Satan Wants You! Michelle Remembers book 1980

This book was the source of the Satanic Panic that swept the world in the 80s. (edit: and why QAnon members believe today there are satanic cults abducting children.)

Wiki: Michelle Remembers is a discredited 1980 book co-written by Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his psychiatric patient (and eventual wife) Michelle Smith.[1] A best-seller, Michelle Remembers relied on the discredited practice of recovered-memory therapy to make sweeping, lurid claims about Satanic ritual abuse involving Smith, which contributed to the rise of the Satanic panic in the 1980s.[2][3] While the book presents its claims as fact, and was extensively marketed on that basis at the time, no evidence was provided; all investigations into the book failed to corroborate any of its claims, with investigators describing its content as being primarily based on elements of popular culture and fiction that were popular at the time when it was written.

 
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Clint_L

Legend
IMO, the best book on this subject is Satan's Silence by Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker, journalists who helped to expose what was happening and free a number of wrongfully imprisoned victims. However, it is only tangentially related to the Dungeons and Dragons paranoia of the time.

On that note, I am intrigued by Satan's Panic, a collection of essays more broadly exploring the widespread anxiety about Satanic influences in 1980s pop culture, but I haven't read it yet.

You could always just read or watch Arthur Miller's the Crucible, as well. He pretty much sums up how these moral panics work.

I was fortunate to grow up in a place (Vancouver Island, British Columbia) where we heard a bit about the Satanic Panic in the media, but very few took it seriously, and no one in a position of power that I can recall. So I never once had anyone disparage my friends and I for playing D&D...at least, not on a moral level. On a social level, well...
 

Ryujin

Legend
IMO, the best book on this subject is Satan's Silence by Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker, journalists who helped to expose what was happening and free a number of wrongfully imprisoned victims. However, it is only tangentially related to the Dungeons and Dragons paranoia of the time.

On that note, I am intrigued by Satan's Panic, a collection of essays more broadly exploring the widespread anxiety about Satanic influences in 1980s pop culture, but I haven't read it yet.

You could always just read or watch Arthur Miller's the Crucible, as well. He pretty much sums up how these moral panics work.

I was fortunate to grow up in a place (Vancouver Island, British Columbia) where we heard a bit about the Satanic Panic in the media, but very few took it seriously, and no one in a position of power that I can recall. So I never once had anyone disparage my friends and I for playing D&D...at least, not on a moral level. On a social level, well...
I've spent most of my life in Brampton, Ontario which isn't far from Orangeville, where one of the most publicized "D&D murders" took place, back in the '80s. I couldn't escape hearing about the Satanic Panic as it damned near resulted in our high school gaming club being shut down. We called it the war gaming club to dodge the issue, but played mostly RPGs.

 

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