Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: The 'Satanic Panic' of the 1980s

Episode Date: October 19, 2019

In the late 1980s, the United States experienced a "Satanic Panic," leading parents to fear for the safety of their children. But were there any real examples of Satanic ritual abuse? Find out this and more in this classic episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey friends when you're staying at an Airbnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb and if it could what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guest house over childhood home now The extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it But you might have an Airbnb to find out what your place could be earning at air bnb.ca Slash host on the podcast. Hey, dude, the 90s called David Lacher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show Hey, dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces We're gonna use hey, dude as our jumping off point But we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s

We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it Listen to hey, dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Hello everyone it is Saturday and that means it's time for a Saturday stuff You should know select episode as you know Josh and I curate these each week We take turns going back through the archives and picking out some of our favorite episodes and boy Oh boy that I love this one from January 5th 2016 the satanic panic of the 1980s. We lived through it. We talked about it It's pretty amazing stuff. Check it out right now

Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of iHeart radios how stuff works Hey and welcome to the podcast I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and this is stuff. You should hail Satan Man that would have gotten you locked up a few years ago Yeah, so I want to go ahead and say that I would like to do one on Satanism Yeah, for sure the religion misunderstood may include the church of Satan or maybe those are two separate things And the PM RC Is that the tipper core Organization yeah, I just this this brought back a lot of memories because we lived through the satanic panic for sure

And I remember it very distinctly. Yeah, like oh, I can imagine young Baptist. I was afraid right? I can imagine I Was very scared. I remember like growing up thinking, you know, some of the big kids are sacrificing things in the woods Yeah, oh, yeah Which is I mean like that was just part of your normal everyday thing like walking around thinking that was happening Yep, but it turns out in retrospect. It was all almost entirely made up. Yeah, and there was also and imagine every neighborhood or Town had this with those off Memorial Drive. That was Satan house where supposedly devil worshipers. Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Did you have one in your town? Sure? Yeah Yeah, it's so funny to me to think about that now. They were probably just nice normal people. It's probably some old

Shut-ins Some old folks elderly folks who just couldn't get out of the house much right they murdered anybody for years You never notice you never see anyone. Yeah, or it's kind of like kind of dilapidated or run down Yeah, it's because they're old. Yeah, and we want to issue a big COA here parents. This is Got some pretty grisly stuff in it. You probably don't want your kids listening to this even though it was all made up Yeah, but there's some Detail and some of this. It's I found myself even going. Oh, we have to say that. Yeah, so yeah, just It's rated R

Maybe even X for content. I'm thinking Chuck. We should put together The Times America lost its mind sweet. Yeah, include this The Associative Identity Disorder. Yeah D-programming cold D-programming Salem witchcraft trials Mm-hmm McCarthyism McCarthyism, that's right. Yeah, we're gonna do it one of these days. I'll actually put some of these sweets together Yeah They exist your mental sweets, right? Okay. Thanks, man for letting me off the hook But I don't know if you guys have picked up on

It or not, but I keep saying like they never really existed wasn't actually true It wasn't real this whole idea that we're talking about from the Roughly the mid 80s. Yeah till about the mid 90s about a 10-year period America as a whole was gripped by Again, there's no other way to put it satanic panic. Yeah, this idea that there were cults of Satan worshipers who were Very widespread more than you would think. Oh, yeah, who were abducting Killing raping molesting our children mutilating animals and who had been doing it for a very long time and America was just now waking up to this reality. Yeah, it's your teachers. It's the cops

Even the mayor of your town. Mm-hmm. There's a battle between good and evil very much going on right now Yeah, and somehow some way and people are still studying this Um, America clomped on to this idea and ran with it Like it was for real the idea that there were say murderous child molesting satanic cults Operating almost openly in the United States was a very deep and widespread belief Not just among religious people although they were at the forefront of this But among people who were writing academic papers and creating television shows in the news

It was people in the courts were subscribed to this. It was this it was a It was what's called a moral panic. Yeah, and when I was reading this even though I lived through it I kept thinking how in the world did this happen in the 1980s 1980s not the 1640s, right? Not the 1300s sure And it turns out there's a lot of reasons why and We got to go back in time a little bit to touch on the early reasons got to go back in time So this is That should be our way back machine theme song. That was just too darn loud

What was I was continuing with the back to the future references. What was too darn loud? Remember Huey Lewis when he auditioned he said, I'm sorry. That's just That's right Thank you. Thank you And by the way, this is not just the United States apparently it was in the UK Australia Canada South Africa South Africa Still has a cult crimes division. Yeah, I believe it. So Robert Lam wrote this article of stuff to blow your mind And we're gonna be drawing from other articles as well, which will name drop along the way. I guess One from slate that was good boom. There's some name dropping

I've got one for you. I'll hit it up later. All right. So part of the groundwork was laid for this in ancient history And Robert does a good job in pointing out that there is long Especially when it comes to Christian theology long been a divide between us and them heaven and hell Two sides good and evil good and evil light and dark. I Was gonna repeat that too. What else? Yin and Yang is super Christian. No, actually, I think Yin and Yang work together, right? Sure. Yeah, we should do it on Yin Yang, but a lot of people it's not just Christians Chuck There's humans subscribe to an in-group out-group mentality. Yeah, absolutely

