Devil's Playground: The Satanic Panic and Its Gen X Legacy

Remember when your Dungeons & Dragons dice might summon demons and heavy metal albums contained secret Satanic messages? If you grew up in the 1980s, you lived through one of America's strangest cultural moments – the Satanic Panic.

We're taking a deep dive into this bizarre phenomenon that had parents checking under beds for devil worshippers and police departments training officers to spot "occult crime" using horror paperbacks as manuals. From the infamous McMartin preschool trial that cost taxpayers $15 million without securing a single conviction, to the demonization of everything from rock music to role-playing games, we unpack how mass hysteria shaped an entire generation.

This wasn't a random occurrence – we trace the pattern of moral panics from ancient Rome through medieval blood libel accusations and into modern times, revealing how fear of shadowy cabals has been recycled throughout history. The targets change, but the template remains eerily similar.

For those of us who grew up during this era, the Satanic Panic wasn't just headline news – it shaped our relationship with authority, media, and moral crusades. Yet ironically, Gen X didn't just survive these fears – we reclaimed and transformed them. The very things once considered gateways to hell became celebrated cornerstones of our culture. Dungeons & Dragons experienced a renaissance, heavy metal thrived, and the aesthetic elements once deemed "Satanic" now feature prominently in nostalgic pop culture.

Join us for a fascinating exploration of how the devil went from terrifying America to rocking out with Jack Black – and what this strange chapter in our cultural history reveals about the cyclical nature of fear. When you understand the Satanic Panic, you might just recognize its patterns in today's headlines.

Chapters

• 0:00 Episode Introduction
• 4:23 Jungle Jim's and Road Trips
• 8:59 Show Format Change Discussion
• 15:12 Origins of Satanic Panic
• 22:31 The McMartin Preschool Case
• 28:36 Dungeons & Dragons and Music Panic
• 36:00 Media Amplification and Talk Shows
• 42:35 How Gen X Reclaimed and Mocked Satan
• 50:05 Episode Wrap-Up and Call to Action

Transcript

Megan: 0:00

I'm Megan Bennett,

Lesley: 0:01

I'm Lesley Meier

Megan: 0:02

and this is Gen X. Women Are Sick of this . Shit.

Megan: 0:10

Hi Lesley.

Lesley: 0:12

Hi Megan!

Megan: 0:14

oh my god, you're strung out, I can tell you've been driving.

Lesley: 0:18

I'm so tired. I've been in the car for hours. It was like, well, me like six and a half half, probably all together. I did make a pit stop.

Megan: 0:28

It's like six and a half to like one way

Lesley: 0:31

no it's only like the drive is probably should be about five

Megan: 0:37

gotcha

Lesley: 0:37

but you know

Megan: 0:38

terrific

Speaker 4: 0:39

And then I pit stopped at jungle Jim's.

Megan: 0:41

Nice

Lesley: 0:42

to pop into the spirits section to get some of that good, good ohio irish whiskey that we can't get in indianapolis, even at the, even at the snug of irvington

Megan: 0:56

for people who are not familiar with jungle gyms, it is a massive grocery store with a ridiculous international section

Lesley: 1:06

you can get pretty much anything you want at Jungle Jim's

Megan: 1:08

It's so much more than a grocery store.

Lesley: 1:10

Oh yeah

Megan: 1:10

there's some wild fruit Like you just walk through that produce section. You're like what the fuck is that?

Lesley: 1:18

I was really struck by the seafood today because I was like whew pungent, but the blue crabs were crawling in their little tank. They were alive.

Megan: 1:28

Oh see, that makes me sad.

Lesley: 1:29

It does make me sad too. Giant pet section.

Megan: 1:33

Fascinating

Lesley: 1:34

They have a huge pet section

Megan: 1:35

Like they're selling pets or pet food.

Lesley: 1:36

No stuff Like things toys, food. There's a like home goods, like cookware and all that stuff.

Megan: 1:44

I feel like it's expanded.

Lesley: 1:46

It's just bizarre. It has the feeling of a - We're going to get like shitty comments from all the people in Ohio that love Jungle Jim's. It feels like a high-end flea market in parts Not the whole thing, yeah. I can see that I can see that there's like the toy section, which I didn't actually I've never walked through before

Lesley: 2:08

.

Speaker 3: 2:08

I didn't even know there was a toy section.

Speaker 4: 2:10

Games, disney, everything. They had all the like board games and they had a case with stuff. There was some like critical role playing card, something, I don't know, whatever.

Speaker 3: 2:26

This is all the nerd stuff every pop, funko pop ever made, there were like thousands of them. Okay, so it's clearly changed.

Speaker 4: 2:29

And that wasn't the front there so I guess they try to catch the kitties as they walk in. And then there was a bunch of other stuff, and I bought a set of kitchen utensils for eight dollars, nice we just needed some.

Speaker 3: 2:40

Maybe they just drop the, you drop your kids off and then you can go actually do the shopping, because you leave your kiddos.

Speaker 4: 2:46

Well, and there's the whole bar, in addition to like the giant wine section the giant beer section and all the spirits. I feel like I was rushed through there. It's insane, I got lost. I almost left in frustration because I couldn't get to where I knew I wanted to go, because my children had requested. There's very little directional signage, no that's true, that's true so.

Speaker 4: 3:06

I was like, okay, there's the bathroom, it's cavernous, which isn't a bathroom. I mean it's a bathroom. I do remember the bar, because there's a bathroom near the bar which looks like the front of a porta potty. Yes, you open the porta potty door, which I was very perplexed by, and then you walk into restrooms which they say are the world's best bathrooms but they were not, not true they were. They were bathrooms and it was fine. I remember the british food section.

Speaker 3: 3:34

Oh yeah, really cool all the countries all around the world.

