker 1: wrongfully put away for crimes they didn't commit. Yeah. Of course,
Speaker 1: sad like crimes that we we do not we don't
Speaker 1: have an answer for we know who is RESPONSI yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: That's the sad part is that the person or persons
Speaker 1: who did do it, uh got away with it. But luckily,
Speaker 1: as we said, this occurred towards the end of Satanic
Speaker 1: Panic as it's going out as it's uh is it's
Speaker 1: leaving the public mindset and becoming far less of a
Speaker 1: media obsession. Uh. And you might wonder what what caused that?
Speaker 1: What makes us get away from that? What what creates
Speaker 1: a situation so that by um you see you see
Speaker 1: cases where the media doesn't jump on the Satanic bandwagon.
Speaker 1: Four um abuse charges that at an elementary how do
Speaker 1: we get to the point where by you have the
Speaker 1: Columbine shootings. And despite all the various theories that come
Speaker 1: up that initially in the wake of the awful incident,
Speaker 1: Satanism is not one of them. Right, Yeah, that could
Speaker 1: have very easily have been tagged within the Satanic panic easily,
Speaker 1: and if it had occurred years earlier, no doubt it
Speaker 1: would have. Yeah. Absolutely. Uh. There's this really interesting article
Speaker 1: that I read uh UM called the Satanic Ritual Abuse
Speaker 1: pan as a Religious Studies Data as part of the
Speaker 1: journal International Review for the History of Religions, that sort
Speaker 1: of this was written in two thousand three that summarizes
Speaker 1: sort of the the entire era of Satanic Panic and
Speaker 1: looks at this this sort of ending phase, and their
Speaker 1: conclusion is there was no evidence for abuse of Satanic
Speaker 1: cults existing Uh, anything that connected them as as ever
Speaker 1: existing largely came from these repressed memories. Uh. And or
Speaker 1: they were extracted from small children who then subsequently recovered
Speaker 1: from what happened to them through the use of psychotherapy.
Speaker 1: But there there was there was no actual, tenable forensic
Speaker 1: evidence that these groups ever existed or responsible for these crimes.
Speaker 1: Uh and and uh. There there's sort of a a
Speaker 1: sadder thing at play here, I think, which is that, um,
Speaker 1: that human culture maybe has a harder time dealing with
Speaker 1: child abuse or violence, especially this this kind of you know,
Speaker 1: horrific violence, as in the case of the West Memphis three,
Speaker 1: especially sexual abuse, um, without being able to place it
Speaker 1: into a fantastic narrative that it is somehow outside of
Speaker 1: the every day And that's the unfortunate part about this
Speaker 1: is that in a lot of these cases where these
Speaker 1: children and people were abused were hurt, um, oftentimes it
Speaker 1: was just their friends or relatives, you know, it was
Speaker 1: that that is the most disturbing thing of all, because
Speaker 1: you want to be able to position that kind of
Speaker 1: thing outside of your immediate sphere out you want to
Speaker 1: place it on another and even if they look like
Speaker 1: you and seem to be the same group. Like, if
Speaker 1: the narrative is, oh, well they're secretly a Satanist, that's
Speaker 1: far It's far easier to wrap your head around, as
Speaker 1: fantastic as some of the ramifications are, than to say, well,
Speaker 1: they're just this person that we just thought were like us,
Speaker 1: someone that lived within our sphere, within our family. Even. Yeah, this,
Speaker 1: this is a good quote that I liked from that
Speaker 1: article that addresses that the author whose last name is Frankfurter,
Speaker 1: I don't know what his first name is. He says
Speaker 1: human memory psychologists have shown is clearly not a matter
Speaker 1: of historical snapshots, even in the cases of trauma, and
Speaker 1: it is enormously subject to suggestion, fantasy, social conditions, and
Speaker 1: cultural nuances. So largely I think that's what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here. Yeah, I mean you basically had a situation
Speaker 1: where the experts moved in, the actual experts, not the
Speaker 1: ones that would appear on like the soralto Special, and
Speaker 1: they said, look, it doesn't exist. You had people like
Speaker 1: Kenneth Lanning, FBI lead investigator on these so called sex rings,
Speaker 1: who is a skeptical of it from the beginning, and
Speaker 1: then with an outspoken critic of it in the media
Speaker 1: had study of ritual crime allegations sponsored by the National
Speaker 1: Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, and it just credited
Speaker 1: virtually everything um as a massive study, and they only
Speaker 1: found a very few cases of loan or or paired
Speaker 1: perpetrators using ritualized tactics to intimidate children or thrilled themselves.
