On this season, we'll be exploring the moral panics, urban legends, and conspiracy theories that shape our psychology and culture and why we end up believing them.

I'm your host, Chelsea Weber-Smith, and this is American Hysteria.

There's power in Satan.

One more time.

We said, there's power in Satan.

Parents were actually saw their child summon Dungeons and Dragons demons into his room

before he killed himself.

Another scripture says that if you bring an abomination or an accursed thing into your house,

then you will be accursed like it is.

Would you say these toys are cursed to God?

Oh, I would guarantee it. The original Hebrew translation of the word Satan refers to an adversary, or more directly, one who throws something across one's path.

In the Bible, the word Satan can certainly refer to the Satan, the actual character

of the devil himself, but just as often also refers to a Satan, to whatever challenges

you as you move through your life's journey. The entity of Satan, often seen as the fallen

angel Lucifer, one who rejected the authority of God, has long been the

symbol of the world's ultimate evil, the evil beyond humanity itself, the pain, the suffering,

the death and depravity, all made into a convenient villain that we can experience together.

The satanic panic of the 1980s and early 90s is truly one of the most

mystifying things I've ever studied. A serious and widespread belief was burning through the country,

and not just among fundamentalists, that a secret network of satanic cults was indoctrinating kids and

teens through music, movies, and games,

hypnotizing them toward drug-fueled sex orgies and suicide, toward atrocious violent crimes,

...