Episode 1: Did Swayze Start the Fire?

Summary

The Devil You Know with Sarah Marshall

Episode 1: Did Swayze Start the Fire?

Release Date: October 20, 2025
Host: Sarah Marshall
Podcast by: CBC

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Episode Overview

This inaugural episode of "The Devil You Know" dives into the beginnings of the Satanic Panic in 1980s and 90s America, using the real-life story of "Diane" – a pseudonymous photographer who unwittingly became a target of hysteria while working in rural Kentucky. The episode unravels how rumors, fueled by cultural anxieties, mistranslations, and the media, grew from innocent misunderstandings into a nationwide moral panic—sometimes with bizarre Hollywood connections. Sarah Marshall sets the stage for a series that promises to explore this phenomenon not just as a national story, but as personal ones, spotlighting the individual lives warped by collective fear.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Diane's Story: From Photographer to Pariah

[00:51–03:06]

• Diane, an artist and photographer, describes her 1988 arts residency in rural Kentucky.
• She recounts a welcoming town, enthusiastic students, and a deeply positive start.
• Suddenly, the attitude shifts: the high school art teacher urges her to "leave right away" ([02:30]), and Diane flees in a panic, fearing arrest or even something worse.

Notable Quote:

"The art teacher turned to me, looked at me real seriously, and he said: ‘Leave right away.’ So I did...I just couldn't put the miles between me and that place fast enough. ...I didn't know if I'd end up in a jail or if I would end up, you know, thrown in a cave." — Diane ([02:30], [02:48])

2. The Microcosm of Panic

[03:06–04:47]

• Diane’s experience is introduced as a microcosm of the broader Satanic Panic: a rumor morphs into panic, then legend.
• Sarah stresses that seeing the Panic only as a big cultural wave neglects the intensely personal experience—every victim perceives it differently, often painfully.

Notable Quote:

"The grand sweep of the narrative turns it into something that happened to a country, or a culture. But that also means it happened to individuals. And each of them saw something a little different." — Sarah Marshall ([03:35–04:27])

3. How Rumors Spread & Authority Response

[06:11–09:26]

• Throughout the '80s, mainstream media and authorities buzzed about Satanic cults infiltrating American life.
• TV shows, national news segments, and law enforcement reinforced the fear.
• Mary DeYoung (sociologist) introduces the idea of a "moral panic"—efforts to restore threatened traditional norms amid social change.

Notable Quote:

"Virtually every state that I’ve taken a look at has had its own version of the Satanic panic. ...One day in one community in Kentucky, 450 kids were kept out of school by their parents. That’s a manifestation of a belief system." — Mary DeYoung ([13:53])

4. Why Now? The Social Context of Panic

[10:06–11:32]

• The episode deeply examines social anxieties: rising divorce rates, changing family structures, economic stress, and the rise of "latchkey kids."
• These factors provided fertile ground for conspiracy, particularly targeting children and youth as supposed victims.

Notable Quote:

"There was a lot of anxiety about what was going on in the family during that period of time...you had a lot of commentators talking...about latchkey children and unsupervised children and children, particularly boys, who were not growing up with fathers." — Mary DeYoung ([10:06])

5. The Machinery of Panic: Experts, Law Enforcement & Rumors

[13:04–14:57]

• "Self-appointed experts" on cults and Satanism popped up, training social workers, police, and therapists to "spot" signs of Satanism everywhere—from music to games.
• Rumors led to real investigative consequences—police, teachers, parents on high alert.

6. The Kentucky Rumor Mill: The Blue-Eyed, Blonde Victims

[16:07–17:21]

• In Kentucky, rumors spread that Satanists sought blonde, blue-eyed kids for sacrifice. Hundreds of kids were kept home from school due to parental terror.
• Law enforcement investigated widely, but found no evidence. Yet the cycle persisted.

Notable Quote:

"Satan worshippers are looking for blonde blue eyed children to kill in a sacrifice to the devil. Some versions implicated vacuum cleaner salesmen." — Diane ([16:07])

7. Return to Diane: Art, Paranoia, and a Narrow Escape

[17:31–24:37]

• Diane provides a detailed account of her work and how an innocent arts project suddenly became “evidence.”
• With little warning, she was shunned, instructed to leave by both teachers and friends citing disappearances and urban legends of people ending up in caves or mines ([22:20]).
• The story moves quickly from initial confusion to nationwide media attention—with Diane fielding press calls while still trying to process what happened.

