Satanic Panic of the ’80s
About This Episode
In the 1980s, a wave of fear swept across America, fueled by rumors of satanic cults, ritualistic murders, and child abductions. This wave, known as the Satanic Panic, led to mass hysteria, witch hunts, and even false convictions. In this Backtrack, we delve into the origins, impact, and enduring legacy of this dark chapter in American history.
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Show Notes
- The strange origins of the Satanic Panic: How one Canadian book started a worldwide witch hunt » bit.ly/3T8LpDJ
- How ‘Satanic Panic’ Came to Roil the Nation During the 1980s » crimereads.com/satanic-panic-1980s/
- Satanic Panic Phenomenon Explored In Documentary ‘Satan Wants You’ » bit.ly/3yNh3Qu
- How a doctor and his patient sparked a global ‘Satanic Panic’ » bit.ly/3XofcLr
- QAnon Revives America’s ‘Satanic Panic’ » n.pr/4e0uQ4X
- After 30 years, a father is exonerated in ‘satanic panic’ case » bit.ly/3X6KvJ4
- When Dungeons & Dragons Set Off a ‘Moral Panic’ » nyti.ms/3Jl4oVU
- Satanic Panic’s long history — and why it never really ended — explained » bit.ly/4cNJueO
- McGurk effect – Auditory Illusion » bit.ly/3XofcLr
- The Devil Wears Headphones: A Brief History of Backmasking » bit.ly/475OrhZ
- Mail the show » podcast@genxgrownup.com
- Visit us on YouTube » GenXGrownUp.com/yt
Transcript
| Speaker | Transcript |
| Jon | Welcome back Gen X Grown Up podcast listeners to this, the backtrack edition of the Gen X Grown Up podcast. |
| Jon | I am Jon. Joining me as always, of course, is Mo. Hey, man. |
| Mo | Hey, how’s it going? |
| Jon | Would be a show without George. How you doing, George? |
| George | Hey, how’s it going guys? You did that just because I complained about it before. |
| Jon | Just because you complained last time. That’s right. See, we we can’t do it without you as as evidence here. |
| George | Yeah. |
| Jon | In this episode, back in the 1980s, a wave of fear swept across Back in the 1980s, a wave of fear swept across America fueled by rumors of satanic cults, ritualistic murders, and child abductions. This wave known as the satanic panic led to mass hysteria, witch hunts, and even false convictions. In this backtrack, we delve into the origins, impact, and enduring legacy of this dark chapter in American history. and And it is, warning you, listener, it there is some dark stuff. |
| Jon | when we dig into the satanic panic. |
| Mo | Oh yeah. |
| Jon | So be prepared. ah If you’d rather not hear about dark stuff, wait, listen to the fourth listener email before you tune out because on a up note, we have a great piece of fourth listener email. |
| Jon | And I have to mention because he mentions at the end of our email, we call the fourth listener because look, there’s three of us. There’s myself, George and Mo. If anyone else listens, well, that’s our fourth listener. Although George allegedly has says he doesn’t always listen. |
| Jon | And our fourth listener this time, |
| George | I’m it’s not allegedly I’ve actually said that. |
| Jon | Oh, it’s verifiable. He doesn’t listen. Okay. |
| George | I know I’m not saying whether it’s verifiable that I do or don’t listen. I’m just saying it’s verifiable that I’ve said that, which is what you said was allegedly said. |
| Jon | Okay. That you have said it. Oh, I see. I see. Okay. All right. You really walked that, that razor’s edge of legality. I liked that. That’s why you’re so good at debate. |
| George | Who’s one more debates in the group. That’s all I’m saying. |
| Jon | Mm-hmm. That’s there we go. That’s it. That’s why our fourth listener for this episode is longtime listener supporter, Vern. The subject line of his email was, the Dukes of Hazzard. |
| George | Hmm. |
| Jon | He says, Jon loved the Dukes of Hazzard podcast. My best memory of the Dukes is the slot car set that I had as a kid. It was a figure eight track with a jump included. |
| Jon | I played with that thing for hours. It was never a fair race as I’m fairly certain the old General Lee was always faster than Roscoe’s patrol car, no matter how well you raced. |
| George | Yeah. |
| Jon | the patrol cars light bar, the patrol cars light bar on top did light up. And I even thought maybe it was the light slowing it down. |
| Mo | good yeah It It’s taking some of the power, maybe? |
| Jon | Yeah, so I borrowed. |
| Mo | Yeah, I can see that. |
| Jon | Yeah, a little bit of the voltage maybe. Yeah. So Vern says I borrowed a soldering iron and remove the light, but the General Lee still won every race. So he wraps it up. |
| George | I would imagine it would have something to do with the motor that the electricity was feeding less so than the electricity. |
| Jon | Mm-hmm. Right? Yeah, yeah. Just you got to put the General E as faster. If you’re gonna pick one, it’s got to be that one. |
| George | Yeah. |
| Jon | Yeah, of course. |
| Mo | Yeah, yeah. |
| Jon | Vern wraps it up by saying thanks for bringing us some good memories and thanks for everything y’all do. And the words of the balladeer, y’all come back now, you hear? Vern. He has a PS though. |
| Jon | He says, always striving to be the best fourth listener. |
| Mo | Oh |
| Jon | Heck, I might as well call myself the third listener since George claims that he ain’t listening. Insert Roscoe’s laugh here. |
| Mo | geez. |
| Jon | you do |
| Jon | So yeah, he’s calling you out. Again, not verifiable as we’ve established. It’s just alleged and it has been said. That’s all. Vern, thank you so much for taking the time to write, Anderson. Vern, thank you so much for taking the time to write in and tell us what you thought of our Dukes of Hazzard backtrack. We love that you did. We love it every time any of our listeners takes the time to write in. If you would like your email featured here on the show, it’s dropdeadeasy. Just hit us up at podcast at genxgrownup.com. You know, we read every single one of most of them, just like Vern’s. We’ll eventually make the show. All right, time to jump into the backtrack on Satanic Panic after this quick break. All right. |
| Jon | So just be forewarned. And I do want to thank ah fourth listener Jojo Granham, who suggested this episode some time ago via discord. That was his idea. And I finally got to, we finally got around to was doing it. |
| Mo | Finally got to it, yay! |
| Jon | Yeah. Now, we’ll start with the Satanic Panic is the name given to the moral scare of the 1980s that devil worshippers were hiding in plain sight throughout American society, secretly indoctrinating children into the occult and ritually ah abusing them. That’s what they said anyway. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Mo | Yeah, and I… |
| George | I thought it was just my father being an asshole, but you know if it caused a problem, I apologize. |
| Jon | I don’t think it’s his fault, but he i mean that could have played into it, sure. |
| Mo | Yeah. And. Yeah, I could have, you know, I think part of they said, but um kind of contributed to it is that, you know, this is also the time with like kind of the latchkey kids. And so, you know, parents are getting more and more scared that, you know, kids weren’t in their control all the time. And what’s, what are they doing when they’re home? You know, they, you know, worshiping Satan or whatever else or, or, you know, even lights on. I have no idea. |
| Jon | I read somewhere that another potential cause, not a cause, but a reason we were susceptible to believing all this was like we’re looking for a boogeyman. Like we’d just gotten out of Vietnam. That war was wrapping up. |
| Jon | We had not yet gotten into the Cold War and that scare. And so otherwise, like what was there to be afraid of? And so it’s almost like Americans need an an evil to be afraid of, to combat against. |
| Mo | Mm hmm. |
| Jon | And so when this came out, they were quick to latch onto it maybe. |
| George | Possibly. I mean, just something to what Mo was talking about earlier with the latchkey kids that made me something pop in my head was we’ve talked about this in other podcasts in the past. |
| George | Our generation is one who, um, psychiatrists and psychologists of the day told our parents and told us as we were growing up and maturing during this time, that you needed to be more present in your children’s lives before this in the previous generations. |
| Jon | Hmm. |
| George | you know kids started working at much earlier ages, ah parents basically were like, you know you’re your own person now, once you can feed and clothe yourself, you know you’re not my responsibility. |
| Mo | Mhm. |
| George | We became like that helicopter parenting thing and that got sold to us and that’s what we did to our kids. |
| Jon | Yeah. |
| George | And I think this is kind of some of the starting points of that thought process that psychiatrists and psychologists had at the time of |
| Jon | I’d agree. |
| George | Well, these kids are going to go astray and the 70s movements of the Vietnam era are all because parents weren’t parenting their children properly. So they swung the pendulum from one side to the other. |
| Jon | Hmm. |
| George | And this, in my opinion, was just kind of one of the one of the scary offshoots of that entire thought process. |
| Mo | Yeah, it it makes a lot of sense. |
| Jon | Yeah. |
| Mo | um You know, they tie a lot of this back, if you can believe it or not, to a single book that came out in 1980. |
| George | yeah Hmm. |
| Mo | It was called Michelle Remembers. |
| Jon | Oh man, this thing. |
| Mo | And the whole premise of the book was it was a a Canadian psychiatrist and his patient who eventually became his wife, which is kind of weird. um They basically he threw hypnosis and told all these other other methods. |
