I don’t really have any personal memory the Satanic Panic of the 80s – I was perhaps more concerned with trying to make myself look like a brunette Madonna – but I do find it to be a fascinating subject. A few months ago I read Remembering Satan, which was a true account of one family’s descent into a hellish landscape of satanic rituals and false memories. Clay McLeod Chapman’s novel Whisper Down the Lane leans into these ideas.

Richard teaches art at the hoity toity Danvers School in Virginia. He is newly married to fellow teacher Tamara, and step-father to her young son. He seems like a good guy, although he is prone to drifting off from conversations, a habit that causes him great anxiety but which he seems unable to prevent.

Then there’s Sean, a young boy living with his mother in 1982. Things start to go off the rails in his life when his mother notices bruises on him. His mother asks Sean if Mr. Woodhouse, Sean’s teacher, had given him the bruises. It’s such a strange question because “Of course he hadn’t.[…]He had more energy than any of Sean’s other teachers. Even more than his classmates. To Sean, he was like a clown without makeup.”

Whisper Down the Lane is inspired, in part, by the McMartin Preschool trial of 1987. You can watch a little bit about that here:

As Chapman’s book toggles back and forth between Sean’s story and Richard’s, it won’t take readers very long to figure out the connection. The book has some creepy moments, but I also found it slow moving and not wholly satisfying.