Like I took an anthropology class once and the professor was like try to go a day without using words like us them We yeah, they it's impossible Virtually impossible politics. That's just the way our minds go in-group out-group and our group is safe and good Their group is potentially threatening and possibly bad. We don't know. Absolutely. So throughout history This has come up again and again and again and innocent people have been persecuted for doing nothing at all one good example are the Jewish people Christians accused Jews and

1475 of using blood for kidnapped Christian children in rituals Which is pretty ironic because the Romans just a few hundred years before had accused the Christians of bathing and dining and feasting on baby's blood us in them once again, baby's blood. It's a go-to thing for Villifying an out-group. Oh, yeah, but you see baby's blood in a lot of these cases. Yeah, because that's I guess the hardest blood to get a hold of yeah It's expensive blood and the most grizzly Witchcraft everyone of course we did we do one on the Salem witch trials or just McCarthyism. We did one. I believe yeah

Well, let's say we have and if we haven't we will Like member on like them being high on air got Yeah, we did something like that Okay, all right, so 15th century you had witchcraft persecutions all over Europe innocent women being Killed drowned burned you name it And of course none of this was true in all cases When it comes to art, they laid the groundwork in the 19th century the French romantic artists

loved painting stuff about Satan and witchcraft and and by the 1920s and the West we had pretty firm established a groundwork for believing in things like demons and Satan and a fiery hell And people who who worship this Satan? Yeah, and a lot this the weird thing is Chuck is there's a still to this day There's this idea that at some point back in antiquity at least there were devil worshipers Who like killed for Satan and all of this was born out of whole cloth fabricated from? People who are doing the religious persecution along the way and the people who are being tortured to confess

Into this kind of stuff. It was all just fabricated But the fact that it was old the fact that it was Sensational yeah, and the fact that it had been repeated so many times it gained traction to become this To gain this idea that it is historical fact at some point. Yes, people just take it as fact, but it's not true No, it's not true. It's never been true never been satanic satanic death cults in the United States or anywhere else, right? These people have never existed no now that is not to say that people haven't killed in the name of Satan or anything like that But there's never been any kind of satanic death cult ever in the history of the world as far as we can ever tell it's all made up right and

We want to go further by saying that these people who have killed in the name of Satan Are actually an example of life imitating art. Yeah, they're inspired by the thick the fictitious myth Because they're gullible and buy into it just as much as the people who think that this stuff is out there, too Like Richard Ramirez sure and he was driven by Satan or something like that There was a girl in the 80s in Georgia who supposedly killed a friend And then performed a satanic ritual. It's like this stuff did happen Yeah, but it happened as a result of the hysteria movie. It is a positive feedback. Yeah, absolutely So now we're in the 20th century and the roots of satanic panic can be found all throughout the entertainment industry

Yeah, books. There was one in 1927 by Herbert Gorman called the place called Dagon Which was very influential and radical at the time Complete fiction of course, but that doesn't Doesn't stop it from Establishing former roots that this could be a thing right and that's something that kind of keeps coming up again and again a Movie or a work of fiction. Yeah, we'll establish some storyline And then somebody will have read it and told a friend about it or something like that And then it becomes a game of telephone along the way

Somebody stopped saying I read in this work of fiction right or I saw in this movie this happened instead It becomes this happened. Yeah a friend of mine's sister. Yeah, which we'll get to a urban legend is one theory, of course Yeah, and I know we did a podcast on that we did 1968 a couple of movies came out one horror film called the devil rides out with the great Christopher Lee Because he was in every weird movie. He was great, man. He was the tall man in phantasm, right? No Who's that then? Christopher Lee was sure was he? Oh, no, that's Angus somebody. You're right. Christopher Lee was the guy from like the wicker man

Yeah, I mean dozens and dozens of horror movies played Dracula a lot Rosemary's baby also came out that year, which was way more mainstream Big big hit great movie. Yeah, really good still very creepy movie with Mia Farrow and Cassavetes and Charles Groden weirdly. I guess it's not weird, but I just associate him with comedy Yeah, but he always plays a straight man so he could go back and forth. Yeah, he could straddle worlds Yeah So those movies were huge as far as planning and you know, of course other things like the Omen and the Exorcist and it was just it was just a

Big time for talking about Satan and movies. Yeah, it's very popular What's interesting is you can trace it back to and initially that book the place called Dagon Which inspired HP Lovecraft? Yeah, that started it all basically Music of course, which if we ever do one on the PMRC, you'll get to that and backmasking more heavily but Satanic imagery and everything from like Iron Maiden to King Diamond and Judas Priest. Yeah, Judas Priest. Remember they got hauled in the court for backmasking. Yeah Man people I know and

Then you have some real-life things real-life occult like Alistair Crowley and Anton Levese who really didn't help quell Satanic panic fears If anything they help set the stage. No dressing up like with candles and being naked with like cloaks and pentagrams Right, isn't gonna make people feel any better. No, but that's what they're doing And if you will like I said, we'll do on a Satanism if you look at Satanism It's not let's sacrifice animals and throw blood on each other. It's more like hey We're on this earth for a short time. Let's party and just live for ourselves, right? It's more about hedonism and being atheist right then some weird dark occult Alistair Crowley was darker and more occult

Sure and Anton Levese definitely dressed his brand of Satanism up in that kind of like dark theatrics Sure, but the really ironic thing about both of those guys occult stuff is that again It was life imitating art or life imitating fiction Yeah, their ideas of the black mask or the witches Sabbath or wearing pentagrams all that stuff Yeah came out of those witch persecutions from before they were fabricated from whole cloth So these guys were tapping into what was already part of the popular culture in the in the way of what people thought of Satanism and Satanic rituals and we're just basically playing it up to the end is what it was very much So yeah, but to people who are scared to death of the idea that Satan is real and his worshipers are here on earth

