Five Goofy Things About the SATANIC PANIC
If you were a kid growing up in the United States in the 1980s, you had at least some exposure the the “Satanic Panic”. This post is not an erudite treatise on why and how this nonsensical social panic occurred. There are many other well-written articles about that such as these from the New York Times or The Oregonian. Rather, this post is much more of a memoire about the ridiculousness of it all from a child’s perspective. Because I believe most children of the 1980s knew how absurd this social scare really was, we did all the things we weren’t supposed to do because we weren’t supposed to do them. At very least we were curious; at most, spiteful.
In my single-mom-household world, the hierarchy of who decided what was sufficiently Satanic and what to do about it presided with whatever strip mall church and/or televangelist preacher my grandmother was into at the time. Anti-Satan edicts would flow down from him (it was always a “him”) to my grandmother to my mother. I’d often get strange commands to not do one thing or another and they always sounded so derisory to me that I would go out of my way break the rule to see what the fuss was all about. I was not alone. So, here are five of those goofy things from a kid who lived through the Satanic Panic.
Playing Records Backwards
Heavy Metal often had unapologetically Satanic themes. The bands did this on purpose for certain. Heavy Metal was definitely frowned upon by grandma’s TV preacher (unless they were rockin’ for Christ like Stryper or White Cross). However, the real scare came from those select vinyl records that had subliminal messages from the Devil when playing them backward. These messages would no doubt instantly infect the mind of young listeners and force them to join a cult or sacrifice their dog or something. Grandma had a complete list of records not to do this with. Ever.
I’m glad she did too because I could bring that list to my older, teenage cousin April who happened to have a vast majority of these records. A group of neighbor kids and I would then proceed to listen intently as she hand played the records backward. As it turns out, if you are looking for Satanic messages from a song playing in reverse, you will find them. We giggled as we deciphered all kinds of Satanic messages. It didn’t really matter which records you did it with. You will find them. Go ahead and try it yourself!
Dungeons & Dragons
I remember watching a short-lived cartoon one morning called “Dungeons & Dragons” based on a role-play game. It was pretty cool and looked harmless enough. I don’t remember if it was my grandmother, mother, or both but people were really upset that I was watching it. Sure, I could watch shit like Robocop, Rambo or horror movies not overtly Satanic, but NOT THIS CARTOON! Moreover, I was forbidden to ever play the game less I be indoctrinated into some sort of medieval, Satan-worshiping cult to summon demons.
My buddy Daniel was a geeky guy, and I knew he must have had this game. I promptly biked to his place to learn what all the fuss was about. He happily showed me the boards, books, figures, etc. and was happy to teach me to play Dungeons & Dragons with him. I never learned though. Not because I was afraid of summoning demons, but because it was time-consuming and complicated. Aside from a handful of geeks like Daniel, I don’t think this had any chance of mainstream proliferation like the kind society was worried about. I settled for secretly watching the cartoon.
Prism Pennants
I don’t know what the exact name for these are. There’s a product description on Amazon that literally calls them, “Clear Crystal Ball Prism Suncatcher Rainbow Pendants Maker, Hanging Crystals Prisms for Windows, for Feng Shui…”. Whatever they’re called, they are essentially little crystal chandeliers people can hang near their windows. They catch sunlight and refract little rainbows all over the room. My mother loved them…
…until she learned that grandma’s latest strip mall preacher said they were EVIL! That’s right, these “dark crystals” were associated with the New Age movement. This “cult” of people used these crystals not only to heal in unnatural ways, but also to catch devils or talk to aliens or whatever. So, my grandma and mom started removing the beautiful little pennants and all the rainbows they made. They rubbed oil on the walls to spiritually cleanse the house. Vegetable oil on the walls instead of beautiful little real rainbows was a bad trade as far as my little mind could fathom.
But, you know what? I saved a handful of those little rainbow-making prism pennants. Surely anything that could heal people, summon demons or communicate with aliens should be saved! They then hung in the refuge of April’s room while we played records in reverse. I gave one to Daniel too and told him it’d bring him good luck for his next D&D game.
Symbology
One would not have to look beyond many Heavy Metal album covers to find Satanic symbology. It was dyed-in-the-wool with them. The real danger was the subliminal Satanic symbols that would stealthily embed their way into young minds and make kids want to join cults. My grandmother’s strip mall-preacher-of-the-quarter combated this by giving a lesson of all the things to watch out for.
As you can probably surmise, this armed us with the curiosity to find Satanic symbols wherever we could! The best at this was a kid at school named Chad. He could fold a dollar bill in a dozen ways to give us various versions of “666” hidden in our money. There was a time when almost every kid was looking for pentagrams in magazine covers or goat heads in movie posters. Well, at least all of the devil’s symbols we found were no longer subminimal, and therefore, no longer a danger to our young, impressionable minds.
Probably the funniest story I can remember is when Proctor & Gamble had to change their logo because so many Satanic Panic Fanatics and conspiracy theorist were convinced it was evil. Under the training and tutelage of televangelists, people clearly saw two horns with the 666 in the middle. Can you see it now? “13” stars? Hhhmmm. Thus, the logo was change from a really cool bearded moon guy among the stars to… “P&G”. Pretty lame.
Media Hype
The hyper-commercialization of media in the 1980s hooked on and propagated Satanic hysteria. I’ve said it before on multiple podcasts but I think television and printed media took a huge hit in the 80s and 90s and our culture is still not recovered from it. Numerous magazines, tabloids and even newspapers were printing anything they could about Satanic cults or whatnot. Oprah Winfrey, a professional propagator of misinformation, aired shows along with other talk show hosts to sensationalize stories of Satanism. NBC aired a Geraldo Rivera “special” on network television in 1988 called “Devil Worship: Exposing Satan’s Underground” which scared people into believing there were over a million Satanists in the USA secretly working against society.
The truly sad thing is we have not learned much. Media is still scaring people into believing there is a big group of “others” out there systematically working against their interests with no real evidence to back their claims. In fact, it’s probably even worse now with multiple, micro “panics” happening congruently at any given time.
Turn off your TV. Turn off your phone. Turn off your computer. Do it often. Go read a thoughtful book. Sit on a bench. Watch a bird. Get your mind out of the echo chamber for at least a little while every day. You may be surprised and amused about how goofy it all really is.
