204 lines
15 KiB
Markdown
204 lines
15 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "The 1980s hoax that ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ was Satanic was launched by a lying mother"
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source: "https://medium.com/belover/in-the-1980s-a-woman-spread-a-hoax-that-dungeons-dragons-is-satanic-cb8da5614132"
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author:
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- "[[Jonathan Poletti]]"
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published: 2024-07-08
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created: 2024-10-29
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description: "Over and over, she told her heart-rending story. Her son Bink had killed himself while under the influence of a board game called Dungeons & Dragons. She learned it wasn’t a ‘game’ at all, but a…"
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tags:
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- "clippings"
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---
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## The sad story of Patricia Pulling
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[
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](https://medium.com/@belover?source=post_page---byline--cb8da5614132--------------------------------)
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[
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](https://medium.com/belover?source=post_page---byline--cb8da5614132--------------------------------)
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## Throughout the 1980s, she was a well-known public figure: the heroic mother fighting a board game. She was on talk shows, in newspaper profiles, and her memoir was at a bookstore near you.
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Over and over, she told her heart-rending story. Her son Bink had killed himself while under the influence of a board game called *Dungeons & Dragons*. She learned it wasn’t a ‘game’ at all, but a portal to Hell itself.
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There was more to learn about Patricia Pulling.
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## She returned so often to that dark, terrible night.
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It was June 9, 1982, in Montpelier, Virginia. She and her husband had eaten out, and come home to see the house was dark. The front door was open.
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What was going on? They parked, as she got out, and saw Bink stretched out on the grass. His eyes were just staring at her.
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She realized: her teenage son was dead.
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## Had Bink been murdered?
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She rushed to the neighbor’s house to call the police, and came back to find a crowd gathered around her son’s body. They tried to keep her away, but she broke through.
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> “I fell down inches from his face and reached out to touch his hair. I lay there on the ground and would not move. I did not want to leave my son.”
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She wasn’t even that religious, but heard herself screaming: “God, why did You do this to me, to my son, to us? We don’t deserve this! Why?”
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I’m reading here from Pulling’s 1989 [memoir](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16477139W/The_Devil%27s_web?edition=ia%3Adevilswebwhoisst00pull), *The Devil’s Web: Who’s Stalking Your Children for Satan.* She narrates being told that her son had shot himself in the heart — using her own gun.
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## The detective went through Bink’s school books and papers, then asked a strange question.
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How surprised she was to hear it! “Mrs. Pulling, are you or your husband devil worshippers?”
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She replied that, no — she was Jewish.
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Bink had left a suicide note. “Dear Mom and Dad,” it began, as he went on to confess how evil he had become — Hitler, Antichrist-type evil. He was hearing voices, he said, and was being ‘told’ to commit murder, but was choosing to end his own life instead.
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## She went through Bink’s effects, shocked.
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She writes: “We found violent, sadistic poems among the papers, poems that appeared to have been written by a demented person.”
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Some were school assignments! — graded with an ‘A’, and with a teacher’s critiques. He’d played this ‘game’ in class! Then there were books with demons on the covers, and titles like *The Dungeon Master’s Guide.*
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She learned Bink played the game on his last day of life. And she learned that Bink had received in the game some kind of ‘death curse’. She’d found the text in his papers. It read:
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> “Your soul is mine. I choose the time. At my command, you will reave the land. A follower of evil, a Killer of man.”
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## She set out to learn more about this evil game.
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Before long she became aware there was groups of players of *Dungeons & Dragons*. There were ‘Dungeon Masters’ to serve as the ‘deity’ to a fantasy world full of magic and a lot of violence. It was scary.
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The idea was floating around that Dungeons & Dragons was a portal to the demonic realm. That seems to have owe to a news event in 1979, when a college student at Michigan State University named James Egbert disappeared from campus for a month. His parents launched a search that became a media event. His playing *Dungeons & Dragons* was noted.
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It turned out that Egbert was gay and hiding from his parents, but the idea took hold that the board game was a portal to Hell. A 1981 novel, *Mazes and Monsters*, was quickly published to capitalize on the idea. In 1982, a T.V. movie resulted. It was the actor Tom Hanks’ first starring role.
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## But there was no personal face on the idea.
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Or not until Patricia Pulling came along. After Bink’s death, she said, she became immersed in ‘D&D’ culture. She joined a group of young men who played the game. She writes: “We played for several hours a day every day for a month.”
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She saw they were full of “devotion” and “loyalty,” even “love” for *Dungeons & Dragons*. It felt like a “cult,” she reports.
