A timeline of the Satanic Panic in my lifetime. I noticed a spate of podcasts about it and wondered who was copying whom, and why the topic was popular again. Podcast dates are in bold.

• March 2020 - 20k Hertz - Satanic Panic - record backmasking
• January 2020 - Gimlet Media’s “Conviction” podcast: American Panic
• January 2020 - Lisa Bryn Rundle - CBC podcast “Uncover”, Season 6: “Satanic Panic” (Martensville, Saskatoon)
• October 2019 - Stuff You Should Know replays “Satanic Panic”
• September 2019 - Satanic Panic, the movie
• April 2019 - Cameron Styles and Hannah Waterbury “The Satanic Panic” podcast
• April 2019 - Penny Lane “Hail Satan”, documentary
• November 2018 - Chelsey Weber-Smith - “American Hysteria” podcast
• October 2017 - Q starts the Pizzagate conspiracy rumor
• August 2017 - Stuff You Should Know - “How Satanism Works”
• August 2017 - Sarah Hughes - “American Monsters: Tabloid Media and the Satanic Panic, 1970–2000”
• June 2017 - Bethania Palma - Couple Exonerated in ‘Satanic Panic’ Child Ritual Abuse Case
• June 2017 - Travis County District Attorney Margaret Moore files a motion to dismiss the Kellers case
• November 2016 - San Antonio Four exonerated
• October 2016 - Aja Romano- The history of Satanic Panic in the US — and why it’s not over yet
• September 2016 - “Exorcist” TV show, Fox
• 2016 - Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four
• January 2016 - Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant “Stuff You Should Know” podcast - they say they lived through this. - working off the Slate article
• September 2015 - Dan Shewan - Conviction of Things Not Seen: The Uniquely American Myth of Satanic Cults
• August 2015 - Richard Beck - We Believe the Children: A Moral Panic in the 1980s
• July 2015 - TIME - The Evolution of Modern Satanism in the United States
• June 2015 - Robert Lamb - “How Satanic Panic Worked”
• April 2015 - Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick - “Stuff To Blow Your Mind” podcast, “Satanic Panic”
• January 2015 - Cheryl Eddy (Gizmodo) - A Brief History of the “Satanic Panic” in the 1980s
• January 2014 - Maurice Chammah (Texas Observer) - The Mystery of the San Antonio Four
• January 2014 - Linda Rodriguez McRobbie - The Real Victims of Satanic Ritual Abuse
• December 2013 - Richard Noll - When Psychiatry Battled the Devil
• 2013 - PAUL: The Secret Story of Olympia’s Satanic Sheriff (Vimeo - Thurston County case
• March 2009 - Jordan Smith - “Believing the Children”, Austin Chronicle - Keller case
• December 2007 - first edit in Wikipedia
• 2001 - Debbie Nathan, Michael Snedeker - Satan’s Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt
• December 1997 - Last issue of Dissociation
• 1997 - San Antonio Four case (4 convictions, 4 overturned in 2016)
• 1996 - Mike Snedeker gets cases overturned
• 1995 - “The Law Enforcement Guide to Satanic Cults”, training video
• 1994 - Treating Survivors of Satanist Abuse
• 1994 - National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect report noting no evidence of SRA
• 1994 - DSM-IV removes the Multiple Personality Disorders, demoting it to dissociative identity disorder
• 1994 - Elizabeth Loftus and Katherine Ketcham, The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse
• 1993 - Ms “Elizabeth Rose” - “Surviving the Unbelievable” - Gloria Steinem worked to help convict the McMartin suspects
• 1993 - West Memphis Three case
• June 1993 - Vanity Fair - Leslie Bennetts - “Nightmares on Main Street”
• January 1993 - Satanic Cult Awareness - Gayland W. Hurst, Ph.D. and Robert L. Marsh
• October 1992 - Self “The Terrible Truth”
• 1992 - Keller case
• 1992 - Joan Baez - “Play Me Backwards”
• March 1992 - False Memory Syndrome Foundation
• 1991 - Laurel Rose Willson (Lauren Stratford) - Satan’s Underground - hoax, also witness in McMartin case
• 1991 - A Thousand Acres
• 1991 - 20/20 airs a live Roman Catholic exorcism (YouTube) (NY Times)
• 1990 - Judas Priest trial
• 1990 - Don’t Make Me Go Back, Mommy: A Child’s Book About Satanic Ritual Abuse, Multnomah Press
• October 1989 - preliminary report of an investigation by Supervisory Special Agent Ken Lanning from the FBI Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico
• July 1989 - “Cook Report: The Devil’s Work”
• 1989 - Sally Jesse Raphael has two shows on SRA
• 1989 - Oprah Winfrey hosts Laurel Rose Willson and Michelle Smith on her show
• 1989 - Unlocking the Secrets of Your Childhood Mind
• 1989 - Hell’s Bells: The Dangers of Rock ‘N’ Roll - documentary film by Eric Holmberg
• 1988 - The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse (induced memories)
• 1988 - Thurston County ritual abuse case
• 1988 - Geraldo Rivera show, “Devil Worship: Exposing Satan’s Underground” (whole show) (Parts 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
• 1987 - DSM-III-R, with extensive revisions for dissociative disorders
• 1984-1990 - First Accusations in the McMartin Preschool case
• 1986 - SRA classes taught by International Society for the Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation
• November 1986 - Mike Wallace, 60 Minutes - interviews on the McMartin case
• 1986 - The Devil Rides Out
• 1985 - Warnke on 20/20
• December 1983 - International Society for the Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation Annual Conference
• June 1983 - Jacob Aranza - Backward Masking Unmasked: Backward Satanic Messages of Rock and Roll Exposed
• 1982 - Kern County case (36 convictions, 34 overturned) - prosecution and support used Michelle Remembers as training
• 1980 - DSM III includes “dissociative disorders”
• 1980 - Lawrence Pazder, Michelle Smith Michelle Remembers - first book on Satanic Ritualized Abuse (Pazder later marries his patient, Michelle) based on West African secret societies. Padzer works as a consultant on the McMartin PreSchool case.
• 1978 - Jonestown mass suicide
• 1977 - Son of Sam murders
• December 1973 - Exorcist, the movie
• June 19, 1972 - TIME Magazine - “The Occult Revival”, “A Substitute Religion”
• 1972 - LaVey publishes Satanic Rituals
• 1972 - Hal Lindsey - Satan Is Alive and Well On Planet Earth
• 1972 - Mike Warnke - The Satan Seller - hoax
• June 1971 - William Peter Blatty, Exorcist, the book
• 1969 - Manson murders
• 1969 - LaVey publishes The Satanic Bible
• 1968 - Rosemary’s Baby
• 1966 - Anton LaVey starts The Church of Satan (San Francisco)