And are ready to kill you those guys Scared those people and just proved that this is very real. See look at those two Anton Levese Alistair Crowley proved that there are Satanic cults Exactly, and who knows what's going on but on that big huge iron wooden door All right, well, let's take a break here and we're gonna come back and talk a little bit about The 1970s Stranger Danger Panic which factors in big time on the podcast pay dude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor Stars of the cult classic show. Hey, dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces

We're gonna use hey dude as our jumping-off point But we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it It's a podcast packed with interviews co-stars friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy blowing on it and popping it back in as we

Take you back to the 90s listen to hey, dude The 90s called on the iHeart radio app ample podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new iHeart podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself? What advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation if you do? You've come to the right place because I'm here to help this I promise you oh god seriously I swear and you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you

Oh, man, and so my husband Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush Boyband or each week to guide you through life step by step not another one Kids relationships life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life Just stop now if so tell everybody yeah Everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye Listen to frosted tips with the Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts All right, it's the 1970s and all of a sudden all you can hear about on the news is Our stories about child pornography rings child murders child murders

kidnappings Crimes involving children in general and not just that Chuck like at that time America was really waking up to the To just how widespread child abuse was yeah the 1970s, which is yeah that it took that long Yeah, it really was because apparently it took it just a couple of doctors to really stand up and be like I'm not looking the other way again on these unexplained breaks to a child's arm. Yeah It's the it's the parents. You're you're breaking your kids arms. It's abuse. That's wrong Right stop doing that and as a result the government stood up and was like, okay We need some laws here one of the things that they enacted were mandatory reporting laws

If you're a doctor and you notice signs of child abuse Yeah, you have to report it and as a result in 1974 child abuse cases went from 60,000 nationwide yeah to the year 2000 there were three million reported right and it was because of Public education a lot more visibility And then mandatory reporting laws, but it had this cumulative effect of saying America your children are being They're in danger. Yeah, and you need to do something about it and this child protection Movement grew out of it. Yeah, and I also get the sense that pre the late 70s. I think the media It was unsavory to report on this kind of stuff. It's like that's that family's business. Yeah, and just period

It's like no one wants to hear about this stuff. It's awful, right and somehow it got transferred to Probably to drive ratings like this is sensational is what it is sure yeah Anytime America is scared all you have to do is poke and prod it and you will get people to watch your TV show That's right, and it's done very frequently. It's sad and despicable, but it happens a lot. It still does There's another aspect to this too Chuck With the with the child protection idea This is also a time the 70s Especially is when it when women started to go back to work after they had kids yeah before they they may work

And then they would have kids and that was it for their professional career They would just stay home. They were moms for the rest of their time if they ever worked at all originally, right? Now in the 70s in the 80s women were having kids going back to work And as a result they were having to leave their kids in more and more daycare workers Care. Oh, yeah, and so this idea that their children were being abused or potentially abused really resonated with families Where their kids were in daycare and weren't like constantly under their supervision all the time How well do you know the people watching your kids? How much do you trust them? Yeah, are they Satanists? Yeah, and this this fear took root because of that

Collective anxiety at the time with more and more families putting their kids in daycare, right? Or they're just latchkey kids a little older. Yeah, who I remember during the Atlanta child murders Do you know where your children are? It's 10. Oh, yeah, I'll bet you know where your children are. Yeah, it was just a time of of in a good way people were more aware of Than ever of potential dangers for their children. Yeah, so it's not like it was all bad But when it goes into panic and I well, we'll just see what happened. Yeah It went from like zero to 120. Yeah, just a couple of seconds basically. So what happened was during the satanic panic

Largely it is based around court cases where largely daycare centers and people who cared for children were now being accused of Some of the craziest things you could ever imagine in your entire life. Yeah And like you said, one of the reasons this was fueled was very much because parents could relate to it I mean, should we go ahead and talk about a couple of these cases? Yeah, um, you know, the whole thing sounds crazy and weird and everything but

just Inocuous, I guess Until you come across the court cases. Yes, and then you're like, oh real people lost decades of their lives because of this because Goalable people were in position of power and locked them up. Yeah. All right, let's talk about the Kellers What was the actual where this is one in Texas? Yeah in Austin and Austin, Texas Francis and Dan Keller Ran a daycare center out of their home and were accused of the following things among others Drowning and dismembering babies in front of other children

Killing animals dogs and cats in front of children and baby tigers baby tigers. That's right Taking the kids to Mexico to be abused sexually by Mexican army soldiers and then brought back in time for their parents to pick them up. That's right Dressing is pumpkin. This is my favorite and shooting children in the arms and legs. Yep Putting children into a pool with sharks that ate babies Mm-hmm putting blood in their Kool-Aid forcing children to carry the bones of Of Bodies that they had dug up sure and this is just a few and I'm getting most of this from this great slayed article the real victims of

Satanic ritual abuse SRA by Linda Rodriguez McRobbie So the Kellers were accused of all this stuff And here's generally what happens Robert points out a lot of times it starts with one Perhaps credible case of child abuse. Yeah sexual or otherwise, right and then that's snowballs. They tell the parents Maybe this is going on so they tell the parents Hey that your child may be May be abused the parents start looking they start talking to other parents in that same daycare center They start looking they start asking their kids right and it all snowballs