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She’d learned what she needed to know. She sued the high school principal for $1 million, and sued Tactical Studies Rules, or ‘TSR’, the company that made *Dungeons & Dragons*, for ten million.
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Her lawsuits went nowhere, as she launched a group that became a famous 1980s-era reference, ‘B.A.D.D.’, or ‘Bothered About *Dungeons & Dragon*s’. A case developed in the media that many young people who played the ‘game’ had died, of suicide or under suspicious circumstances.
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## She did the whole talk show circuit
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Patricia Pulling was on *Geraldo, Sally Jesse Raphael, Donahue.* She was on CBS’s *60 Minutes.* She told the story of her beautiful son ensnared by the powers of evil.
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“Your son was well-adjusted?” the *60 Minutes* reporter asks.
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She replies: “Always. He had never had psychological problems.”
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She displayed her photo of Bink, smiling in a white suit. It had been taken the night of the junior-senior prom, and seemed a vision of a happy teenager before *Dungeons & Dragons* got a hold of his soul.
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## She often said that teenagers got in the occult and were killing themselves and others constantly.
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Exactly how many were falling victim to otherworldly forces was unclear. Pulling called for a federal investigation, so they could find out.
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She continued to blame Bink’s high school and his teachers for allowing this horror into his life. She [says](https://www.newspapers.com/image/244554009/?terms=%22patricia+pulling%22&match=1) in 1985: “To me, if he’d been in positive channels, this wouldn’t have happened.”
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Her son, she kept saying, was “perfectly normal” until the game deranged his mind. “A child his age has no business delving in this,” as she said. “I have lost a 16-year-old child.”
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## She had allies—like Tipper Gore, the wife of politician Al Gore.
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Then there was Dr. Thomas Radecki. He was a psychiatrist and chairman of his own media awareness group, the ‘National Coalition on Television Violence’. They did many radio and T.V. appearances together.
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“*Dungeons & Dragons* is essentially a worship of violence,” Radecki [says](https://www.newspapers.com/image/624568533) in a 1985 news story, adding: “The game is full of human sacrifice, eating babies, drinking blood, rape, murder of every variety, curses of insanity.”
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In another [interview](https://www.newspapers.com/image/244554009/?terms=%22patricia+pulling%22&match=1), he adds: “kids are getting murdered because of this game.”
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## They were famous—and effective.
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*Dungeons & Dragons* became a rather touchy subject. The CBS channel had a Saturday morning cartoon based on the game. It was cancelled.
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But the biggest impact was probably on Evangelical America, which instantly believed that Satan was trying to come through the board game to possess American teenagers. Patricia Pulling was on the *700 Club* many times. Evangelical organizations helped fund her lawsuits and projects.
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## Evangelicals wrote more books to explain how evil ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ really was.
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An “occult researcher” named John Weldon had a religious bestseller in 1984 with *Playing With Fire.* Weldon was often [introduced as a Ph.D.](https://www.moodypublishers.com/authors/w/john-weldon/)—having gotten a kook degree at an unaccredited Evangelical seminary.
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Ernest Cline, the novelist who later became famous with *Ready Player One,* would recall being an Evangelical teenager who played ‘D&D’. His mother gave him a copy of *Playing With Fire*, as he [recalls](https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/interview-ernest-cline/):
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> *“She thought that I was really going to try and collect spell components and cast spells and that it was meddling with witchcraft. I was meddling with powers I didn’t understand.”*
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He jokes: “That was a part of the appeal.”
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## ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ was actually very Christian.
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Its primary inventor, Gary Gygax, [identified](http://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2012/12/gary-gygax-on-christmas-and-christianity.html) himself as ‘Christian’, though more specifically, he was a Jehovah’s Witness. An early collaborator, Dave Arneson, was a ‘devout Christian’.
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Then the game was mostly an effort to bring to life J.R.R. Tolkien’s *Lord of the Rings* novels. They are often considered very Christian. *Dungeons & Dragons* could’ve easily been read as Christian, but it became the image of Satanism for a decade in America’s largest religion.
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## TSR seemed dazed and ineffective against the Patricia Pulling media onslaught.
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Then in 1985, they hired Dr. Joyce Brothers, the well-known media psychologist, to advocate for them. She [called](https://www.newspapers.com/image/336723498) *Dungeons & Dragons* “wonderful” since it was “cooperative” and not “competitive.”
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Brothers presented ‘D&D’ as a positive experience. She’d [explain](https://www.retroreport.org/transcript/tabletop-to-tablet-using-dungeons-dragons-to-combat-screen-addiction/): “There is good and evil in life and the way *Dungeons & Dragons* is set up is that good triumphs over evil.”