Speaker 4: 3:37

All the things I just. I brought home a bunch of weird chips because, because that was the request, and, uh, some nice italian wines, nice and some irish whiskey and maybe a nice rum. Maybe we need a road trip sometimes it's you need like breaks, you need a couple of hours and like breaks for like snacks and a drink, and then, yes, to wander some more and spend some time to take it slow so much, and.

Speaker 4: 4:05

I never am there when I have like a cooler, so I can't really like we need to plan Dive in.

Speaker 3: 4:11

Yeah, let's plan it. We're going to do it. Cincinnati, we're going to be in you.

Speaker 4: 4:16

Oh, and Cincinnati, so fun.

Lesley: 4:18

One of my favorite places to go Agreed.

Speaker 3: 4:20

I love it too. It's a nice jaunt. Well, welcome back, I'm glad you're home, thanks. Me too. I'm glad you got home safely.

Speaker 4: 4:26

I'm going to be pretty excited to. I'm going to stop messing with my microphone. I could just hear Tim's eyes. I'll be glad to sleep in my own bed, which will be pleasant because hotel sleeping is.

Speaker 3: 4:41

you know it can either be very, very good or absolutely dreadful. This was fun. I had like eight pillows. Okay, oh, that's helpful, so it was like great and I had all the blankets.

Speaker 4: 4:52

So that was fine. The bed was. But you know I had it all worked out. It was good. Good, and we just were up very early every day.

Speaker 3: 5:05

I usually don't get up at 630 in the morning and I was up at 6.30 every day. Yeah, I know it was a long ass day. Well, I'm glad you're home and you can enjoy your chips and your wines and your whiskeys. I'm excited about those wines. Good for you.

Megan: 5:14

Good.

Speaker 4: 5:14

Thanks, how was your week? You know, fine, I have no complaints. Did you do anything exciting? Not a damn thing. You did something fun last weekend. Didn't do anything exciting? Not a damn thing. No, you did something fun last weekend, didn't you? You went to my, it was your spouse's birthday.

Speaker 3: 5:28

It was my spouse's, that was.

Speaker 4: 5:30

Oh that, that was funny because we were going to do something. We were going to play games, we were going to play games and then we didn't, because I completely forgot his birthday.

Lesley: 5:38

You were like oh oops.

Speaker 4: 5:45

And I just forgot it again.

Speaker 3: 5:46

So I suck, uh, but you were there in the moment when it happened, yes, and that's all that. We went to dinner. That was nice. I got him a lovely jacket for the fall and that and an ascot he did not get an ascot with his jacket.

Speaker 3: 5:57

No lobby, no nothing, nothing, quite so posh, it's like a, it's like a nice little leather jacket that he can wear with jeans, or he can dress it up if he so chooses. So anyway, mr fancy, mr fancy my metrosexual yeah, no, it was fine, it was good shout out how should we start this show today?

Speaker 4: 6:20

because we're doing something a little different well, so, let, so, let's.

Speaker 3: 6:24

We should probably talk about that, because I feel like it was time, maybe, for a little bit of a mix up in the way we do things.

Speaker 4: 6:32

And we were getting bored and, quite honestly, not bored. After one calendar year, we can only talk about these significant holidays, seasonal transitions from a Gen X perspective and our memories right.

Speaker 3: 6:47

Like we only have so many of those, and they're slipping away. So I figured we probably needed to do something a little bit different.

Speaker 3: 6:56

So the idea is that we are going to do slightly more deeper dives on some of these cool topics. Obviously, we're still going to throw our memories in there when we have them, absolutely Because that's what we're all about. We'll basically do whatever we want Exactly, and we're still going to be sick of shit because we are so sick, so sick, so tired. But we're going to take topics occasionally and just go a little deeper on stuff.

Speaker 4: 7:25

Gen X relevant topics. Yes, Memories from our childhood that we were like why did that happen? Right?

Speaker 3: 7:33

Who let us out? Why?

Speaker 4: 7:35

did they let us out. Right, we need the history of this shit.

Speaker 3: 7:39

I want to know the birth and this will be a future episode why we have safety belt, like seat belt laws, and what happened there? And who invented that shit and we're gonna talk about, like I don't know, the tv dinners and where the hell those came from I think we should deep dive into this.

Speaker 4: 7:55

I just totally cut you off. I'm sorry. You can cut me off anytime you want baby, I'm gonna pause no, go go talk. Okay, okay, okay, jesus we should deep dive into beauty pageants sometime because fun. I remember it being like an event to kind of watch like miss america, oh, yeah, I was young, me too which is, you know, of course influences everything about our experience. But put that on a note script, okay hey, producer, producer, tim will remember beauty pageants.

Speaker 4: 8:26

Did you write that down? Thank you, okay, great, he's got it. Uh, because I'll forget as soon as we go on to the next topic.

Speaker 3: 8:32

Absolutely, no, I think that's right and I think we just we've just got our master list and we'll just start coming up with stuff and then we're gonna do some research and we're gonna report back.

Speaker 4: 8:42

I think I'll be blessed.

Speaker 3: 8:43

We'll see how people like it or not well, and if there's topics that people want oh, yeah, remember like and they're like why the hell did we have hands across america like? And yeah, we talked about it, but we didn't go into any real detail about what, the why?

Speaker 4: 8:57

but? Yeah, the why and the how and all the things and if there were regional things, maybe that, like we don't even know about, that might be interesting to kind of like hear from people like, oh, I remember this thing in my hometown and that's really weird, and will you try to find out why that happened? I love that. That'd be kind of interesting. But we're still going to keep some key segments as remembered, one of them being who died this week.

Speaker 3: 9:21

Yeah, so in the spirit of that, yes, died this week. Yeah, so in the spirit of that, yes, um, a woman by the name of polly holiday, which I gotta say, fucking awesome name, amazing name. You would know her better as flo from the tv show alice hello, yeah, would you like to do your best imitation? Kiss my grits.

Speaker 4: 9:42

There it is, ladies, and gentlemen I fucking loved Flo so much. I wanted to be Flo as a small child.