Into these little preschoolers basically making stuff up and not only that it's like yeah Yeah, I've heard about that that's just abused it like it's some Satanists that are like molesting children and murdering I'm in the parents are like what? Yeah, or that plays into something they'd already heard on on TV, which we'll talk about the media's role in this Yeah, and like you said it snowballs and snowballs and all of a sudden once concerned parents Get involved And start talking to one another panicked concerned parents exactly. Yeah, then

people can end up falsely accused of some pretty horrendous stuff people stop thinking critically and You've got problems if you're on the receiving end of finger being pointed at you Well, yeah, cuz if you're a parent and your child goes to this daycare center another parent and the cops come and say hey This parents kid was sexually abused what parents gonna be like. Oh, I'm sure it's fine Yeah, you're fine quick quick complaining. Yeah, I'm not gonna check out my kid. Take a salt tablet so so with the with with the McMartin case which happened in Southern, California. Yeah, and and actually Ended up helping turn the tide against this

But the McMartin case and then the Keller case in Texas both of those were bolstered actually by bad medical testimony Yeah, by inexperienced doctors who didn't know what they were looking at who in their defense a little bit Was the at the time no one knew no one was looking at little kids like three-year-olds Viginas in describing what normal ones looked like right so since you didn't know what to look for but Thought you were looking for evidence of sexual abuse, right anything Could conceivably look like evidence of say vaginal trauma or something like that and in the case of the Kellers in particular the little girl who was basically I guess Accuser zero of this

Was was examined and found that her vagina showed Some evidence of trauma later on the doctor after gaining decades of experience saw that no that was totally normal what I saw yeah, and is not the That's I basically gave false testimony unwittingly, and I'm sorry yeah And that was a huge thing because these people were locked away because of medical testimony And again the case against the McMartin's was also bolstered by bad medical advice as well or bad medical testimony Yeah, so with the Keller case the patient or not patient victim zero Christy cheviers Shavia, I don't know how you'd say it

She was three years old. Uh-huh didn't go to the daycare center much And in 1991 told her mom that Dan Keller had spanked her That's what started this whole thing. Yeah, so all of a sudden the mom says And here's a key fact here the mom goes to her therapist Yeah, Donna David Campbell who the little girl was seeing because she'd been acting out She's like a central figure in this whole thing this whole Snafu who the doctor yeah, so they go to her and say listen something's going on here Can you talk to her about it and all of a sudden?

Donna Campbell Donna David Campbell starts coaxing out all these really bizarre Alligations about what's going on there They made us take off our clothes and had a parrot peckus on the pee pee that was one That was the earliest accusation that that formed the foundation of this whole case the basis of the snowball Yes, so this is this is This is what begins the snowball. This is when the mom goes to the other parents like you hear what's going on here We'll look at what's happened to my daughter and what's really happening here is something called

It was part of the recovered therapy recovered memory therapy movement Which was very big at the time in psychology, right? Basically the idea that we have these repressed memories That of abuse many people do that they have no idea of and it's up to the therapist to bring these out of us Yeah, that's almost like a separate intertwined thread to this whole satanic panic thing the satanic ritual abuses the recovered memory therapy movement, right and So the satanic panic can actually trace its roots Directly to a book from 1972 by a guy named Mike Warnke. He was a Christian sandup comedian He also was totally full of it He wrote a book called the Satan cellar where he talked about his life as a former satanic cult

Priest I believe yeah and drug dealer and he was eventually exposed far too late by the Christian magazine Cornerstone as almost entirely fraudulent and made up in just a liar Yeah, but his book just sold like wildfire through the the Christian fundamentalist community and basically Really established the groundwork for the idea that there were satanic cults operating in the United States, right? Yeah for for the thread of the recovered memory Movement that formed part of the satanic panic you can trace that back to a book from 1980 Yeah called. I think Michelle remembers. Yeah, 1980 and this was a by the way I

Was the on the cover of a Christian magazine in the 1980s cornerstone magazine. I thought it was but it wasn't guideposts I've heard of that. That's a bit. It's a big-time Christian magazine man. That's a cover boy one month What were you doing on the cover? I was I was at a church camp one summer and that was just like it was like a four-panel cover Uh-huh of just kids having fun at church camp and I was one of them the May 82 issue Man, I hope I wish I could track that thing down. They'd be great You if anyone out there has the issue of Chuck on the cover of guideposts magazine from do you remember the year roughly? it would have been

Probably between 1985 and 1987 okay, we need that everyone. I want to post that that cover That would be awesome. So this book Michelle remembers it was a it was just like dropping a bomb in the midst of this Everybody so everyone was transitioning from who can we start? Pointing at and persecuting. Yeah now that we've decided the cults are okay, and we're gonna stop deprogramming them Yeah, who could we do what could we do next and this book comes in the midst of that in 1980 and it's a book about a woman named Michelle and her therapist Lawrence Pazder. Yeah, he wrote it and he he was he helped her Uncover repressed memories of being ritually satanically abused or satanic ritually abused in the 1950s in Vancouver Yeah, he actually ended up marrying her and he coined the term ritual abuse that lies directly at his feet and

