I was just thinking abbout this after it was mentioned in another thread. This was a period of history that affected media, commerce, government, and even child care. It has/had implications that stretch towards the 1st Amendment and law enforcement and even cost innocent people their careers, if not outright time in prison.
I lived through it as a teen. I remember the hysterical pleas to protect children from the evils of Teh Rock Music. There were protests when AC/DC came through town, and the city came this close to canceling their concert. When Styx came through town – Styx!!! – the then-Governor of Illinois condemned it because one of their songs, if played backwards, has Satanic messages. According to a bunch of uptight church ladies. I went to that concert.
I see this episode as a valuable tool for teaching teens about mass hysteria and how governments and society can collectively lose its shit over much ado about not a lot under the right circumstances.
It certainly didn’t come up in the 70’s when I was in school, and it didn’t come up in my kid’s school in in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. Actually, under the premise that “Those that hide history want to repeat it”, I can see where parents, school officials and governmental types that want to guide children with emotion and not fact would do their best to ignore that period.
My kids were in school for the 2000s and 2010s. It did not come up. But McCarthyism is barely covered, so no surprise. This was also in New Jersey where the Satanic Panic did not have much effect.
My kids do know about it, mainly as I brought it up. In context of those ignorant pathetic assholes trying to demonize Dungeons and Dragons and Heavy Metal. The most extreme ones even going after Tolkien & Lewis, which is a seriously sad joke.
Eldritch Wizardry was published in 1976, and most people seem to agree the Satanic Panic really didn’t start until the publication of Michelle Remembers in 1980. Michelle Remembers is the book that really popularized the idea children were being ritually abused by Satanic cults. All this information allegedly came from more than 600 hours of therapy sessions that included hypnosis and recovered memories.
D&D was originally published in 1974, and it wasn’t really produced for kids. By the time the panic was in full swing, it had gained quite a bit of popularity among adolescent boys and young adults. If you’re going to blame TSR for bringing the panic down on themselves, let’s not forget other targets including the Care Bears. What’s Satanic about the Care Bears? I have no idea.
I graduated at the tail end of the Satanic Panic here in the United States. The last big hurrah was the conviction of the West Memphis 3 in 1993. As such, we really didn’t cover the panic in school because it was too recent. We covered McCartyhism though.
I’m a gaming nerd, so the Satanic Panic still comes up from time-to-time when alking about the history of role playing games. TSR made changes to the 2nd edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons based on their experience with the Satanic Panic. It’s been a while, but I think they got rid of demons & devils by renaming them. On the other hand, there were other RPG companies, like White Wolf, that went all in and had you playing blood sucking vampires.
I’m not suggesting that TSR triggered the Satanic Panic, just that they sure hung a target on their back with that volume, published in 1976.
Yes, D&D came out in 1974. Which is the year it hit my high school. It’s always been in the schools; there wasn’t a multi-year lag of any sort, in my experience.
I can only go by my own experience, but I remember that volume being cited by parents who were concerned about D&D.
I recall upset about many of the pictures in the original Monster Manual. “Kids were being exposed to boobies”.
There were also protests at 7-11 for having Playboys and the like in areas kids could access them. I witness one of these protest driving cross country. I’m going to say it was in Iowa or maybe Nebraska. I was an asshole. I walked in and said, “Thank you, I was wondering where to find this month’s Playboy.”
Seems like Satanic Panic was just part of the overall playbook of the Morale Majority.
I don’t think that particular image was the problem. If you listen to what parental groups had to say in the 1980s, these were the most common objections.
The game is psychologically harmful to kids. Pat Pulling of Bothered about Dungeons & Dragons (BADD) fame made this argument on her appearance along with Gygax on 60 Minutes back in 1985. Role playing was a technique used by psychologist and could lead to confusion and the blurring of line between reality and fantasy among players. Pulling alleged her son’s suicide was caused by his D&D having been cursed. (It’s easy to make Pulling the butt of jokes, but now that I’m older, and hopefully wiser, I see her more as a tragically misguided individual searching for the answers behind the death of a child.)
D&D introduces and encourages children to engage with the occult. This fear is best exemplified in Jack Chick’s “Dark Dungeons” comic about a young woman who commits suicide after her D&D character is killed. I ran across no end of publications about players learning how to cast real spells, worship demons, etc., etc.
TSR didn’t set themselves up by publishing a racy cover to a booklet from 1974. They simply had the bad luck to publish something that hit the zeitgeist in more than one way.
I do recall reading at least one publication that quoted the random harlot table from the AD&D GM’s Guide. They quoted an excerpt out of context to make it seem as though player characters were engaged in such activities as rape and murder.
A lot of us focus on role playing games when discussing the Satanic Panic, but I think that was just a small part of it. Let’s not forget the McMartin Pre-School trial or the trial of the West Memphis 3 in the early 1990s. I don’t expect many high school graduates in 2025 will have heard of either case.
I agree. I was born in 75. Mom REALLY loved garage sales. One day, she came back with some D&D stuff. I loved it immediately. Cheesecake illustrations were IMHO neither the primary draw nor the primary problem.
Some of you may recall the tv movie Mazes & Monsters. Plot- College kids play thinly disguised, poorly researched and poorly thought out version of D&D. One of them (played by Tom Hanks) starts believing he is his character. He wanders NYC having delusional adventures while his friends rush to save him. I belonged to an RPG club in college. Among the club materials available for reading was the hardback novel. It sucks. The woman knows only slighlt more about writing than she does about D&D.
I was in 4th grade or so when the Dale Akiki trial was taking place on our local news. It made it pretty easy to see that it was all a bunch of nonsense when you had people telling tales of elephants being slaughtered in a church daycare by a man who wasn’t even physically capable of driving a car.
That book is called “Trance Formation.” Big difference!
The Satanic Panic, and its various iterations, coincided with the beginning of MTV. Any person who thinks it’s culturally relevant to modern-day teenagers is immediately suspect; it hasn’t been of interest to them since the mid 1990s.
I sort of agree. This indivual example is not of particular interest. The fact that this kind of thing keeps happening, and the underlying causes remain relevant.