| Jon | Yeah, quite kosher. |
| Mo | supposedly brought back all these memories that she had of just horrific. |
| George | The repressed childhood memory kind of stuff. |
| Mo | Oh yeah. |
| Jon | That yes. |
| Mo | But I was telling like, I mean, but not like minor thing. I’m not like, Oh, I had a baby and then they sacrificed it. And I mean, it was, it was just, just crazy, crazy stuff. |
| Mo | But for some reason he was, they were on every talk show. |
| George | Hmm. |
| Mo | They were, everybody was interviewing them. It was on every team, you know, it was everywhere. |
| George | Yeah, I will. |
| Mo | And people, and at the time people didn’t have a reason to not believe her. |
| George | No, to me, this feels exactly like a Donahue segment, the way you were describing it. |
| Jon | Hmm. |
| Mo | Oh, it it definitely, it was actually, I think it was. |
| Jon | Hmm. |
| George | There’s no question in my mind, I could see his little gray haired ass asking people in the audience, so what do you think about the baby and what happened? |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| George | And you know, it was all for monetary motivational purposes, right? It’s all about selling the book. |
| Mo | ces Sensationalism. Yeah. |
| George | Yeah. |
| Jon | Yeah, that book was so, first the fact that people just accepted it at face value, but the more you dig into it, I watched this documentary about that book and kind of stuff around it, crazy stuff that like, as you said, they got married later. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Mo | Hmm. |
| Jon | He was married at the time that he met her, ah this Michelle, and they got divorced and later married the patient, so there’s that. |
| George | Mm hmm. Upstanding guy, right? |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Jon | And then there was like an interviews, when they would ask her the thing she remembered, she would look to him And they’re like, why is that? Oh, well, as you you pegged it, George, the repressed memories, that was a thing that has since been largely, like not totally debunked. |
| George | Mm hmm. |
| Mo | yeah |
| Jon | And she would say, oh, well, he took those, he was cleansing me, took those away from me, so I don’t have them anymore. He has to tell me what I said when I was under hypnosis, because I don’t have the memory now. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Jon | It was repressed, and now he helped me purge it. What? You don’t remember, but it it was, yeah, it was just, Like why couldn’t we have looked at it with a critical eye then? I think all those factors we talked about, we were susceptible and open to something crazy like that and weren’t looking critically. |
| Mo | Yeah. Um, I watched that same documentary and the thing also that got me was like with just minimal investigative reporting, like not heavily in depth reporting, but like just minimal, where was she on these dates when this happened? |
| Jon | Yeah. Mm-hmm. |
| Mo | They said that it like supposedly she, this thing happened like in so it’s the central America or something, but she was in Connecticut or something like documented in Connecticut. |
| Jon | Yeah, it could have happened. |
| Mo | So unless they found a way to fly her there and back in a day, there was just no way this all could have happened. |
| George | Well, you know, you talk about it, Mo, you said the phrase there, basic, minimal investigative journalism. |
| Mo | he Yeah. |
| George | This was really the timeframe when all of that went away because we started going to CNN, the 24 hour news cycle, all of that type of stuff. |
| Jon | Yeah. yeah |
| George | And so journalism became less about telling the truth and more about getting ratings. Now, Jon, you were a news director for years, so you know that even if you want to tell the truth, |
| George | If there’s something that’s going to get a bigger number of people watching, your producers are going to put that on the air over the thing that’s maybe a little less sensationalistic, regardless of what truth is there. |
| Jon | Mm-hmm. Well, you heard the line. If it bleeds, it leads. |
| Mo | Lease it leads. |
| George | Yeah. |
| Jon | Yeah. Yeah. Well, it’s not about telling a lie. It’s about telling the most sensational version of the truth possible because ultimately it’s a business and you get ratings. |
| Mo | Mm hmm. |
| Jon | Yeah. |
| George | Well, but in this case, obviously the moralistic viewpoint of what the truth is went out the window. They didn’t give a shit about what the truth was. And I would argue that a lot of these probably started off on the talk show circuit, right? |
| Jon | Right. |
| Jon | Mm-hmm. |
| George | The Donna Hughes and her, all those, all that stuff. And that’s probably what led the media to feel like it was okay to cover it because it was already out there on television, which we at the time considered all of that media. |
| Jon | Right. It must already be vetted. |
| George | And if it’s on TV, it’s gotta be the truth, right? |
| Jon | Must be true. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Jon | Yeah. |
| George | Yeah. |
| Jon | Well, and you you nailed it, man. Even though there was no evidence, and despite how, or maybe because of how lurid these things were, I mean, some people were claiming that in these cults, they were forced to have children just to sacrifice those children. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Jon | And yet there was no evidence they had ever had a child. It didn’t matter. The media got absolutely captivated and it became the frequent subject of talk shows all through the 80s. One of the big ones, Geraldo Rivera, already known for sensational stuff. |
| Mo | Oh, yeah. |
| Jon | He did this, I think it was a two and a half or three hour special called Devil Worship Exposing Satan’s Underground. |
| George | Sheesh. |
| Jon | He released it the week before Halloween in 1988. |
| Mo | Oh my God. |
| George | Of course. |
| Jon | And he has since gone back. I don’t know the Geraldo has ever apologized for anything, but he has certainly addressed this and said that and acknowledged we didn’t verify whether or not things were factual or not. |
| Jon | We were just reporting on what these people were telling us they experienced. |
| Mo | Right. |
| Jon | And that is a sucker’s way to get out of any culpability for. |
| George | Yeah, that’s not reporting. |
| Mo | Oh, big time. |
| George | That’s repeating. Those are two different fucking things. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Jon | There you go. That’s right. Yeah, you didn’t check it. You just let them ramble and ramble. Yeah. |
| Mo | It was just crazy, that stuff. |
| Jon | Hmm. |
| Mo | Because there was also another book that came out, now this came out a lot of years earlier, it was called The Satan Cellar, which was like a best-selling book like in 72. |
| Jon | Okay. |
| Mo | And supposedly again, it was like a memoir. It was like a true story or based on a true story of a guy who’s like, he led a cult of like 1500 Satanists and they were raping and sacrificing and cats and dogs laying together. |
| Mo | I mean, it was just, you know, Um, and the, and basically it was like, you know, and the Christian groups really latched onto this book and there was like, it was almost like required reading because this is what could happen if you’re not here, you know, this kind of stuff. |
| George | Sure. |
| Mo | And then again, it took like a minimal amount of effort and someone said, Oh, this is a lot of crap. You know, like this couldn’t have happened, you know. |
| Jon | Yeah. Yeah. Little chickens. All it would have taken. |
| George | ah you you know there’s a lot of stuff that goes around this time frame that basically makes us more susceptible to believing in these truths right like you talk about the Geraldo thing I keep wondering did he find her ah her hidden memories in Jimmy Hoffa safe at some point during that fucking special right I mean this guy was known for that kind of shit but also in pop culture stuff that we |
| Jon | Okay. |
| Mo | Yeah, I still remember that one. That was terrible. |
| George | believed or knew previous to this point to be fiction movies movies were largely fiction based like there were documentaries but you didn’t go see them in the theater really like that was something different |
| Jon | Mm hmm. |
| Mo | This is a PBS kind of thing, right? |
| Jon | Okay. |
| George | Yeah, exactly. |
| Jon | Yeah. |
| George | So most movies that we would go to the theater at the time in the late 60s through the mid to late 70s, we would think of as being fictional. But three films in particular that definitely had the Satanism slant toward them started out in 68 with Rosemary’s Baby, |
| George | 73, the scariest film I have ever seen to this date in my life, The Exorcist, right? |
| Mo | e |
| George | And then the Omen in 76 with Damien and his little hee-haw, hee-haw, whatever noise, you know, means you’re gonna get stabbed with an iron stake or some shit. |
| Mo | Oh, yeah. |
| Jon | Yeah, Darmé news. |
| Mo | Head gets iced off. Yeah. Yeah. |
| George | It just, it basically… made us more susceptible to listening to stuff. There was a scholar named Joseph Laycock. oh Patients hypnotized by therapists to recover those memories of those childhood traumas seemed to be recalling scenes from those films that they had previously seen. |
| Jon | internalized and then pretend it was me. ah |
