What Sparked the Satanic Panic of the 1980s?

In the 1980s, fears of satanic worship spread across parts of the United States, fueled by a wave of public accusations. They claimed that heavy metal albums and fantasy role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons were driving teenagers to suicide, and that day care workers were abusing children through satanic rituals.

The satanic panic, as it has become known, was what sociologists call a "moral panic,” says Mary deYoung, professor emeritus of sociology at Grand Valley State University and author of The Day Care Ritual Abuse Moral Panic. Moral panics occur during times of social change, she explains, when people identify an enemy or “folk devil” as the cause of a social shift.

In the case of the satanic panic, one social change involved the increasing use of day care centers as more women entered the workforce. Public concern emerged about “latchkey kids,” whose parents were still at work when they arrived home from school. People feared that without adult supervision, children “were potentially up to no good, listening to the wrong kind of music or playing these fantasy role-playing games,” deYoung says.

The folk devil in this moral panic became the literal devil, as well as alleged Satan worshipers who sought to corrupt and abuse America’s youth. Although the satanic panic did not uncover any actual satanic cults, it led to real court cases that accused musicians, educators and day care workers of endangering children and teens.

Throughout U.S. history, people have condemned new musical genres as immoral or satanic. But the accusations leveled against 1980s heavy metal stood out in a few ways.

People feared heavy metal records contained subliminal messages meant to corrupt young listeners. Detractors commonly claimed that if played backward, songs revealed hidden messages or satanic phrases. Bands like Black Sabbath, Mötley Crüe and even Led Zeppelin (which was not heavy metal) faced accusations of satanic messaging.

When Los Angeles police arrested serial murderer Richard Ramirez in 1985, the media played up his apparent obsession with “satanic themes” on an AC/DC album. At his first court appearance, he raised a hand with a pentagram drawn on it and yelled, “Hail Satan!”

As anxiety over satanic messaging spread, some grieving parents alleged heavy metal music had driven their children to suicide—and some took the musicians to court.

In 1990, two American families sued the British heavy metal band Judas Priest and CBS Records for driving their sons to suicide in 1985. The families accused the band of recording subliminal messages in their albums that allegedly encouraged listeners to kill themselves. The judge ruled the families could not prove this claim.

Dungeons & Dragons, a fantasy role-playing game that debuted in 1974, also became a target during the era. In 1983, parents Irving and Patricia Pulling sued their son’s high school principal for allowing students to play the game, alleging it had contributed to their 16-year-old son’s suicide the previous year. The Pullings did not win their case, but Patricia continued to campaign against the game through an advocacy group she founded: Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons (BADD).

BADD accused Dungeons & Dragons of promoting witchcraft, a claim that cartoonist Jack Chick repeated in his fundamentalist Christian comic “Chick tracts.” The motif of secretive occult rituals was also a key part of emerging accusations that day care workers were practicing something called satanic ritual abuse.

In 1980, Canadian psychologist Lawrence Pazder published a book called Michelle Remembers. Co-written with his pseudonymous patient and later wife “Michelle Smith,” the book claimed to recount repressed memories of abuse by devil-worshipers that Smith recovered during their sessions.

The book and the press coverage surrounding it introduced the concept of satanic ritual abuse, a now-discredited term for physical and sexual abuse allegedly inflicted during occult rituals. During the 1980s and early ’90s, up to 100 day care centers in the United States faced accusations of satanic ritual abuse.

The first and most prominent day care ensnared in the satanic panic was a preschool in Manhattan Beach, California, run by Virginia McMartin. In 1983, a mother accused McMartin’s grandson of abusing her 2-year-old son. Based on children’s testimony, she also accused McMartin preschool workers of leading children into secret underground tunnels where they dressed up as witches and flew around in the air.

Other parents made similarly shocking allegations about McMartin Preschool, accusing the employees of cannibalism, blood-drinking and infant sacrifice. The McMartin case resulted in no convictions after seven years of investigation and trials, but similar accusations soon spread nationwide. Several prominent convictions related to these claims were overturned after appeals courts found no physical evidence or determined children’s testimonies had been influenced by coercive questioning.

“There is no corroborative evidence of satanic involvement [or] cult involvement in any of the day care cases," says deYoung.

If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or self-harming behaviors, call or text 988 to get help from the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.