Speaker 3: 9:49

Who wouldn't?

Speaker 4: 9:50

She's awesome, that hair that sass, I mean, she was great. Flo and Auntie Mame are my spirit animals in terms of who I wanted to grow up to be, and I think I'm close-ish.

Speaker 3: 10:06

Well, there's a picture. Actually it's funny. There's a picture here on the CBS News site. And I got to say from a distance you could probably maybe pass as a young girl, she's like 88 there though. She's not 80. Jesus. Well, you did just drive six hours, you're probably tired, but I do.

Speaker 4: 10:29

There is a photo of me in a play that I was in in college and I had sort of a similar vibe happening.

Lesley: 10:38

I mean she looked pretty cool.

Speaker 4: 10:41

I can't remember, I don't need to remember, but she was awesome. I mean, that whole show was awesome. I think it was really fun, just like it wasn't. It was, it was, it was women focused t-back right.

Speaker 3: 10:53

Was that his name vic? T-back was mel, I'm pretty sure.

Speaker 4: 10:56

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, like the women ran the show and there was like single mom action happening and like working mom and raising your kids and like not putting up with shit, and it was really it was really good, I agree, I liked it. I liked it a lot I'm very sad about that it is.

Speaker 3: 11:16

It's sad to lose her. She did live to 88, which is pretty nice. Florence, florence jean flow castleberry was her name on the show.

Speaker 4: 11:25

That's an amazing name.

Speaker 3: 11:27

Florence Jean Castleberry.

Speaker 4: 11:30

I just Kiss my grand Polly Holiday I know they didn't really name their kid, polly Holiday.

Speaker 3: 11:35

Do you?

Speaker 4: 11:35

think that was like her stage name.

Speaker 3: 11:37

It's brilliant, I don't know. I don't know, but if her parents gave her that name, why the hell, would you get rid of it?

Speaker 4: 11:45

She should have also been like a vaudeville kind of performer like a comedian, singer, dancer, polly Holiday. Polly Holiday Kick ass. Maybe I'll make a D&D character and name her Polly Holiday. So fucking good, do it.

Speaker 3: 11:59

Anyway. So yes, we lost her, and I'm sure there's other people. Yeah, but that was the one that really stood out.

Speaker 4: 12:05

So anywho, so topic for this eve. So, yeah, what are we talking about this evening?

Speaker 3: 12:16

It just kind of hit me that one of the topics that we you love Dungeons, Dragons.

Speaker 4: 12:22

So much so much. I play a lot, not as much now.

Speaker 3: 12:26

But there was a time when loving Dungeons and Dragons might have made people question you a little bit what do you mean About what? About whether or not you were being cool? A?

Speaker 4: 12:40

devil worshiper. Oh Well, I mean that is a requirement. Like you buy your first book and then they send you a letter in the mail.

Speaker 3: 12:50

It's coded, you gotta do some rituals you gotta sacrifice some stuff, polaroids, send them back.

Speaker 4: 12:59

It's all for Gary Gygax.

Speaker 3: 13:02

RIP. The inventor.

Speaker 4: 13:03

Creator of Dungeons andIP the inventor creator of Dungeons and Dragons, it's the cult of Gygax that is actually true, there is a bit of a cult of Gygax.

Speaker 3: 13:11

But problematic person, yeah, but don't you wonder which came first right Right. We're just going to lean all the way into this devil worship shit.

Speaker 4: 13:21

He was just a simple shoemaker. Actually, we could create this right now, but we're not going to do that.

Speaker 3: 13:28

We're going to talk. We have notes. I have notes. Yes, you have notes. We just did some deep diving here on satanic panic Satanic panic from the 70s and 80s.

Speaker 4: 13:39

Right, why? What is it? What are the origins? What's going on?

Lesley: 13:43

here. Why are we so? What is it what?

Speaker 4: 13:44

are the origins what's going on here? Why are we so freaked?

Speaker 3: 13:47

out by Satan. I'm like thank you for the church lady there.

Speaker 4: 13:50

She showed up.

Speaker 3: 13:51

This is great. So if you were born in the early 1970s, then you grew up in a world where adults seemed really worried about hidden dangers. Right, it wasn't. Ironically Right, because there's a part of me that's like did they really give a shit?

Speaker 4: 14:07

because kids were kind of better, I know they didn't know where we were right, but they were really worried about things happening to us that whatever we were doing or what was happening to us involved devil worship and whatever.

Speaker 3: 14:20

Right so. But by the time you were a teenager, like in the in the mid 80s, um, all of those fears that people had really took a sharp and sinister turn. Uh, parents, teachers, police officers, hello were suddenly convinced that satanists were everywhere they were hiding they were hiding in daycares, they were sneaking into rock albums, they were luring kids with role-playing games. This was the Satanic Panic, a cultural wildfire that raged from the late 1970s into the early 1990s, and it sent a crap ton of innocent people into prison.

Speaker 3: 14:59

Holy cow it left scars that still shape conspiracy thinking. Today I'm looking at you, QAnon, Uh-huh, but it wasn't new. In fact, Satanic Panic was just the latest chapter in a story that has been playing out for nearly get this 2,000 years.

Speaker 4: 15:15

Or more For sure. I mean it goes all the way back to oh my gosh, in the olden olden days.

Speaker 3: 15:23

177 ce way into the 19th century, back in 177 ce, the roman city.

Speaker 4: 15:33

Of what do we think? Leon leon?

Speaker 3: 15:36

lion? Well, I think, I believe it's leon leon.

Speaker 4: 15:39

but they weren't french. Well, they were, they were. We're not going to get into the particulars of that. They weren't French, they were Roman, so it was actually probably in Latin Early Christians were painted as monsters. Rumors spread that they held secret banquets where they molested, cannibalized and sacrificed children. My golly gee willikers. The same people accused of eating babies in the second century went on a thousand years later to accuse other outsiders of eating babies. History is nothing. Babies are delicious.

