A little project I am working on. This is an overview/timeline of the Satanic Panic in the last 30 years of the 20th Century and how our little hobby is connected.
Click to access my H5P site and interact with this timeline (technically an "accordion.")
Enjoy a little (emphasis on little) history lesson.
3 comments:
This is a great project to work on! I realize you weren't asking for input, but I can't help but mention a couple of characters that were really memorable to me growing up in the South, but that often get overlooked by those who didn't spend the '80s and early '90s in evangelical churches. (I've gotten some amount of confirmation from others that it wasn't just me...overall, I think the reach of these was very limited but very powerful...)
The first is the contemporary Christian singer Carman, who released a song in 1993 called "A Witch's Invitation." He specifically mentions D&D in the tune, which is about a warlock named Isaac Horowitz (yep) who invites Carman to his house and tries to amaze him with his power. It's really a spoken word story with music, and it has a video, and it kind of has to be seen to do it any sort of justice. I remember this song being HUGE.
Going back a little farther, there was a Christian comedian named Mike Warnke who built his fame on being an ex-Satanist and had all kinds of stories about the things he had done as some sort of high priest. Unsurprisingly now (but which probably would have blown 10-year-old me away), he was full of shit on all of it. He published a book in the '70s that really rocketed him to fame, and his overall story (or...the story he told, at least) is just wild. I know he even appeared on 20/20 at one point, but I almost never see him mentioned anymore.
Anyway, just wanted to note them because there is a specific group of us who have these figures and events as formative milestones in the Satanic Panic. I'll be following with interest!
Interesting little rabbit hole to go down is the overlap between satanic panic and Tom Hanks’ early career. Mazes and Monsters, Dragnet (cops v. Satanists), The Burbs (satanists next door) dark magic adjacencies to Big and Joe vs. the Volcano
The satanic panic was so bad in Western Nebraska, especially in the small towns, when I was a kid in the 70's and 80's that none of the stores anywhere near us sold D&D products. I never knew anyone who played it until I went to college in the 'big city' of Lincoln, NE in the early 90's. That's when I watched students at the student union playing 2nd edition AD&D until the DM invited me to help him run some of the NPCs and monsters. I've been playing ever since.
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