| George | I mean, it’s you see it all the time. There was this one really great episode of a TV show that I love called Castle. And in it, there was a guy who was murdered. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| George | And then all of a sudden, like multiple people started coming to the precinct and like saying that they had committed the murder. And it turned out they had all been hypnotized while watching a film production of the person being murdered. |
| George | And then the person got murdered in that way to try and cover it up. |
| Jon | Oh. |
| George | And the only reason it got debunked was because all the people kept coming forward and saying, it was me. I did it here. I did this. It’s that kind of thing that sheds light on what was the hysteria of that timeframe. |
| Mo | yeah |
| Jon | Yeah. |
| Mo | Yeah. It actually reminds me of like the whole thing with like UFO abductions. Remember that was a big deal. |
| George | Yeah. |
| Mo | And it was funny because, and people basically, their stories were basically repeating stories that people have said before, right? |
| Jon | Right. |
| Jon | Mm hmm. |
| Mo | It wasn’t like they’re coming up with a new idea. |
| George | Yeah. |
| Mo | It’s like, Oh, small gray men, you know, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, I mean, it was, it was, this it was so consistent that people were like, okay, there’s something up here. Like, you know, it can’t be exactly the same for everybody because memory by itself is not perfect. |
| George | sure |
| Jon | Sure, of course, yeah. And I don’t know how much I wanna go into this, but, and you alluded to it ah most several times already, it wasn’t just the paranoia. |
| Jon | People believed this, it built upon itself with the media and the books and the films and to the point that, I mean, people were, not that not the victims who claimed that they were in Satanic cults, but people were prosecuted, jailed, |
| George | Sure. |
| Mo | Yes. |
| George | but Sure. |
| Jon | They lost big chunks of their life for things that have since been proven false, but the hysteria around it. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Jon | If you take the book for example the take the book, for example, Michelle remembers in 1980, the book that, no, I’m not single-handedly, it is often cited as the thing that triggered satanic panic. |
| Jon | It has almost completely been debunked at this point. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| George | Yeah. |
| Jon | all of it, all of it. And yet so many lives were impacted, lives were ruined, people were accused of things that they didn’t do. and And I think probably a lot of people who claim to have these memories were also victims of the system that made them believe that this must be true. |
| Mo | Yeah. Mm hmm. |
| Jon | And it’s just, it’s it is crippling to think that that we could be susceptible to that. And yet there it was just 40 years ago, we lived through it and nobody asked any questions until, you know, decade after it. |
| George | Well, ah you know, you talk about the reasons, right? The book was the thing that people target as the start, but you also mentioned earlier, we needed something new to fear. |
| Jon | Mm-hmm. |
| Jon | Yeah. |
| George | Right. You were talking about we had just gotten out of Vietnam war. Cold war wasn’t really a big thing yet. I get that. But there was a fear that was developing around this time. And that was the fear of the rise of serial killers, right? |
| George | You got Zodiac, you got alphabet killer, Ted Bundy is early eighties as well. |
| Jon | Oh, yeah. |
| Mo | Mm hmm. |
| George | You got all these serial killers that are kind of getting notoriety in the media at that time. You couple that along with these books hitting the talk show circuit. You couple that with these movies that had just come out a few years earlier that are very you know scary and satanically laced with all of the motifs and whatnot that people are now saying, this happened to me and recalling scenes and whatnot. |
| Jon | Mm hmm. |
| George | It’s no wonder that this happened. If anything, I’m surprised it didn’t stay a hold of our collective consciousness for a longer period of time than just the one decade, basically. |
| Jon | Yeah. |
| Mo | Yeah. Is also, I think people were trying to find a reason, you know, especially things like serial killers, like what, why would a person go around and kill random people for 10 years? |
| George | Mm-hmm. |
| Mo | You know, I mean, and I think it just, it just blew people’s brains. Cause no one, you can’t get around it because you’re a sane person and hard for a sane person to understand that. |
| Jon | Must have been the devil. Had to be. Yeah. |
| George | Well, I mean, I could understand it, but I forget who comedian that what comedian it was that had that old joke. |
| Mo | But, you know, Oh yeah. But George, you know, yeah. Uh, that’s why we do these remote. |
| Jon | well You understand it, but you don’t act on it. that’s that That’s the differentiation, George. To the best of our knowledge, you don’t act on it. We’ll say that. |
| Mo | Right. |
| George | I’m not going to slap a woman, but I can understand. |
| Jon | ah |
| Mo | And then they had people like the Zodiac Killer putting like symbols and signs in the notes and stuff like that, which again, everyone just said it had to be. |
| George | Mm hmm. |
| Jon | Mm-hmm, cryptic. |
| Mo | That’s why this is happening, you know. |
| George | because every symbol has to be satanic, even though the symbols weren’t satanic at all, but their symbols, they’ve got to be satanic. |
| Mo | Yes. No. |
| Jon | Right. |
| George | That looks like a pentagram. |
| Jon | It’s the unknown fear, fear of the unknown. |
| Mo | Yes. |
| George | Yeah. |
| Jon | Therefore, it must be this satanic thing. |
| George | All right. |
| Jon | It’s black and white. If it’s not something I know, it’s the anti it’s the evil. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| George | Yeah. |
| Mo | You know, and the other thing that came out watching that documentary was how I think part of it was just not having a lot of knowledge as far as psychiatric knowledge of like, you know, embedded memories and how you could create memories in somebody and how easy that is to do, you know, especially if somebody is already damaged in some way, you know. |
| Jon | Hmm. |
| George | Sure. |
| Jon | oh |
| Mo | um And so then you hear like, especially like the book and that one school, there was a school where like, a teacher was like, they thought that he was abusing her students, like her, like, like young kids, like, you kind like it’s a kindergarten and a psychiatrist went in there and every single kid had a story about how the teacher abused them. |
| Mo | Every, every single kid, which that by itself should have raised like alarm bells, you know? |
| George | Sure. |
| Mo | Um, but yeah, as similar stories. |
| Jon | Right. And similar stories invariably, right? Yeah. |
| Mo | And then they found out that the person, the psychiatrist who was interviewing them was asking leading questions. You know, and, and, and kids want to make adults happy, generally speaking, right? |
| George | Mm hmm. |
| Jon | Damn it. |
| Mo | They want approval, you know? |
| George | Sure. |
| Jon | Right. |
| Mo | So if they see that, Oh, if they answered this way, that his eyebrows went up. |
| Jon | Mm hmm. They seem excited about that answer. |
| Mo | Yeah. Oh, he’s interested now. |
| Jon | Therefore, yeah, right. |
| Mo | Or he’s keeps now he’s interested in listening to me. And it was just horrible. Cause that one teacher went to prison for like, was it like three years or four years before they debunked it and got out, you know, career is shot lives just. |
| George | Wow. |
| Jon | Yeah. |
| Jon | Yeah, there was a couple from a daycare in Canada that ah that was like spent almost 10 years in prison before finally, somebody dug into it enough and said, you know, but all all the psychiatric reasons, the evidentiary reasons, they’re like, well, this couldn’t have actually happened. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Mo | 10 years in prison. |
| Mo | Mm hmm. |
| Mo | Right. |
| Jon | They’ve got to, you know, but the damage has been done at that point, they’ve lost 10 years of their life. |
| Mo | Oh, yeah, absolutely. And then you look at these psychiatrists also like the one who did that preschool, you know, they became a celebrity. You know, they were on all the talk shows. |
| George | Sure. |
| Mo | They were on the news. They wrote books that became best sellers. |
| Jon | Book advances, sure. |
| Mo | You know, and now it’s like in their best interest to keep this going, you know, and to say, this is real. And maybe some of them actually believe it. Maybe something, some want to just believe it. You know, I don’t know, but it’s, it was a lot of just bad science that kind of caused this or lack of science. |
| Jon | Yeah. |
| Jon | Or lack of science. |
| George | So that’s the, that’s one thing that I always think about. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| George | So you guys know, I’ve gotten a lot of benefit from talking to a therapist in my adult life, especially the last few years, but I still don’t consider psychology or psychiatry a science. |
| Jon | Yeah. |
| Mo | Mm hmm. Oh yeah, me too. |