This thing had a lot of traction. I mean this lady was on Oprah. Yeah, she did the talk show circuit Oh, yeah for years the guy was used as an expert witness in court cases like he's he founded a whole movement in psychology It was completely debunked. Yeah, and the whole idea is it's based on this premise that If you undergo a traumatic experience your mind is going to try to repress that memory Yeah, but it's gonna have all sorts of horrible effects in your life You're gonna be an alcoholic and a drug addict and maybe a child abuser and you won't know why but it's because you were abused as a Child probably by satanists and you covered it up and you need to go to therapy to have it unlocked That's right

And a lot of people went to therapy and had these memories unlocked which only proved Pazder's point even further, right? The problem is is if when they were reexamined they were pseudo memories through the power of suggestion and overzealous Therapists a lot of people form memories of stuff that never happened. Yeah, the problem is recovered memory therapy There's little to no scientific evidence that it's a thing at all, right that people unconsciously repress these memories The Royal College of Psychiatrists in Britain They have officially banned its members from using it all together the British Psychological Society Says you can use it But you can't draw any premature conclusions. You have to have evidence not just well

This is what they said in therapy, right? So that's a repressed memory that came to the surface, right? And the AMA I'm sorry the APA and the United States Their official stance was issued in 1980. I'm sorry in 1998 There's a consensus among memory researchers and clinicians that most people who are sexually abused as children Remember all or part of what happened to them, although they may not fully understand or disclose it so a competent psychotherapist is Likely to acknowledge that current knowledge does not allow the definite conclusion without corroborating evidence, right? So again The general consensus is that people don't completely unconsciously forget everything that happened, right?

It's virtually impossible. Yeah, and so they're this idea that During therapy while you're coaxing these memories out You're actually forming pseudo therapy is backed up by a lot of follow-up research pseudo memory pseudo memory Sorry. Yeah is backed up by research. There's a researcher famous memory researcher named Elizabeth Loftus She found that 90% of participants of this study came to Believe that they had done something they hadn't when confronted with Witnesses who said that they had done it. That's the real danger in all this Sure, is it these memories become just as valid as real memories and do

Damage because they aren't real and there's actually a real-life case that came out of all this this one was crazy Paul Ingram Yeah, Paul Ingram was a sheriff's deputy and he was accused by his young daughter of Satanic ritually abusing her and that he was a member of a satanic cult and that She had been raped by this cult six to eight hundred times they had been involved in the murder of 25 babies at least and and Paul Ingram said I don't remember any of this but

You must be right. So I I'm going to confess. He was a preacher too. When he yeah, he was a fundamentalist Christian So he was very much primed to believe that there is a very a very real Satan roaming the earth and If his daughter is telling him that he did this why what what reason does she have to lie? So he actually I mean he bought into it and and took the rap for this even though it never happened No one ever showed that any of this stuff happened. Yeah, he served his full prison sentence of 20 years 20 years And maybe didn't even do it anything. Yeah But he himself said well, I don't know. Maybe I did yeah And I think he fully bought into it over time such a weird reversal in that case. It is you know, yeah

Um, should we take another break? Maybe so all right We'll take another break here and talk about the media and then some other theories and in cases and satanic panic On the podcast hey, dude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show Hey, dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces We're gonna use hey, dude as our jumping off point But we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it It's a podcast packed with interviews co-stars friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever

Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper Because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Gameboy blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s Listen to hey, dude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app ample podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new iHeart podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road

Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself? What advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation if you do you've come to the right place? Because I'm here to help this I promise you. Oh god. Seriously. I swear and you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband Michael Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life Step by step not another one kids relationships life in general can get messy You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so tell everybody Yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen

So we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye Listen to frosted tips with the Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts All right, if you were Alive from the 1980s and early 90s, which I was then you remember opera Geraldo bubble yum Sally Jesse Raphael. Yeah, you name it every single talk show Donahue Yeah, doing lots and lots of shows on Satanic death cults

If it's 2 p.m. On a Wednesday afternoon And you want to figure out how to get America to turn their TV to your station You would have had a choice of different shows to watch probably total. Oh covering satanic. Yeah on the same day, right? And yeah, everybody did Satanists and Geraldo was the king of this He actually had a two-hour primetime special in 1988 called Exposing Satan's underground and it is on YouTube and I think about 10 parts I watched one of them. Yeah, where he had Ozzie on yeah, and Ozzie's like For Ozzie he's Ozzie looks like a pre golden girls Dorothy is the way he's dressed and done up

It's awesome, but he's like I don't mean to freak anybody out with me music He doesn't know what to make of this, but I was like Ozzie just sit there We'll get back to you later, right, but there's this classic line in this right Geraldo goes they're talking about a murder that was carried out by this boy and Geraldo says to this cop he goes detective you're a cop not a theologian, but let me ask you was this boy possessed dead serious and the cop was like I Hedges a little bit like I think that's a state of mind, but yeah in that sense. Yes, I think he was

Geraldo doesn't give it he's looking for out of the guy So he goes to an actual theologian a priest. Yeah, you know, you're you're you're charged with Investigating these cases for the Catholic Church. Do you think that this is a case of possession? He's like absolutely and her all is like, yes That's what I was looking for But that's the level of journalism that people were tuning into unlike NBC eight o'clock for two hours in like the highest rated two-hour TV documentary ever and a third or a half of America is like what idiot believes this is the most entertaining thing I've ever seen the other half is

