Fearing the Devil: A Cultural History of America’s Satanic Panic with Scott Culpepper

Returning guest Dr. Scott Culpepper, professor at Dordt University, joins us to examine the social phenomenon known as the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and early 1990s. Drawing from his extensive research for his forthcoming scholarly book and his novel, "The Demonologists' Daughters," Dr. Culpepper analyzes how this period of heightened social anxiety developed and influenced American society.

We explore the cultural context of this moral panic, examining its effects on institutions from childcare centers to entertainment, while drawing meaningful parallels to witch hunts. Our discussion includes analysis of media influence, law enforcement response, and the intersection with broader social changes of the era. Through careful historical examination, we consider how this period continues to inform our understanding of mass social fears and institutional responses to perceived threats. And we ask the question, are we in a Satanic Panic again?

Dr. Culpepper's Blog, The Imaginative Historian

Youtube - Connecticut Witch Trials with Dr. Scott Culpepper

Dr. Scott Culpepper Professor Profile

The Demonologists’ Daughters by K. Scott Culpepper

American Tabloid Media and the Satanic Panic, 1970-2000 by Sarah A. Hughes

The Exorcist Effect: Horror, Religion, and Demonic Belief by Joseph P. Laycock and Eric Harrelson

The International Network Against Accusations of Witchcraft and Associated Harmful Practices

Call on the World Health Organization to re-add sunscreen to the list of essential medicines

Zoom Event World Day Against Witch Hunts 10th August, 2024

International Alliance to End Witch Hunts

IK Ero On Next Steps For Ending Witch Hunts TINAAWAHP

Sanguma: Everybody’s Business

Justice for Witches, Pardon Campaign

End Witch Hunts

Connecticut Witch Trial Exoneration Project

Massachusetts Witch-Hunt Justice Project

Maryland Witches Exoneration Project
Witch Hunt Website

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to Witch Hunt, the podcast discussing witch trials
and related events. I'm Josh Hutkinson.
And I'm Sarah Jack. Throughout the 1980s and early
90s, America was gripped by a moral panic that had striking
similarities to historical witchhunts.
Parents feared their children were being abused in secret
satanic rituals. Police departments trade

(00:20):
officers to look for signs of devil worship, and popular media
warned that Satan's influence was everywhere from heavy metal
music to children's cartoons. Today we're joined by Doctor
Scott Culpepper, a historian who's extensively researched
this fascinating period of American history known as the
Satanic Panic. Doctor Culpepper, a professor at
Dort University, has just released the novel The

(00:43):
Demonologist Daughters, adding to his contributions on the
subject. In addition, his upcoming
scholarly book about the panic helps us understand how this
widespread fear developed, who promoted it, and how it changed
American Society. We'll explore how ordinary
elements of American life, from daycare centers to Dungeons and
Dragons, became suspected tools of evil.

(01:06):
We'll meet the colorful cast of characters who drove the panic,
including Fake Ex Satanist and Tabloid.
TV host. And we'll discover how this
period of mass hysteria intersected with other social
fears of the era, from working mothers to the AIDS crisis.
Doctor Culpepper also draws fascinating parallels between
the Satanic Panic and the historical witch hunts, showing

(01:28):
how moral panics follow similar patterns.
Across time, joining us for an eye opening conversation about
one of America's strangest periods and learn why its echoes
still resonate in today's conspiracy theories.
Let's begin. Welcome back to the podcast
Doctor Cole Pepper. We are so happy to have you back
for 1/3 time. Thank you so much.

(01:51):
I always enjoy it, it's always adelight, so thank you for having
me. You bet.
I've been waiting to get to thistopic to talk with you on it.
I'm really thrilled that you've gotten to this point with your
project and we get to have this conversation today.
Can you? Give us a little.
Bit of background again on your work to just to remind your
listeners who you are. Yeah, I teach at Adore

(02:13):
University. I got my PhD at Baylor, and then
my area focus is the Atlantic world from 1400 to contemporary
period, and I've got to focus onthe history of Christianity as
well. So all of that feeds into this
project in different ways. I wrote a book a few years ago
on an English Separatist pastor named Francis Johnson, who was

(02:33):
active during the late 16th, early 17th century, which was
the time when a lot of the witchtrials were developing and there
was a lot of that sort of energyin the air.
So that was adjacent to what I did for that project, and that
really interested me. So I was drawn increasingly
towards looking at the history of moral panics and the ways
that that's influence both the history of Christianity and the

(02:54):
history of larger societies, notjust in the West, but around the
world, as you've demonstrated sowell on the podcast episodes,
that these elements that influence so much of Western
culture, they're an active presence in other parts of the
world as well. So I've been increasingly
fascinated with those topics from 1400 to about the present

(03:15):
time. My own personal history growing
up in evangelical circles exposed me to a lot of the lore
about demonology, possession, exorcism, spiritual warfare and
all that, which is a very integral part of many Christians
worldview. And so I grew up with those
influences around me in the 80s and early 90s.

(03:37):
And so I was increasingly drawn to ask myself what were the
larger cultural and societal forces that created the Matrix
which I was raised in and which still has probably at least a
little bit of influence on me, but which I grew away from in
college. I continue to be a Christian,
but different sort of Christian perspective than what I was

(03:58):
raised with. In some ways, some of the things
that we took for granted as non negotiable aspects of our
worldview, we've since learned aren't quite as non negotiable
or as solidly based on fact as we thought they were when we
were younger. And so more recently I've been
doing research on the phenomena that was known as the Satanic
Panic, or at least it was labeled that in the early 90s

(04:18):
where you had this very large societal body into the idea that
there were satanic cultic forcesat work in American culture,
very broadly influencing things negatively.
And what was so amazing about this is it wasn't just the focus
of conservative Christians who were following spiritual warfare
theology. It became a more widespread

(04:40):
cultural fascination to the point that government, law
enforcement, popular culture wasbuying into this to such a
degree that it literally wreckedreputations, ruined lives,
resulted in one of the longest and most expensive trials in
America, judicial history. Incredible moment in American
cultural history that continues to resonate.