| Jon | yeah |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| George | The reason why I don’t consider it to be a science, it’s nothing that you can do like test and proofs with, right? It’s nothing where you can, you know, like run an experiment that yields results because it’s all based in emotional manipulation. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| George | And all of that is subject to the feelings of the person that’s being talked to or that’s doing the interview or any of that stuff. So I don’t understand how it can ever be considered a science. I’m not saying it’s not helpful, but it’s not a science. Just like baking a pizza is not mathematics. I’m sorry, I like both, but one is not the other. So That’s just my opinion, but I know that one of the things that truly affected us as Gen Xers growing up during this timeframe was how satanic panic led people to condemn other things that we loved growing up, right? |
| Jon | Mm hmm. |
| Jon | Oh, yep. |
| Mo | Oh, yeah. |
| George | So you’re talking about |
| Jon | Yep. |
| George | occult-adjacent media properties, right Ouija boards, comic books, you know stuff like that, video games, but then also some specific things that are probably more associated with the satanic panic and what it happened |
| Mo | A cult adjacent. I love that. |
| Jon | Mm hmm. Yep. |
| George | Dungeons and Dragons, obviously the big one, movies created about it and whatnot, and heavy metal music, which a lot of people are very into, but really got lambasted with this whole label of Satan worshiping music kind of stuff. |
| Jon | Just as George led us in a minute ago, one of the many things that were impacted slash influenced slash affected slash blamed for a lot of the satanic panic was music, music oriented, a lot of heavy metal especially. |
| George | That’s cool. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Jon | ah Now you remember in 1985, right in the middle of the satanic panic, the PMRC was created by Tipper Gore, |
| Mo | Oh, yeah. Tipper gore. |
| Jon | But yeah, it it was, let’s have this parents meor this Parents Music Resource Center, which effectively was, we’re gonna decide what music is good for your kids. And the criteria was partially sex, partially drugs, partially devil worship. |
| Mo | Oh, |
| Jon | Those were kind of the things. Remember she had the list called the Filthy 15? There was this template saying, because people would say, what’s profanity? |
| Mo | oh yeah. |
| Jon | Well, you’ll know it when you see it or hear it. Well, she was like, no, no, here’s a list of what profanity is. I’ve decided. and then the labels that would go on stuff. And again, it was it sex, was it drugs, or was it the occult? |
| Jon | Those were the things. And a lot of the groups that were in that Filthy 15 are groups we’re gonna talk about here in this segment. People like ACDC, Judas Priest, Wasp, Def Leppard, Black Sabbath, right? |
| George | Hmm. Hmm. |
| Jon | And they were they were bands that were, yeah, they were dark because that’s what heavy metal was. That didn’t mean that they were into the occult or devil worship, but here we were in the satanic panic. |
| Jon | That’s what Tipper Gore decided. |
| Mo | But in a way, though, they were kind of like ripe for being a target because a lot of these heavy metal bands, like they went on to a lot of the devil imagery and the satanic imagery. |
| Jon | Sure. |
| George | Oh, they were selling their side just like everybody else was selling the other side, right? |
| Mo | And so so it was almost like they were like. |
| Jon | Yeah. |
| Mo | Right. Exactly. So it was almost like, you know, it was just like, I mean, they were such an obvious target, you know? |
| Jon | Yeah, yep. |
| George | No question. |
| Mo | Um, no, it was funny because they, not funny, but they talked about this guy who killed his friend in New York while he was stoned. Right. |
| George | Hmm. |
| Mo | But when he was arrested, he was wearing an AC DC shirt. |
| George | Hmm. |
| Jon | Oh, the music did it. |
| Mo | Oh, it was obviously the music. |
| Jon | Oh, of course the music did it. |
| George | Yeah. |
| Mo | And of course, all the reporting suddenly said like, oh, was that a factor in it? What does that have to do with it? No, I had nothing to do with anything. |
| Jon | ah |
| Mo | But, you know, it was just, again, just like the panic. And again, I think people trying to find a reason for something that maybe they can’t understand why somebody would do something. Right. |
| Jon | There you go. |
| Mo | Why would you do it? |
| George | Yeah. |
| Jon | Don’t understand it. |
| George | And at the same time though, they didn’t ban the post office for all the postal workers going in and killing all their people wearing that uniform. |
| Mo | You know. |
| Mo | Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. That should be a whole other us backtrack going postal. |
| George | Come on. |
| Jon | zing |
| George | We’ll just go dark the whole year, like postal and ACDC. |
| Jon | Yep. |
| Mo | Yeah. Um, but then it had another incident back in 85 where, um, ah somebody, they tried to, I’m sorry, where they tried to sue Judas priest because, you know, after a night of partying, this guy and his friends went to a park and shot themselves. |
| Mo | And they, his claim, cause when does his friend died? |
| George | Yeah. |
| Mo | He didn’t. And he claimed that it was some little messaging in an album that made him do it. You know, it I mean, um you know, who was it? |
| Jon | Yeah. |
| Mo | It was some comedian. I think it was Chris Rock. He said something like, if you’re so on the edge where a song can tip you over the balance, then you are too far gone anyway. |
| Jon | Yeah. |
| George | I mean, it’s not the only one they’ve tied other music to crazy real world happenstances. ACDC had a song called Night Prowler and popular media and Tipper Gore and all. |
| Mo | Hmm. |
| Jon | Yep. |
| George | Everybody tried to tie that to Richard Nightstalker Ramirez, the satanic killer, blah, blah, blah, you know, whole greater loss. |
| Jon | Yeah. |
| George | There’s been like a million movies on this guy in the last like five, 10 years. But I found that one really ironic and funny because Who came up with the term night stalker? |
| George | The fucking media. Richard didn’t give himself that name. The fucking news people did. |
| Mo | Because it sounded good. |
| George | ACDC didn’t like, they came up with their own name. |
| Mo | Mm hmm. |
| George | Aside from that, it’s just bonkers that somebody would say, yeah, they both had the word night in them. |
| Jon | They sound similar. It must be music’s fault. |
| Jon | It was really great. |
| George | They did it. |
| Jon | That’s all it matters. I listened to a really fascinating podcast about the satanic panic leading up to this. And one of the things that that hadn’t thought occurred to me, but I wanted to mention during our show is that There are religions that pray to a deity for good, for wholesomeness, for you know health and that kind of thing. |
| George | Sure. |
| Jon | And so the whole satanic panic circled around people that worship the opposite of what we do. Taking care of children, they wanna hurt children. We pray to God, they pray to Satan. |
| Jon | you know They want good things to happen, they want terrible things to happen. There has never been an organized official documented religion ever of people who want evil and worship Satan. |
| Jon | In that way, there are Satanists, but that’s not what they believe, that actually do that. It’s because people, they want to hate the anti, the negative. What isn’t what we believe. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Jon | It’s so hard to think about shades of gray. It’s much easier. Well, if we’re the light, well, then whatever’s going on, that must be the darkness and it’s the absolute worst that you could have. and it’s |
| George | Well, the the satanic church, though, wouldn’t that that if I remember correctly, and um I’m sure I’m possibly be wrong here, but they worshiped more anarchy, which was the absence of law rather than the the hope that evil would happen. |
| Jon | Yeah, kind of. |
| Jon | Mm hmm. I right. |
| Mo | yeah |
| Jon | I don’t know how much we could both know part of the truth in reality here. I don’t know how much anarchy it is, but you’re right on that it’s not about wanting evil or bad to happen. It’s more about it’s the religion of me, me, me. |
| Jon | It’s I want good things to happen to me. |
| Mo | Mm hmm. |
| George | Mm hmm. |
| Jon | It’s not about altruism. It’s like, do what feels good. If it’s if it’s sex, if it’s it’s selfishness, it’s about doing things for you, not for others. |
| George | So selfishness. |
| Jon | That’s kind of what real the real, you know, Church of Satan, that’s what it really is about. It’s not about worshiping Evil, it’s about worshiping earthly delights and pleasures. |
| George | Gotcha. |
| Mo | As a matter of fact, from that documentary, because there there was a there is an official Church of Satan that was founded in the late 60s during an official church in the United States. |
| Jon | Mm-hmm. |
| George | Yeah. |
| Jon | Absolutely. |
| Mo | And they basically sued the writers of Michel Remembers because he kept using that term, Church of Satan, Church of Satan. |
| Jon | Yeah. |
| George | Oh. |
| Mo | And they’re like, no, no, no, no. |
| Jon | Yeah, that’s not us. We didn’t do any of that. |
| Mo | Unless you’re talking about us, in which case we’ll sue you for slander. |
| Jon | Right. |
| Mo | That’s not us. And so the actual other revisions, they had to actually take those terms out because They didn’t apply, you know, and again, they’re mostly about getting your reward now. |
| Jon | Yeah. |
| Mo | That’s basically where it kind of is like, you know, get your pleasure now because they can get happen later. |
| Jon | Yeah. |
| Mo | You know, so. |
| George | Right. |
