Anyone Remember The Satanic Cult Conspiracies In The 80's?

[clone]

This topic made me think of Stephen King's Danse Macabre where he basically theorizes about collective American horror themes. He talked about Rosemary's Baby, which is about a Satanic cult which sucks in a young couple. I found this article interesting. http://filmmessages.com/id21.html

It talks about the film being about control. And I think that's a pretty good take on the fear that existed in the 80s. The older generation always comes to a point of disconnect with the younger. That's nothing new, but the flavor that disconnect takes on changes a bit. The 80s were a flamboyant time in many ways--over the top clothes, money and drugs displayed right and left, musical experimentation. So, I think the fear/control that the older generation manifested then had to be rather flamboyant too. You can't get much more fabulous than Satan and the gang. ;) It made everything a lot more interesting too. Face it, if you're forced into a life of strictures and piousness, then wouldn't you want a grand epic storyline to make your life sound better?

[alchemy]

Someone donated some Beatrice Sparks books to the charity group I work with recently, and I read Jay's Journal, which is about a teenager who gets into Satanism. Written in the mid-70s, so most of it is pretty laughable today.

I read Go Ask Alice and really enjoyed it so was excited to read this one, but even my tender teenage mind laughed at how ludicrous much of that book was.

[RosyDaisy]

Speaking of the PMRC, how about the moment when Dee Snider made the best speech ever? :character-beavisbutthead:

S0Vyr1TylTE

On VH1's Behind the Music Dee said that his manager (?) said let them put the labels on the records, it means more sales. He's absolutely right about that.

[RachelB]

My first exposure to fundamentalism was in the context of those conspiracies, though I didn't know that at the time.

Back in 8th grade, a classmate I didn't know especially well asked to sign my yearbook, so I handed it over, then wished I hadn't, because what my classmate wrote was pretty rude.

When my friend M looked over my shoulder later at the page, she told me, with a panicked look on her face, "There's a satanic symbol in that message! You have to burn that page."

I told her not to be ridiculous, that I was going to use white-out over the signature, because I didn't want to look at it, but that I wasn't going to burn anything, and she was genuinely stricken at the thought that my decision would lead to me being demonically possessed and going to hell.

I'm much more puritan in background, so it was theologically baffling to me that anyone would see a mere object as having that kind of power (a kind of power I associated with God, not with things). I tried to tell that a scribble only had power over her to the extent that she invested it with power. Yeah, that didn't go so well.

Her parents started home-schooling her for religious reasons the next year, at which point we drifted apart. I feel kind of bad about how little compassion I had for her at the moment we were arguing. It's clear in retrospect that someone-- her parents or pastor or both-- was scaring the living daylights out of her and making it more difficult for her to cope with daily life.

[ThisOlGirl]

*Hums 'The Way We Were' to self*....ah yes, the good 'ol Satanic Panic days!

My not even remotely fundie mom & stepdad were convinced that bands like Van Halen & Motley Crue were going to send me straight to hell. So of course, I did what any kid would do when something was forbidden--I listened to my debil worshippin' music on the DL. But it was totes ok for me to listen to Prince & Madonna :cray-cray:

But my parents eventually got over the whole thing, and my mom even has old high school pictures of me & my friends looking every bit the rock n roll groupies on our way to a KISS concert.

And about those parental warning stickers--that's how I knew I'd love the music. I remember not being able to get to the record store (memba those?) fast enough to buy Madonna's 'Justify My Love' single and 2 Live Crew's 'Nasty As They Wanna Be' cassette (yes I said cassette) just because of all the hoopla.

[Jinger Jar]

Dating myself here, but I clearly remember the hysteria that surrounded The Exorcist when it first came out. I myself didn't see it until years later, but I had adult cousins who saw it and fainted in the theater. One of my professors in college met the man who would become her husband when she vomited in his lap during the movie. :lol:

I think the satanic conspiracies of the 80s started in the 1950s and the worry that rock-n-roll was the Devil's music. This idea gained new life with Charles Manson and the Manson family being linked to both satanism and The Beatles, the whole Helter Skelter thing. Follow that into the 70s, when we used to play Frank Zappa, Led Zeppelin and ELO records backwards to listen for supposed satanic messages, destroying the needles on our record players in the process. And the theaters were showing The Omen or The Car or Amityville Horror, and you could watch Rosemary's Baby on late night TV, right before the stations went off the air for the night.