Speaker 3: 16:16

Why are we eating so many babies? It was a thing.

Speaker 4: 16:19

I mean, I guess I don't know, I don't think that's ever really happened.

Speaker 3: 16:22

History is pretty lazy.

Speaker 4: 16:23

It is so. When Christianity later took power, the targets flipped. In 1144, England saw the first recorded blood libel.

Speaker 3: 16:33

Oh nice, Everybody loves a good blood libel.

Speaker 4: 16:37

People were accused of ritually murdering a Christian child. The tale spread across Europe and mortalized in the church, art and folklore by the 19th century. American Protestants turned the panic on Catholics.

Speaker 3: 16:49

It's their problem now.

Speaker 4: 16:50

The bestseller Maria Monk's Awful Disclosures in 1836, supposedly an escaped nun's memoir, described convent orgies Again, baby murders, baby murders, my gosh. And satanic rites. Imagine, like the 1830s equivalent of, like a viral TikTok being a fake nun memoir about satanic orgies. Oh nice, anthropologists called this demonology. Every culture invents its own story about ultimate evil. Sociologist Stanley Cohen later coined the term moral panic, when societies in moments of stress, manufacture folk devils to blame. That's the thread tying together like these three pieces of history Nice.

Speaker 3: 17:36

Yeah, that's awesome. By the late 70s, american society was a fertile ground for new panic. Families were changing fast, divorce rates had doubled since the 1960s and more women you know women were now entering the workforce and children were spending more time in daycares. So to a lot of people that whole shift felt really destabilizing.

Speaker 3: 18:02

I mean now, all of a sudden, women are out doing things right. Right. The moral majority Having lives, the moral majority which was founded in 1979, and the televangelism that happened turned Satan in society. Into Sunday night primetime you had Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Jim Baker. They regularly took to the television to warn you that Satan was active in schools, culture and, of course, politics.

Speaker 4: 18:34

Oh my gosh.

Speaker 3: 18:35

yes, so the rise of televangelism made Satan a TV celebrity, always in reruns, never needing makeup. This dovetailed, of course, with politics, and by Reagan's 1984 re-election the religious right had cemented itself as a cultural powerhouse. The idea that America was under siege by secularism, feminism and the devil's music hello heavy metal gave satic Panic the perfect stage In the 1980s. Reagan was in the White House, mtv was in your living room and, according to your pastor, satan was in your toy box.

Speaker 4: 19:14

I mean, it depends on which toy box you were looking at. Quite honestly, I mean, Satan was probably in my toy box.

Speaker 3: 19:20

Pop culture fed the fear. Pop culture fed the fear. So in 1973, the Exorcist came out and its imitators normalized possession stories. True crime brought ritual overtones into real headlines. You had the Manson murders in 1969. You had the Zodiac Killer, you had Son of Sam, and then there was a book that kind of lit the fuse and pulled everything together, and that was called Michelle Remembers in 1980. It was written by a psychiatrist named Lawrence Pazder P-A-Z-D-E-R Pazder, and his patient, Michelle Smith. It claimed that Michelle had recovered memories of satanic ritual abuse. It was later debunked, but at the time it was a bestseller and it promoted on talk shows and was used, of course, in police trainings, because you have to have your police trained to know what a fucking satanic ritual would even look like.

Speaker 4: 20:26

Well, of course, I mean you have to be able to identify them on the street at any time.

Speaker 3: 20:30

You got to know what you're looking for Any moment. So across the country, right, you have police departments in America teaching cadets about Satanism with a horror paperback as its manual. What could?

Speaker 4: 20:43

possibly go wrong. I think that's completely reasonable, well researched, cited, scientifically proven.

Speaker 3: 20:52

I think that producer Tim has a clip actually from one of those.

Speaker 4: 20:58

Oh, one of the training videos.

Speaker 3: 21:00

Like a police training video yeah.

Lesley: 21:08

Very obvious ritualistic markings that will appear on a body that is the result of satanic killings, oftentimes a cut that goes from behind the ear all the way down to the throat. There's wax laid on it to cover it up afterwards after the body has deceased. Another area that you might find satanic ritual carving is in the stomach area Note again the points representing again the goat's head.

Lesley: 21:39

Now, as you look at the body of a person such as this, please note each and every one of these markings. But whatever it is, if you look just a little bit deeper, ask a few more questions and note to the investigators more information, it could lead to the solution of other crimes that have been just passively sitting on the desk without any clues.

Speaker 3: 22:02

Oh. So why is she so naked? All of this? I don't know, I don't.

Speaker 4: 22:06

Why does a police video? Well, they have to show the pentagram on her belly she can wear a pants and a pants. She can wear a pants and a t-shirt. They put her just for our listening. She is in like a string bikini.

Speaker 5: 22:19

Well, that's pretty easy.

Speaker 4: 22:21

Hey, baby, all right. Nice, I think it was just for like soft court cop porn. So now that we all know how to identify satanic, ritual murders I guess we're going to look at daycares.

Speaker 3: 22:38

Hell yeah, that's where it all got started baby between 1983 and 1990.

Speaker 4: 22:46

And 1983, the McMartin preschool case which I don't remember this because I was 10 years old and I probably would not have heard about it because it was about child sexual abuse turned anxiety into a spectacle. It began when a mother reported her son's painful bowel movements to police and they just decided that this child had been abused in some way, reflecting how much Pazder's satanic framework had already seeped into law enforcement. So they're kind of drawing a line between this book and then police training and then this mother reporting your son was constipated, constipated into the police.

Speaker 4: 23:27

But that was, you know, that was her first thought. Obviously she's like oh, something terrible must have happened. So then the police sent letters to 200 parents of preschool Students Are you a student in preschool? Preschoolers Urging them to interrogate their children, which, if you're in preschool, you are zero to four, right, right Years old You're going to interrogate your four-year-old child.

