Police Guide From ‘Satanic Panic’ Era Found

[rashore]

Quote

The “Satanic Panic.” That slice of 1980’s America when everyone from news anchors to your best friend’s decidedly-not-hip aunt was scared of Satan worshipers breaking down their walls.  Any day the satanists could come, brandishing 20-sided dice and weaponized guitar riffs,  stealing away their children to force feed them an unholy cocktail of drugs, Dungeons and Dragons, and death metal until, against their own innocent will and in spite of their desire to run back to the safety of suburbia, their little angel’s right hand would raise and make the sign of the devil horns (“throw the goat” as they say) as they skateboard into the night, lost, forever.

Radical.

It’s an easy thing to make fun of, especially if you’re an unrepentant nerd who owns far too many 20-sided dice and knows that DnD is essentially just people arguing about math for 4 hours. Thirty or so years on, we forget that during the Satanic Panic of the 80’s people were legitimately scared. OK, maybe it wasn’t a legitimate fear, but they were actually scared, and police departments actually took it seriously. According to Mashable, Jennifer Jordan tweeted documents that her sister found in a school supply closet, written by then Detective Robert Simandl of the Chicago Police Department, which lays out how to identify both satanists and those “at risk” of falling prey to the occult.

http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/05/police-guide-from-satanic-panic-era-found-includes-magic-spells-and-signs-of-satanism/

 

[GlitterRose]

Yeah, it's a scary chapter in our history. 

[Piney]

1 hour ago, ChaosRose said:

Yeah, it's a scary chapter in our history. 

I had a social studies teacher who was all over my case about Led Zeppelin, D and D and the fact that gramps was a "witch doctor".., and do you remember Tipper Gore and the PMRC? 

[travelnjones]

Ugh terrible crap.  Al Gores wife was crazy and could match wits with Dee Snyder nor Frank Zappa.

[GlitterRose]

41 minutes ago, Piney said:

I had a social studies teacher who was all over my case about Led Zeppelin, D and D and the fact that gramps was a "witch doctor".., and do you remember Tipper Gore and the PMRC? 

Everyone was always trying to blame everything on rock music.

Of course, being a connoisseur of rock music...I was opposed to this. 

[Piney]

42 minutes ago, travelnjones said:

Ugh terrible crap.  Al Gores wife was crazy and could match wits with Dee Snyder nor Frank Zappa.

Watching Frank Zappa in the Congressional hearings was some great stuff! 

[Hermai]

Section A: 'Characteristics of Teen Involved.'

Witness the expert law enforcement insight that the afflicted teen may be 'Male/Female.'

Gee. You don't say.

[rashore]

2 hours ago, Invisig0th said:

Section A: 'Characteristics of Teen Involved.'

Witness the expert law enforcement insight that the afflicted teen may be 'Male/Female.'

Gee. You don't say.

To be fair to the police guide. This was from Chicago, where male/female mixings happened as often as solely male or female "panics". Some areas did see more male or female specific panics too.
 

[Jello]

It's crazy to think at the time this was a serious issue in our society. I don't think they knew the difference between satanists and devil-worshipers..

 Here's a video from the 90's on how to identify satanic activity. They made a whole police training video on the subject 

https://youtu.be/1Q5kDm9eOTM

 

[Oniomancer]

I've got this trash-rescued bound report from the library called Satanism: Crimewave Of The 90's, put out in 1990 by some outfit called the Executive Intelligence Review, apparently a mouthpiece for lyndon larouche. Skimming though it again just now and there's a nicely captioned picture of "the British "punk" rock group KISS", which probably goes to show how well the rest of it was researched.

[~Onyx~]

Only "panic" that was experienced by playing D&D was when we ran out of Doritos and Soda. We were a bit looney tunes before that, but that just put us over-the-top, by golly.

[moonman]

On 5/12/2018 at 1:09 PM, Hermai said:

Section A: 'Characteristics of Teen Involved.'

