Satanic Panic! Occult Hysteria and RPGs in the 1980s
Leading up to what would become a nationwide panic of Satanic Panic of the 1980s, a 16 year old child prodigy by the name of James Dallas Egbert the III would disappear from Michigan State University dorm room in 1979. Egbert’s parents hired a Dallas, Texas private investigator by the name of William Dear. Though Detective Dear knew next to nothing of Dungeons and Dragons, he suspected that the popular role playing game had a part to play in the prodigy’s disappearance , as Egbert and his friends would LARP (Live Action Role Play) in the steam tunnels below the school. Detective Dear theorized that Egbert was injured or somehow disappeared in the tunnels below. Meanwhile, Egbert had gone into hiding at a friend’s house, it was revealed later by numerous eyewitnesses that he <Egbert> may have attended GenCon XII. The news media latched onto the idea that Dungeons and Dragons somehow had a part to play in the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert, III. The search for Egbert c...