They weren't the usual suspects. To be fair, there were a lot of weird targets during the height of the satanic panic in the 1980s. Most of them, in some way or another, resembled Eddie Munson from Stranger Things.

These folks, though, did not fit that mold. The Fortune 100 Company, Proctor and Gamble.

You see, they were accused of supporting Satanism, and it was all because of their logo.

It looked innocent enough. On one side, there was a crescent moon with a man's face.

Think man in the moon, right? On the other side, there were 13 stars. And to the average

person, it honestly just looked like a stylized depiction of the night sky. But paranoid pearl

clutches claimed that the image contained satanic imagery.

The curls in the moon's hair, for example, were actually supposed to be subtle devil's horns,

and the stars, when connected like a constellation, could form the number 666, the mark of the

beast.

The company denied the claims, of course. They'd had that logo since

1851, and the 13 stars were meant to represent the 13 original colonies. But it was too late.

The panic had fully set in, and no amount of reasoning would dissuade the true believers.

The company was forced to change their logo in the

1990s, and thankfully that seemed to do the trick. The rumors die down, and today Procter and Gamble

is known less for their potential ties to the powers of hell, and more for their monopoly over

consumer goods. The lesson, though, is clear.

It doesn't take much for a rumor to spiral out of control.

A sneaking suspicion, a scary story, even a little joke.

All of them can be sucked into the cultural zeitgeist faster than you can say,

Mark of the Beast.

So be careful what you believe, because you never know when a bit of fantasy could actually become an urban legend. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is lore legends.

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