A flashback to the 80s and the mentality that originally sucked me in and nearly destroyed my life. A bit of Jack Chick and his Chick Tracts, the James Dallas Egbert III mess, Patricia Pulling, "former" Satanists John Todd and Mike Warnke, even Tipper Gore gets a mention among others. A good primer on the history!
One of my favorite pieces of Satanic Panic-era propaganda has to be Jack Chick’s “Dark Dungeons” religious tract. One of hundreds of such tracts created by evangelist Chick, “Dark Dungeons” is the story of two young women led astray by the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. One of them, Marcie, commits suicide after her thief character “Black Leaf” dies and the other, Debbie, is initiated into witchcraft after her cleric character Elfstar advances to eighth level. As the diabolical Dungeon Master “Ms. Frost” leads Debbie further from the loving arms of Jesus, her mysterious friend “Mike” pops up to tell her that she’s in grave danger. Following a visit to a mustachioed minister, Debbie repents and burns all of her D&D materials instead of saving them to sell on eBay in twenty years when she needs beer money.
Gamers, as well as most people with an ounce of sense, see “Dark Dungeons” for the hysterical kitsch it is, and rather than angering D&D players, it mostly amused them. I know my group loved it (“Where’s the real spells?” “No, Black Leaf!”) when we were kids. My parents didn’t buy into the Satan rumors that surrounded the game, or anything else I liked. Not all of my friends were so lucky: They had to hide fantasy novels, D&D manuals, heavy metal albums and other “Satanic” materials to keep them from being burned or thrown away by their parents. Others suffered in far worse ways: They were sent to camps for “troubled youth” or private Christian schools.
Mazes, Monsters, Charlatans, Satan and Suicide: A Short History of the Satanic Panic - disinformation
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