Sept. 19, 2012<\/p>\n
\u201cThe rumor has traveled like a Halloween ghost \u2013 from Wilson to Coats to Apex to Raleigh.<\/p>\n
\u201cPerplexed law enforcement agencies statewide have been fielding inquiries for weeks about stubborn \u2013 but unfounded \u2013 rumors of a plan by unidentified Satan worshipers to kidnap and sacrifice children.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe most common variation is that a satanic cult plans to abduct one or more blond-haired, blue-eyed children between the ages of 2 and 5 for a human sacrifice on Halloween.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018All these parents of blond-haired, blue-eyed children are frantic,\u2019 said Detective R.C. Couick of Garner. \u2018I\u2019ll bet I\u2019ve received 500 phone calls from mothers saying they were going to dye their children\u2019s hair.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cSheriff Freddy W. Narron of Johnston County said rumors seem to have started after a local newspaper printed articles about Satanic cults.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 From \u201cRumors of satanists kidnapping children are tough to snuff out\u201d (News & Observer of Raleigh, October 28, 1989)<\/em><\/p>\n What fertile ground North Carolina, circa 1989, provided for hysteria about 2- to 5-year-olds. The sheriff of Johnston County seems to have summoned considerably more skepticism about farfetched rumors than the Little Rascals prosecutors. Within three months of the Halloween panic all of the Edenton Seven had been arrested.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sept. 19, 2012 \u201cThe rumor has traveled like a Halloween ghost \u2013 from Wilson to Coats to Apex to Raleigh. \u201cPerplexed law enforcement agencies statewide have been fielding inquiries for weeks about stubborn \u2013 but unfounded \u2013 rumors of a plan by unidentified Satan worshipers to kidnap and sacrifice children. \u201cThe most common variation is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=640"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":641,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions\/641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}