Speaker 4: 23:51

And the letter listed horrifying things that could potentially maybe have been done to children under the pretense of taking a child's temperature, and it also sent photos of unclothed children, which I find highly disturbing. It warned parents not to speak with staff and to keep the investigation secret.

Speaker 3: 24:12

Can you imagine, as a parent, that Just getting this?

Speaker 4: 24:16

letter in the mail and then being like, of course, totally freaked out and panic and they tell you not to talk to anybody. So you can't go and like compare stories or figure out if this is actually accurate.

Speaker 3: 24:29

Well, and the whole idea too, I think, was that they were, they wanted you to interrogate your kid and you're basically like saying did this particular thing happen to you? So they're suggesting it to the child. So the kid is going to be like OK, sure, yeah.

Speaker 4: 24:44

And your parents are really upset and you feel like you're in trouble because they're being very serious. So parents panicked and under repeated questioning, children described tunnels under the school, witches, clowns, animal mutilations and being flushed through toilets. Nobody stopped to ask how a child got flushed through a toilet and came out the other side just fine and went home after preschool that day totally dry and not smelling. Everything's fine, but that's fine. The case ballooned seven staff, 321 counts of abuse, 48 children. Trials dragged on until 1990.

Speaker 3: 25:22

I paid, no, I knew nothing about this and we wouldn't right like this is middle school and high school yeah, I can't imagine that we would know much about this because, it you know, I would have been 13 you were 10, it was just like and it probably wasn't like there's not 24 7 news.

Speaker 4: 25:41

I mean it happened, but it probably was not on like right the original 24.

Speaker 3: 25:45

So like this stuff we wouldn't necessarily have known about. It was later when it started to affect kind of us and the stuff that we cared about, that we would have noticed.

Speaker 4: 25:56

The trials cost over $15 million, making it the longest and most expensive trial in US history, and produced no convictions Zero Because it was not true. No convictions, zero because it was not true. The longest, most expensive trial in history, and the only people found guilty were the taxpayers. Um, the truth, nothing sinister was happening at mcmartin, there was no satan to panic over, but the template was set and it I mean at that point it's sort of proven that you can like whip people into a frenzy, yes, and suggest that things are happening, and that will tap into their anxiety about whatever in the world, and everything will be evidence and proof of that. And then you can manipulate them.

Speaker 3: 26:40

Yeah, and the crazier the better.

Speaker 4: 26:43

Right Like it just, the more outlandish, the more believable Right.

Speaker 3: 26:47

Police were also trained to see cults absolutely everywhere. So occult crime seminars warned that black clothes, heavy metal posters, dungeons and dragon dice were the signs of Satanism. So basically, the evidence of Satanism was the standard decor of literally every Gen X teenager's bedroom.

Speaker 4: 27:07

Who knew that Satan loved us so much?

Speaker 3: 27:11

Just Gen X teens, my dude, Just us Right. Of course, there was also a comic from a gentleman named Jack Chick and it was called Dark Dungeons and it depicted a girl sucked into Satanism by a Dungeons Dragons game who commits suicide after her wizard character dies. It became infamous and it was later parodied in fan films those I was aware of the parody films Of those?

Speaker 4: 27:39

yeah, Because I was like this is hilarious Right.

Speaker 3: 27:42

Only in the 80s could rolling a 20-sided die be seen as a gateway to eternal damnation.

Speaker 4: 27:48

My gosh. So people were like whipped into a frenzy. They were certain that, like Satan, was in every single one of our bedrooms.

Speaker 3: 27:56

Us young troublemakers, troublemakers, yes.

Speaker 4: 28:00

Troublemaking teens, black clad. Then people started to like I guess sort of repent. Then people started to I guess sort of repent. The ex-Satanists became media darlings. Evangelical comedian Mike Wernke shot to fame with his 1972 memoir the Satan Seller, describing orgies, murders and child sacrifice before his conversion. His book the Satan Seller claimed he was a high priest of Satan before becoming a Christian comedian, I mean everybody loves a redemption story.

Speaker 4: 28:35

The ultimate career pivot Warnke toured churches, hit Oprah and Larry King and cashed in grifter. He was later debunked, but by then countless pastors and parents had cited him as proof apparently stuff.

Speaker 3: 28:51

He apparently even had his own airplane like and what do you mean? Like he, he owned his own airplane like he had made that much. He had just made that much money. Oh, he owned his own airplane he was flying around doing his little comedy shtick.

Speaker 4: 29:06

Seriously Because of his not Because he was an ex-Satanist, not cultist, not Satanist career. I will say if you ever get a chance you should.

Speaker 3: 29:16

I didn't include any of it here, but if you ever get a chance, you should listen to some of his and I'm going to use quotation fingers a comedy, because it is both dreadful, big and horrible. And then he transitions in from being a comic into telling these horrific stories of abuse and satanic rituals. It's like that are all lies, like he's sitting there telling jokes to families and then just transitions not really well into his story. So the kids would be there for these like comedy shows.

Speaker 4: 29:53

Yes, if you could see how far back in my head, my eyes are going.

Speaker 3: 29:57

They went very far back.

Speaker 4: 29:59

They can't go much further back than this.

Speaker 3: 30:06

Tim's like hold on now, please.

Speaker 5: 30:08

No, it's so. When I was growing up, we went to this very fundamentalist church and I have a very distinct memory of guest pastors coming through to testify.

Speaker 4: 30:24

Oh yeah.

Speaker 5: 30:25

And there was one guy that came through recounting his life as a hard rock musician.

Lesley: 30:32

Get out.

Speaker 5: 30:32

Until one night, he was confronted with a demon at the end of his bed. Yes, and he called upon Jesus to push this demon away from him. And all the while you're looking around and this is a church full of I mean kids, babies and parents, and, like the whole time, it's like oh what you're so terrified as kid.

