Harvey in Hell

This episode is an interview with Ken Lanning and an announcement that the Kickstarter for Harvey in Hell, Season Two is now live.

Ken Lanning was a Supervisory Special Agent with the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit for 20 years. His main focus was the victimization of children, which put him at the center of the wave of alleged cases of Satanic Ritual Abuse in the 80s and early 90s, what we now call the Satanic Panic. 

Lanning’s work touches on many of the themes in Harvey in Hell (and that’s no accident): the nature of memory, how we understand our past, and the extent to which personal beliefs can color investigations, and can blind even very intelligent people to evidence, or lack of evidence, that’s right in front of them.

In 1992 Lanning published the Investigator's Guide to Allegations of "Ritual" Child Abuse. This became known as the Lanning Report, which claimed that the allegations of widespread child abuse by Satanists was not credible. This essentially put an end to this part of the Satanic Panic. Have a listen. It'll be worth your while.

This interview is released to mark the launch of the Season Two Kickstarter for Harvey in Hell, a psychological horror audio drama inspired in part by these events. The Kickstarter is live now here.