In this light, it's not surprising that folks who grew up in the 60s and 70s would accuse their children's pre-school teachers of being satanists. It doesn't make it right, and it's shameful that so many people's careers and lives were destroyed. But the popular culture of the 60s and 70s was so steeped in a fear of satanism that it's not really that shocking.

[RachelB]

*Hums 'The Way We Were' to self*....ah yes, the good 'ol Satanic Panic days!

My not even remotely fundie mom & stepdad were convinced that bands like Van Halen & Motley Crue were going to send me straight to hell. So of course, I did what any kid would do when something was forbidden--I listened to my debil worshippin' music on the DL. But it was totes ok for me to listen to Prince & Madonna :cray-cray:

But my parents eventually got over the whole thing, and my mom even has old high school pictures of me & my friends looking every bit the rock n roll groupies on our way to a KISS concert.

And about those parental warning stickers--that's how I knew I'd love the music. I remember not being able to get to the record store (memba those?) fast enough to buy Madonna's 'Justify My Love' single and 2 Live Crew's 'Nasty As They Wanna Be' cassette (yes I said cassette) just because of all the hoopla.

How on earth did parents who got excited about this stuff decide what was okay to listen to? Pre-warning sticker, my (Catholic) best friend in elementary school was not allowed to listen to Prince, because he appeared in Playgirl, but Michael Jackson (Thriller era) was just fine. And she wasn't allowed to listen to Madonna, because she writhed around on the floor in a wedding dress, but Cyndi Lauper was okay.

My own parents (both mainline Christian ministers) didn't care if I listened to Trent Reznor, Madonna, Pet Shop Boys, or Public Enemy, so long as I kept the volume low enough not to bother them. But I was not allowed to go to any concerts without them or a friend's parent (and we lived far enough away from the city for sneaking out not to be a viable option, even had I been more of a sneaker than I was).

[javafriend]

I remember going to a small bookstore years ago - very late 80's/early 90's - and finding a picturebook in the children's section about satantic cults. The story was about a child going to preschool and seeing suspicious satanic things going on. The plot was that the child tells her parents about what she has seen and the parents protect her from the evil preschool. I think it was published by a religious press. I thought it was ridiculous at the time and am sorry I didn't buy it for future snarking purposes.

[javafriend]

Good news! I just found the book I was looking for online : http://awfullibrarybooks.net/satan-for-kids/ It is called, "Mommy, Don't Make Me Go Back." I can't imagine anyone ever reading this to a child.

[ADoyle90815]

As I grew up in southern California, the McMartin daycare case was all over the local news and in the papers so I remember that case specifically. Speaking of the Satanic hysteria about Dungeons and Dragons, I found this classic Chick Tract. My gamer geek friends and I still snark over this one.

chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp

[frumper-rump]

Yes! I grew up in a Southern Baptist church in the 80's and some of the people there thought absolutely everything was evil and satanic, from the ET movie to Care Bears and Rainbow Bright dolls. Luckily, my mom didnt play into all that. She is actually more liberal than I am these days and, while still a Christian, has renounced her ties to the Baptist church, (She would actually fit right in on FJ!)

[Loveday]

Good news! I just found the book I was looking for online : http://awfullibrarybooks.net/satan-for-kids/ It is called, "Mommy, Don't Make Me Go Back." I can't imagine anyone ever reading this to a child.

What a horrific book! :o

I love the awful library books website. Always something either hilarious, ridiculously outdated, or totally bizarre to see there. :pink-shock:

[Rainytown]

I remember Mike Warnke...he was an odd combination of Christian comedian with former Satanic cult membership thrown in. I think he wrote a book. I seem to remember several years later him admitting that it was all completely made up.

I remember being dragged -- oops, compelled to see Mike Warnke with the church youth group more than once in those days. He made it all up, hm? I can only imagine what my former youth pastor had to say about THAT.

I'm sure he still believes everything that emanated from Warnke's mouth is the gospel truth... :roll:

[alchemy]

As I grew up in southern California, the McMartin daycare case was all over the local news and in the papers so I remember that case specifically. Speaking of the Satanic hysteria about Dungeons and Dragons, I found this classic Chick Tract. My gamer geek friends and I still snark over this one.

chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp

LOVE the pornstache on the preacher!