Speaker 4: 30:58

Yeah, that's a whole other conversation.

Speaker 3: 31:01

I have have lots of thoughts about that wow, well, I'm glad you got out, got two thumbs up.

Speaker 4: 31:12

They were like a lot of our parents, I mean parents of that generation were in. Not that it stopped, but like the culty church, like the pole barn church, I think there was like a rise and then a fall, and I think we're experiencing another rise of that, but it's church in the woods, man.

Speaker 3: 31:25

Well, seriously, all of that evangelical stuff that's on tv, I mean, that was just hammered into people. Oh yeah, you know like yes and hammer lucrative, lucrative. Those people made so much fucking money, they made the ultimate mlm my right, god okay so the panic, uh, expanded really into kids' bedrooms. Then Heavy Metal was accused of backmasking. There were Dungeons and Dragons. It was blamed for everything from you know kids' suicides to just bad grades, Just bad grades.

Speaker 4: 32:03

Getting in fights Smoking, Everything Drinking Sex.

Speaker 3: 32:06

Getting in fights smoking drinking sex, Even things like the Smurfs, the Care Bears, He-Man all of that stuff was flagged as demonic by one group or another, as PMRC, if you are Gen X. It was co-founded by the lovely Tipper Gore and she pushed Senate hearings on explicit lyrics. You had some superheroes out there defending things like Dee Snider of Twisted Sister. I remember that he famously testified, and the result was the parental advisory sticker, which sort of backfired and became a badge of honors for teens.

Speaker 3: 32:51

Right, you wanted those albums with that sticker. Thank you very much. Absolutely so. That little black and white sticker became the best free marketing campaign the music industry ever had. Musicians ultimately got the last laugh, cheek and cheekily opened their 1985 album hell awaits, with backwards masked chants of join us, and ozzy osbourne and iron maiden leaned into the devil imagery. Music didn't just survive the panic, it turned it, it weaponized it and the devil became the brand shout. Then we hear shout at the devil.

Speaker 4: 33:32

Sorry, had a little motley crew moment I was like oh, you're doing a microphone or a megaphone, megaphone oh my gosh I know words I really do, uh.

Speaker 4: 33:42

So you know, in the 80s we also had talk shows which, which is how, what's his face? You know names, words. The 80s, we also had talk shows which is how, what's his face? You know names. Words straight in, straight out. Oh, the comedian, yeah Wernke. He made the talk show circuit and in 1988, geraldo Rivera's NBC special Devil Worship, exposing Satan's Underground drew 20 million viewers the most watched documentary in NBC history at the time, until Al Capone's Vault, I used documentary very loosely oh. God, I watched Al Capone's Vault.

Speaker 3: 34:19

What was that? It was nothing, it was just ridiculous. It was so ridiculous, we sat there.

Speaker 4: 34:25

I mean the era of the grift. We think that, like I mean, at least on social media, it's straightforward.

Speaker 4: 34:30

Well, I think it's straightforward many people believe it, but I'm just like oh, look at that grift here, here, here were the contemporary beginnings, because the grift has always been a thing. Devil worship, exposing satan's underground forget the super bowl in 1988. America's biggest tv event was Geraldo telling you your neighbors were sacrificing goats in the basement because we all have goats. Yes, oprah aired Survivor Claims that 50,000 children were kidnapped annually. Oh man, that feeds all the like kids in the back of pizza restaurant.

Speaker 3: 35:10

I mean no wonder. Like. I guess maybe that's the birth of like the whole Oprah thing.

Speaker 4: 35:15

huh Donahue hosted tearful adults describing tunnels and rituals, sensationalist stories and vastly outpaced skeptics. Why are there always tunnels? I don't, because you gotta go down in the underground there's always tunnels.

Speaker 5: 35:32

Where do I file my complaint? I was promised tunnels.

Speaker 3: 35:36

I ordered a flying car. You wanted a tunnel, half as many tunnels as there should be. Full of devil worshippers, I guess.

Speaker 4: 35:41

And the ones that exist we can't get into, Like the crypts, which I mean we can get into the catacombs underneath, not crypts, catacombs underneath the city market. Oh yeah, they like have tours and stuff like I want to go in those.

Speaker 3: 35:55

Yeah, but apparently there were supposedly everywhere magic tunnels, under school, someplace everywhere I don't know, but by the early 1990s the panic unraveled because nobody found any tunnels. They just didn't exist, right right, like I know. I know bearing the lead there, courts overturned convictions because a lot of people ended up in jail and in 1992, the FBI's, kenneth Lanning, concluded there was quote no evidence of organized satanic conspiracies. So it turns out that the scariest thing about Satanism was just how much airtime Geraldo could get out of it. So a lot of therapists ended up facing lawsuits for implanting memories. Professional groups warned against hypnosis and slowly child forensic interviewing standards improved.

Speaker 4: 36:49

Um, it was about time, right the panic mostly focused on white middle-class daycare kids. Unsurprisingly, poor and minority kids facing real dangers like poverty and gangs didn't even make the evening news. But white suburban kids with imaginary tunnels. Headline news um csa was over represented among the poor, but reframing it as a middle class problem made it politically palatable and profitable for therapy and law so really tragic surprise, it's just, it's horrifying but, of course, in the way that things do, the panic didn't just vanish, it evolved.

Speaker 3: 37:31

So in 1993, the west memphis three were convicted of murdering three boys in arkansas, with the prosecution arguing that it was a satanic ritual. Their black t-shirts and interest in metal music were treated as evidence. In the 1990s, your fashion sense could. You could get you convicted of as a murderer, really, um, and then, decades later, dna tests excluded them from the crime scene and they were released in 2011.

Speaker 3: 38:00

Oh, my gosh almost 20 right like that's an awful lot of time to spend time in jail. When qAnon burst online in 2017, sociologist Mary DeYoung thought well, here we go again. The tropes were identical there were secret cabals, there were ritual child abuse, there was blood drinking elites. Only the villains changed from daycare workers to democratic politicians. So you just swap daycare workers for democratic politicians, you add Wi-Fi and voila it is the same panic in a shinier outfit.

