What were your experiences with the Satanic Panic?

[Yzz]

The Satanic Panic was this period of time, ranging from the 80s to the early 00s, where a bunch of parents and adults started accusing innocent things and persons of being the devil incarnate.

I was very young when the entire thing fell apart (the 9/11 being the main culprit of its fall), but I somehow remember my mom being really hostile to Pokémon and other Japanese stuff. My older sibling has told me that my mother would never shut up about how Satan was planning to hypnotize the children and other crazy stuff. What seems surreal to me is that she is a totally different person than what I remember, and what older people had told me about her. Nowadays she is pretty much an agnostic and she is very critical of religious fanatics.

What are some of your experiences of those crazy times?

 

[WestEgg]

I grew up in the 90s but my family never really seemed to buy into most moral panics, despite them being conservatives and religious. In fact I remember them mocking the Harry Potter panic, and they didn't way much when I started getting into Dungeons and Dragons. My grandparents had more of a problem with some pop culture stuff, namely The Simpsons and Roseanne, but I think it was more about them being offense to their tastes rather than a religious conviction.

 

[Mekanos]

I'm not Christian so I didn't get much exposure to it and by the time I was a teenager in the mid 2000s it had mostly died off I feel like. The only time I remember it coming up was my college roommate was dating this girl who refused to watch Harry Potter with him because she considered it satanic.

 

[Sailor Moon]

I’m an old and grew up in the late ‘70s and ’80s. My parents never banned anything but I knew kids who weren’t allowed to listen to music, or play anything but educational and religious games. One of the moms wouldn’t let me play with her kid any more because I watched He Man and She Ra and Skeletor = Satan to her I guess.

I remember seeing the McMartin preschool stuff break on the news, even though I was too young to really get what people thought was going on.

In high school I had fundie kids telling me I’d go to hell because I was listening to Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, the Dead Kennedys, etc. Also they got to have an after school group hosted by the pastor of their church where they’d pray on school grounds, very normal. Pokémon came out a bit after I graduated, but considering that they threw a fit over Magic cards and D&D in my senior year, I’m sure they had a normal one over that too.

Upstate New York is p much a shithole outside of a few cities.

 

[ArchedThunder]

D&D wasn’t allowed in our house, that’s about it. I did have a friend who had super christian parents and she wasn’t allowed to play or watch Pokemon.

 

[Lord Azrael]

The only one I've ever really seen was around Pokémon, but even then my only encounters with it were online rebuttals/fans defending against it, not even the actual thing

 

[sir_AnGer]

I'm from Germany, and the Satanic Panic always seems like a thing that has taken hold mostly in North America (mainly the US, I've never heard of anything related to it from Canada). There was some brief outrage over Harry Potter in the early noughties in Bavaria, but if I saw some stuff regarding "satanism" it was mostly goofy or imported from the US.

Violent video games and to a lesser extent manga were "our" stupid moral outrages, though only the former amounted to anything substantial and cases like the McMartin Preschool Trial or the case of the West Memphis Three weren't a thing. (That I know of)

 

[GamerJM]

I grew up in the late 90s and the early 2000s in a decently religious household that still wasn't like, fundamentalist or anything, and it always seemed like something that only happened in the bible belt (as a kid living in a California city). Because not only did my parents completely think this sort of thing was ridiculous, so did the parents of everyone else I knew, and I only knew this was a thing from....I guess TV news reports? The internet later?

But later I learned that wasn't the case, I've met people from around here who grew up in households with parents who bought into it.

 

[Sadist]

I’m always somewhat amazed when these things happened when it passed in our news;

Especially in the Netherlands, where there is a biblebelt you didn’t hear these things at all. They probably did not own any tv’s anyway, but still. My parents had rules, but when I watched and played stuff, they always did talk with me first about how perceived certain things. Always like(d) that side of my parents

 

[Rika]

I don't think my parents or anybody in my family cared for this. I read Harry Potter all the time and my mom bought them for me every time a new book came out. I was a 91 baby, so maybe late 90's and early 00's I'd have noticed this.

 

[TaySan]

My parents weren't religious so that never happened to me. My parents were super lax with entertainment unless it was pornographic.

 

[Yzz]

I’m always somewhat amazed when these things happened when it passed in our news;

Especially in the Netherlands, where there is a biblebelt you didn’t hear these things at all. They probably did not own any tv’s anyway, but still. My parents had rules, but when I watched and played stuff, they always did talk with me first about how perceived certain things. Always like(d) that side of my parents

I have the impression that the catholic front of the Satanic Panic was more chill than the protestant one, which is one of the reasons I made this thread lol.

 

[chocolate_supra]

Ooooohohohoh boy my time to shine

- I wasn't allowed to watch Disney cartoons because they had magic in them and magic=witchcraft=satan

- I wasn't allowed to watch anime because as I was told "the Japanese make their cartoons with the deliberate intent to appeal to American children and brainwash them towards satanism"

- I couldn't listen to J-pop because "they're probably singing 'worship satan' in Japanese and you don't even know it!!"

- My Dreamcast caused a stir because the name sounded "witchcrafty"

Luckily this was just my extended family so I didn't live with it but I was sure around it a lot. "Panic" is definitely the right word to describe the phenomenon.

 

[VHS]

Babysitter would not let her kids watch Pokemon with me, "EVILution", but I was still allowed to watch it in the basement by myself. So weird

 

[OTBWY]

I had a classmate who wasn't allowed to watch Pokemon cause their parents were very religious. And then Dragon Ball Z also happened and basically the entire class was into it while this one classmate had not idea what it all was. Sadly got bullied for it too..