Scared to death and thinks that all of this is totally real. Yeah, you know, it's easy to laugh about now But shame on all of them. Well, Geraldo came out and said I want to apologize Oh, he did that bit of journalism that was really bad. Yeah, I'm sorry for it But I mean that's how he made his name with stuff like that. Well, he was caught up in the moral panic. Everyone was doing it Yeah, there was a book in 1990 a children's picture book Called Don't make me go back mommy colon a child's book about satanic ritual abuse. Yeah To read to your children or if you were a therapist to use in therapy. Yeah, right, you know that while they also had

In many of the court cases little little anatomically correct ragdolls that they would use in court Like, you know, show me where you were touched and things like this, right, which I'm sure that has valid use as well And you know like sex abuse cases for sure, but you know like completely poo-pooing that you have to You have to use that you I would imagine you you're training in how to do that correctly without inadvertently or inadvertently leading The the child on into Creating some sort of pseudo memory. Yeah, well, it should be extensive. I would guess. Yeah, you know, I mean Yeah, so the media was definitely complicit in all this

Really saw that there is a lot of ratings to be had in just fanning the flames of the satanic panic And I think a lot of people bought into it as well and then so too were things like the The field of psychiatry and psychology very much complicit in this by allowing repressed memory therapy to really spread as much as it Did without any kind of real Verified research into whether it was real or not. Yeah, and to defend them a little bit Robert also makes it points. They're probably well-meaning probably thinking they were doing this great work like helping these kids. Well, sure, but like with no scientific basis whatsoever, right and

Lacking a lot of critical thinking too. Yeah, and they dressed as pumpkins and shot the kids in the arms and the legs Where are the bullet wounds? Yeah, how exactly did they get the kids to Mexico and then back to Austin in the average daycare day? Secret tunnels, you know secret tunnels that was an explanation. There was a lot. There wasn't enough critical thinking so you can definitely take the media psychology psychiatry and a lot of law enforcement investigators To task for this, but really there were a lot of hucksters and fraudsters making a lot of money as Satanic experts at the time. Oh, yeah, both is like legal legal

representatives Expert witnesses authors Going on shows like her all though and Sally Jesse Raphael And those people are really should bear the brunt of this because they were just lying. Yeah Lying lying lying their faces off And and scaring people to death and making a lot of money out of it. So we said it was widespread There was a red book magazine survey in 1994 and this is at the end of the whole thing. Yeah, true that found that 70% of Americans believed in satanic ritual abuse

And in 1993, this is the really scary one a survey by the American Bar Association Center on Children and the law found that 26% Quarter more than a quarter of prosecutors said they handled at least one case involving ritual satanic ritual abuse during that time period. Yeah, 25 percent. Yeah, 26 percent. So Within that time, too, there was a very famous case in 1993 in West Memphis, Arkansas Yeah, the West Memphis 3 Who were very famously exonerated thanks to crack documentary filmmaking? Yeah on HBO's half As a matter of fact, HBO really led the vanguard against this whole satanic panic. Yeah, they released in 1995

a Documentary or I think it was a biopic on the McMartin trial. It wasn't a documentary. I think it was like dramatized Oh, really and that really started to change the tide of how academics intellectuals and the media itself saw satanic ritual abuse started to expose it as mmm. This is not real Yeah, and this is after the McMartin trial had been the longest and most expensive trial in the history of the United States That's right 15 to 16 million dollars spent for with zero convictions because it didn't happen, right? And that case actually was started with a woman who believed her child had been sexually abused and the woman actually sadly went on to die from alcohol poisoning a

Couple years later and was schizophrenic She was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic in that time and yet nobody stopped and said oh, well, wait a minute She was the center of the accusers of all this should be We take another look at all this it was like no Let's spend 15 million dollars a taxpayer money trying to prosecute these people and get zero convictions out of it The West Memphis three were successfully prosecuted in Arkansas. I mean railroaded. Yeah There is no other way to put this thanks to something like a false confession by Jesse miss Kelly Which is mind-blowing until you should go listen to our episode on false confessions, which I believe we did that one, right?

Either that or it was a part of another one, but yeah, we covered that topic for sure Um and the end all of that was based on the satanic panic thing as well But you should definitely watch those again HBO documentaries paradise lost one two and three. Yeah, and they um They made the original in paradise lost the child murders of Robin Hood Hills Mm-hmm, and I think they thought it was the same guy. Did you see brothers keeper the other documentary? Uh, yeah about the the older older brothers love that one man That's the same guy that brothers keepers will put him on the map Uh-huh, so I think he thought that paradise lost one was just the documentary and to his credit

Joe Biden burlinger sure I think he He really championed this case and followed it to its conclusion over the course of two more documentaries over the years Yeah, and from what I understand he changed his mind about the the Content or the crime midstream like I think yeah, didn't he go there thinking he was just covering the crime And then yeah, actually saw what was going on. It's like whoa. Yeah, I think I think he was I mean because of him They were exonerated. Yeah, ultimately. Yeah, like he got three people out of prison one off death row. Yeah Yeah, that's off, but again, this is part of the satanic panic scare

and that not that one that kind of came at the end of it, but the McMartin movie on HBO started to change the tide and so too to the exoneration of a woman named Margaret Kelly Michaels in New Jersey In 1993 she was let out of prison after it was revealed how coercive the questioning was Yeah Of the children who ended up accusing her of this and that was true in every case it seems like it was it shed a Lot of light onto this and people started going like whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Wait. This is coercive, huh? Let's look at these other cases. Yeah, and you go back and look at the transcripts and see like