Things of Dubious Connections

• “A Place Called Dagon” - H.P. Lovecraft
• Pamela Klein - trainer
• Jerry Simandl, Chicago Police - trainer
• Children’s Institute International
• Manhattan Ranch Pre-School

Other References

• “A Brief History of the Satanic Panic”
• List of satanic ritual abuse allegations
• Psychiatric Times retracts essay on “satanic ritual abuse”
• Little Rascals Daycare Case - Edenton Seven
• Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s
• 1932 Frederic Bartlett - Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology
• Law Enforcement Guide to Satanic Cults
• April 1995 - Gary Cartwright The Innocent and The Damned
• Babysitters Accused of Satanic Crimes Exonerated After 25 Years
• Satanic ritual abuse
• When Psychiatry Battled the Devil
• Satanic Abuse’ Disorder Pioneer Comes Under Fire
• Conviction of Things Not Seen: The Uniquely American Myth of Satanic Cults
• Mark Pendergrast - The Repressed Memory Epidemic: How It Happened and What We Need to Learn from It
• “Michelle Remembers”: The story of the literary hoax that started a tragic moral panic.
• “Why Satanic Panic never really ended”
• Chuckle-Worthy Video: Law Enforcement Guide to Satanic Cults
• “Law Enforcement Guide to Satanic Cults Part 2: Satanists Love Strolls Through the Park”