| Jon | Yeah. Well, we’re talking about music. You can’t talk about music in the 80s without MTV. They were also throwing gas on the fire, not on purpose, but look, they’re showing rock videos and what’s in rock videos. |
| Mo | she |
| Jon | It’s imagery of stuff from heavy metal. It’s guys dressed in black and it’s all kind of demonic. It was fun, right? It was about this, this, ah this, this, taboo subject. |
| Jon | It was really the the the occult of appearance is what people were doing. ah There was a documentary on 2020 called Devil Worshippers that said, but but yeah, those right, that’s not loaded language. |
| Mo | That’s not an unbiased title. |
| Jon | It was It was documenting all those symbols associated with the occult, like 666, pentagrams, inverted crosses, stuff like that. All things you would expect from album covers on heavy metal bands ever since the genre came along. |
| Jon | Poor MTV, they can’t win. |
| Mo | Yeah, I mean, they even had some videos that they wouldn’t show until later and they they try to try to help people basically with this, you know, or try to so come halfway and help, you know, parents. |
| Mo | But, you know, yeah. |
| Jon | We’ll try to not be criticized because we’re trying to run a business here, yeah. |
| Mo | Yeah. But I mean, they had people like, you know, Marilyn Manson, right, who was, you know, essentially it was a nightmare to pretty much every parent and religion out there. Right. |
| Mo | um You know, but when Columbine happened, they tried to pin it on him. You know, they said it was because that’s one of the albums that person happened to have one of the CDs that the person happened to have on them. |
| Mo | You know, oh, that must have been the cause when again, it, you know, it had nothing to do with it. |
| George | Right. |
| Jon | Yeah. |
| George | Yeah. Causality and causation, right? |
| Mo | Right. Exactly. |
| Jon | There you go. |
| George | Yeah. I mean, I remember, and we’ll talk, I’ll talk a little bit more in detail about it in a segment later on, but I specifically remember how, uh, ACDC was focused on by some religious groups because they had an album called highway to hell. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Jon | Mm-hmm, great album. |
| George | and Bon Scott then died right after that album and then they found a new lead singer and the next album was called Back in Black. |
| Jon | Mm-hmm, yep. |
| George | Now let me tell you religious people went nuts with those two fucking titles. They lost their shit. See he was going to hell and then he died and ladies and gentlemen then the devil comes back as a new singer in ACD. |
| Jon | Oh, ah. |
| George | Oh my gosh it was |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| George | crazy. But one of the things that they really tied to music and satanic panic was our wonderful term of back masking. |
| Mo | Oh. |
| Jon | oh yeah |
| George | Everybody knows, but from Wikipedia, back masking is a recording technique in which a message is recorded backwards onto a track that is meant to be played forward. It’s a deliberate process where a message found through phonetic reversal may be unintentional. |
| Jon | And I actually looked up the phonetic reversal, because I’m like, what are you talking about? That’s not playing it backwards. That’s like, if you try to say words backwards, like, Hello, and you go, Oh, like you try to make it set the the the yeah it’s gonna sound crazy to play it backwards. |
| Mo | Right. |
| George | Right. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Jon | It’s not going to work. But that’s one thing that’s often and unintentional, like they said, but they just said it was all your fault. Everything that they did on an album had to be intentional. |
| George | Absolutely. And we talk about, you know, ACDC highway to hell. That was one of the albums labeled with the back masking moniker Led Zeppelin stairway to heaven. |
| Jon | Mm. |
| Jon | Yep. |
| George | They’re going to heaven. Why would you label that as Batman? But they did. But even the Beatles were labeled as back maskers. |
| Mo | oh yeah |
| Jon | Mm hmm. |
| George | And weird Al Jon had a song where he actually did some back masking called nature trail to hell. |
| Jon | Yeah, yeah. Yep. But it was innocuous. |
| George | And they |
| Jon | It wasn’t like Satan worship. It was just saying some stuff backwards. Yeah. |
| George | But they went so far with this whole thing that it actually made it into legislation at different points in our history. I mean, just crazy. |
| Jon | Yeah, so you mentioned a Stairway to Heaven, which I think is really funny. |
| Mo | Oh yeah. |
| Jon | When I was looking this up, I found a little article and they talked about because I’m like, well, what did they say? What was in Stairway to Heaven? Apparently there was a section where if you played it backwards and you but you squint your ears or whatever, you just kind of make it fuzzy. |
| Jon | Listen, people thought they were hearing. There was a little tool shed where he made us suffer, sad Satan. Hmm. But many people said they believed it sounded more like there was a little tushy. He made a super sassy. |
| Jon | So it’s up to interpretation when you hear these things. |
| Mo | Oh my God. |
| Jon | If you’re listening for something that is demonic, you’re probably gonna project that onto it. If you’re just, what does this say? |
| George | Sure. |
| Jon | Maybe you’re gonna hear nonsense, but it depends on what you’re predisposed to look for, looking for patterns and noise. Humans love to do that. |
| George | Yep. |
| Mo | Yeah, I’m going to try to see if I can find this on YouTube and put it in the show notes, but there was a thing where a person that’s playing the same sound. the same word over and over again, but has people mouthing different words over it. |
| Jon | Mm-hmm. |
| Jon | Mm-hmm, yep. |
| Mo | And you would swear on a stack of whatever you want to swear on that the that’s the word that that’s being said, not the actual thing that’s coming over the speakers, because your hearing is just one part of listening. |
| Mo | I mean, it’s like your brain, you know, your vision, everything comes into it, context, you know. |
| Jon | Right. |
| Mo | And so they said it’s so easy to mishear something, you know, and It totally be innocent and normal, but then they hear, you know, the devil wants you to kill your children or whatever health they want to hear. |
| Jon | Yep. |
| George | Well, that predispose thing that you’re talking about reminds me of an episode from the first season of The Irrational where he’s giving a lecture and he plays music to the audience and asks them to say what it means while he’s also projecting words up on the screen and the people hear kind of what they’re seeing. |
| Jon | Mm hmm. |
| Mo | Hmm. |
| Jon | Mm hmm. |
| George | And then he plays it what it really is. And it’s a completely different sentence. And that’s forward, Matt. That’s not even back masking. |
| Mo | That’s not a back masking. |
| Jon | Yes, I go backwards. |
| Mo | That’s forward masking. |
| George | It’s people are predisposed to hear what they want to hear based on what they think they’ve seen. |
| Mo | Mm hmm. |
| George | And it’s, it’s scary that it ended up, you know, in this it caused a lot of people, a lot of problems. |
| Mo | Yeah, it did. |
| Jon | it It really did. It did. Mo, I think it was a few months ago that you led a whole backtrack about Dungeons and Dragons, which was yet another, as George mentioned earlier, one of the kind of the focal points that people pointed to during the satanic panic, we get back, we’re going to talk about that. |
| Mo | Oh, yeah. |
| George | Mm. |
| Jon | And hopefully, you’ll shed some light on it for us. Just 300 bucks. |
| Mo | Yeah, why not? |
| Jon | You’re the expert before you’re the expert again. Okay. |
| Jon | you want to Let’s see, what do we got? escape |
| Mo | You want me to go into this one? Obviously, it seems like you set me up for it. |
| Jon | Yeah, let’s see. There’s a big section here. |
| Mo | I mean, I could just do a general lead and someone could take that. |
| Jon | Well, what is all this? I mean, I didn’t grab this, so I’m going to have to look at it and see. |
| Mo | Uh, I thought I did eat. |
| Jon | There’s all this stuff about bad. |
| Mo | Oh, I think I might’ve hold up. |
| George | Yeah, I didn’t put anything in the D and&D, I don’t think. |
| Mo | Yeah, I think I grabbed most of this stuff. |
| Jon | Let’s see. George, you could probably easily add stranger things or Ouija boards and probably riff off of that and grab one of those. |
| George | Yeah, I can do either or both. |
| Jon | OK, yep. |
| Jon | Yeah, this middle one about I think that’s probably something I drug in there that has nothing to do with BND probably. |
| Mo | I can do the leading and go right into the B-A-D-D thing. |
| Jon | Podcasting covered all. OK, yeah, I’m going to delete that one because that has nothing to do with anything. I must have put that in there. I can definitely talk about Wazes and Monsters and then, Mo, you’ll do those those first couple. |
| Jon | cause I don’t know what that’s about. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Jon | And that’s D and&D specific. OK, good. And after this segment, it’s just the impact and goodbye. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Jon | Cool. |
| Mo | All right, D&D, five, four, three. |
| Jon | Laid on us. |
| Mo | One of the areas I was just so ridiculous, but they were sure it had something to do with Satan was Dungeons and Dragons. Right. As you brought before the break. |
| Jon | Mm hmm. |
