The Satanic Panic: an analysis – II
In the previous post in this series I examined some of the factors that contributed to the North American Satanic Panic of the 1980s. Now, I’ll take a look at the Dungeons & Dragons “Panic”.
Part 2: The Dungeons & Dragons “Panic”
On August 15, 1979, a sixteen-year-old boy, James “Dallas” Egbert went missing from Michigan State University (MSU). His wealthy parents offered a $5,000 reward for any information that might lead to his whereabouts. A note was found in his dorm room at the university stating: “Should my body be found, I wish to be cremated.” It later transpired that James had problems – he felt himself to be under pressure from his parents to perform well academically. He was a member of MSU’s gay society, and he also suffered from epilepsy. He was also known to be using (and manufacturing) recreational drugs.
James’ parents hired a private detective, William Dear, to search for him. Dear went to the MSU campus with a team of five investigators. He quickly learned that there was an extensive network of steam tunnels under the campus and that these were often used by students – sometimes for Live-Action Fantasy Role-Playing Games. Dear learned that James had an interest in the Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Role-Playing Game (FRPG) and concocted a theory that James had gone into the tunnels to play a new kind of FRPG and never emerged. He suggested that James had suffered some kind of mental breakdown and had been unable to tell the difference between reality and the fantasy world of the game. Dear gave a press conference about the case and aired his theories about Dungeons & Dragons, which led to several sensational news stories in the press.1 In some ways, Dear’s speculations helped promote interest in Dungeons & Dragons – according to some accounts, sales of D&D sets quadrupled2 – but it also created the master narrative for the panic over FRPGs. The three key elements were the player – gifted but delusional; the “Dungeon Master” – a cult leader-like figure who manipulated the players; and that playing these games could lead players to lose contact with reality.
What had happened to James Egbert? On the night of his disappearance, James had gone into the steam tunnels, taking with him a bottle of quaaludes – apparently intending to commit suicide. He survived the attempt, and went into hiding, staying at a friend’s house. He spent several weeks moving around – sometimes staying with friends he knew from the local gay scene. When he finally contacted his parents, he was in New Orleans, having made another suicide attempt. His parents sent William Dear to collect him. He later enrolled in another college but committed suicide in August 1980. William Dear published his account of the James Egbert case in 1984, as The Dungeon Master.
In 1981, two novels appeared that drew on the James Egbert case, John Coyne’s Hobgoblin, and Rona Jaffe’s Mazes and Monsters. Hobgoblin is a horror story, wherein a teenage boy becomes obsessed with “Hobgoblin”, an FRPG based on Irish mythology. Jaffe’s Mazes and Monsters features a group of four teenagers who become obsessed by Live-Action roleplaying in underground caverns. All four characters suffer from emotional problems, and Jaffe suggests that their role-playing gaming is a form of psychodrama through which they work out their problems, and that the gaming party is a poor substitute for what the teenagers ‘really’ need – a traditional family life. Mazes and Monsters was made into a television film in 1982, featuring Tom Hanks in his first-ever leading role.
Enter BADD
The following year saw the foundation of a public advocacy group: Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons (BADD). BADD was founded by Patricia Pulling (1948-1997). Pulling’s son had committed suicide in 1982, and Pulling believed that his interest in FRPGs was the cause. She believed that a D&D curse had been placed on him during a game he had played at his local high school. Pulling filed suit against the high school principal in 1983, but it was thrown out of court. She also attempted to sue D&D’s publishers, TSR Inc., but was equally unsuccessful. Pulling was rather more successful in her career of being an expert on the dangers of FRPGs and the occult. Obtaining a qualification as a Private Investigator in 1987, she appeared as an expert witness in several murder trials, as well as being interviewed by the press and radio & television. BADD drew up special indicator lists aimed at profiling teenagers likely to be attracted to Satanism – a tactic that later became popular during the Satanic Panic. These lists were circulated to police departments in a collection of documents entitled Law Enforcement Primer on Fantasy Role-Playing Games. Through the circulation of these documents, Pulling made alliances with law enforcement professionals, also appearing at seminars aimed at educating law enforcement about D&D and its dangers. BADD’s literature was also circulated internationally.3
BADD’s strategy mainly took the form of demonizing FRPGs – asserting that not only did they lead teenagers into the occult, but also that they contributed to crimes and suicides. BADD circulated a list of teenagers who had either committed suicide or were involved in violent crimes that was linked – however tenuously – to Dungeons and Dragons. BADD also tried to lobby the Federal Trade Commission to require a warning label be placed on D&D products and cartoons stating that the game had led to a number of crimes and suicides – but was unsuccessful.
BADD’s campaigning led to D&D and similar games being banned in several schools across North America. For example, after a thirteen-year-old boy committed suicide in 1985 in Putnam, Connecticut, BADD advocates circulated pamphlets and organized a petition, and after a six-month campaign, the Putnam Board of Education banned the playing of D&D in local schools.4 That same year, Winston Matthews, campaigning for the position of Attorney General for the state of Virginia, promised to pass a law banning D&D from public schools.5
BADD’s anti-FRPGs campaign also led to several murders being linked to Dungeons & Dragons as a motive. On November 12, 1985, David K. Ventiquattro shot his eleven-year-old friend in the back of the head with a shotgun whilst they were playing Dungeons & Dragons in his bedroom. Ventiquattro initially stated that this had been an accident, but the police testified in court that Ventiquattro told them he had killed his friend because he believed he had “become evil”.6 It later emerged that Ventiquattro had been questioned by police for eight hours without being allowed to speak to his parents or an attorney, and it was at the end of this period that Ventiquattro “confessed” to the D&D connection. Ventiquattro was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to five-and-a-half years to life in prison. In 1988, the verdict was overturned by the Supreme Court of New York.