(05:02):
So more recently that's what I've been doing, is doing
research into that and crafting a non fiction book, which is
going through the pitching process right now and hopefully
we'll have more solid information about the timeline
for when it will come out soon. Then I also write fiction, and
so I've been writing some fictional works adjacent to that
too, which hopefully conveys thefeeling, the emotion, the issues

(05:25):
at the heart of the Satanic Panic in a way that resonates a
little more emotionally with people.
We got a sneak peek at some of that fiction, and I can say,
yes, it does. I was pulled right in.
My own upbringing is very similar to what you've
expressed. And so this story is really, I'm

(05:47):
going to jump right in when it'savailable.
That's great. Thank you.
That's encouraging. You always hope that it
resonates with people and especially your own experiences.
Until you get started talking topeople, you don't realize how
shared they are across the spectrum.
You think, well, it was just me or it was just our little corner
of the world. And the more I talk to people
like you, the more I realized it's just such a common

(06:08):
experience for so many people inAmerican culture.
The fictional component should be out in October.
That's my plan. We're working to get it ready
for release in October. It's called The Demonologist
Daughters. And my elevator pitch is
basically what would happen if The Conjuring met Little Women.
You've got The Conjuring series,which is so popular right now,

(06:30):
and Ed and Lorraine Warren are such a big part of the story of
the Satanic Panic because they in so many ways were
capitalizing on the fears the Satanic Panic was stocking.
They had this sort of ad hoc exorcism ministry where they
went about attributing haunting to the influence of demonic
powers. They gained a following,

(06:50):
especially among people who are influenced by pop culture
products like The Exorcist, to look for exorcisms as a way to
help with different struggles that they were having.
And they just made this cottage industry out of producing
popular works, chronicling theirquote cases and different media
like television, miniseries, things like that.

(07:11):
And then eventually The Conjuring movies that were spin
offs of the stories they told about their cases.
So it's a cultural phenomenon ofa lot of people are familiar
with now. And they had a daughter, Judy,
who appears as a character in the films, and she's been a
pretty loyal proponent of their work.
She's been a pretty loyal heir of their legacy.
She and her husband have made ittheir mission to preserve the

(07:34):
Warren's legacy. The Conjuring films are one way
they do that, and the continued existence of their Museum of
Antiquities or haunted objects is another.
They haven't had that actively open recently, but it still
exists. And they do a pretty good job of
trying to continue to promote the parents legacy.
I started thinking as I was working through all of this,

(07:56):
what would happen if that familyhad more than one daughter, if
they were located in a differentpart of the country instead of
New England and South Louisiana,which I was more familiar with.
And what if, yes, one of those daughters was like Judy Warren,
who is very committed to the cause.
But what if the other daughters had their questions, had their
doubts, and they grew away from all of that, and then as adults,

(08:17):
are forced to come back and confront that world they grew up
in, the tragedy they experiencedwhen they were younger.
So that's what the story is about.
And it draws on a lot of the things I've been learning about
the Satanic Panic to sort of tryto invoke what that world was
like, what those fears were likethat haunted people's
imaginations during that period.Given all those fears, and the

(08:40):
name Panic definitely implies this atmosphere, a very intense
widespread fear, the Satanic Panic is often cited as a strong
example of a recent moral panic.How does it compare to other
moral panics? In a lot of ways, I think there

(09:01):
are definitely similarities, though of course we always have
to be very careful about historical context.
Things have echoes, but they're never exactly the same.
In the case of the Satanic Panic, I think one thing that
distinguishes it from what came before and later is the extent
of buy in on the part of the larger American mainstream
culture, at least for a little while, for a few decades.

(09:22):
And there's a scholar named Sarah Hughes who's made the very
good observation in a book she wrote that this is the same time
when tabloid television was really taking off.
And you think about Geraldo Rivera 2020, a lot of the
mainstream platforms that gave an opening for these people to
gain widespread exposure, a lot of that help this grow.

(09:46):
So it was not by any stretch andisolated phenomena within some
pocket of the church. It was something that powerful
cultural gatekeepers are latching onto.
In that way, I think it is somewhat similar to the witch
trials in that you have a lot offolk hysteria.
You've got beliefs in folk magic.
You may even have concerns aboutpeople at the local level, about

(10:07):
things that are happening. But you have this kind of
symbiotic dance that has to happen between the fears and
superstitions on the ground and some of the more powerful
leaders of society to make it a real threat.
Like you might have some ongoingpersecution or prosecution at
local villages, but it takes buyin by the judicial authorities

(10:28):
or by rulers, like in the case of James the 1st in Scotland, to
really make it a more widespreadphenomena.
In the same way, there's always a low simmering concern about
demonic powers and spiritual warfare in Christian circles.
That always exists because it's part of the biblical literature.
It's a part of the beliefs of a good number of Christians, but

(10:51):
you get something different whenyou get buy in for whatever
reason by more powerful culturalgatekeepers.
Another way that I think it's similar is that the fears that
stoke the Satanic panic are often stand insurance for other
fears. Like the stated reasons for why
we're doing this. What our concerns are are often

(11:12):
code for other things that we'reworried about other cultural
changes. One example of that might be the
heavy push against daycares thatoccurred in the 1980s and 90s
and the most infamous case in the Satanic panic concerning
that, the Mcmartin preschool case.
You had people accusing VirginiaMcmartin and those who worked at

(11:33):
her daycare of having an underground chamber where they
conducted satanic rituals that included flying around, abusing
children, engaging in all kinds of weird black masses and
satanic rites. So weird as described by those
who were spinning the tails. It was just so fantastic in so
many ways. It even involved imagined

(11:54):
spaces. There was no underground chamber
beneath the Mcmartin Preschool at all.
People literally were digging upthe yards around it trying to
find something. That decades later with the
Comet Ping Pong pizza parlor incident, where you had somebody
go and shoot up a pizza parlor because they thought there were
pedophile rings and satanic rituals happening there, you had

(12:17):
the same thing. There was an imagined space they
thought existed there. And so you get this cultural
fear that a lot of scholars would say is driven by the fact
that you're in an era when for the first time, middle class and
even upper class women are re entering the workforce.
It's the late 60s, it's the 70's.
The number of kids in daycare isgoing up, and you've got all

(12:39):
these anxieties about what kind of environment am I leaving my
kids in all day long. And that probably has more to do
with a lot of these suspicions and fears than any kind of
concrete evidence. Obviously, there were places
where real abuse was happening. And you don't want to diminish
that, you don't want to overlookthat.
But sometimes things like this led to misdirection where they

(13:02):
were focusing on alleged abuse cases that were, quote, satanic
ritual abuse in particular places that weren't happening.
And there were other places where it very much was happening
where that they were overlooking.
The most glaring example being the fact that you had all these
evangelical pastors and leaders engaged in trying to find the

(13:22):
satanic cult activity in daycares while you're having an
epidemic of sexual abuse in boththe Catholic Church and many
evangelical churches as well that gets overlooked.
And that's another way I see a comparison.
There's so often the witch huntsare misdirection.
Misdirection away from other problems or other culprits.
You've mentioned the Warrens andyou mentioned the daycare.