| Mo | and I mean, granted, I mean, the game was actually had very little demons. I mean, there was a section of them, but that was a very, very small part of the whole game system. |
| Mo | You know, ah but for some reason, because it was in the monster manual or because you could be evil, like you could pick an evil character and role play as an evil character. You know, all these things together, they just kind of figured that this was something that must be turning our children into whatevers, you know? |
| Jon | And it probably is not even that somebody dug into it and said, oh, you can be evil. It’s just the appearance. I don’t think a lot of parents who were judging Dungeons and Dragons were digging through the monster manual to see what what entities there were. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Jon | Just look at the art on the cover. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Jon | There are these weird creatures that are half man, half you know bull, and there’s a, the DM guides got a giant demon on the front with you like a statue. |
| Mo | Yep. Oh yeah. |
| Jon | It’s just at a glance, just like heavy metal music, I think. the occult and and the scary, that was interesting. And so it was on there. And I think people just judged it by its cover, literally the thing you should never do to a book. |
| Mo | Yeah, I mean, there was actually a group, they actually formed a group called BAD, B-A-D-D, and it stands for Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons. I mean, horrible, horrible naming. |
| Jon | have |
| Mo | They need some better publicists or something like that. But Patricia Pulling joined forces with a psychiatrist named and Thomas Radecki, and they created this thing. |
| Mo | Do you believe they actually create an organization called, wait for it. Bad B A D D which stood for bothered about Dungeons and Dragons. |
| Jon | Bad. |
| George | he |
| George | That, wow. |
| Jon | Bothered. |
| Mo | Bothered. I’m really bothered by this. |
| George | They were reaching on that acronym, weren’t they? |
| Mo | I know. |
| Jon | but |
| George | That was like some old school acrophobia players right there, buddy. |
| Jon | Well, that was reverse engineered. We want to call it bad. The DD is going to be Dungeons and Dragons. |
| Mo | Yes. |
| Jon | What else can we put? |
| Mo | But what’s what’s your yeah. Yeah. but they So anyway, but they saw role playing games and specifically Dungeons and Dragons, because that was most popular one at the time as actual actual satanic cult recruitment tools, you know, that was trying to, you know, get kids involved in Satan, make kids commit suicide, murder, ritual abuse, all that stuff. |
| George | Right. |
| Jon | What? |
| Mo | um And they also yeah thought these like, you know, heavy metal music and, you know, teachers. and I mean, basically, everybody was basically causing your kids to do this. And they started creating all this information and started sharing all this public awareness stuff, um letting the police know that you know if they find a child who had Dungeons and Dragons books, they should handle them you know a certain way and da, da, da, da. And of course, none of these things held up to analysis at all, at all. Matter of fact, they actually did some analysis and found out that Youth suicides over that time period was actually lower for kids that played role-playing games because it was a lot of the social outcasts and stuff that found a home and found you know a group of people that they could relate to. |
| Jon | Mm-hmm. |
| Mo | you know It was just ridiculous. |
| George | Wow. |
| Jon | Like you list all these things and it’s like it induces kids to kill themselves and ritual abuse and all that. I’m like dot, dot, dot based on what evidence? |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Jon | right? It’s like the the the kid with the ACDC shirt, you know, well, what’d you say earlier, right? Correlation is not causation, George, right? |
| George | Right. |
| Mo | Mm hmm. |
| Jon | The fact that you have it, 100% of people that drink water will die. |
| George | Die. |
| Jon | Oh my goodness, must be the reason for it. |
| George | Yeah. |
| Jon | Well, what? Oh, that’s, that’s accurate. And it’s true. But think about it. Just the fact that you’re wearing this shirt or played that game, |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Jon | Yeah, it’s so crazy. it’s I can’t believe bad B-A-D-D. |
| Mo | Bad, just just that just that acronym itself means that you should not take it seriously. |
| Jon | Ridiculous. |
| Jon | It’s dumb. Yeah, it’s dumb. um So speaking of Dungeons and Dragons, do you remember the ah the Tom Hanks game called Mazes and Monsters that he enjoyed playing? |
| George | The game? |
| Mo | The game, oh, yes, the movie. |
| Jon | The movie. that they faked |
| George | Oh, the movie. I was like, huh? |
| Mo | but But the name of the game in the movie was Mazes of Monsters, yeah. |
| Jon | Exactly. |
| George | Yeah, true. |
| Jon | So they they they couldn’t be smurched Dungeons and Dragons. So they’re like, well, let’s see. What’s a dungeon? It’s like a maze. What’s a dragon? It’s like a monster. That’s alliterative. We can do that. |
| Mo | Yeah, let’s get some alliteration here, we’re good to go. |
| Jon | Yeah. Now I rewatched. |
| Mo | Was that the one that took place in caves or something? |
| Jon | Well, part of it, part of it, here’s the crazy thing, right? |
| Mo | Okay. |
| Jon | so It was about these kids that all had problems. First of all, I went back and rewatch some of this movie. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Jon | I couldn’t watch the whole thing because it has 80s pacing and you know how that is. But each of these kids, one was a rich kid and his parents ignored him and just threw money at him. One of the kid who’s A brother had passed away and they were still dealing with that trauma. um Tom Hanks was the kid who he’ was the most normal, probably of the kids, the character he played. And his parents just felt it was bad and had heard it was evil and asked him not to play it. So it was it was forbidden. He was supposed to not do it. And in this film, one of the kids who has problems already, they go off playing their mazes and monsters game in a cave and has a mental break. |
| Jon | And ultimately, it wasn’t even in the cave, Mo. He decided that he needed to go to New York and leap off of one of the Twin Towers because he believed that’s how he would meet up with ah ah a wizard who was going to take him to this magical realm and whatever. |
| Mo | Oh. |
| George | oh |
| Jon | But he had a mental break for real mental issues. But the whole point of the movie, oh, it’s this role playing game. |
| Mo | Uh. |
| Jon | These kids are playing. Have you heard about it? It’s causing them to go crazy. |
| George | Yeah, that movie didn’t age well on a couple of fronts. |
| Jon | Yeah, a whole bunch, a whole bunch, right? |
| Mo | Mm |
| Jon | Not the least of which this is panic, panic, mental health, you know, getting people help. |
| Mo | hmm. |
| George | Mm hmm. |
| Jon | The media was diving right into it. The front of the movie, Mo, and you’re remembering the cave part at the beginning, they jump in in the middle and this guy’s like, you heard about this mazes and monsters game? |
| George | Right. |
| Jon | Yeah, they’re saying it’s related. And they go three, two, one, mazes and monsters, the cause of the problem tonight, possibly, that he has jumped right in and it’s how people behave. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Mo | ah |
| George | ah You want to talk about media properties that are related tangently to this whole scare in Dungeons and Dragons in particular. You guys remember Ouija boards. They’re still out there. |
| Mo | Oh, yeah, he’s still solid, but he’s still by me, yeah. |
| Jon | Oh, yeah. Yeah. |
| George | One of my favorite films that was one of these meant to be serious, but too bad, so bad that you could laugh at it kind of horror films. |
| Mo | Mm hmm. |
| George | Remember Witchboard with Tawny Catane. |
| Jon | ah Yes. |
| Mo | I never know, I don’t know that one. |
| Jon | Yes. |
| George | Right. That was all about her getting linked with a Ouija board and just like these spirits, like they, uh, they came into her and took her over and all this evil shit happened. |
| Jon | Yes. |
| George | But that was all tangentially related to Dungeons dragons. People were talking about, well, it’s in which board? It must be true. Satanic panic, Dungeons dragons, but |
| Jon | Mm hmm. |
| Jon | Oh, yeah, we’re jumping for your butt on a Ouija board. Are you going to jump into the stranger things? |
| George | Yeah. Okay. |
| Jon | OK, let me just do this Ouija board thing real quick. Yeah. You know, you guys will remember that just last year, my daughter moved out. She’s i’m probably an empty nester and she moved out. So she was selling a bunch of stuff she didn’t want. And so she had put a Ouija board up on Facebook Marketplace. |
| George | Well. |
| Mo | Okay. |
| Jon | I kid you not, not one, but two people contacted her, advising her why she shouldn’t sell this, that it’s an affront to God, she should burn it, she should go get forgiveness, because she’s selling a board game on Facebook. |
| Mo | Oh my God. |
| Jon | Can you believe it? |
| George | It’s ingrained. |
| Jon | Yeah, it’s real. |
| George | It’s ingrained in certain cultures now. |
| Mo | oh |
| Jon | Yep. |
| George | And it’s no wonder that one of our favorite nostalgic TV shows didn’t decide to cover the topic of all of this satanic panic stuff in Dungeons and Dragons in Stranger Things season four. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| George | One of the main subplots was all about Eddie Munson, who was played by Joseph Quinn as the leader of the Dungeons and Dragons group. |