In addition to making links with police departments, BADD also forged links with religious advocacy groups and moral entrepreneurs7 such as the psychiatrist Thomas Radecki, a founding member of the National Coalition on Television Violence (NCTV). Radecki and Pulling joined forces, touring the USA giving lectures about the dangers of D&D. Radecki stated in a press release:
“The evidence in these cases is really quite impressive. There is no doubt in my mind that the game Dungeons and Dragons is causing young men to kill themselves and others. The game is one of non-stop combat and violence. Although I am sure that the people at TSR mean no harm, that is exactly what their games are causing. Based on player interviews and game materials, it is clear to me that this game is desensitizing players to violence and causing an increased tendency to violent behavior.”8
Radecki claimed to have been personally involved in at least nine cases of death linked to FRPGs, and to be familiar with over a hundred.9 Radecki is currently in prison, having been convicted in 2016 for trading opioid-addiction treatment drugs for sex.
In 1988, one Christopher “Chris” W. Pritchard was convicted, together with two accomplices, of murdering his stepfather and the attempted murder of his mother, in Washington, North Carolina. It transpired that Pritchard would have inherited over a million dollars from the death of his parents, but what drew national attention to the case was the defendant’s interest in Dungeons & Dragons. The three had met through playing D&D, Pritchard’s attorney argued that Pritchard’s sense of reality had been warped by playing D&D. The idea that playing D&D had caused the defendants to become caught up in fantasy was also reinforced by the investigating police chief, John Crone. Crone claimed to have found a fantasy scenario in a bookstore that seemed to him to be an “outline” for the murder, with players being sent to a castle to kill an evil overlord and steal his treasure.10
Two books appeared which were based on the Pritchard case – Joe McGinniss’ Cruel Doubt and Jerry Bledsoe’s Blood Games. Cruel Doubt was turned into a television mini-series and broadcast in 1992. A copy of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook, with some pages altered, was used in the series as a prop. The same year, Blood Games was also turned into a TV movie, airing on CBS as Honor Thy Mother. Like Cruel Doubt, it used a fake D&D manual as a prop. Pulling co-authored a book (with Kathy Cawthon) The Devil’s Web: Who Is Stalking Your Children For Satan? in 1989.
By the early 1990s, media interest in the dangers of D&D was declining. One effect of BADD’s campaigning activities was the response of the FRPG community. In 1990, Michael Stackpole published The Pulling Report.11 Stackpole exposed numerous errors and misconceptions made by BADD publications and called into question Patricia Pulling’s status as an expert witness. He also published a lengthy article entitled Game Hysteria and the Truth12 in which he cited several studies from institutions such as the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, The Centers for Disease Control, and The American Association of Suicidology, none of whom found any evidence for a correlation between Dungeons & Dragons and teen suicides. Gamer advocates also responded to sensationalist media stories, arguing against the claims made by BADD and other groups. In 1988, two gamers, Will Flatt and Pierre Savoie, established the Committee for the Advancement of Role Playing Games (CAR-PGA) with the aim of providing moral and legal support for gamers targeted by the anti-D&D campaigners.
Another reason was the rise of computer games, which became the focus of attention for advocacy groups such as the NCTV. Christopher B. Strain, in his 2010 book Reload: Rethinking Violence in American Life, argues that the similarity between FRPGs and video games share a sense of “doing” – a level of imaginative participation that is greater than the passivity of watching television (or reading a book). Whilst concerns over D&D focused primarily on the dangers of suicide to troubled teens, the anti-video game advocates focused on alienated youngsters who, after playing violent video games, picked up rifles and went on killing sprees.13 Patricia Pulling stepped down from her leadership of BADD in 1990. She died in 1997.
Many elements of the D&D panic would resurface in the Satanic Panics that, to some extent, it overlapped with. There was a rapid proliferation of “experts” who took advantage of media infotainment. Pulling and Radecki appeared on an episode of 60 Minutes in 1985, along with D&D co-creator Gary Gygax. In 1987, Entertainment Tonight ran a two-part special investigation (hosted by Geraldo Rivera) entitled Games that Kill. Rivera asserted that over ninety deaths had been linked to D&D. These experts also reached out to law enforcement agencies, and forged alliances with therapists, and other moral entrepreneurs, prompting a wave of popular books trumpeting the dangers of fantasy role-playing games.
In the next installment of this series, I’ll examine the 1983 McMartin Preschool Case that kicked off the North American Satanic Panic.
- A large archive of media reports related to the D&D Panic can be found here ↩︎
- Gary Gygax and his partners went from earning $2.3 million in 1979, to $8.7 million by the end of 1980.” See also here ↩︎
- An example of one of BADD’s publications can be seen here ↩︎
- “Putnam’s High School Drops Dungeons and Dragons Game” The New York Times October 9, 1985, Section B, Page 2 ↩︎
- Joseph Laycock, Keep These Satanists Out of Congress! ↩︎
- AP News. “Teen Convicted Of Murdering Friend In Dungeons and Dragons Game”. November 21, 1986. ↩︎
- A term coined by sociologist Howard S. Becker in his book Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (1963). ↩︎
- https://believersweb.org/Press-Release-From-Washington-About-D&D/ ↩︎
- Radecki’s list of D&D deaths can be accessed through Wayback Machine ↩︎
- Greensboro News & Record “New blood, old suspicions and a breakthrough.” 20.08.1991. ↩︎
- Archived at: http://www.theescapist.com/archive-pullingreport.htm ↩︎
- Archived at: http://www.theescapist.com/archive-gamehysteria.htm ↩︎
- Strain, Christopher. Reload: Rethinking Violence in American Life. Vanderbilt University Press. 2010. pp56-57. ↩︎