Okay, these people were basically telling the kids what they wanted to hear. Yeah They were using Approval whenever the kids said something that that pointed the finger, right? They were using disapproval when they the kids refused to talk or whatever or Implicate anyone and if you go back and really listen to what the kids are saying a lot of the times They're like no nothing happened. Well, and then they would follow that with are you sure this didn't happen? Right. Are you sure this didn't happen? You're not supposed to do that and you're certainly not supposed to put people in prison for half of their lives

Well, and you're especially not supposed to do that to a kid who's highly suggestible Right and wants to please because most kids want to please right and when you look at some of these allegations It sounds like if you asked a three-year-old to make up what they think Ritual abuse would be right here's what a kid would say. Yeah, they locked us in a closet with spiders and snakes Yeah, they put us in a pool with sharks that ate babies and they fed us baby parts, right? So the real death knell of the satanic ritual abuse scare came in 1994 with a meta-survey for the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect and this study

It contacted Prosecutors regular lawyers social workers psychologists I think that was it thousands and tens of thousands of them across the country ended up whittling it down to a sizable sample and Found all sorts of things Specifically what they found is there was no evidence whatsoever of any satanic cults operating anywhere in the US or a single crime Carried out by a satanic cult. They said that they found a couple of Crimes that were carried out by people allegedly in the name of Satan But that these were most likely inspired by the satanic panic itself and solo

Affairs, that's what yeah, that's what that's what I'm saying. Yeah, but they had had it wasn't a satanic cult by any means they also found in this study that children of The ages that that where they would go to daycare weren't capable of forming the type of accusations Against satanic ritual abuse. Yeah that people had been convicted of that clearly the adults were the ones who were Channeling themselves through their children. Yeah to accuse these people the kids were saying things like they locked us in a closet With spiders and snakes. Yeah, they weren't saying like they carved open a baby and Sexually abused it and then we all drank its blood while everyone's wearing black robes

They're not sophisticated enough to think that kind of thing So the study also proved that too and then ironically the same survey found plenty of evidence of religious-based crimes Including murders carried out Things like exorcisms that went too far that kind of stuff. They're like that actually is real, right? And ironically we have a lot of laws protecting people who do that, but we have laws that step up the punishment for its satanic abuse even though that doesn't exist and That one really changed the tide of how people saw the satanic panic. Well, yeah, and then experts later came out and said as far as the Physical abuse and the doctors who testified at trial like the type of a physical abuse these kids were enduring

They were like a layman could look at a child right and and say wow what happened to this kid But you will obviously never be able to reproduce. Yeah, you're totally mangled not this like ambiguous Like well, yeah, I think it seems like they had some marks where they could have been, you know Molested or something right like it would have been so obvious right because these allegations were so far out there Yeah, and of course years later. They say this at the time. Everyone was drinking the flavor aid. Yeah, you know nice the blood drenched flavor aid and insult to injury that same media all of a sudden the hot story became The outrage that was satanic panic and what a bunch of crap that it was, right? So now let's cover that story in full. Yeah, even though we had a lot to do with it, right? Yeah

So Chuck why did people drink the flavor aid like what was the immediate? Reason for the satanic panic. Well, you found this great Article, which one I found a lot of great articles The three satanic ritual abuse as oh, yeah, the sociological article Yeah, that was good They have a few reasons as Subversion ideology as rumor panic and as contemporary legend and the subversion ideology I thought was super interesting I didn't even know what that was. I hadn't heard of it before you they define it as a culturally constructed myth that gives

Shape and form to feelings of anxiety and uncertainty about the future that are experienced between periods of rapid Unpredictable social change, right? So so we're anxious. We're not even necessarily conscious of our anxiety But we just we don't feel quite right. We're everything's changing. We don't know what's going on So what's yeah, what exactly is making us nervous? Oh, how about that group over there Satanists? Yeah, before it was Jews and before that it was Christians exactly now It's a face to to this underlying sense of dread we feel because the times are a change exactly and it gives us a An outlet at the expense of other people, but that's the with the subversion ideology the hallmark characteristic of it is that that that other group takes everything we hold dear and

Values the opposite of it. Yeah, right. So Satanists they they use upside-down crosses and evil is what's really good And it was it's a classic example of subversion Ideology well and one thing I thought was really interesting in here is they contend and I'm sure it's true that Subversion ideology actually ends up having a stabilizing effect because people then go. Oh, okay Well, that's why I'm so upset and worried and anxious is because of these Satanists Yeah, not what's really going on which is the end of the millennium apparently. Oh really? Yeah, whatever That was another explanation. I ran across is that it was millennial anxiety There is also no the another when you said moral or rumor panic. Yeah

Which we touched on before but basically that is this idea that It's just buying into a rumor. Yeah, like really really buying into it and the way you buy into it is because all of a sudden professional psychiatrists and psychologists and law enforcement people and People in the newspaper are talking about this stuff like it's fact and with that because we trust these people as being smart Intelligent people it becomes fact in the eyes and the minds of just normal people and that gives it Veracity in and of itself once people start believing something as fact without any proof Yeah, you a rumor panic has just set in well and ironically to them. It seems like the more out there The the panic is the more readily it's believed because that the old like who would make something like that up, right?