Notable Quote:

"She looked at me and she said, leave town right away. She said, people have disappeared…often end up in nearby caves or mines, never to be heard from again. So then I really freaked out…So I was really shocked and upset." — Diane ([22:20])

8. The Roots of Rumor: Black Fabric and Hollywood Intrigue

[26:24–34:32]

• Diane reflects on how the simplest things—a theater group ordering black fabric—became “signs” of occult activity.
• The episode uncovers how, simultaneously, a local Hollywood shoot ("Next of Kin," with Patrick Swayze and Liam Neeson) was source of rumor: the purchase of black dresses for a funeral scene became ‘evidence’ of Satanic rituals.
• Patrick Balch, a child extra on set, remembers the “rumor mill” and the leap from boring facts to wild conjecture.

Notable Quotes:

"Police in Hazard said employees of a department store were frantic after someone bought 20 black dresses. Authorities later learned the dresses were sewn together for use in movie lighting during the filming of ‘Next of Kin’..." — Mary (Producer) ([33:19])
"That’s hazard for you…If you came in and bought black eyeliner and a black dress, they’d say he’s a Satan worshipper, you know…No, there wasn’t no Satanists around." — Patrick Balch ([34:37])

9. Larger Lessons: The Pattern of Panic

[35:34–38:48]

• Sarah draws a parallel to how collective anxieties make people assume not just the worst, but "something even worse than that."
• The episode notes: such panics ebb and flow, returning when conditions are right. And these stories are lived by real people—some thrust into danger, others cast as villains for arbitrary reasons.

Notable Quote:

"When the devil is hard to find, you can always just blame Patrick Swayze. The activities of a Hollywood production crew being mistaken for satanic ritual is just one of many very sketchy pieces of evidence that people pointed to as some kind of a smoking gun throughout the long decade of the Satanic panic." — Sarah Marshall ([35:34])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Diane’s trauma:

  "I'm not the victim here. But I think also, I don't really know how much my experience had to do with Satanic Panic. But I do feel like it was part of the zeitgeist of that time and they needed some excuse, you know, they needed some label for it." — Diane ([27:19])

• Parallel with modern conspiracy theories:

  "The really compelling thing about this story and also the way it compares to sort of the QAnon logic of today is that, you know, it would be funny if it wasn't so dangerous..." — Sarah Marshall ([26:40])

• Patrick Balch, local color:

  "No, there wasn’t no Satanists around. Patrick Swayze definitely wasn’t a Satanist and Liv Neeson wasn’t a Satanist...I didn’t see anybody naked dancing around a fire at night or anything like that. No witches." — Patrick Balch ([34:37])

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Key Timestamps

| Segment | Key Content | |---|---| | 00:51–03:06 | Diane describes being forced to flee the town | | 06:11–09:26 | Marshall & DeYoung trace the roots of the panic, role of media | | 13:53–14:30 | Kentucky, blue-eyed blonde child rumors, schools closed | | 17:21–24:37 | Diane’s detailed account, her sudden ostracism, media fallout | | 29:25–34:32 | Patrick Balch on movie shoot, black dresses, rumors | | 35:34–38:48 | Marshall sums up: how panic grows, why it returns |

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Takeaway & Tone

The episode blends dark humor, empathy, and sharp cultural critique. Marshall’s narrative voice is wry yet compassionate, highlighting both the absurdity and tragedy of the Satanic Panic. The interviews and anecdotes keep the history intimate and personal, setting up the series as not just a chronicle of a bizarre conspiracy, but a human story about fear, misunderstanding, and scapegoating.

Final Thought:

"There’s no panic without the people panicking…What I’m most interested in and what I want to share with you are the voices of the individuals who found themselves within this larger story." — Sarah Marshall ([38:48])

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A must-listen for fans of You're Wrong About, true crime, and anyone curious about how collective anxieties can warp reality—sometimes with an unexpected assist from Hollywood.

Transcript

[Sarah Marshall]

Who was Elon Musk before he was.

[Patrick Balch]

So loved and so hated, he saved free speech.

[Diane]

He created so many different great things.

[Sarah Marshall]

Before the billions, before the rockets, before the never ending headlines. I'm Jacob Silverman and my new podcast explores the prequel to the Elon Musk era.

[Diane]

Let me tell you what you don't.

[Sarah Marshall]

Know about the world's most notorious billionaire understood the making of Musk. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.

[Diane]

This is a CBC podcast. I didn't have any clue what what that was all about, but the art teacher made it clear that I should get the hell out right away.

[Sarah Marshall]

This is Diane. She's a photographer. Diane is not her actual name, but what I've given her for her privacy. And also in honor of one of my favorite women of the 80s, Diane Ankiers.

[Diane]

I'm an artist, photographer, designer, art educator, digital designer and more.

[Sarah Marshall]

Diane was telling me about a project she was working on in the late 1980s.

[Diane]

I planned and I arrived in the fall.

[Sarah Marshall]

It had her traveling around Kentucky.

[Diane]

I wasn't staying permanently then, but I was there to kind of establish the program, find a place to live and kind of get things going.

[Sarah Marshall]

She was photographing locals and also teaching them photography.

[Diane]

The first time I went, we had this little after school club of girls who were really interested in photography and very enthusiastic and they went home and told their families and their families were really friendly and they were inviting me over for dinners and stuff. So when I left there the first time after a two week residency, I left with a really warm place in my heart for the town and its people.

[Sarah Marshall]

She worked with people of all ages, including local high schoolers. That's what brought her to this particular small town.

[Diane]

So it was a pretty old town. It was really scenic and beautiful, kind of nestled in the hills or maybe they were mountains, I don't know.

[Sarah Marshall]

But before Diane could really settle in and get to work, something happened that made her want to get the hell out of Dodge.

[Diane]

And the art teacher turned to me, looked at me real seriously, and he said, leave right away. So I did. I mean, I arrived in the town hopeful and optimistic, ready to, like, work hard and do good work.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah.

[Diane]

And when I left, I couldn't drive fast enough. It was just pedal to the metal. I just couldn't put the miles between me and that place fast enough. I didn't know if I'd end up in a jail or if I would end up, you know, thrown in a cave.

[Sarah Marshall]

Diane, a stranger in a small town, had unwittingly become the Target of a conspiracy.

[Diane]

You know, at the time, I remember hearing about, you know, pentagrams on the floor of barns and all kinds of stuff like that. I mean, I thought maybe it could happen, but I really didn't believe it. Where could all these, like, all of a sudden, all these devil worshipers pop up?

[Sarah Marshall]

What happened to Diane was a microcosm of a larger conspiracy and sweeping the nation throughout the 1980s. It was a conspiracy about a conspiracy. It was a story where rumor became panic, and eventually that panic became legend. That legend has always fascinated me. But to see it only from the distance of the present is to not see it at all. The grand sweep of the narrative turns it into something that happened to a country or a culture. But that also means it happened to individuals. And each of them saw something a little different. I thought, could this have happened? You know, I mean, I questioned it because it's like we had such a strange childhood.

[Patrick Balch]

Anyways, the first version of it was.

[Sarah Marshall]

This was somehow wrapped up in the Mafia.

[Diane]

And then the next iteration I heard.

[Sarah Marshall]

Was that there was some group of.

[Diane]

People at the school called the group.

[Sarah Marshall]

Especially some goth people.

[Diane]

I remember two days later, maybe even.

[Sarah Marshall]

A day later, I received a call from Detective Majeca.

[Diane]

You know, would you come in and come and talk to me or.

[Sarah Marshall]

Sure, you know, I have nothing to hide. Unfortunately, that was the worst thing I could have ever done. So what did it look like to the individuals who got caught up in this panic, often in ways that they could never have imagined? Today, we're going to see it through Diane's eyes. Come with me as I trace the development of one small, strange rumor, a rumor involving virgin sacrifice, grave robbing, and Patrick Swayze. I'm Sarah Marshall, and this is the Devil youl. Welcome to the 80s. Here's what's in leg warmers, Madonna phones that look like Star wars trilogy and Government Initiative. Michael J. Fox, the DeLorean, Michael J. Fox, the Jacuzzi, the VCR, Reaganomics, Cyndi Lauper, Aquanet fishnets, and also, apparently, Satanism. Good morning, everyone.

[Patrick Balch]

I'm Richard Scher, and welcome to People Are Talking on this Monday. We are live on Television Hill. And as you know by watching previous programs on People Are Talking that Satanism seems to be on the rise here in the United States.

[Sarah Marshall]

People, especially Americans, were getting this information not from the fringes, but from mainstream sources like local morning news shows and on nationally syndicated daytime talk shows like the Oprah Winfrey Show. In every state in the nation, authorities are investigating some form of what they call Satanic activity.

[Diane]

Witches, covens are reportedly.

[Sarah Marshall]

People also heard these stories on primetime news, like in this investigation by ABC's 20 20.

[Patrick Balch]

Startling, sobering results of a 2020 investigation. Satanism, devil worship, is being practiced all across the country. We have all types of perversion going on, and it's affecting America. Perverse, hideous acts that defy belief. Suicides, murders, and the ritualistic slaughter of children and animals.

[Sarah Marshall]

Satan has been in North America for a long time, at least according to some. But he began to enjoy a new level of notoriety in the 1960s and 70s. Anton Lavey was freaking people out with his Church of Satan in San Francisco, a church that, if you read the literature, was about worshiping not Satan, but yourself and your ability to do whatever you wanted. The public reeled from news of the Manson family murders in the wake of their 1969 crime spree, a case in which teenage girls ran away from home and ended up in the thrall of a man who commanded them to kill. Surely just some guy couldn't be responsible for such horrific crimes. Surely it had to be Satan. And members of the growing evangelical Christian movement began arguing that the Age of Aquarius was really a front for Satan. One day you're reading a horoscope, the next day you're sacrificing a goat. But it's hard to know if Satan would have become quite the American obsession he was if he hadn't also been such big business.

[Patrick Balch]

Satan is his father, not guy.

[Sarah Marshall]

He came up from hell and begat.

[Patrick Balch]

A son of mortal woman. Hail Satan.

[Sarah Marshall]

Hail Satan.

[Patrick Balch]

Satan is his father, and his name is Adrian.

[Sarah Marshall]

That was Rosemary's Baby from 1968. It established a market for devil movies. And there was no devil movie bigger than the Exorcist in 1973, which told the story of an adolescent girl possessed by a demon. And the two noble Catholic priests who saved her from evil.

[Diane]

What an excellent day for an exorcism.

[Sarah Marshall]

But this pervasive fixation on Satan, both religious and secular, achieved a new level of urgency in the 1980s. Now, stories of satanic activity were no longer just in the movies. They were happening in your very own town. Or at least that was what people were saying.

[Mary DeYoung]

And we have, essentially, in a moral panic, a somewhat regressive movement that it's trying to restore old moral lines or old, old cultural habits. You know, kind of like the good old days that the social change was really threatening to upend.

[Sarah Marshall]

That is Mary DeYoung, professor emeritus of sociology at Grand Valley State University. And according to Mary, many Of these fears tend to center around children and teenagers and the harms that might befall children, Both physical and moral.

[Mary DeYoung]

I mean, there was a lot of anxiety about what was going on in the family during that period of time. That was one of the sources of social stress. There was a higher rate of divorce, A higher rate of what were referred to then as non traditional families. We also were dealing with the consequences of a recession. We had more and more women going to work. And you had a lot of social commentators who were talking with one degree of expertise or another about what the consequences were of so called latchkey children and unsupervised children and children, particularly boys, who were. Were not growing up with fathers.

[Sarah Marshall]

And is there this idea that the nuclear family must stay together to ward off satanists and therefore, you know, don't get divorced?

[Mary DeYoung]

Right. Well, you know, historically, the family has always been the moral foundation of society. And when you begin changing that moral foundation, then consequentially other things are going to happen that are either going to, depending on your belief system, Invite evil influences, however you define evil, or somehow make it much more difficult to resist those.

[Sarah Marshall]

This panic across the board Was one whose proponents and alleged victims Were largely white and middle class, in part because it affected white america the way so many moral panics do, by giving a monstrous face to the changes that the future might bring. Those accused of being in league with the devil were, as you might imagine, A more diverse group than their accusers. The weight of false accusations fell most heavily, as always, on those without the money or the power to crawl out from under them. It feels like so many structural problems can be ignored when we say, well, these things, bad outcomes happen because people wake up in the morning and sort of stretch and do their affirmations and are like, I'm evil and I'm gonna do something evil today.

[Mary DeYoung]

Right, Right. I mean, throughout history, there's always been something, someone, some group of people, some ideology, whatever, that's been labeled as evil. And evil, the word itself is an extremely powerful word. Throwing it into a sentence really begins to change the whole nature narrative about the problem that you're taking a look at.

[Sarah Marshall]

Deyoung tells a story where the satanic panic emerged not just from the fears of everyday people, but from a whole class of professionals.

[Mary DeYoung]

All of a sudden, we had experts popping up on satanism, on cults, on satanic cults, Even on ritual abuse, which was a brand new term.

[Sarah Marshall]

Self appointed experts who could tell you how to find evidence of satanism in a patient or at a crime scene and who turned around and trained more experts, who trained more experts. Across North America, social workers and therapists were urged to look for the devil in their clients memories. And teachers, parents and children were told that secret satanic messages were hidden in heavy metal songs, comic books and games.

[Mary DeYoung]

Virtually every state that I've taken a look at has had its own version of the satanic panic. For example in Kentucky, where rumors that were going around that a satanic cult was going to kidnap blonde haired, blue eyed girls and sacrifice them meant that on one day in one community in Kentucky, 450 kids were kept out of school by their parents. That's a manifestation of a belief system.

[Sarah Marshall]

By the time we get to the late 80s, the idea that Satan and his followers have infiltrated North America is thoroughly embedded in our culture. Satanists, you are told, are a threat to your children, your town, your country. And out of all this fear come people who are primed to look for Satanists whenever something a little bit out of the ordinary occurs.

[Mary DeYoung]

I found training sessions where hundreds of Kentucky police officers were attending training sessions on satanic ritual abuse and, and what was generically referred to as a cult crime. So you begin to look at those kinds of relationships again and you see that you can have a community that really is primed for an allegation, primed to believe it, primed to proceed on it as if it were a credible allegation.

[Sarah Marshall]

Hi, I'm Sarah Nicole Landry and I'm the host of the Papaya podcast where each week I ask curious questions to people with incredible stories or expertise in their fields. I'm somebody who has found so much inspiration in storytelling and learning from them and I wanted to bring that to a podcast where each week we walk away learning something that might just change our lives for the better. Check us out with every Monday on the Papaya podcast. See you there.

[Diane]

Rumors of devil worship have spread like wildfire across a large section of eastern Kentucky. Stumping police officers who have fielded thousands of telephone calls from terrified residents. Satan worshippers are looking for blonde blue eyed children to kill in a sacrifice to the devil. Some versions implicate vacuum cleaner salesmen.

[Sarah Marshall]

Vandals painted six Satan rules and occult symbols in the city park.

[Diane]

Similar incidents on the floor of a mobile home the defendants are alleged to have used for satanic ceremonies. The words Satan rules were inscribed outside a circle around the model. Noble met with parents who were considering keeping their children home because of fears of devil worshippers.

[Sarah Marshall]

Videotapes and books on the occult were confiscated along with Some heavy metal rock tapes.

[Diane]

The rumors migrated into Leslie, Clay, Lee and Owsley counties to the southwest, and.

[Sarah Marshall]

Wolf, Powell and McGoffin counties.

[Diane]

All of the law enforcement officials surveyed last week said they believe the stories were false. Most agencies reported investigating the rumors and finding no supporting evidence.

[Sarah Marshall]

The State Journal, Franklin the Messenger, Inquirer.

[Diane]

Owens, Louisville Courier Journal, Kentucky New Era, Lexington Herald reader, September 12, 1988.

[Sarah Marshall]

September 1988. That is the very same month a certain photographer travels to rural Kentucky. Remember our friend Diane from earlier?

[Diane]

When we were at school, we had a lot of fun just running inside and outside, because in the pinhole cameras they're called, you could only put one film in at a time. So you would load it up in the darkroom, run outside, take a picture, and then run back into the dark room and develop it. You know, it was this frantic, great release of energy as opposed to sitting in one of those little school desks, you know, for hours.

[Sarah Marshall]

She was working in small towns across the state teaching photography to kids and teenagers.

[Diane]

I was part of an artist grant program through the Kentucky Arts Council. So as one of those artists, I packed up my car with all kinds of photo gear and I would travel around the state doing these residencies. I think most of them were about two weeks. The town would, like find a place for you to stay and, you know, you were just kind of on your own with the students and the specific group of teachers, or one teacher maybe. I would show up with dozens of cardboard boxes that the students would make into cameras and then photograph with them. And we made school newspapers where they would write and publish their photos. We made photo books and had exhibits, and we made videos where they would write the story and star in it and dance in it, and they'd write original music.

[Sarah Marshall]

What was it like to be working with teenagers artistically and specifically working with young adults in that part of the country in that time?

[Diane]

Once they were on board with it, they really got inspired by it, which I really enjoyed because it's so hard to sometimes get people interested or teenagers interested. But I think it was so different than regular school for them that they kind of latched onto it. It was a real. For them, it was a real opportunity I had for years after some of the teenagers riding me and sending me photos and, you know, asking me questions because they. They just wanted to keep going with it. So that was pretty amazing. I think most people were happy to have a visitor that was going to, like, shed light on something brand new.

[Sarah Marshall]

I'm curious about what this town was like what it was like to drive into it and kind of what it, you know, the experience of was pretty.

[Diane]

Small, but when you drive in, you know, you see hills and beautiful scenery. It's like one road through the town and some other little neighborhoods around. The woman who was the teacher that I stayed with initially, she was living in the old one room schoolhouse and she used to find, like, arrowheads in the front yard.

[Sarah Marshall]

Was there like. Was it like a Dairy Queen town? Was there like a.

[Diane]

Yes, there was this. There was this great Dairy Queen. And I was always just amazed. There was this. One of the kids had a baby, and they would put the baby through the order window, you know, place their orders. They would, like, push the baby through.

[Sarah Marshall]

And you have to hold the baby upside down like a blizzard to make sure that he's thick enough.

[Diane]

Yeah, yeah, maybe. Yeah. It was like a one everything town. One doctor, one Dairy Queen, one movie theater. I was staying at a local motel. The doctor across the street, he offered a room in his building. I could use it as a studio darkroom. And I'd run around the town as I was doing all this, meeting people. And when I did, I'd tell them about the project. And with their permission, I would photograph them. And I was using a Polaroid camera so I could give them the photo. The outcome was always really friendly. And in doing my recognizance, I scheduled a meeting with the high school principal and the high school art teacher. Day came for our meeting, and I met the principal. I thought it went fine. And then I went to meet with the art teacher. And halfway through our meeting, the principal's voice booms out of the loudspeaker, and he said, if anyone sees the photo, woman, escort her to my office immediately. And the art teacher turned to me, looked at me real seriously, and he said, leave right away. So I did.

[Sarah Marshall]

But during her drive through town, Diane spots a friend traveling in the opposite direction.

[Diane]

I was thinking of finding her anyway, but our paths crossed in our cars, and so we stopped. You know, people used to, like, in a small town that would stop in middle street and have a conversation. So we kind of stopped in the middle of the street and, you know, going in two different directions and rolled down our windows. And I told her what had just happened. And she looked at me and she said, leave town right away. She said, people have disappeared or are disappeared, like abducted, and often end up in nearby caves or mines, never to be heard from again. So then I really freaked out. And she said it in such a way, too, that I knew it was no joke, you know, and it wasn't like a horror film where you might just stay anyway, you know. So I was really shocked and upset. I went back to the motel and I just grabbed all my stuff and threw it in the car and left. And for some reason, I remember, like, for some reason I decided to change my shirt. And I wasn't hysterical, but I was definitely panicky because I remember I had the hardest time trying to button the buttons. Later I found out that the sheriff was waiting for me in the principal's office. And later I found out that he had just missed me at the motel.

[Sarah Marshall]

Wow.

[Diane]

So I was just so glad that I had left. I didn't know if I'd end up in a jail or if I would end up, you know, thrown in a cave.

[Sarah Marshall]

When. Okay, and so you got out of town and so where did you head to from there?

[Diane]

I just drove back to Cincinnati the next day and, you know, nobody here really, really understood. And my phone started ringing off the hook. Just constant phone calls from all kinds of different media, including like People magazine. All these people just kept calling and calling and calling. I. I really didn't even know what to say. I was still trying to process what happened and why. But, yeah, that's when I found out what I was being accused of or being.

[Mary DeYoung]

You know.

[Sarah Marshall]

I've been fascinated by Diane's story ever since I stumbled across it. I first saw it in a book from the 80s about police officers who became experts in cult crimes. So when I finally got the chance to sit down and talk with her, I had to read her this passage. A Cincinnati photographer traveled through rural Kentucky taking photographs under a grant from the Kentucky Arts Council. By coincidence, quote, rumors that devil worshippers were searching for blonde blue eyed victims for sacrifices reached the town from surrounding counties about the same time. The photographer, however, had taken photographs of children, prompting the rumor, quote, that a woman was taking pictures of blond haired, blue eyed girls, potential victims for devil worshippers. After receiving threats and after the local high school principal chased her from school, yelling, get out. Get out. The photographer fled.

[Diane]

Yeah, I don't remember. I don't think that happened. I really, I don't think that happened. I think that was like some fiction that he made up to make it sound good, because I really, I just kind of left, you know, nobody was around. I just got in the car and left. I do want to tell you that right before I went to Kentucky, there were rumors reported in Lexington. I think they reported it in the newspaper about a theater Group that was suspected of dealing in witchcraft because they ordered yards and yards of black material. You know, and anyone who's been to the theater knows that probably black material is used as backdrops and blockout curtains and all kinds of stuff.

[Sarah Marshall]

Right. Probably they had to put on Private Lives and they needed it for, like, the night sky.

[Diane]

Yeah. I mean, it could be so many different. So, you know, and there was another. Another little silly incident like that reported, too, but I can't remember what it is.

[Sarah Marshall]

I think that's the part of. To me, the really compelling thing about this story and also the way it compares to sort of the QAnon logic of today is that, you know, it would be funny if it wasn't so dangerous and if it didn't affect so many people's lives because the sort of are sort of. Again, it would be comical if there weren't real lives at stake.

[Diane]

Yeah. I mean, it was not funny at all, you know, and as a matter of fact, it's going to take me days to get over this now, I think, you know.

[Sarah Marshall]

Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm sure. I think the kind of. The nervous system response of remembering something like this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Diane]

I made some notes to kind of get it straight in my head, and all of a sudden I started, like, getting upset. You know, it's like, no, I'm not the victim here. But I think also, I don't really know how much my experience had to do with Satan. Satanic panic. But I do feel like it was part of the zeitgeist of that time and they needed some excuse, you know, they needed some label for it. Even if it was, you know, anti Semitism, they weren't going to say that, so they had to label it something. And that whole satanic business was timely.

[Sarah Marshall]

I find it kind of very depressing that we find ourselves in a worldview where people find it more believable that somebody is going to come from another town all the way to your town to, according to the COVID story, at least try and sacrifice a virgin rather than just being interested in teaching them photography.

[Diane]

Yeah. Why would anyone go all that way, go to all that trouble, you know, just to, like, try and infiltrate their lives for some other evil purpose, you.

[Sarah Marshall]

Know, just doesn't make any sense either way. This is the story that was left on the record and that we have now. Satan is in the news. It's just a matter of time until he shows up in your town. There's a detail of Diane's story that I haven't been Able to get out of my head the black fabric and the theater group. How in the world did something so small fuel a rumor that engulfed an entire state? To answer that, we have to go to another small town, Hazard, Kentucky.

[Patrick Balch]

People around here, we band together. You mess with us, we'll mess you up.

[Sarah Marshall]

That is Patrick Balch. He's in his 40s now, and he.

[Patrick Balch]

Grew up in Hazzard, about four bars on Main Street. And they had a store called Doll Hairs and a dime store. Oh, my God. That brings back so many memories. Hazard was just like a ghost town when I was a kid.

[Sarah Marshall]

In 1988, when Patrick was about 8 years old, Hollywood came to town.

[Patrick Balch]

They had open casting call for locals come in at the Holiday Inn in Hazzard. My mom just took me because she was interested. She wanted to meet Patrick Swayze because she basically thought he was a God. But ironically, when we went to the casting cow, he was sitting in the hotel bar. You've seen Dirty Dancing, I assume. Do you know the sleeveless shirt that he wore in it? He was wearing that shirt. And we go into the hotel bar, and I immediately located. And she's like, that's not him. I was like, yes, it is. And I walked up to him, I said, hey, Patrick. He turned around and started talking to me, and mom's jaw just, like, dropped.

[Sarah Marshall]

Liam Neeson, Helen Hunt, Patrick Swayze, all of them were there to film scenes for a movie called Next of Kin.

[Patrick Balch]

Patrick Swayze is Detective Truman Gates. He's a country boy. We are gonna find Gerald's killer, but he's got some unfinished business in the city. Howdy, brothers who've been separated for a while. One of them gets murdered. The other one tries to solve it. Because he's a Chicago police officer, he gets in trouble, and then his other brother comes to help to get revenge, more or less. So they're kind of fighting with each other. End of it is the best part. If you haven't seen it, I'm not going to tell you. But the end of it is the cemetery scene is the best part of it. It shows you how family comes together. And whoops, ass.

[Sarah Marshall]

He ended up with only one line in the theatrical cut, but he basically got to spend a couple of weeks hanging out with Patrick Swayze.

[Patrick Balch]

Yeah, I was little Patrick. He was big Patrick on the set. Patrick Swayze actually is the one that taught me how to shoot the bow and arrow. And he taught me in about 15. Fifteen minutes, I was doing great. But at the time that I actually shot for the Scene I missed the haystack by probably a half a mile. I guess I was nervous, but I completely missed the target. It's a wonder I didn't shoot somebody on the. In the background. But luckily no one was hit in the end.

[Sarah Marshall]

It was one of the high points of his childhood. And looking back on it now, he says that it changed his life.

[Patrick Balch]

Just kind of opened my eyes to the fact that the world was a lot bigger than what I thought it was at the time, because I didn't know there was anything beyond hazard. I mean, you know, I was eight years old, very naive. Hear all these big Hollywood actors come in. It just kind of woke me up and made me realize that there's more to life than just Prairie County.

[Sarah Marshall]

There's another way. Next of kin left a mark in Kentucky. Patrick talked to my producer, Mary.

[Mary (Producer)]

Do you remember a scene where a lot of people would have been wearing, like, black dresses?

[Patrick Balch]

The funeral scene when they was doing the funeral and having the wake. It's in the deleted scenes. It's also the one where I got my hand slapped for stealing cookies or something off a plate.

[Sarah Marshall]

Remember Diane mentioning the theater group buying the black fabric? Well, just like the story of her being chased through the school, this is a detail that suffered from some historical mistranslation too.

[Mary (Producer)]

Okay, I'm gonna read you something from this newspaper. This was in the Louisville courier journal on September 12, 1988. It was also reprinted in a lot of other places like papers across the state because it was originally from the Associated Press. And the article is called Devil Worship Rumors Keep officials Busy in Eastern Kentucky. And it says rumors of devil worship have spread like wildfire across a large section of eastern Kentucky, stumping police officials who are fielding thousands of telephone calls from fearful residents. Police in Hazard said employees of a department store were frantic after someone bought 20 black dresses. Authorities later learned the dresses were sewn together for use in movie lighting during the filming of Next of Kin last month in Jackson and Perry counties. A dispatcher said people believed Satan worshippers were looking for virgin girls and blonde blue eyed children to sacrifice to the devil.

[Patrick Balch]

Pardon my French, but what the. I don't know about that. Nothing like that occurred that I'm aware of.

[Mary (Producer)]

I mean, yeah, I mean, what do you think about that?

[Patrick Balch]

That's hazard for you. I mean, if somebody goes and takes a. Everybody else that knows what color it is by the time they get out of the bathroom, it's a rumor mill. The second you walk out the door, they'll be talking about you behind your back if you do anything that alarms them. There's so many Bible thumpers and hazard. I mean, you know the ones that wear the big long denim skirts, goes down to their ankles. If you came in and bought black eyeliner and a black dress, they'd say he's a Satan worshiper, you know. No, there wasn't no Satanists around. Patrick Swayze definitely wasn't a Satanist and Liv Neeson wasn't a Satanist. And I seen no evidence of any Satan worship or anything like that. I didn't see anybody naked dancing around a fire at night or anything like that. No witches.

[Mary (Producer)]

I mean, if you did see something like that, would you immediately think, oh, it's Satanists?

[Patrick Balch]

No, I would have joined them, really.

[Sarah Marshall]

So there we have it. Woman scared out of nearby town because Hollywood movie set bought 20 black dresses for a deleted scene. Doesn't really have the same ring to it as the other headlines, does it? But in any case, when the devil is hard to find, you can always just blame Patrick Swayze. The activities of a Hollywood production crew being mistaken for satanic ritual is just one of many very sketchy pieces of evidence that people pointed to as some kind of a smoking gun throughout the long decade of the Satanic panic. And I bring up all these details and I bring you the story of Diane in this, our first episode. Because I think the story of the panic itself, the story of a many headed hydra that seemed to reach into every part of North American life, can seem like too big of a concept to wrap your head around when you try to take it in, in its totality. I've been studying it for the past 10 years or so and every day I feel like I find some new detail that I've never encountered before. The Patrick Swayze thing, for example. In any case, the story of the dresses, the story of Diane and so many of the other stories that we're going to talk about in this series are really about people encountering something just a little bit unusual and being stirred into such a state of anxiety that they assume not just the worst that they can imagine, but something even worse than that. This is a scary story because it hasn't gone away. Maybe it doesn't need to be out all the time. Maybe sometimes it retreats underground, takes a nap and then returns to feast again, like Pennywise and Stephen King's it. And of course you can't really personify a panic and blame it for the way it recurs. There's no panic without the people panicking. Maybe with a phenomenon like this, it doesn't come down to us getting smarter as a people, but to us just getting tired of a certain story, craving novelty, moving on to something else for a while, until Satanists once again seem fresh and shocking. Like oh, say about now. What I'm most interested in and what I want to share with you are the voices of the individuals who found themselves within this larger story. Some of them are like Diane, they never thought it could happen to them. And some of them thought they knew what to expect, but discovered that reality was even more bizarre. And some of them had no idea they were even part of the story until they were already trapped inside it. These are the people and the stories we want to look at to understand what happened, but also so we can understand together where we're going. I hope you'll join me for this season on the Devil youl Know. Thank you for listening to the W Know. Our producer is Mary Stephanhagen. Fact checking by Katherine Barner Production assistants by Nicole Ortiz. Thanks to Jay Cowett for voice coaching. I've been your host. Sarah Marshall. Our sound designer is Evan Kelly. Roorkhni Nair is our coordinating producer. Our senior producer is Jeff Turner. Executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Tanya Springer is Manager of growth for CBC Podcasts. Arif Nurani is director of CBC Podcasts. Listen to every episode early on the CBC True Crime YouTube channel. For early and ad free listening, subscribe to the CBC True Crime Premium Channel on Apple Podcasts.

[Diane]

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