Witness the expert law enforcement insight that the afflicted teen may be 'Male/Female.'

These days, going by those pronouns alone would get a lot of people off the suspect list - or at least they'd like to think so.

I'll take satanic panic over SJWs any day of the week, honestly.

Edited July 17, 2018 by moonman

[Indiogene]

It was a mass hysteria and moral panic of the era, not only about satanism, but the religious right in American politics began to get powerful in the 1980s/90s and you have radical feminism on the left thrown into the mix. What does the Left and right wing have in common in the 1980s/90s: women and children, hide from "creepy" men. :-/  I take the issue of missing children, sexual abuse, sexual harassment and crimes against women seriously, but turn it into a political weapon to commit a witch hunt and innocent people will get hurt. I grew up dealing with the public's worry about devil worshippers harm children and I was taught "stranger danger", plus a now debunked homophobic myth of adult men sought little boys. Satanism today is a joke, as long the group aren't harming anyone (nor animals in their worship ritual). I compare this to the anti-communism wave of the 1950s when it became difficult to discuss politics and religion with people, esp. if your opinion is too different from "the mainstream" and you're not conforming to social mores of the time period. 

[Robotic Jew]

On 5/11/2018 at 8:13 PM, ChaosRose said:

Everyone was always trying to blame everything on rock music.

Of course, being a connoisseur of rock music...I was opposed to this. 

Yep. And now it's movies, video games and....rap...

[LostSouls7]

why do they panic over the satanic ? lol

Then Marlyn Manson came out and changed everything 

[Farmer77]

3 minutes ago, LostSouls7 said:

why do they panic over the satanic ? lol

Then Marlyn Manson came out and changed everything 

Dude Maylyn Manson would have been burned at the stake in the 1980's 

[LostSouls7]

oh yeah they were not ready for him until the 90s! lol

[Farmer77]

My family being religious extremists were all caught up in the satanic panic. I was a kid at the time and ill never forget hiding my star wars figures because our preacher had instructed the congregation to destroy their kids star wars memorabilia due to "the force" being a gateway to Satanism or some crap. 

 

[RoofGardener]

5 minutes ago, Farmer77 said:

Dude Maylyn Manson would have been burned at the stake in the 1980's 

Indeed. It was a more civilised age

 

[Farmer77]

Just now, RoofGardener said:

Indeed. It was a more civilised age

 

I had to laugh considering the post above the one you just made. 

You know what sucks about Manson? If I had never seen him I would have probably been a fan of the music (definitely not my scene now). That whole weird gimp from Pulp Fiction thing he has going on though just killed it. 

[SecretSanta]

I live in the Southern part of the US and some people are still in a state of Satanic Panic. I know people who won’t allow their kids to play with Pokémon because there is a dark side and they can’t read Harry Potter. 

[Michelle]

11 minutes ago, SecretSanta said:

I live in the Southern part of the US and some people are still in a state of Satanic Panic. I know people who won’t allow their kids to play with Pokémon because there is a dark side and they can’t read Harry Potter. 

That's strange. I live where there are dozens of private Christian schools and almost everyone we know is Christian. Their kids have all read every Harry Potter book, seen the movies and have memorabilia covering their bedrooms. They even name their pets after Harry Potter characters.

[SecretSanta]

1 hour ago, Michelle said:

That's strange. I live where there are dozens of private Christian schools and almost everyone we know is Christian. Their kids have all read every Harry Potter book, seen the movies and have memorabilia covering their bedrooms. They even name their pets after Harry Potter characters.

Those are the progressive Christians, ha ha! 

My son had a friend who couldn’t even dance at school dances. 

[Michelle]

1 hour ago, SecretSanta said:

Those are the progressive Christians, ha ha! 

My son had a friend who couldn’t even dance at school dances. 

Well then, in my fifty something years in the south, I've only known about ten of the other kind of Christians. 

[Davros of Skaro]