[laura oz]

Yes! I grew up in a Southern Baptist church in the 80's and some of the people there thought absolutely everything was evil and satanic, from the ET movie to Care Bears and Rainbow Bright dolls. Luckily, my mom didnt play into all that. She is actually more liberal than I am these days and, while still a Christian, has renounced her ties to the Baptist church, (She would actually fit right in on FJ!)

Oh snap! I hadn't thought about this in ages. I remember in third grade our teacher told us that we should throw our Care Bears and Rainbow Bright dolls away, because kids were telling the dolls and bears their troubles and not talking to God about them. I fluved Mrs C, but this just makes me

[debrand]

Dating myself here, but I clearly remember the hysteria that surrounded The Exorcist when it first came out. I myself didn't see it until years later, but I had adult cousins who saw it and fainted in the theater. One of my professors in college met the man who would become her husband when she vomited in his lap during the movie. :lol:

For years, The Exorcist was the most frightening movie I'd ever seen-although it didn't make me vomit or even give me a tummy ache. Because I love horror movies, I tried to share the movie with my daughters and son. Their reaction was disappointingly, meh. They liked the campy quality of Nightmare on Elm Street better. I think part of the problem was that they do not believe in Satan or god so the idea of possession didn't really bother them.

When I was about 12, I found a scary book of short stories under my mom's bed. I loved it but my mom took it from me. Her rational was not that it would frighten me but that the devil might come take me. She then told me how a cousin had warned her to stop reading horror novels because she saw a ghost or something after reading one. :lol: So, I was forced to not only never finish the book but my mom threw it away

[ThisOlGirl]

LOVE the pornstache on the preacher!

I SWEAR I was just going to say that the minister reminds me of John Holmes!

[lorem ipsum]

I remember being dragged -- oops, compelled to see Mike Warnke with the church youth group more than once in those days. He made it all up, hm? I can only imagine what my former youth pastor had to say about THAT.

I'm sure he still believes everything that emanated from Warnke's mouth is the gospel truth... :roll:

OMG I'd forgotten all about him until now! One of my fundie lite uncles was obsessed with him, bought all his tapes, donated to his ministry, etc. He refused to believe it when Warnke admitted it was all a load of crap, heh.

The late 80s/early 90s are when my family moved into fundie lite-ism so the santanic fears were a big part of my early religious memories.

Yoga was satanic. Public school curriculum was satanic. 90% of children's shows/toys were satanic (Care Bears, Rainbow Brite, She Ra, He Man, My Little Pony, etc.). D&D was so satanic that you might as well just skip the middle step of playing the game and go straight to human sacrifice lol.

When I got older, I remember hearing a speaker (can't remember who) claiming that rock music/metal were directly responsible for satanic possession and that whenever a teen committed suicide or participated in a school shooting, police would always find the same 4-5 CDs in their rooms. By that point my religious skepticism was growing and I asked my family if maybe it was just because those bands (one was Nine Inch Nails, can't remember the rest) were just really popular and you could probably find those CDs in the rooms of many/most teenagers. That was not a popular question lol.

[alchemy]

I remember one of the most cheez-tastic of the cheezy CHiPs series episodes involved Satanism in rock music. It even involved them playing a song backwards at 666 speed/frequency/something like that?? and getting a hidden message. Satan, Satan everywhere! Good times.

My parents used to love Jimmy Swaggart and he once had a sermon about rock music where he claimed that the beats of drums in rock music came straight from the rhythms of tribal Africa which, of course, made them straight from the devil. About then I was already drifting away from the faith so thought it was fucking dickish thing to say. Especially when Swaggart's own music has the same sound of his cousin Jerry Lee's music whose sound was the original rock n roll.

[rezski44]

People's lives were ruined over the repressed memories that were drug up and later turned out to be false. Remember the "children never lie" about abuse? Turned out "memories" can be manipulated. Not always easy to figure out since there is plenty of real abuse out there. That was also the time of wrecking Halloween and calling it a Satanist holiday.

[FloraDoraDolly]

People's lives were ruined over the repressed memories that were drug up and later turned out to be false. Remember the "children never lie" about abuse? Turned out "memories" can be manipulated. Not always easy to figure out since there is plenty of real abuse out there. That was also the time of wrecking Halloween and calling it a Satanist holiday.

