"When the smoke billowed up from under the bridge, residents not only called firefighters, they climbed down themselves to investigate.
It was the beginning of a maddening ritual.
Over the next several months, members of the Feltonville Town Watch repeatedly climbed down the treacherous slope beneath Roosevelt Boulevard near Bingham Street, stumbling among the trash and brush and discarded auto parts. They would chase away the teenagers gathered there, and put out the fires.
Then they would stare in wonder at the skillfully wrought, but unnerving paintings on the bridge supports -- winged demons dancing in flames, Satan, pentagrams -- the art and signs of devil worship."
So begins Joanne Sills' article, "Feltonville jittery over Satanic images," for the Philadelphia Inquirer. The story, published on May 20, 1992, details efforts by the Feltonville Town Watch to counteract the growing scourge of Satanism in Tacony Creek Park.
References to specific groups or acts are limited. There were animal remains. Make-shift altars. You know, the usual. What these Satanists intended to do, however, was never made clear. In fact, neither Sills nor members of the Feltonville Town Watch establish precisely if the paintings were the work of a genuine Satanic cult or a group of disgruntled teenagers. Michael McCrae (pictured above on the right), a member of the town watch, noted that a few of the people spotted in the immediate vicinity of the Satanic paintings appeared to be teenagers clad in heavy metal tee shirts, and that some of them had made a habit out of "writing on the wall with ketchup" -- Sills speculated that this was intend to evoke blood -- but that the teens were likely engaging in a passing fad.
Of course, this wasn't the first time Philadelphia and its surrounding areas had panicked about a potential invasion by the legions of Lucifer's armies.
1990: The Year Satanism Broke
1990. It was the dawn of a new decade. The excess of the eighties was gone. Reaganomics mostly an afterthought. But there was one last hangover that just wouldn't go away: Satan.
Yes, while heavy metal was slowly in decline, soon to be replaced by grunge, its boogeyman, its patron saint, Old Scratch himself, was still the topic of concern for many Philadelphia area residents, especially the religiously-minded. Over the course of the year, Philadelphia newspapers would make reference to Satanism or devil worship in dozens of pieces. Let it never be said that the Inky isn't willing to ride a trend straight into the depths of Hell.
On February 5, 1990, it was reported in local papers that a human skull, a horned goat's head, and other animal bones were found in Tacony Creek Park. While police speculated that the horned goat skull and animal bones were likely the work of local practitioners of Santeria, a Caribbean folk religion which had planted roots in a number of U.S. cities after the Cuban revolution in 1959, the skull could not be explained, as human sacrifice was not a part of the religion's ritual practices. Throughout the year, more and more references to Satanism would crop up, often as excuses for or explanations to grisly events happening in the region.
Take, for example, the trial of Joy Whitted. Already facing prosection for the murder of her step-grandfather, Alphonsus Mahoney, Whitted admitted on the stand that she had assisted in the murder of her daughter, Corena Whitted. When asked why, she explained that her husband, David, had said Satan had commanded him to do it. Supporting this, while police were investigating the death of Mahoney, they found strange writings on the wall of the Whitteds' Penssauken home which resembled Satanic symbols. Joy Whitted would later plead guilty to aggravated manslaughter, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, hindering apprehension, and the attempted murder of her daughter.
Then there were the various towns and cities in New Jersey which border Philadelphia. Throughout March of that year, Willingboro, Washington Township, and Camden were plagued with animal sacrifices, toppled tombstones, and Satanic graffiti. Local law enforcement could make little sense out of the crimes, or if they even presented any kind of pattern. Detective Sgt. Fran Burke of the Washington Township police department bluntly stated, "People laugh at 'the devil made me do it.' We usually know why dopers deal or why burglars steal; it's harder to find a motive for ritual crime." When it was noted that a witness to one of the sacrifices may have seen teenagers drinking the blood of one of the sacrificed animals, Burke noted, "That's hardcore."
Satan Is Everywhere
The thing to note about these stories is they were part of a much larger trend in popular culture. Philadelphia wasn't alone in its Satanic panic. That term, Satanic Panic, became popular vernacular among pop psychologists, religious fundamentalists, and television news anchors in the 1980s as specious autobiographies like Michelle Remembers became best-sellers and Exorcist clones littered movie theaters. By the time 1990 rolled around, Satanic panic was at a fever pitch in the United States. Feeding into this, the longest and most expensive court case in U.S. history (up to that point) was underway and Satan was at the forefront.
The McMartin preschool trial in California, from investigation through prosecution, had been in the news for six years by the time these events were taking place around Philadelphia. Accusations of child molestation, witchcraft, and Satanic ritual abuse had been leveled against Peggy McMartin Buckey and Raymond Buckey. The case had cast a long shadow over the American media in the course of its lifespan and cynical profiteers like Geraldo Rivera and manipulative fundamentalist Christian churches smelled fresh blood... literally and figuratively. The McMartin trial gave these groups ample speculative evidence to conjure up imagined demons in the form of television specials and direct-to-video pseudo-documentaries, to stoke the flames of Hell before a fearful public all too ready to believe the Devil was real and he was hiding in their small town or city. But in July of 1990 something unexpected happened; Peggy and Raymond were acquitted on all or most of their charges respectively. Many top "experts" on Satanic ritual abuse began to be debunked or rebuked in popular media. Suddenly, the public was turning against the fantastic claims of devil worship. What's an desperate charlatan to do when your cash cow is about to disappear?
So, Satan localized further. The experts doubled down and throughout the 1990s claims of Satanism would become more ludicrous. It was as if comedy writers had stolen the script and were writing their most deranged caricatures of hysterical religious pundits. In the Philadelphia area, a young girl from Morrisville, New Jersey, noticed a picture in which a pattern in Jerry Garcia's beard formed the word "Lucifer," and somehow that got a youth center closed for code violations. Various dead animals found in parks would be attributed to Satanic ritual practices. Oddly though, the furor over Satanism continued to fade as the 1990s turned into the 2000s, and eventually it disappeared almost entirely.
That's not to say locals don't still speculate Satan may be hiding somewhere in or near Philadelphia. As recently as 2013 desecrated dead animal remains have been found in Tacony Creek Park, leading some to argue that devil worshipers may still be hiding out somewhere. But, today, if you hear about Satanists at all, they're more likely to be protecting our civil rights by testing the limits of religious freedom laws than they are to be drinking the blood of dead animals or defacing local parks.