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It became, then, a war between two Jewish women—observed raptly by Evangelical America.
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## Patricia Pulling became an occult crimefighter.
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She got a license as a private investigator and started giving speeches and “trainings” in locating occult involvement, telling police what clues to watch out for when investigating teenage deaths.
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There was a lot of talk of ‘Satanic cults’ and ‘ritual sexual abuse’ in the air. She seemed like the warrior against it — the mother plunging into the dark abyss of Hell to save children from Satan.
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## There were curious details along the way?
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For her seminars she’d reprinted a 1983 *Washington Post* profile of her story, but her reproduction had omitted several paragraphs. The newspaper had reported a few odd facts about Bink, like he:
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> *“…had trouble ‘fitting in’ and became dejected when he was unable to find a campaign manager when he ran for school office. Shortly before his death, he wrotes ‘Life is a Joke’ on the blackboard of one of his classes, a classmate said.”*
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A classmate was quoted remembering him: “He had a lot of problems anyway that weren’t associated with the game.”
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## Patricia Pulling would admit her son had quirks.
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Newspaper profiles did catch her with [oddly shifting details](https://www.newspapers.com/image/99069987):
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> “Patricia Pulling said her son was considered a loner and that he liked to be alone in his room to read, usually history. But she said he also had many friends and dated girls often.”
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On his last day at school, she added, she was told that Bink had [written](https://www.newspapers.com/image/340388596/?terms=%22patricia+pulling%22&match=1) on a test sheet: “This is the last paper I will ever write, GOODBYE.”
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Just before dying, she said, he’d been on the phone with a friend. “I have to go,” Bink said. “You’ve been a good friend. Goodbye.”
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## ‘D&D’ enthusiasts began to investigate her.
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And some further curious details were noticed. At her events for law enforcement, Patricia Pulling would say more about her son’s life.
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She’d sometimes display Bink’s papers from his *Dungeons & Dragons* play. He’d called himself ‘Narthöl’, and his personal insignia included a swastika*.*
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A [transcript](https://limsk.tripod.com/pulling.htm) emerged of a speech she’d given to law enforcement officers in 1986. She said that in the weeks leading up to Bink’s death, he’d been doing some kind of werewolf thing, like he’d:
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> “…growled, screamed, walked on all fours, and clawed the ground. Nineteen rabbits raised by the Pullings were found torn to pieces in the last three weeks of his life, although stray dogs were never seen. A cat was found disemboweled with a knife.”
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## There was more to learn about Bink Pulling.
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In 2015, the scholar Joseph P. Laycock publisheed a study, [*Dangerous Games*](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00RX4UVWI/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)*: What the Moral Panic Over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds.* A chapter on Patricia Pulling’s crusade was startling.
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He interviewed one of Bink’s friends from school—a fellow D&D player. Laycock writes:
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> *“According to this source, Bink only played D&D at school for a total of nine hours. In this person’s opinion, Bink’s suicide had been an act of aggression toward his mother. Both of his parents had been having affairs before the suicide. Bink shot himself in the chest with a .38 caliber pistol that belonged to his mother, and his choice to commit suicide on the front porch appeared to be a deliberate attempt to shock and horrify his parents when they returned home.”*
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## I write to Leycock asking if the impression I’m getting is right.
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He replies: “Yes, Pulling absolutely lied, misled, and prevaricated in the cause of B.A.D.D.”
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He points to her story that she had played *Dungeons & Dragons* for ‘many hours a day for a month’ to learn about it. As he notes, she later “lacked even a rudimentary understanding of what D&D is or how it is played.”
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Scene after scene of Patricia Pulling’s supposed journey into the bowels of ‘D&D’ Hell—she had just invented.
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## She died of lung cancer in 1997.
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An [obituary](http://www.kismetrose.com/antirpg/PullingObituary091997.html) reports on the many honors and awards she’d received for her anti-occult work, without noting any of the critiques.
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Her associate Thomas Radecki is still living. In 1992, his medical license was revoked for coercing female patients into having sex. He went on to run a ‘rehab center’ that was found, in 2016, to be [trading opioids for sex](https://www.pennlive.com/news/2018/02/psychiatrist_convicted_in_drug.html).
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The man who protested ‘violence’ in a fantasy board game was, it turns out, a sexual predator. He’ll be in prison until his death.
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## It ends up being a story about a grieving mother who launched into a career in media hoaxing.
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If Patricia Pulling had ever been trying to deal with grief, she quickly found other uses for her fictions.
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Dr. Thomas Radecki saw a gig, and went along for the ride. They were both gamers, playing the world. 🔶 |