Speaker 4: 38:36

By the mid-90s, the satanic panic had collapsed under its own weight. No tunnels, no covens, no evidence, nope, damn it. But the kids who had grown up during the hysteria didn't just move on. They turned the whole thing into a joke, because that's how gen x copes that is how we deal with everything.

Speaker 4: 38:57

Cartoons and tv parodies came first. Of course we have seen all of these. The simpsons post fun at the idea of secret cults. South park turned satan into a comic character with a boyfriend and how one of my favorites um horror comedy shows like bobby the vampire slayer leaned on a cult tropes, but with a tongue-in-cheek kind of I mean buffy's fucking awesome.

Lesley: 39:19

We can't even say that this is just because of that awesome.

Speaker 4: 39:22

uh, when satan shows up as a lovesick cartoon character, you know the panic has lost its bite. Dungeons Dragons, once blamed for summoning demons, came roaring back by the 2000s. It was having a renaissance embraced by nerd culture. Bring it In the 2010s. Stranger Things Bring it 2010s. Is that when Stranger Things came out? I guess so, yeah, late. Yeah, okay, because we're on season five, wow.

Speaker 3: 39:45

And we've just waited a really fucking long time Olden days.

Speaker 4: 39:47

Olden days, the 2010s, way back when Horse and buggy Stranger Things reframed D&D as the very essence of 80s nostalgia, which it fucking was. Yes, making it cool again. Heavy metal and hard rock had the last laugh too. Bands like Slayer, iron Maiden and Ozzy Osbourne leaned into the devil imagery during the panic, and by the 90s and 2000s it was practically mainstream. Marilyn Manson, questionably human.

Speaker 4: 40:13

Over-the-top theatrics in the late 90s were deliberately designed to freak out parents. Accurate and well done, and kids loved it. Kids, teens, young adults. You know the parental advisory sticker was a badge of honor. Cds sold like crazy.

Speaker 4: 40:30

Comedy shows like Metalocalypse and Tenacious D openly mocked the idea of satanic conspiracies, turning selling your soul to the devil into absurdist comedy. Bring it. I fucking love Tenacious D. Yeah, me too. The devil went from terrifying America to rocking out with Jack Black in Tenacious D, the Pick of Destiny Metal, once demonized, now mainstream worthy. In 2019, the Metropolitan Museum of Art hosted an exhibit called Play it Loud, featuring Slayer, metallica and Black Sabbath alongside Beethoven's pianos. I mean, if you make it in the Met, right, right, I think you are pretty fucking important. By the 2000s, what had once been considered as dangerous was being celebrated as art, entertainment, pop culture and nostalgia. Kids who grew up in the shadow of the satanic panic didn't just survive it, we claimed it, owned it and turned it into culture on our own terms. The ultimate revenge wasn't proving the panic wrong, it was laughing at it, making it wee. Satan didn't get our souls, but he sure gave us some great TV, music and t-shirts.

Speaker 4: 41:43

Absolutely and we paid a lot of money for all of those things there was really good.

Speaker 3: 41:48

T-shirts.

Speaker 4: 41:49

He didn't get our souls, he got our pocketbooks.

Speaker 3: 41:51

He got our money For Gen Xers who were born in 1971, like myself. You were 12 years old when Michelle Remembers came out. You were 15 when McMartin broke. You were 17 during the PMRC hearings Wow. And you were 20 when Geraldo declared that Satanists were everywhere. You were the exact age adults thought was most at risk. How did that turn out, folks? Satanic panic never really ended, it just got Wi-Fi and we kids who survived warnings about Satan in our toy box. We grew up, we cranked out the metal, we rolled our dice and we realized the real devil was fear itself.

Speaker 4: 42:37

The only thing you have to fear is fear itself Is the devil, no, no, just fear. Truer words were never spoken, absolutely. This is fun it was a great like bit of research. I mean it's kind of fun to read through it, like I. I remember it being a big deal, but I do think I have more memories of it being like a joke, right like late high school and college, just like how frigging ridiculous it was.

Speaker 3: 43:05

And that had to be partly, I think, just us being Gen X being cynical about the whole thing. Absolutely Like the whole idea that some TV evangelist is going to tell you that you know the devil has your soul is just kind of super eye rolling material, sure.

Speaker 4: 43:21

But fear sells right, absolutely. It makes them lots of dollars and it gives something to focus on in terms of their worries and anxieties, instead of just like attending to their own lives.

Speaker 3: 43:36

Yeah right.

Speaker 4: 43:37

In the day to day.

Speaker 3: 43:38

Well, in our general feeling about, I think religion too had just people were less religious in our generation, like us as kids generally were less religious than our parents or grandparents or great-grandparents right so like we it was just a little more silly, as we yeah, I definitely was like. I do remember seeing the testimony like Deenyder on tv and mtv like really elevated that.

Speaker 4: 44:07

Yeah, I do remember that that the preschool trial which I already said. Like never heard about that but like I'm curious if any of those kids have gone on to like write any sort of memoirs or reflect on I'm curious about how that affected their later lives Like if they remembered it right, right, because it would have to be incredibly traumatic and memorable and confusing, because these trusted adults are like putting you through this very tumultuous experience that was absolutely traumatizing.

Speaker 3: 44:43

For sure.

Speaker 4: 44:44

And then it just stops and goes away. Yeah Right, but you know people don't let things go. So did their families like grind away at it? Was it like bitter hatred on the inside of the family system for years and years and years? Or did they like apologize and like put their kids in real therapy with actual therapists?

Speaker 3: 45:05

I mean, I'd like to think that some of that happened. I do suspect that you know there were kids who, even though it was proven to be not real right, you know people dig in and dig in and whether or not they actually ever, you know yeah who knows?