(13:44):
What other central characters drove the Satanic Panic?
So many and such an interesting cast of characters as well.
Two at the inception are on opposite sides of the
conversation. One is Anton Lavey, who most of
the audience is probably heard of before Lavey created the
Church of Satan in the mid 1960sas a very obvious troll of

(14:09):
Christianity. There was never any pretense
that they actually believed in areal devil.
It was a very Nietzschean sort of will to power philosophy that
they embraced, and they had all kinds of rituals that looked
like black Mass rituals, but they were very clear that what
they were doing was essentially trying to troll Christianity,
being sort of a satirical mirrorto the Christian Church in

(14:30):
American culture. Lavey fabricated most of his
background, as we learned in 1991 when Texas Monthly
published a story about him, An investigative report revealed
that much of his back story had been fabricated.
He had talked about being a circus ringmaster.
That may or may not be true. Dating Marilyn Monroe, that was

(14:51):
definitely not true. And a number of other things as
well that were found to be fabrications.
But he created this very popularmovement, at least popular
around San Francisco for a little bit that got many
Christians around the country upin arms because whatever their
intentions, this the imagery looked very satanic to them.
That was the idea that they weresort of clothing themselves with

(15:13):
satanic imagery to make a point.And then you had the Manson
murders occur in 1969, and therewere allegations that there were
connections between Manson and Anton Lavey.
Investigation demonstrated that those connections were loose at
best. I mean, they traveled in some of
the same orbits, but there seemed to be no formal
connection between them. But in a lot of ways, Manson's

(15:36):
followers tried to make their activities look like they were
satanically inspired or under the organizing principle of some
kind of general belief system tothe degree that they were
worried about appearances at all.
And so you had that occur in 1969 and that to some degree,
raise the stakes a bit for the Church of Satan.

(15:56):
They found themselves by the late 80s very much on the
defensive because they had a lotof people accusing them of
things they had never imagined doing, Satanic ritual abuse and
all of that. To the degree that Lavey's
daughter Zena would make the rounds in the late 80s on
different news programs trying to rehabilitate the reputation
of the Church of Satan. While on the hills of Anton

(16:18):
Lavey and the Church of Satan, there are popular Christian
speakers to some degree who are reacting to all of that,
beginning to publish accounts oftheir own supposed escape from
organized Satanism. And one of the most popular of
those was a Christian singer andcomedian named Mike Warnke, who
released a book in 1972 called The Satan Cellar.

(16:41):
But Warnke claimed that for about a year and a half or so,
he had been a Satanic high priest, leading a coven of about
1500 people or so. The numbers would vary depending
on the audience he was talking to.
In the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas.
He claimed to have met Anton Le Bay and had lurid, lurid stories
about the things that he had done as a satanic high priest,

(17:05):
which that alone should have raised people's skepticism when
he released the book in 1972. As you read through it, you're
thinking, if any of this stuff is true, why is this guy not
worried about the authorities coming and knocking on his door
to arresting him for some of these things that he
participated in? But he writes the story, Very
lurid imagery. And you can definitely tell

(17:28):
reading the book and then comparing it to pop culture
products of the time, that in somany ways it draws more on
imagery for movies like Rosemary's Baby than it does
from anything that had been circulating in Christian
theology, at least in formal Christian theology.
Joseph Laycock has written a book with a co-author called The

(17:49):
Exorcist Effect that came out recently.
Then that book he talks about how films really conditioned the
expectations people had for satanic cult activity during
this period, what exorcisms looklike.
Once you get The Exorcist released in 1973, essentially
people's view of what an exorcism should be is

(18:11):
conditioned by the film. You see a definite change in
people's expectations of both what exorcisms look like and the
frequency of them as well. So you get people like Mike
Warnke, who becomes a celebratedfigure in evangelical Christian
circles. And there's also a prophecy
writer, Hal Lindsay, who is known for his sort of end times

(18:33):
writings on Revelation of the book of Daniel.
He also writes a book in 72 called Satan Is Alive and Well
on Planet Earth, and he kind of adds to this interest in Satanic
lore and the notion that there are Satanic cults operating in
the country. The book that really puts it all
on the radar of big time media moguls and tabloid news is

(18:58):
Michelle Remembers, which came out in 1980.
And that's probably the one thatmore people in the audience have
heard of. Michelle Smith.
This is an alias started seeing a psychologist named Lawrence
Pasdar. And during their sessions,
supposedly she recovered, repressed memories of ritual
abuse that she had suffered as achild.

(19:19):
And the longer they work together, the more memories came
out and the more graphic they got.
And Pasdar and Michelle Smith published together this memoir.
Michelle remembers she divorced her husband.
Eventually they got married as well, which of course raises all
kinds of questions about the professionalism of their
interactions. But they started going on

(19:40):
speaking tours. They and Mike Warnke were very
welcomed amongst law enforcementand would actually host clinics
to advise law enforcement about how to find satanic ritual abuse
and how to identify where satanic cults were operating.
And from there you get a whole alist of people who begin to

(20:02):
print, begin to write and issue popular books that claim to have
familiarity with Satanic ritual abuse, claim that they have been
insiders who are now telling thetrue story to everyone.
One of the most interesting was a woman who appeared in the late
1980s named Laura Stratford, whowrote a work called Exposing

(20:22):
Satan's Underground. She claimed that she had
actually been a baby breeder. Held by a satanic cult, forced
to give birth to children that were then sacrificed in horrific
ceremonies that she eventually broke away from that converted
to Christianity and began to spread the word of warning about
these groups in America. She was supported and platformed

