For a while now, one recurring topic on my blog has been the ongoing revival of the Satanic Panic. This phenomenon was mainstream in America during the 1980s and 90s and is now being pushed back into vogue by contemporary conspiracy theorists.
I personally divide the Satanic Panic into two aspects. One is the “soft” Satanic Panic, which deals with pop-cultural concerns (notions that role-playing games or heavy metal music are turning children into Satanists, for example); the other is the “hard” Satanic Panic, which deals with allegations of ritual abuse. While it’s the “soft” variety that attracted me to writing about the subject — I’m a horror author, after all — this post will discuss the second variety. I’d like to stress that I’m in no way a qualified expert in this field; I’m simply a writer whose area of popular culture has led me to the topic.
The revived Satanic Panic has already amassed a mythology mixing older cases with newer elements. A good example is the case of a group known as the Finders, founded by a man named Marion Pettie: this is a story from 1987-93 that was given a new lease of life in October 2019, when the FBI released a 1993 document on the case.
The above photograph comes from a 
Doris V. Sutherland 