Speaker 4: 45:23

It's hard for people to like question their sincerely held beliefs, particularly when they've invested so much time, energy and money into believing something horrifying, even when you lay out, like, all of the facts to the contrary. Um, you don't want to let that go, because if you do, I mean it can kind of just crack your psyche open yeah you have to really question fundamentally everything and then I'm sure, and then there's a flood of like guilt and shame and it's hard for people to cope sure, so I would rather just sit in their shit.

Speaker 3: 45:55

I'd like to think that we would be better than this and we wouldn't like we would have remembered or learned from that experience. And then the whole q anon thing is just so lazy like I just look at it now and I'm like, after reading and researching about that, like how lazy can you get right to have like tunnels under a pizza place, right where people eat children?

Speaker 4: 46:18

you know, come on why are we always eating the children? If we are always eating the children, then where are the billions of bones of all of the little eaten children, because there would be like.

Speaker 3: 46:29

I feel like there would be way more parents missing their children absolutely.

Speaker 4: 46:33

We would have some more, you know, like missing children reports.

Lesley: 46:37

I don't know, it just smelled like chicken when I went in to get little johnny out of bed today, but he was gone.

Speaker 3: 46:47

It's just, I don't know why we're so obsessed with eating kids. They're not very tasty. I can't imagine they would be they're germy and they poop, they're gross, they probably make a shit.

Speaker 4: 47:01

Ton of noise too. Shit, that was a good joke. There you go. Oh my God, it is fascinating. Oh my god it's fascinating. And it's because our historical memory is only so long, right and like, and we don't educate in quite the same way. Right, uh, and there is less. Um, it's like one of the downsides, I think. Think of the internet Like, as much as we have access to more expansive information and we can learn a lot.

Speaker 3: 47:28

Oh, that misinformation spreads so much faster too, I wonder, like if you looked at the timeline of Satanic Panic versus the timeline of QAnon, with knowing that you have the internet behind it, right Like it just caught fire so much faster than you know.

Speaker 4: 47:45

And there's less like return to reason, you know, like a rebalancing.

Speaker 4: 47:49

It just feeds on itself yeah, like return to normal, because almost the more niche that it gets like, the smaller or the tighter, more insular the community becomes, the more quiet they have to be. The more intense the beliefs are, the more that they're self-validating all the time. Because you have no external input, you're not like, as I like to say, touching grass. Go outside, touch some grass, look at the sky. We just have to stop, and I think bubbles like that are problematic across the board, but when you really feel that you have to be secret and that somehow makes you extraordinarily special, that is a self reinforcing narrative that is delusional.

Speaker 3: 48:36

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 4: 48:37

I could talk about it for days, but we should probably wrap this shit up?

Speaker 3: 48:41

we should, because, uh, producer tim needs to do some editing yeah my golly, this was super fun.

Speaker 4: 48:47

I enjoyed this conversation me too I look forward to more.

Speaker 3: 48:50

I hope people enjoy listening to it I hope so too, and if you have ideas for future episodes and things we should dig into, please let us know.

Speaker 4: 48:58

We would love to know oh, and we asterisk on our, on our research. We are only as good as the internet. So it's just you know we're not, we're not MIT. Not, yet we're not Harvard or Yale.

Speaker 3: 49:16

We haven't been sued yet. Nope, nope.

Speaker 4: 49:18

So, funding. We didn't have funding to begin with, so we're not saying that every fact was 100% true, but it's as true as we care to get it. For these purposes, it's pretty yeah, you're right.

Speaker 3: 49:32

I mean, I'm not going to say shit, I believe it.

Speaker 4: 49:35

I mean, it's the, what is it? Oh, I can't even remember the thing that we would say Gen expert. It's gen expert, not an expert say.

Speaker 3: 49:45

Gen X-pert. It's Gen X-pert, not an X-pert.

Speaker 4: 49:46

It's only been a week. More Gen X-perts, not an X-pert, it's fine. I have very few brain cells left. This was awesome.

Speaker 3: 49:52

Thanks for pulling all those words together.

Speaker 4: 49:54

All right, well, let's do it again. Okay, sounds good, cool, thanks High.

Speaker 3: 49:58

I don't know why I did that. I don't either, but it's fine, have a good night. Thanks, you too. See you later, goodbye.

Speaker 4: 50:06

You have been listening to Gen X. Women Are Sick of this Shit. Hey Megan, hey Leslie.

Megan: 50:14

What do people do if they want to find us? Well, we have a website that people can find us on, and that is genxwomenpodcom. We also have a Facebook page. We have an Instagram account as well. We have a YouTube account where we put YouTube shorts and other little tidbits up there. We have a TikTok account. I don't talk the dick or tick the tock. You don't tick the tock, I do not. I barely talk the tick, but I did put a TikTok up. We're explaining the internet.

Speaker 4: 50:46

That's okay. Though it's great, we need to know how the internet works.

Megan: 50:55

Can people buy merch? They absolutely can. We have a merch store on the website itself, and we also have an Etsy store too, so it's just pretty easy to find. It's just Gen X Women on Etsy.

Speaker 4: 51:03

And if you are listening to this podcast, presumably you found it somewhere. And while you're there, give us a review.

Megan: 51:11

Yeah, let us know what you think, throw some stars at us. That'd be great. We'll take one, two, three, four or five, ooh, five, maybe ten. And also make sure that you are hitting subscribe so that you're notified whenever a new episode drops. Most important, we also have a five minutes of fame that I think we should tell people about too.

Speaker 4: 51:31

Hell, yes, we want to know your stories, your five minutes of fame stories. You can send those stories in on the website or you can call 1-888-GEN-X-POD and leave your story for us and we will play it live in our next episode. Yep.

Megan: 51:48

We'll listen to it on a little red phone, just like Batman. That'd be cool. Let's get a bat phone, a bat phone. I think that's it. I think you're right.