| Jon | Mm hmm. |
| Mo | yeah |
| Jon | Mm hmm. |
| George | What was, what was the name of the group? |
| Mo | Hellfire Club. |
| Jon | Hillfire Club. |
| George | Hellfire Club. |
| Jon | Yeah. |
| George | Thank you. The shirts are awesome. I mean, they accused him of murder because he loved heavy metal Metallica bands. And because, you know, he was playing Dungeons and Dragons with all the local slightly like one or two grades lower than him, but he was the leader, right? |
| Jon | Yeah. |
| George | You know, and then they did the best thing ever with that episode in that series. |
| Jon | Right. He must be this big ringleader. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| George | They made him the hero. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Jon | Yeah. |
| George | I really liked how they flipped that script a little bit so that we can all understand how stupid satanic panics, like objectification of Dungeons and Dragons was. |
| George | It was, I’m so happy they did that series. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Jon | You’re right, there were actual demons attacking them and he defeated the demons with Metallica heavy metal music. |
| Mo | Actual demons. |
| Jon | That was the weapon he used to fight evil. |
| Mo | That’s right. |
| Mo | Yeah. And, and the thing is also with this is like, you know, doesn’t drag his role playing, especially in the eighties, they attracted outsiders, right? They attracted the kids who were nerds and couldn’t get along with a lot of people, quiet introverts, you know? |
| Jon | Sure. |
| George | Sure. |
| Jon | The nerds, not the jocks. Yeah. Mm hmm. |
| Mo | I mean, all the people, and those are people that they probably, the parents least understood, you know, of any of them. |
| Jon | Mm hmm. |
| Mo | And so, you know, again, it was like, you know, well, I understand this thing, so it must be bad. |
| Jon | True. |
| Mo | I think is what it kind of came down to. |
| Jon | That’s it. Yeah. And it’s sad, but that’s it’s human nature sometimes. And we’ve got to get over that. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Jon | Okay. |
| Jon | Just so I remember when it started. Dana Carvey. It started in the 80s, 86. Okay, got it. All right. In five, four, three. |
| Jon | We’re now here some 40 odd years past the 80s when to the height of the satanic panic is something we ah people still talk about regularly. I see it as a standard topic. It’s because while it, |
| Jon | Ish went away, it’s it’s its original incarnation went away, its primary form went away, echoes of it continued. And the first one actually, I guess, started in during the Satanic Panic in 86. |
| Jon | And that was a comedic slant on it when Dana Carvey created a character on SNL called the Church Lady. |
| George | Ah. |
| Mo | Satan? |
| George | Mm hmm. |
| Jon | And what was her big thing? |
| Mo | Is it? |
| Jon | Well, how could that happen? Could it be Satan maybe, right? |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Jon | Everything? was created and was the fault of Satan, the devil made you do it. And hilarious. And they still, you know Dana Carvey has gone back into and done revivals of that when you know when he when he would host, guest host, everyone to see that character again. |
| Mo | e |
| Jon | And it was emblematic of, it’ll happening right there midway through the panic. It was a manifestation, I guess, in humor of what people were acting like. And she was, of course, a buffoon, right? |
| Jon | She had no credibility. |
| George | Right. |
| Jon | But that was the point. It was the humor trying to go, look, look at this critically. Look how silly it sounds that all this stuff is the fault of, you know, cults and the devil. It’s made up or it’s a so it’s a standalone thing that is horrible. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Jon | But because your T-shirt was ACDC doesn’t mean that was the cause. |
| Mo | Mm hmm. |
| Mo | So actually, you probably should do. Oh, no, sorry. Sorry. You know, and then nothing. I mean, you guys, I don’t know if you guys heard of pizza gate, that whole conspiracy theory. |
| Jon | Pizza gate. |
| Mo | I mean, I mean. |
| George | No, is that a new delivery service or? |
| Mo | No, it was this thing. It started back in 2016 ish or maybe a little before, but essentially it was a conspiracy theory going around that all these Democrats were all involved in this pedophile ring. |
| Mo | And one of their meeting places was a pizzeria. |
| George | Oh. |
| Mo | And it was so it was called Pizzagate and it was this whole long involved conspiracy with Anthony Weiner. Remember that guy? And then when he got arrested, I found these books and had all these names of all these other people who were involved in this. |
| Jon | Yeah, yeah. |
| Mo | another And course we look at, we laugh like, okay, this is silly. This is stupid. Somebody went into one of these pizzerias with a weapon and started shooting. |
| George | Mmm. |
| Jon | Oh my God. |
| Mo | You know, no one got killed. |
| Jon | but Based on what evidence? That’s the thing though. |
| Mo | No. Well, his thing was that it was true. |
| Jon | It’s it’s that. |
| Mo | The police weren’t taking it seriously. So he was going to investigate himself. |
| George | Yeah. |
| Mo | you know Yeah. |
| George | I mean, you talk about the year of rational thought, right? 2016 was what the fuck ever, right? |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Jon | that’s the one |
| George | We know how that started. |
| Mo | Oh, |
| George | It ended four years later. I’m not going to get into it on the podcast, but let’s just say it went a little crazy. And one of the main things that came out of things like pizza gate and that probably fueled pizza gate and had a lot of other stuff going. |
| Jon | Mm hmm. |
| George | It was bad shit. Crazy is the QAnon conspiracies, the website, the predictions. |
| Mo | oh yeah. |
| Jon | Oh. |
| George | everything. I know we’ve got some personal impacts that we’re going to talk about here in a second. This one is kind of a sub personal impact for me because my half sister got heavy, heavy into QAnon conspiracies and beliefs so much so that like took her Facebook profile thing and switched it to the QAnon symbol and was spouting off all this stuff that was coming out of the QAnon websites. |
| Jon | No. |
| Jon | Really? |
| Mo | Hmm. Oh, wow. |
| George | So much so that I commented on one of her posts saying, you can’t rationally believe what you’re saying. |
| Mo | Oh, God. |
| George | This is something you’re doing as a joke, right? |
| Mo | Yikes. |
| George | And she went off on me, like in this comment. |
| Mo | Hmm. |
| Jon | she disown you? |
| George | Yeah, no, no, she didn’t disown me. I just stopped talking to her completely. |
| Jon | Okay. |
| George | I’m like, look, |
| Jon | Oh, that’s terrible. |
| George | I’m just letting you know right now that this is stupid. You can’t seem to get yourself out of this conspiracy hell funnel that you’ve put yourself in. |
| George | I will no longer speak to you to this day. I have not spoken. |
| Jon | Oh, oh, no. |
| George | to my half sister, if she hears this podcast, it’s not because I’m mad at her or anything. |
| Mo | Hmm. |
| George | I just will not associate myself nor my family with anybody who believes in that much hate because that’s everything that that group was spewing was this is evil. |
| Jon | Mm-hmm. |
| Mo | yeah Oh, it is, yeah. |
| George | Hate these people. This thing is bad and pizza, but all that shit. |
| Jon | The pizza. |
| George | It was just all about hate and it, it was fueled by fear. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| George | Like we talked about this whole satanic panic. That’s where the panic comes from. |
| Jon | Mm-hmm. |
| George | It’s all based out of fear. |
| Jon | Evidence or not, they believe it, and that’s that’s almost as good, that’s actionable if you believe it, whether you have the evidence or not, that’s the problem. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| George | Yeah. |
| Mo | e |
| George | Yep. |
| Jon | Now, we often like to take just a moment to talk about like our favorite episode of a show that we do or whatever. |
| Mo | he |
| Jon | I don’t think we all have a favorite satanic panic problem, but um Maybe you do, I don’t know, but I thought maybe it might be really briefly go around Robin here and talk about how you remember or how the satanic panic affected you, what you remember of it. And I’ll start by saying that if my parents bought into it at all, they were pretty level headed. They certainly never let on if they did. |
| Jon | I played Dungeons and Dragons and my parents took a look at the books and went, oh, I don’t say anything terrible about this. They kind of, you know, they did their own evaluation rather than just buy into it. |
| Jon | It was easy to believe it is the problem because everybody acted like it was real. |
| George | Sure. |