Speaker 1: And they looked at twelve thousand incidents and they couldn't
Speaker 1: find a single one that provided evidence quote of a
Speaker 1: well organized intergenerational Satanic cult who's sexually molested and tortured
Speaker 1: children in their homes or schools for years and committed
Speaker 1: a series of murders unquote. So UK studies end up
Speaker 1: backing this up. The McMartin preschool case falls apart. So
Speaker 1: the media begins to realize, oh, well, there isn't anything
Speaker 1: to this story. This is uh. They start talking to
Speaker 1: the actual experts, and that the discrediting of Satanic panic
Speaker 1: becomes the media narrative for a while, effectively killing it
Speaker 1: off at least in the United States. But then, of
Speaker 1: course you have lingering elements of it that remain in
Speaker 1: other areas, particular in South Africa, for years to follow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so one of the things that I think is
Speaker 1: an interesting question for us to sort of pose to
Speaker 1: ourselves and to the audiences, is uh. So we have
Speaker 1: had these uh moments of hysteria throughout human history, you know,
Speaker 1: um satanic panic. Uh. One of the ones that comes
Speaker 1: to mind for me is something that I researched here
Speaker 1: for a video that we did about, um, the Pokemon
Speaker 1: panic in Japan in the late nineties. There was this
Speaker 1: idea that there was an incident where an episode of
Speaker 1: Pokemon supposedly caused seizures and kids and then, like I
Speaker 1: believe it was something like I can't remember the exact
Speaker 1: statistics off the top of my head, but something like
Speaker 1: three thousand kids overnight claimed that they all had seizures.
Speaker 1: So these kinds of you know, like like we were
Speaker 1: talking about earlier about how our memory and trauma is
Speaker 1: susceptible to suggestion and cultural nuances, Um, they recur over
Speaker 1: and over again in human history. But I can't really
Speaker 1: remember a large incident of that in the last I
Speaker 1: don't decade other than ebolabola and uh and vaccines. Oh yeah, okay, yeah, movement, Well,
Speaker 1: I guess on both sides depending yeah, yeah, So it's
Speaker 1: kind of fascinating. They have not, and neither of those
Speaker 1: I think really got the traction that stuff like satanic
Speaker 1: panic did. And I don't know why that is. Um
Speaker 1: it's interesting to think about, though, you know. Is it
Speaker 1: is it because of the proliferation of social media it
Speaker 1: spreads information faster and further, or is it uh, simply
Speaker 1: because you know, mass media has been around long enough
Speaker 1: now that there's somewhat of an innoculation maybe against the
Speaker 1: hysteria that can be spread by it. I'm not sure. Well,
Speaker 1: there's certainly more voices in the media. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: they're more they're more channels, they're more people on the
Speaker 1: channels talking constantly about the subject matter. So uh, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe there's a be maybe our our media is less
Speaker 1: susceptible to long term UM panic with no grounded evidence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does. It does make you wonder like, could could
Speaker 1: something like which trials or Satanic panic happen today? You know,
Speaker 1: would are we as humans, uh susceptible to that? Still?
Speaker 1: I have a feeling we are. I think it's a
Speaker 1: lot of it comes down to the particular environment that
Speaker 1: we find ourselves in. And uh and hopefully, I mean
Speaker 1: hopefully we are a little less susceptible to it, just
Speaker 1: based on how much information is out there. It just
Speaker 1: comes down to how much information are we willing to
Speaker 1: ignore to support this uh, this this this script for
Speaker 1: what has happened or what could happen to us that
Speaker 1: fulfill some need to either make the danger more tolerable,
Speaker 1: you know, more palpable. You know. It's like like we're saying,
Speaker 1: it's sometimes the the more outrageous explanation or something is
Speaker 1: more attractive because it's it's easier to handle, because it's
Speaker 1: it's it's that you position it outside of the atmosphere
Speaker 1: and it has lines and boundaries that you can sort
Speaker 1: of use to yeah to again, like stick to the narratives,
Speaker 1: stick to the strip, to the script, and um somewhat
Speaker 1: to try to understand experiences that are so horrifying that
Speaker 1: normally otherwise you wouldn't be able to understand them. All Right,
Speaker 1: So there you have it, Satanic panic. Um. We took
Speaker 1: you through it from the beginning to the end of it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And we would love to hear from any of you
Speaker 1: out there who, like us, have some element of their
Speaker 1: childhood immersed in the world of Satanic panic, or if
Speaker 1: you came about after Satanic panic, but we'd love to hear,
Speaker 1: you know, an outsider's take on on all of this, UM, like,
Speaker 1: do you see any of these elements at work in
Speaker 1: your in your modern world? Um? If you would like
Speaker 1: to learn more, check out the landing page for this episode,
Speaker 1: it's Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. I'll conclude
Speaker 1: links out to some of the resources that we mentioned
Speaker 1: and what about you, sir? You can find me personally
Speaker 1: at Christian Sager dot tumbler dot com. Uh and UH
Speaker 1: for the how stuff Works content that I produce. I
Speaker 1: am primarily working on the brain stuff YouTube channel. If
Speaker 1: you haven't seen that yet, check it out. That's our
Speaker 1: general science channel. UH. And I also work on the
Speaker 1: main house stuff Works YouTube channel as well, where we're
Speaker 1: producing shows like what the Stuff UH and interviews and
Speaker 1: content like that cool cool. Thanks much again to Christian
Speaker 1: for joining me here UH. And in the meantime, you
Speaker 1: want to get in touch with me, you can reach
Speaker 1: out to Stuff to Blow your Mind at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com