Before and After the Satanic Panic: Conspiracies and Their Consequences for Real Kids

The Children's Table Podcast

This episode explores moments when adults become completely consumed by the specter (see what we did there?) of children in spiritual danger – and spiritual danger so severe that it threatens their physical well-being. Where do these fears come from? How do our ideas about children’s vulnerabilities feed those fears? How do adults act on their anxieties, and how do kids respond? We consider a range of texts across time that exemplify adults’ fears about children’s potential contact with the darker side of the supernatural – from Henry James’s unsettlingly knowing child protagonist Flora in Turn of the Screw to the images of endangered children circulated by conspiracy-driven organizations such as QAnon – but our conversation centers around a watershed cultural moment when adults' fears about children’s safety reached a fever pitch: the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. For related materials and a reading list, please visit https://thechildrenstablepodcast.com/.