According to a book called "Sybil Exposed" as well as other sources, Sybil's psychiatrist was the one who planted the memories of abuse and led Sybil to believe that she had multiple personalities. The personalities (according to the book) were nothing more than Sybil's dolls and imaginary friends from childhood.

[darkplumaged]

What a horrific book! :o

I love the awful library books website. Always something either hilarious, ridiculously outdated, or totally bizarre to see there. :pink-shock:

That book is crazy-nuts. I'm torn between being glad only a few pages are shown and wanting to read the whole thing....

I had an issue of Seventeen magazine--either from 1989 or 1990--that had a long article about the horrors of Satanism. Somehow my lab group in 8th grade science class--this would have been in 1990 or 1991--got to joking about Satan, so I offered to bring the magazine to school so everyone in the group could read the article. My groupmates read it under the lab table for days and seemed to thoroughly enjoy it. I think my "interest" in Satan made the boys in the group think I was slightly cooler than they otherwise would have. Thanks, Satan!

[Chicken bones]

*Hums 'The Way We Were' to self*....ah yes, the good 'ol Satanic Panic days!

My not even remotely fundie mom & stepdad were convinced that bands like Van Halen & Motley Crue were going to send me straight to hell. So of course, I did what any kid would do when something was forbidden--I listened to my debil worshippin' music on the DL. But it was totes ok for me to listen to Prince & Madonna :cray-cray:

But my parents eventually got over the whole thing, and my mom even has old high school pictures of me & my friends looking every bit the rock n roll groupies on our way to a KISS concert.

And about those parental warning stickers--that's how I knew I'd love the music. I remember not being able to get to the record store (memba those?) fast enough to buy Madonna's 'Justify My Love' single and 2 Live Crew's 'Nasty As They Wanna Be' cassette (yes I said cassette) just because of all the hoopla.

Ah, cassingles!

[Freyacat]

Dungeons & Dragons was supposedly a big Satanic recruitment deal too, as I recall, in the 70s or 80s. I didn't know anyone into D&D back then, but one of the earlier things I remember reading online in the early 90s was a big long mess written by a woman whose son was supposedly recruited & committed suicide (I think) because of D&D.

Someone donated some Beatrice Sparks books to the charity group I work with recently, and I read Jay's Journal, which is about a teenager who gets into Satanism. Written in the mid-70s, so most of it is pretty laughable today.

I was born in 1980 and I remember Dungeons and Dragons being suspect. My dad wanted to get me into D&D - I was geeky, loved fantasy, and had trouble making friends. My dad thought it would be a good social outlet for me. My mom vetoed the idea because she was worried about cults having a connection to D&D. She didn't actually think it was Satanic or anything (she's Catholic but pretty sane about religion, not fundie at all). But the supposed satanism/cult connection with D&D was so talked about that she was worried that other people would be drawn to D&D because they were looking for Satanists, and she was worried I'd encounter some messed up people. As it turns out, when I went to college in the late 90s I did get into D&D (my dad was right and it was a great way for me to meet people. I fail hard at friendly chitchat and did much better when I had a topic to talk to new people about) and I ended up meeting my husband at a D&D game. Neither of us have ever encountered anyone who professes any sort of satanism and plays D&D. I've encountered a couple of Wiccan/pagan D&D players, but most of the D&D gamers I know aren't really the type who think much about religion at all.

I saw a documentary once about a teen boy who was falsely accused of murdering a sibling. The police zeroed in on him as a suspect largely because he was a D&D player and a social misfit. It took some time before the actual killer was caught, but I don't remember how and when they figured out they had been barking down the wrong trail. Anyone familiar with more details of that story?

[CelticGoddess]

My Da was the VP of marketing for TSR (manufacturers of Dungeons and Dragons) during the whole "D&D is satanic" and almost ended up on 60 minutes. He ended up leaving the company, as did a friend of his because of the whole mess. It was insane. Lake Geneva, WI is NOT a large town and they were being picketed, as were a few IL towns (because a few higher ups in TSR lived here). Da got hate mail, so did his friend.

I played D&D for years, and funny, never became a devil worshipper. I did rebel though! I enjoyed it and I made friends.

I think my parents blame my playing D&D for my being a socialist today. If I had played Euchre like a good girl, I would have been a Republican, dontcha know! So, maybe D&D is bad :o