 

[Mandos]

My parents had restrictions when I was really young and I wound up bound by it for a while and it did effect some of my tastes in general but it definitely doesn’t effect me these days, though there’s some stuff I’m careful not to show around family. That and it cracks me up internally when my sisters still think I’m the super innocent and oblivious one on certain general topics. I may be the virgin of the 4 of us but I do know what that stuff is.

Plus the complete irony that my folks were fine with me reading adventure novels like Clive Cussler, WEB Griffin and the like thanks to my grandpa. Some of that stuff got racy XD. But I also could be oblivious for quite a while

Also why I only really got into anime 4 years ago.

 

[Tlozbj]

Not exactly in that time range, more in the late 00s, but thankfully, my family never falled for that. The closest was an aunt but she just mentioned some "POKEDEEEEMOONS" stuff jokingly. Shile Though the one who did have it rough was my best friend from back in the day. His mother fully banned anything Pokemon related from the house (but permitted Bakugan :v) because of how they were "demonic entities". However, those were the DS days and what she didn't know was that his dad had gotten him an R4 with the Gen 4 games. So he could at least play some back then.

Though I would note, that this isn't exactly a thing of the past, it has been resurfacing lately. Just today we had to deal with some fundamentalist woman saying one of the recent Bad Bunny photoshoots was satanic... why? Well because he was dressed in black, with boots that per were goat legs, and the long shawl was a pair of demonic wings, so she says he was dressed as Lucifer... she then proceeded to send a cheap collage of the pic and a image of Baphomet.

 

[Sadist]

I have the impression that the catholic front of the Satanic Panic was more chill than the protestant one, which is one of the reasons I made this thread lol.

That might be true.

Whenever these things came up in the Netherlands and you had one person taking the battle to the media declaring X was damaging to kids, the general Dutch opinion was like “sit your ass down. Its harmless entertainment” and it went away lol.

But then again, Holland can be weird. I could legally drink when I was sixteen ha.

 

[balgajo]

My father once told me that he burned my uncle's Iron Maiden collection(80's), because of satanic reasons. Though when I was a teenager he didn't care for the things I listened.

 

[Army of Light]

My mom didn't believe in any of the root stories of the satanic panic and was irritated with the hysteria surrounding it but she still wouldn't let me wear black shirts or let me wear a shirt related to Resident Evil 2. She didn't actually think it was satanic or anything, but she was worried other people might think it was satanic because people in our community were often Christian extremists.

She grew up in a community near where the West Memphis 3 were sent up the river on bogus charges stemming from the hysteria that were obviously bogus to everyone outside of the community. The prosecution sole evidence for trying these boys for murder was that the teenagers listen to metal music and wore black t-shirts, as well as a coerced confession from a cognitively impaired teenager.

She was worried something like that would happen to me if I got into the goth subculture or played vampire the Masquerade. She again didn't believe it was satanic or harmful or dangerous but rather that people in our community were.

 

[Maorio]

My mother broked my diablo 2 cd lol

 

[Pandora]

My mother did not care one bit be it harry potter , yugioh or pokemon . As far as she saw it these were things i enjoyed at the time and it kept me out of trouble . I always only experienced it in the form of an aunt who thought harry potter was demonic and didn’t want my cousin to read it (honestly good for my cousin in the end ) and a friend whose mom randomly decided pokemon was demonic. So i had to buy pokemon pearl for him cause he couldn’t get it directly .

 

[someday]

I can’t say I ever really experienced it much apart from reading things like Pokémon, Harry Potter were satanic (funny in light of recent years re: Harry Potter). I will take this moment to say there’s a really great ongoing comic called The Department of Truth which touches on satanic panic.

 

[Caviar]

My brother and I went to go see the first Harry Potter movie when we were kids. Our cousin was going to come too, but her parents didn't allow it because I don't know apparently watching fictional movies with magic is how you catch the Satan Virus.

We don't really talk to that side of the family anymore.

Also I watched Satanic Panic! on Netflix (or was it Shudder?) a while back and it was pretty ok. Same sort of horror-comedy vibes as The Babysitter, if you enjoyed that.

 

[heavy liquid]

I’m an old and grew up in the late ‘70s and ’80s. My parents never banned anything but I knew kids who weren’t allowed to listen to music, or play anything but educational and religious games. One of the moms wouldn’t let me play with her kid any more because I watched He Man and She Ra and Skeletor = Satan to her I guess.

I remember seeing the McMartin preschool stuff break on the news, even though I was too young to really get what people thought was going on.

In high school I had fundie kids telling me I’d go to hell because I was listening to Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, the Dead Kennedys, etc. Also they got to have an after school group hosted by the pastor of their church where they’d pray on school grounds, very normal. Pokémon came out a bit after I graduated, but considering that they threw a fit over Magic cards and D&D in my senior year, I’m sure they had a normal one over that too.

Upstate New York is p much a shithole outside of a few cities.

I had pretty much the same experience as you, growing up. My siblings and I never had any restrictions placed on us, and our parents never forced religion on us. But I also knew a few kids who had pretty restrictive parents. I remember just kind of watching the whole thing play out in the media from the sidelines, and internally alternating between laughing at it all and getting slightly angry at the ridiculousness of it.

You're Wrong About podcast has a good episode all about The Satanic Panic from a few years ago. Those interested should check it out.

You're Wrong About - The Satanic Panic