| Jon | So I applaud my parents for for not buying into it instantly and seeing what it was that I was doing. However, I will tell you that while I didn’t buy into it, I knew it was out there. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Jon | And so my buddy and I would, we would go, go off what we nicknamed marauding, which is really vandalism. We’d go off and find abandoned cars and abandoned stuff, you know, and smash windows and crap that you do as stupid kids that I wish I hadn’t done. I’m embarrassed of now, but we knew that that stuff was out there. And so we would draw pentagrams and we would draw upside down crosses and stuff because I’m like, Oh, well somebody finds this. Now they’ll think it’s the the Satanists that did it. They’ll think just cause it made it scarier. Like we imagined who would come up on it after and maybe believe that some Satanists came out to smash a window because that was there but that somehow help their agenda. I don’t know. So I don’t think anybody in my family or in my immediate realm took it super seriously. |
| Jon | But we were aware of it. And it certainly was something that was in our mind because you couldn’t escape it at all. |
| Mo | Yeah, that’s true. |
| Jon | How about you, Mo? did you Were you affected much? Do you remember? |
| Mo | no the The thing I remember most about this is my dad, my dad was a avid nightly news watcher, you know, like the, you know, the, the, on the networks, you know, the nightly news and Tom Brokaw and all those guys, like I, like I knew them all as household names and he was watching news and they were talking about this. |
| Jon | Sure. |
| Mo | I remember my dad sitting in the couch in the living room, this coming on, I’m sitting in the corner, probably reading a dungeon dragons book or something. |
| Jon | Probably. |
| Mo | And he looks at me, he looks at support. He just looks at me, he says, You know this is all bullshit, right? |
| Mo | And I’m like, yeah. He’s like, all right, just checking. And then that was the that was the only conversation we had about it. |
| Jon | Way to go, dad. |
| Mo | He’s like, he says, you know, this is all bullshit, right? And I’m like, yeah, this is all stupid. |
| Jon | Oh, we’re the same page. |
| Mo | He’s like, yeah. |
| Jon | Good. Back to reading your Dungeons and Dragons book. |
| Mo | Yeah. Yeah, exactly. How about you, George? |
| George | Yeah, I mean, I certainly had a ah personal experience with the satanic panic movement, as I alluded to earlier. ah Longtime listeners of the podcast might remember that I went to a private Christian high school. |
| Jon | Mm hmm. |
| George | Well, private Christian high school, you start that school in 86, guess what you’re going to be talking about for half your fucking day. |
| Jon | There we go. |
| Jon | Yeah. |
| George | It’s satanic panic, ladies and gentlemen. Uh, I remember distinctly going to no fewer than at least three special student services. We called them chapel at that time. |
| Mo | Wow. |
| George | You would, you would actually, so the way that. The way that school worked back then at the school was you would go to ah three regular classes. Then right before lunch, you would go to chapel and the pastor would deliver a 30, 45 minute kind of speech. |
| Jon | Mm hmm. |
| George | Then you would go to lunch. Then you would come back and do more classes throughout the rest of the afternoon and then do your extracurriculars. |
| Jon | Oh. |
| Mo | Okay. |
| Jon | ah So you like have a little church service in the middle of your day, kind of. |
| George | Every day. |
| Jon | Oh, huh. |
| George | Yeah. |
| Jon | OK, how do you do that? |
| George | ah Later on, when my son ended up going to that school, they had reduced it down to Wednesdays only, I think. But yeah, and there were always special services, special chapels that were held ah to address specific issues of the day. |
| Jon | Hmm. |
| George | Abortion was one that I remember real heavy. But when it came to satanic panic, we did one about the back masking music stuff. |
| Mo | e he good Wow. |
| George | That’s where the ACDC uh highway to hell and back in black hole thing came from that i talked about earlier was from one of those chapels and they had like slideshow presentation things on this and special guest expert speakers who would come in and go over all of this stuff uh they talked about dungeons and dragons one time if dungeons and dragons is found anywhere on campus that student will be suspended for one month and get all f’s and blah blah blah |
| Jon | Whoa! |
| George | And this was a school you paid heavy money for back then, so that was a really big threat. |
| Mo | Mm. |
| George | ah Television movies were also one of the chapels that they talked about. you know they They mentioned The Exorcist. I remember distinctly that being the reason why I went and found The Exorcist on VHS because we had talked about it. |
| George | And i wanted I loved horror movies. I wanted to see it and got scared out of my mind later on watching that damn thing, even though I was high school age. yeah They were definitely pushing that agenda. |
| George | And that’s exactly now looking back on it, what it felt like. It felt like an agenda, like it was a coordinated effort by a large group of people and organizations designed to push a specific thought into our minds. |
| Jon | Yeah. |
| Mo | Mm hmm. |
| Jon | Yeah. Hmm. |
| George | And I’m not going to lie, a large part of me was starting to wonder if it wasn’t true. Cause when I was hearing those back masking lyrics, it sounded like some of the shit they were trying to tell me was really there. |
| Mo | Yeah, of course. |
| George | Now I didn’t go back and like take a record and run it backwards on a, on an album player or anything like that to hear it for myself. It was just what they did in the chapel, but I really started to buy into it a little bit. |
| George | I’m sorry to say. |
| Mo | I can understand that. |
| Jon | man and it’s like Just like I don’t wouldn’t blame you for starting to believe these things that you’ve been taught, I don’t blame everyone in the 80s for buying into this because |
| George | Mm hmm. |
| Mo | Oh no. |
| Jon | I mentioned a little bit earlier that it was everywhere. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Jon | And you’re like, could everybody be wrong? Could every news outlet, could every talk show, could every book be lying to me? |
| George | Mm hmm. |
| Jon | It just seems so. What’s the most likely? Is it really this Satanist thing or is everyone, but it’s not like they were getting together with a concerted effort. It was feeding itself. And I think many people, probably the people at your Christian church, they weren’t being maliciously trying to push a fake agenda. |
| Jon | They likely believed in their heart that it may have been true. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| George | I mean, I, I can’t go back and, you know, check on their motivations or anything, but I will say it felt like to me now, knowing new terms and we have different outlooks on things, it felt like one of the first echo chambers I was ever involved in. |
| Jon | Yeah. |
| Mo | Hmm. |
| Jon | Mm hmm. Yeah, for sure. Well, I don’t think there’s any doubt, as we’ve covered so much of this stuff, the satanic panic was it was a dark and damaging period of our Gen X childhood. um But it’s i it’s part it’s part of what made us us. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Jon | You know, you have to have all the scars to go with all of the Pac-Man, you know, that all of that made us who we were. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Jon | We lived through it just like ah like the Cold War and the nuclear scare and all that. It was part of what made us. |
| Mo | Yeah. |
| Jon | So guys, as heavy as it was, I appreciate you taking the time to walk through and talk to me about the satanic panic and share it about the satanic panic and share it with our listeners. If anything, maybe it’s something that as a collective we can learn from, |
| Jon | We’re not awesome at that, but it’d be nice. |
| Mo | I was about to say, as I was gonna say like, it’s good thing that we’ve learned not to listen to like crazy theories. |
| Jon | Yeah, we’re we’re we still have room we can still improve. |
| George | he |
| Jon | We have room to grow still. |
| Mo | That’s right. We have room for improvement. |
| Jon | I tell you who doesn’t have room for improvement? And that is those people who already love and support us on Patreon. They are already peak performance. They do everything they can to help us out. |
| Jon | And I wanna welcome two more. |
| Mo | Oh, wow. |
| Jon | David M, brand new, joined us not long ago, and returning patron, Brad Bowman. |
| Mo | Oh, nice. |
| Jon | who was a supporter, he had to leave for a while, his financial situation changed. |
| George | Ah. |
| Jon | And when he came back, he just said, hey, couldn’t do it for a while, I’m back now, I just wanna support you, Brad, David, thank you so much for doing that. |
| Mo | That’s awesome. |
| Jon | You know that you can get it for free, but if you wanna support it and make sure we continue to produce this show, what we do on YouTube, on website, all of the things that we do, patronage over a patreon dot.com slash Gen X grown up absolutely keeps gas in the tank and we’re so grateful to you guys and everyone else who continues to support us with a weekly with with that monthly pledge. That then is going to wrap it up for this backtrack edition of the Gen X grown up podcast. Don’t worry, we’ll be back in a couple weeks with another one. And next |
| Mo | in a regular episode next week. |
| Jon | And I was good. Yeah, it’s not not a regular episode. It’s all rewinds. That’s okay. Until then, I am Jon. George, thank you so much for being here. |
| George | Yes, sir. |
| Jon | Mo, you know, I appreciate you, man. |
| Mo | ah Always fun, man. |
| Jon | Fourth listener, it’s you. We all appreciate most of all though. We can’t wait to talk to you again next time. Bye-bye. |
| George | See you guys. |
| Mo | Take care, everybody. |
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