(20:44):
by people like how Lindsay and how Lindsay's then sister-in-law
Johanna Mickelson, who had very popular media ministries in
Southern California. And because of that she got a
tremendous boost early on when Geraldo Rivera made his 2nd
special on Satanism in America. The subtitle was Exposing
Satan's Underground, and he had excerpts of interviews with

(21:08):
Large Large Stratford, with MikeWarnke, with Johanna Mickelson,
and a number of these people whose names are coming to be
known not just in evangelical Christian circles or the Roman
Catholic Church, but in the larger American mainstream
culture as well. In about two years, there was a

(21:29):
evangelical magazine that was run by a group called Jesus
People USA that was headquartered in Chicago that
published exposes on some of these figures, including Lauren
Stratford and also Mike Warnke. In the Stratford expose, which
is the first one they did, they had gone and interviewed family
members. They had gone and looked at

(21:51):
official documents related to her personal history.
They found no evidence that she was a part of any kind of
satanic cult, that her parents engaged in the activities they
said she engaged in, and in fact, no evidence whatsoever
that she had ever been pregnant at all.
So basically her entire story unraveled.
Mike Warnke came to her defense.And so the reporters at

(22:14):
Cornerstone, listening to some of what he said, said, well,
maybe we should take a look at this guy as well.
And so in 1991, they investigated him and soon
released a story that revealed that his entire background was
fabricated in regard to his involvement in satanic activity
of any kind. They found evidence that during

(22:35):
the time he claimed to be a satanic high priest with long
hair and a drug addiction that he was a buttoned up short
haired guy who was working with campus ministries at his College
in Southern California. They discovered that instead of
dating his first wife, he was actually married four times.
Eventually, instead of dating his first wife at that time like

(22:56):
he said he was, he had been dating another woman and they
found her and interviewed her and she said no, none of that
stuff is true. And at one point she said, would
you think I would know if my boyfriend was leading a satanic
cult? And to which everyone replies,
we would hope so. So it just completely unraveled.
His ministry absolutely implodesin the early 90s as it's

(23:20):
revealed that this entire back story that they had gained so
much influence circulating was just pure mythology.
So those are a few of the characters and there's so many
more as well. I could just list them
endlessly. Yeah, two years ago I was
cleaning out a relative's garageand I came across the How
Lindsay book you referenced Satan is Alive and Well on

(23:44):
Planet Earth. I've since lost track of what I
did with the copy though. You're not losing much
financially. I don't think it would sell for
much if you tried to sell it, but it's a great curiosity.
Yeah, it raised my eyebrows right away.
What's this and why is it here? One thing that's interesting
about all this is you don't wantto be puritanical.

(24:05):
So I don't want to commit the opposite era of being overly
judgmental. But at a time when these people
were making family values preservation a big part of their
platform for why we need to be aware of Satanic cult activity,
both how Lindsey and Mike Warnkeare married four times, and

(24:26):
those marriages, at least a couple of them, in both cases
fell apart because of adultery, all at the same time.
These people are presenting themselves as paragons of family
values. And you talked about how the
culture kind of led to or contributed to the rise of the
Satanic Panic. How, in turn, did the Satanic

(24:49):
Panic contribute to the culture?In so many ways, especially
probably most visibly in music, musicians figured out very
quickly that satanic imagery really would help stoke their
brand. They're all accused of it about
even like Elvis, someone who we would today consider as benign
as Elvis is accused of big influence by the devil's music.

(25:13):
And a lot of people are suspicious because a lot of that
music that he was spreading was music that he had inherited from
Blues traditions and other traditions that were more
associated in the popular imagination with African
American cultures. That's where they came from.
And so he's beginning to bring this music into the mainstream,
and white kids are starting to listen to it.

(25:33):
And there's a little racism there, as well as fear about
social depravity that's coloringthe way some people see Elvis.
Then, of course, you have The Beatles.
You have The Rolling Stones. And increasingly, they're
accused of fostering reprobate activity.
They're accused of being an instrument of Satan.
And over time, musicians start to sense it.

(25:54):
It pays to wear this mantle of rebellion.
And so they'll do it increasingly.
And Led Zeppelin, there was an interest there and Alex, Sir
Crowley among a couple of members of Led Zeppelin, when
you get to the mid 70s and early80s, there's a free flowing wave
of sort of Titanic imagery, pentagrams and allusions to

(26:14):
Satan and popular music. And some of them would say we're
just having fun with this. We were shocked at the kickback.
Iron Maiden says that when they released the album The Number of
the Beast, they have that song, The Number of the Beast on the
album. And their response was shocked.
When they came to the US and there was such a huge push back
from a lot of evangelical and Catholic ministries, they were

(26:35):
like, we're just having fun withthese concepts.
We didn't think we were taking them seriously.
So some of them may have been caught by surprise.
Others, like Mötley Crüe, they knew exactly what they were
doing. They released Shout at the Devil
and they knew that imagery really drew focus.
It drew attention from teenagerswho are wanting to embrace the
rebelliousness of it, and also was something that made them

(26:57):
cultural outliers. The idea of cultural outlawing.
It was really in the very centerof mainstream culture in so many
ways. So yeah, you saw that impacting
the popular culture. A lot of the movies and
television that comes out is very much driven, interestingly
enough, by the panic. One of my favorite stories in
that regard is this little TV movie that came out based on a

(27:18):
novel in the early 80s called OfMazes and Monsters.
The novel was written by a novelist, Rola Jaffe, who was
known to publish a variety of different works.
She was never known as a particularly conservative
writer, but she became concernedabout Dungeons and Dragons and

(27:38):
the possible influence it was having on young people.
And all of that was driven to some degree by the story of a
young man who had disappeared ata College of Michigan.
And then he had been found in Louisiana.
They had returned him to the college, and then he committed
suicide. And there were allegations that
this guy, James Eggers, have been very into Dungeons and

(28:00):
Dragons and that that had been apart of pushing him towards
suicide, basically. And it didn't help that the
detective on the case, William Deere, a private detective the
family had hired to find this kid, he titled his account of
it, quote the Dungeon Master. And what's wild about it is
Deere knew that it wasn't D&D that had driven him to commit

(28:22):
suicide, that there were other factors.
He had a troubled relationship with his family.
He was gay, and his family was putting pressure on him and
denying that aspect of his identity.
And ultimately, those were the other factors.
He was a kid who was gifted, hadstarted college early and felt
very out of place. So it was hard for him to find

(28:43):
his place because he was so muchyounger than the other students.
So that story ended tragically, but a lot of people took the
legends and myths about D and DSrole and all that about the
early 80s. They were concerned about it.
You had this novel of mazes and monsters that was published,
which based was a fictional account of a group of young
people who are playing Dungeons and Dragons.