Well, a three-year-old might being coaxed by police and her parents and her shrink Yeah, and then the last one is an urban legend which we talked about before but this sociological article pointed something out that I hadn't thought of that Urban legends deal in metaphors even though we don't think of them as metaphors So in this case the children that were being abused by Satanists were a metaphor for our future and children our future Just go ask Whitney Houston You can't it's true and then as people start to buy into it It becomes a rumor panic and you can dress it up with some version ideology So in the end the McMartens, I don't think they ever well, I think they serve never prosecuted

I think they were in jail here and there while the trial was going on Yeah, but they were never prosecuted but never successfully prosecuted the Kellers were eventually exonerated But they spent 21 years in prison on their life was ruined 21 years in prison each based on these false accusations I have to say if you want to read one of the better articles. I've ever read it's called the innocent and the damned It's from Texas Monthly. It was written in 1994 while this Satanic panic is going on, but somehow Texas Monthly took a critical eye to this stuff. Yeah, really good article I thought this was so fascinating because as crazy as it seems now And like I was saying at the very beginning like how in the world in the 1980s did we buy into this like it was

Salem, Massachusetts. Yeah When you look at the reasons behind it, it was like the perfect storm coalescing It sort of makes perfect sense when you look at everything behind it It does but doesn't it also it's still not like even even even if you take into account that you're using hindsight and that the Perspective that's afforded by that. Yeah, the gullibility. I know that's it that is involves in a moral panic is It's just It's saddening. I bet Edward Bernays would have been all over this. Oh, yeah. Well, he fomented those kind of things You know, um

Yeah Yeah, it's sad Also, if you want some yucks go look up law enforcement guide to Satanic cults on YouTube The video series. Yeah Yeah, so weird. I'm glad to know that you had a Satan house in your neighborhood, too I think everybody did or rumors that like somebody found a cat with its head cut off in a pentagram Oh, that happened. Yeah, because I'm ten which is okay. If you're ten, but if you're fifty, it's not okay Especially if you're the local prosecutor. Yeah

And also one last thing Chuck it makes you wonder what moral panics are we working on right now? Oh, yeah What's a brewing? It's not like this is ancient history. No, you know If you want to know more about moral panics and specifically to say tannic panic You can type those words into the search bar at howstuffworks.com Since I said search bar, it's time for lesson or mail Here's what I predict is that some people are gonna write in and say dudes We're in the middle of another moral panic right now and it is blank vocal fry perhaps

Somebody called me the fry master and an email. Do you see that? And no, I didn't she was like Chuck always uses vocal fry and then when I listen to my voice I'm like I totally do. Yeah, but uh I've noticed it a lot more since we Did that episode yeah Whatever I'm being me. Yeah, man. You should I'm a trendsetter I'm gonna call this oh Guys sitting straight on these grocery store donations

Okay. Hey guys longtime listener love you guys never thought This would be the reason I have to reach out to you at the end of the podcast on Tuesday You said I don't know which podcast it was at the end of the recent podcast Actually, I had to stop and say no Because my friends Josh and Chuck didn't just do that until people not to donate a dollar or two buy the little Hot air balloons at the grocery store because the company then uses those donations to get a tax credit This is absolutely not true. That is not true with that guy. So he says I have actually been working with Children's Miracle Network Hospitals in Connecticut for about 20 years and by the way when I said the balloons

I forgot that was children's Miracle Network specifically. I used to do a lot of work with them in LA So you weren't singling them on video shoots. No, of course not. They're amazing You're like, it's the shamrocks. I have a problem. I know it just felt terrible after that. So He says our corporate partners do not get tax credits for donations made by their customers In fact, many of our corporate partners ring at these donations through their registers So the donation shows on the customer's receipt allowing of them to use that for their taxes What a quick fun fact about the Miracle balloon That I reference is that the first one ever sold in the entire world was at a small diner in downtown

Middletown, Connecticut Roy Cohn in 1986 I thought he's gonna say like 1904. Yeah Soon after that the Miracle balloon became a multinational program that raises money for more than 170 local children's hospitals across the US and Canada and its creator became very very rich As I mentioned, I've been doing this job for about 20 years and I have to tell That I always say I have the best job in the world. I get to work with amazing people like my co-workers and all of our partners

And I get to work for the most inspiring people our patient families. Please help me get this corrected the stuff You should know Legion Don't worry. I still love you guys. That is from Scott Organic the director of Children's Miracle Network Hospitals Wow from the horse's mouth or a director. Yeah, so I don't We're gonna have to look into this a little further. I think we got other people that said that's not true And other people said it is true for Children's Miracle Network I'm sure he knows what he's talking about. Oh, yeah, but there are all kinds of things to donate to and it's also probably not a liar I don't know. He seems like a

Regular guy not a satanic virtual abuser. No not at all in any way, right? So we'll look into it. I certainly did not mean to disparage the no I didn't either and I mean if that's the way it works, I retract that but I need to look into it a little more first All right, the jury's out Thank you very much. What's his name David? Yep, David. You're awesome. Thank you for the work You're doing too. If you want to get in touch with us to set us straight We love that you can tweet to us at sysk podcast You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know you can send us an email to stuff podcast at howstuffworks.com

And as always join us at our home on the web stuff. You should know dot com Stuff you should know is a production of I heart radios how stuff works for more podcasts from my heart radio Visit the I heart radio app Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows On the podcast hey dude the 90s called David Lacher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show Hey, dude bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces We're gonna use hey dude as our jumping-off point But we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it

Listen to hey dude the 90s called on the I heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new I heart podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself? What advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush Boy bander each week to guide you through life tell everybody yeah Everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye Bye-bye listen to frosted tips with Lance Bass on the I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts