On top of giving us the truly epic Dustin, Steve, and Eddie bromance and boosting Kate Bush's album sales, Stranger Things also deserves the bulk of the credit for bringing Dungeons and Dragons back into the zeitgeist. So, given that newfound popularity, it's hard to imagine how the very same game was once decried by a large - and largely conservative - contingent of the U.S., who condemned it for being not only a distraction from life’s realities, but an actual breeding ground for Satanic beliefs and practices. On what grounds, you might ask? Well, as you're about to hear, a lot of it can be traced back to a single case involving a missing boy, a strange push pin map, and the fateful words of one private investigator…

Rob teachers Ray about the case of James Dallas Egbert III, more commonly known today as the Dungeon Master; why having a secret network of tunnels under a college dorm might not be a great idea; why decorated P.I. Bill Dear could’ve used a little help picking his D&D character name; and how one man's journey to unravel the twists and turns of this ultimately tragic mystery may have been the genesis for an entire movement denouncing an altogether harmless and highly imaginative game. 

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TEAM

Ray Hebel

Robert W. Schneider

Mark Schroeder

Billy Recce

Daniel Schwartzberg

Gabe Crawford

Natalie DeSavia

ARTICLES
EPISODE CLIPS

'80s D&D Satanic Panic Supercut

60 Minutes D&D Special

Dungeons & Dragons: Satanic Panic | Retro Report | The New York Times

ADDITIONAL MUSIC & SOUND EFFECTS

"8bit Dungeon Boss" and "Video Dungeon Crawl"

• Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

• Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0

• http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Additional Sound Effects from Final Cut Pro, iLife, and Logic Pro

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