(29:04):
And the game becomes so real to them.
They lose the distinction between reality and fantasy and
things escalate to the point that one of the young people
tries to commit suicide and is stopped by his friends.
The person they get to play thatkid in the movie version is a
very young Tom Hanks, fresh off bosom buddies and just then
becoming very popular. And so he makes this film and

(29:29):
it's a curiosity today. It wasn't a big budget thing.
It wasn't something that just shattered records or anything
like that. It was ATV movie, but it was
part of the zeitgeist at that time and it's still a bit of a
cultural curiosity. Not long after that you had a
mom who lost a son to suicide, Patricia Pulling who was also
convinced that D&D was part of the cause for why her child

(29:51):
committed suicide and she startsthis organization bad which
basically invest in trying to limit D&D and other influences
they think are inspiring their kids to be influenced by satanic
forces. 1 funny thing about the Tom Hanks story is he made Mazes
and Monsters of Mazes and Monsters early in the 80s and

(30:13):
then he comes back towards the end of the 80s and makes the
burbs, which I don't know if you've seen that, but the burbs.
It's like a riff, a comedic riffon Satanic Panic fears and all
of that. It satirizes all of it, except
don't want to give away the ending, but it does in the end,
pull its punches a little bit like the people you think are
goofy and are just on a rabbit chase.

(30:34):
They are on a wild goose chase. They do have some merit to their
investigation, but overall, it'sintended to sort of poke fun at
the suburban fears of cult activity at that time.
So it would be great at some point to talk to Tom Hague if
somebody could get him to discuss all of that and talk
about these two bookends that hedoes at the beginning of the 80s
and the end of the 80s. One of which kind of helps feed

(30:56):
the Satanic Panic and the other one which kind of satirizes it
and asks the question, have we gone too far with all this?
There's so much fantasy with fear.
The fantasy can cause evil. We don't really know what the
evil is. It's this monster.

(31:17):
Is it coming out from under the bed?
Is it waiting for us? It's so fascinating and not a
great way. But how do we end moral panics?
Now, that is the challenge, because they rage so ferociously
and if someone tries to address it, they're almost immediately
labeled as being part of the problem, which again is

(31:37):
something that's a parallel withwitch trials.
One thing that's very noticeableabout some of those people I
discussed earlier, people like Mike Warnke and Lawrence
Stratford, is that you had to have some people from within the
evangelical community, those journalists for Cornerstone,
actually challenge their credentials and exposed to

(31:59):
people what was going on. They were still pushed back on.
In fact, there were people connected to them that were
accused of being satanic cult members, even though those
people were involved in anti cult ministries in Southern
California. So it's not foolproof.
You still get that pushback. But kind of like we said a while
ago about John Winthrop Junior, it helps to have a person who

(32:21):
has some measure of trust that tries to capitalize on that
trust by revealing, hey, this isnot an US against them thing.
This is not the broader culture trying to diminish or destroy
something you hold dear. It's people trying to hold you
accountable, to be factual and careful in the ideas you embrace
and the people you platform. That did help to some degree.

(32:43):
I think kind of cultural exhaustion helped to some degree
as well. By the early 90s, people are
getting a little bit tired of it.
And also the fact that law enforcement had embraced the
possibility that this stuff existed for real for a while.
And the longer they investigated, by the time you
get to the early 90s, in case after case, you're coming up

(33:04):
with nothing, absolutely no evidence that you had leading
FBI officials that started to release reports where they said
we've done our very best to investigate this alleged
activity. It's just not there.
And so over time, eventually it starts to break down just the
truth. The sheer factual reality does

(33:26):
begin to degrade some of those conspiracy theories, but they
don't completely go away. And even in the late 90s, after
the court cases have been shut down and you no longer have a
lot of serious legal persecutionof people on the basis of
satanic cult activity or satanicritual abuse, you still have
push backs against Harry Potter.And you still have that floating

(33:47):
around in the zeitgeist. But thankfully by then it had
lost some of the teeth of being embraced by officials with the
power to actually unleash legal and political pressures against
people. Probably the last major
prosecution of someone that could be associated with the
Satanic Panic was the Memphis 3.In the mid 90s.

(34:08):
There were three young men who are accused of murdering some
little boys basically just on the foundation that they were
known to be into heavy metal music and to have satanic
imagery on some of their binders, their notebooks and all
of that. That led to them being
incarcerated for a while before finally they were allowed to be
released and cleared and still amystery to this day who was

(34:31):
involved in killing those kids. That was probably the last major
gasp of it in the mid 90s, as far as it being an official
thing, something where government authorities and
others could be involved in actually prosecuting people for
these things. Of course, the other side of
that is it continues to echo in some elements of popular

(34:52):
culture, and there's a big debate regarding whether we're
going through another satanic panic now.
Some people would say in some ways maybe because you got a lot
of accusations about people connecting themselves to cultic
activity. You've got conspiracy theories
like those propagated by Q Anon where they'll allege that say,

(35:13):
for instance, members of the Democratic Party are part of
some pedophile ring. And all of that resonates very
much with the same kind of accusations that were being
spread during the Satanic panic.One thing we don't have at this
point which might lead us, and there are several like the
scholar Beth and Julia Dokey whohas said lead us to say that

(35:33):
we're not going through necessarily a full blown Satanic
panic at this point is the fact that the legal process has not
been Co opted to serve its interests.
For the most part, mainstream media has not.
Where you see these kind of things in media today, it's
usually in horror fiction or it's through things like The
Conjuring where it's more fantasy than it is.

(35:54):
Anybody suggesting these things are really happening for the
most part. So you do have that lack of buy
in by the major mainstream culture.
That's reassuring. On the other hand, one thing
that's not reassuring is the fact that you do have some of
these ideas permeating the highest echelons of political
influence. Very noticeably.

(36:15):
The kind of people, the kind of evangelicals that are
surrounding Republican leaders at this point are different from
the ones in the 80s. You can definitely have your
criticism of the ones in the 80s, people like Jerry Falwell
senior who pursued a political agenda that was driven by their
religious goals as well. They were coming from like

(36:35):
fundamentalist Baptist circles and other sort of old school
fundamentalist circles, which made them a little bit wary of
overly demonstrative Pentecostalcharismatic style behavior.
They would not be the kind of people that would sign on very
quickly to theologies about exorcisms and deliverance
ministries and all that, or notions about angels being at

(36:57):
work influencing the political process.
That changes, I would say, about1988 or 89 with the campaign of
Pat Robertson for president. Robertson, of course, did not
get the nomination. George HW Bush did, but he did
well enough that he was able to build an organization off the
back of that and one of the lessons he learned during the

(37:19):
course of the campaign. So a lot of people are not going
to be fooled by a televangelist running for president.
They're very quick to point out that he was a televangelist.
He was not a politician. He tried very hard to shed that
mantle. But they could play clips from
the 700 Club that showed him, like, stretching his hand out to
heal people through the TV and getting a word of prophecy and

(37:40):
all that. So it was not something he could
really live down in 88. After his campaign, he built
this infrastructure at his Regent University in Virginia
Beach, VA. That included bringing in Jay
Sekulow to lead the law school there, bringing in Ralph Reed to
form this political Action Groupcalled the Christian Coalition.

(38:02):
And over the next few years theycreated this sort of
Pentecostal, charismatic evangelical political action
movement that didn't have some of the same baggage.
A lot of the people they were training and platforming were
people that hadn't been on TV doing this kind of stuff.
They could keep that part quiet and give a more respectable

(38:24):
public face. On the surface, that movement
really grew, and in many ways ithas taken over much of the
evangelical influence. Example of that would be during
the presidency of Donald Trump. The advisors he had around him
very often came from this wing of Protestant Christianity, not

(38:46):
as much from the wing that previously influenced presidents
like Ronald Reagan. Again, not that that was great,
but what we're seeing here is something a little bit
different. You have people like Paula White
who explicitly leads prayers where she invokes the power of
God and the power of angels to defeat forces.
The spiritual darkness she sees as, quote, coming against the

(39:07):
goals of the president, the goals of the country.
At one point, she very famously called on angels from Africa and
Asia to come and to be a part ofthe political process in the
2020 election. So on the one hand, you don't
have some of the same cultural buy in.
Some of those cultural gatekeepers are holding the line
against these things and hopefully wouldn't go back and

(39:29):
endorse it to the extent they did in the 80s.
On the other, as recently as theTrump administration, you did
have some people who were very convinced this stuff was real
and very willing to use the levers of power to act against
it, who have a great deal of influence.
So there's still the possibilityyou could see that kind of
influence extended in various ways officially.

(39:52):
I see a couple echoes today thatshow this continuing legacy,
perhaps of the Satanic panic in current political thought, one
that you mentioned regarding Paula White, the spiritual
warfare. I've seen a lot of literal

(40:14):
demonization of political adversaries.
Where you're literally saying that they are servants of the
devil, that they're things to that nature.
And then another wave that is happening is, are these
allegations of grooming, particularly by the LGBTQ

(40:36):
community? And that reminds me of the
preschool allegations. Yeah, very much so.
And I do think probably homosexuality was in the
background a lot of these conversations as well in the 70s
and early 80s as we talked aboutthe young man at the center of

(40:56):
the DND case or the case in the late 70s, he was homosexual but
very closeted because of the circumstances he was living in.
And a lot of the conversation around like DND or heavy metal
culture, a lot of times it wouldhave this sort of bent where
there were references made to the kinds of kids who don't play

(41:18):
sports. Cause a lot of times those are
the kids who are playing DND or to kids with long hair or
whatever, which you get that throwback to the 60s and early
70s as well. But some of these biases, and
it's not always said out loud, but a lot of the racial things
that you see both with the witchtrials and in the Satanic panic
as well, there's often an undercurrent there that you get

(41:41):
the sense, especially if you look back with an eye to more
recent concerns and issues, things we're aware of now we
weren't as aware of back then. There is an undertow of anti
LGBTQ. There's a racist undertow.
I mean, when you look at the people who are driving this, a
lot of them are white, conservative, middle class

(42:02):
Christians of different varieties.
The culture that's gripped by these fears is often white,
middle class, suburban culture. So you see a lot of those
elements. I think that's very true.
I think you're right that that is very much in the undertow of
these conversations, that quiet parts not always said out loud.
Sometimes it is, but it's definitely there in a lot of
ways, and sometimes it is said out loud and in very hateful

(42:24):
ways as well. This is also the period when we
are going through the AIDS crisis, at least the beginning
of the AIDS crisis. The Reagan administration was
notoriously slow to respond to that.
See, Everett Coop tried to push them to faster than they did.
And part of that was because in the beginning they saw this as a
disease that people dealt with who are up to things they

(42:45):
shouldn't be up to. Therefore we shouldn't be as
concerned about that. And certainly all of this
intermixed, all of these tendencies intermixed as people
are confronting those fears and trying to decide how do we
respond to them. There was a sense in white
suburban middle class America that's somebody else's problem
until you start getting kids like Ryan White who get it from

(43:06):
a blood transfusion and they realize it's not their problem,
it's our problem. I was going to ask you about
that also, because those were two of the great panics that I
remember from my childhood and youth were the Satanic Panic and
the AIDS panic. There's so much misinformation
floating around about both things.

(43:27):
I would hear rumors of goats being sacrificed behind the
school and things like that, andthen this misinformation about
how AIDS was transmitted and whowas likely to get it.
And I was just curious, how did these two worlds ever intersect?
The Satanic Panic and the AIDS panic?

(43:50):
Yeah, I would say so constantly,of course, in references by
Christian musicians, preachers and others, They had a big
bundle of things that Satan and his operatives were up to in
America, and certainly homosexuality.
I was on that list. And there was a widespread
sense, whether it was said out loud or not, that AIDS was in a
way of judgement on the homosexual community.

(44:13):
And then of course later that provides that because it's
affecting other people as well. But early on, that was the cause
of a part of the lukewarmness towards actually addressing it
was this notion being propagatedthat this is a punishment.
People are suffering because of wrongdoing.
It's, it's funny how the folklore feeds the panic and the

(44:35):
panic feeds the folklore and sometimes people just having
fun, just wanting to be out there and do something
rebellious feed it as well. We had all those stories as well
about things happening in the woods.
It was great to be scared by that.
I've always loved ghost stories and I love the macabre.
I love to watch horror movies. And so there was an element of

(44:55):
that that was fun in the sense that you like to be spooked a
little bit. And it wasn't great when you're
out in the woods at night to remember all those stories.
But when you're home with your friends in a comfortable place,
it's fun to tell those stories. And there were instances where
people would go out and they would like to create what might
look like a Satanic ritual circle or whatever, fed by

(45:18):
theologies that were being circulated.
Like they would do this to mimicthe kinds of things that people
were saying. Once it was investigated, it
would be revealed this is just abunch of kids having fun.
You did have a couple of real instances of killers that were
at least using Satanic imagery in their writings and in their

(45:39):
presentation. Whether they actually believed
it, who knows. But you did have, for instance,
Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker.
He really leaned into the idea that Satan was speaking to him
and that he was acting as an agent of the Devil.
You had Sean Sellers, a young man in Oklahoma who killed his
parents. He claimed that he had been

(46:00):
influenced by Satan to do that. And you have the whole question
with cases like that, the chicken and the egg question, to
what degree do these people really believe this stuff?
To what degree are they acting in response to those folklores
that are circling, casting that as their motivation when it was
really other things that motivated them?

(46:21):
It's so hard to tell, but those are a couple of instances.
They're rare instances, but theywere enough to get some people
saying, see, this is what we're talking about.
People like Richard Ramirez, people like Sean Sellers, that
you had kids that would commit suicide when they were listening
to heavy metal music, kids that would commit suicide who had
played D&D. And several people made the

(46:43):
point. Sarah Marshall, who's got a
podcast called you wrong about alittle bit ago.
She made the point on her podcast how many millions of
kids had D&D paraphernalia that may have bought it and never
even played it that much, but when they're discovered after
they committed suicide, have gotthat paraphernalia in their
home. As prevalent as this phenomena

(47:04):
was in the early 80s, it was very likely that you're going to
probably find a subset of peoplewho committed suicide who had
some involvement with DND. But then statistically, they
could go back and demonstrate that that was a very small
subset of the total number of kids who were ending their lives
in the 80s. There were a multitude of other
reasons why that was happening, why that was such a horrific

(47:26):
problem during that period. And what was the likelihood if
you took your own life that you had other kinds of books or
other things in your possession?You could point to any kind of
thing and make a trend out of itthat they had science books or
they had religious books or anything.

(47:49):
Absolutely. Again, echoes of the witch
hunts. It's so easily to associate, so
easy to associate an object, a common household item like a
broom or owning a black cat and make that sinister somehow.
How many people own Black Cats? That we're not women and we're
not witches in the early water period.
Yeah, and then you have that element of alleged witches

(48:12):
questioning am I the witch? Maybe it is me or the guilt of
their other are experiences in life where they may have made
the wrong choice. They think they're deserving of
being accused of witchcraft and harm.
And even in modern allegations of witchcraft, you find the

(48:35):
individuals wanting to prove their innocence by doing poison
tests. It is that chicken or the egg
thing. And there I just can't.
It's unlimited how many examplesthere are of crime confessors.
Who? Attribute the problem to the
devil and even, you know, magistrates and governments

(48:57):
attributed their confusion aboutwitch trials to the devil.
Yeah, it's really amazing. And when you think about
cultures like religious cultures, where there's a huge
guilt that people carry for various activities or even
having thoughts about particularthings, if they come in and tell
you these thoughts are being driven by Satanic influence or

(49:19):
possession, there might be an appeal to that in some ways.
Because it's hard to believe that's you, hard to believe that
whatever temptation or whatever obsession you've got or whatever
darkness is a part of just your humanity.
Maybe some of that is just Satanic influence.
And maybe there's an easy way topurge that through an exorcism

(49:39):
or through some kind of ritual that can free me.
One thing I would see in Louisiana, especially among
Pentecostal charismatic cultures, was a lot of people
engaging in what was called deliverance ministry, having
sort of an ad hoc exorcism performed on them as a way to
help them deal with alcohol problems or the ramifications of

(50:00):
sexual abuse or various temptations.
I knew one person who had gone through a very rough divorce,
and they were struggling with a lot of emotional trauma from
that. It had been both physically and
emotionally abusive. And she sought help from a
deliverance minister. And there probably was a bit of
an effect there, not in the sense that she was actually
experiencing demons being cast out of her, but she believed

(50:23):
that it was doing good for her. And so she would go with
regularity to have these ceremonies performed that she
felt like freed her from the things that haunted her.
So you could really see how there's an attraction because
they feel like it's an aid at a time when they feel like there's
no way out of some of the situations they're dealing with.

(50:44):
I guess the positive side of that is it could sometimes be a
placebo that would help people to heal.
But on the other hand, one of the difficulties was if you had
someone who, for instance, was dealing with substance abuse, I
would see them go to these counselors, get these exorcisms,
and their belief would be, OK, Iam delivered from this now, I
will be fine. And obviously we know well

(51:06):
knowing people struggles with addiction.
It takes daily work, it's hard, there are relapses at times,
it's a daily struggle. And a lot of them would get very
discouraged when that struggle would reappear and they would
realize, no, it's not gone away.And it would lead even to them
questioning their faith on the basis of that.
So we'll see it have that opposite effect as well.

(51:28):
We're near the end of our hour. Is there anything that you
haven't had an opportunity to talk about today that you'd like
to express? I guess just the pop culture
phenomena of it is one thing I haven't mentioned as much, but
was just both the fun and bizarre part of that, the number
of pop culture things that we would see as being very innocent

(51:51):
today. They got caught in the
crosshairs of the Satanic Panic.D&D is one of those.
I teach at a Christian School and almost all of my students in
the history department play D&D probably a little more than they
should sometimes. I had one guy that had an
assignment do and he said behindon that, but I was crafting my
new D&D character. But I suggest that he might want

(52:12):
to get around to working on the paper first.
But today that's no big deal. Nobody cares.
Even in Christian circles they do these things and it doesn't
bother anyone. It's become a very benign thing,
at least in most Christian circles.
There are still some that would probably frown on that, but it's
become a very benign thing. The Smurfs were regarded as a

(52:36):
pervasive demonic influence because you had Azrael the cat
who is said to be named after anancient demon.
That you had magic being used all the time by Gargabel and
Papa Smurf, He Man of the Masters of the Universe, the
power of Grey Skull and all the magic there.
Though it's great going through and reading some of the

(52:57):
critiques of things that today we just take as a matter of
course as benign influences in culture.
It's a curiosity and it helps tolook back to that and look to
the present and see some of the things that are said about pop
culture products today and be able to make the case you say
this is so harmful. We'll look at the said about

(53:18):
these other things and they werenot Civilization did not fall
apart because of the. Thank you, Scott.
Now Mary Bingham returns with anall new minute with Mary.
One of the many factors which culminated in the Salem Witch
Trials, now seriously being dissected by historians, is.

(53:39):
Mass psychogenic illness simply defines the circumstance results
when anxiety is morphed into physical ailments and usually
occurs in a group setting where the power of suggestion is
strong, the. Outbreak.
Of witchcraft accusations started in the household of an
influential family in 1692. The minister was an esteemed

(54:03):
member of the community. The Salem Village Parsonage was
small. It was Elizabeth Paris's job to
keep the atmosphere calm. However, her husband, Reverend
Samuel, behaved otherwise. He bellowed his sermons from the
2nd floor with the children in the earshot as he threatened to,
and, I quote, demonize his enemies who were about to cut

(54:27):
off his firewood supply. This would have made for a cold
winter with no means of cooking food.
Thus, the anxiety experienced byBetty Junior in Abigail may have
turned into physical manifestations.
According to the local doctor, the children's symptoms didn't
match any of the ailments known at that time.

(54:48):
The power of suggestion could have added to the phenomena when
news started to travel. But what do the listeners think?
And I got my source of this weekfrom A Storm of Witchcraft by
Doctor Emerson Baker and pages 99 and 100.
Thank you very much. Thank you, Mary.

(55:11):
And now Sarah has this week's edition of End Witch Hunts News.
Welcome to end witch hunts. News hysteria and moral panics
are not relics of a bygone era, but ever present threats.
While we may look back on eventslike the Salem Witch Trials or
the Satanic Panic of the 1980s with disbelief, it's crucial to

(55:33):
recognize that these phenomena do occur in our modern world in
the form of witch hunts and satanic panics.
We talk about it here with experts, and you can easily
identify them through your DailyNews outlets.
These panics often emerge from the constant and complex
interplay of fear, misinformation, and societal

(55:54):
stress on our lives. Ever present realities in
society. These panics are often fueled by
authority figures who exploit their trusted positions to stoke
fears about unsubstantiated threats to children's safety,
using their own word or selective reporting as a sole
substantiation. When we hear about a threat
that's causing widespread concern, it's important to take

(56:17):
a step back. Together, we can look at the
facts and ask ourselves, is thisparticular worry based on solid
evidence? It's not about dismissing
concerns when presented with news of a community threat.
Consider reflecting on these keyquestions to help maintain a
balanced perspective. What is the source of this
information, and is there verifiable evidence supporting

(56:40):
the claim? Who benefits from spreading this
fear, and are there alternative explanations we haven't
considered? Is the suggested level of alarm
proportional to the actual risk compared to other known threats?
It's natural to feel conflicted when you find yourself
disagreeing with a source you'vetraditionally trusted.

(57:00):
This is an opportunity for growth and critical thinking.
Remember, even reputable sourcescan sometimes be mistaken or
biased. Trust your judgement, seek out
additional perspectives, and be open to reevaluating beliefs
based on new information. It's OK to change your mind when
presented with compelling evidence.
Consider the following fictionalstory as an illustration.

(57:25):
In a quiet suburban community, Dr. E, who's completely
fictional, a respected child psychologist and school board
member, began raising alarms about a supposed new threat to
local children. With her credentials and
standing in the community, parents and officials listened
intently as she spoke of a dangerous online game allegedly

(57:45):
spreading among students. Dr. E claimed this game was
causing children to engage in risky behaviors and even self
harm. She cited vague statistics and
anonymous case studies, creatinga sense of urgency and fear
among parents. Local media picked up the story,
amplifying her warnings without thoroughly fact checking her
claims. As panic spread, Dr. E advocated

(58:06):
for strict new policies, monitoring students online
activities, banning certain websites, and implementing
mandatory counseling sessions. She positioned herself as the
expert on this crisis, gaining more influence and attention.
However, further investigation revealed a more complex truth.
The online game did exist, but its dangers were greatly

(58:27):
exaggerated. Dr. E, it turned out, had
recently Co founded a private counseling center specializing
in Internet addiction. By amplifying the threat, she
was driving concerned parents toseek her services, significantly
boosting her new business's client base.
Moreover, the panic she created diverted attention and resources
from other more pressing issues facing local youth, such as

(58:49):
underfunded mental health programs in schools and rising
rates of substance abuse. These problems, which require
long term systemic solutions, were overshadowed by the more
sensational but less significantthreat of the online game.
Instigators like Doctor E can target any group or idea,
turning neighbors against each other and undermining the fabric

(59:11):
of communities. The mechanics of these panics?
The rapid spread of unsubstantiated claims, the
demonization of the other, and the suspension of critical
thinking remain remarkably consistent across time and
cultures. In our digital age, the
potential for panic to spread has only increased.
Social media and instant communication can amplify

(59:32):
unfounded fears and conspiracies, giving them a
global reach within hours. It's essential to remain
vigilant and critical, questioning sensational claims
and seeking verified information.
Education about historical panics isn't just an academic
exercise, it's a vital tool for recognizing and resisting
similar patterns in our own time.

(59:53):
By understanding the warning signs and psychological factors
that drive these phenomena, we can work to create a more
rational, compassionate society resistant to the lure of
hysteria. From well-intentioned but
misinformed concerns about emerging technologies to
misplaced blame for complex social issues, modern panics can
have real world consequences. Leading to misallocation of

(01:00:16):
resources, erosion of Community Trust, and implementation of
misguided policies. It's up to all of us to stay
informed, think critically, and promote a culture of reason and
empathy. Thank you, Sarah.
You're welcome. Thank you for joining us for
this episode of Witch Hunt. Join us every week.

(01:00:38):
Have a great today and a beautiful tomorrow.