Throughout the 1980s, Satanic cults were widely believed to be preying on children — torturing and terrorizing them as part of dark rituals. Across North America, there were hundreds of false allegations, scores of unjust criminal trials and countless lives torn apart. But never any real proof. By the early 90s, the panic reached the tiny Prairie town of Martensville, Saskatchewan. And nearly 30 years later, the people touched by it all are still picking up the pieces. So what happened? And why do so many still believe to this day? Uncover: Satanic Panic investigates. For the best in true crime from CBC, ad-free, visit apple.co/cbctruecrime.
Introducing: The Cult Queen of Canada from Uncover
In The Cult Queen of Canada from CBC’s Uncover, a tiny Saskatchewan town faces a surreal crisis when a cult leader calling herself “The Queen of Canada” occupies an abandoned school. As neighbours turn on each other, a retired teacher leads resistance in a story about what happens when online extremism spills into the real world. Hosted by Rachel Browne.
Crime. Investigation. Revelation. Uncover brings you explosive, high-caliber true crime year-round. From CIA mind control to serial abuse, mysterious disappearances to wrongful imprisonment.
More episodes of The Cult Queen of Canada are available wherever you get your podcasts, and here: https://link.mgln.ai/CQOCxSP (https://link.mgln.ai/CQOCxSP)
28 Oct 2025
Introducing | The Devil You Know: exploring the tangled web of the Satanic Panic, from Jaws to Patrick Swayze
In the 1980s and 90s, Satan and his followers were accused of brainwashing children, sacrificing babies, and infiltrating North American society on a massive scale — yet these thousands of alleged Satanists were nowhere to be found. Even so, the narrative became embedded in our cultural memory, warping everything it touched — including the lives of innocent people… And it never quite died out.
In a new 8-part series, Sarah Marshall (You’re Wrong About) explores the tangled web of the Satanic Panic, in a journey that will take you everywhere from Victoria, B.C. to rural Kentucky to San Antonio, Texas. This is a show about the people who experienced the Satanic Panic in real-time — the believers, the skeptics, the bystanders, and the wrongfully-convicted. What was it like to be a psychologist told to look for Satanists in every case; a mother slowly recovering memories of supposed Satanic abuse; a teenager accused of conspiracy to murder? The stories of these eyewitnesses point us toward the real underlying problems — individual and societal — that the Panic was a response to. The fault, as ever, was not with Satanists, but in ourselves.
You can find more episodes of The Devil You Know wherever you get your podcasts, and here: https://link.mgln.ai/TDYKxSP (about:blank)
30 Jun 2025
Introducing: The Outlaw Ocean S2 and The repo man of the seas
Journalist Ian Urbina interviews Max Hardberger, a maritime repo man, about his daring missions to reclaim seized ships from hostile territories, revealing the shadowy world of international maritime law.
3 Jun 2025
Satanic Panic Introduces | Uncover: Calls From a Killer
Reporter ARLENE BYNON recounts receiving clandestine calls from serial killer Clifford Olson, revealing long-buried secrets uncovered during her years-long investigation, in this interview episode.
1 Apr 2025
Satanic Panic Introduces: Agent Pale Horse
FBI undercover agent Scott Payne’s job was to infiltrate the most dangerous gangs of our times: outlaw bikers, drug cartels and the international neo-Nazi networks hellbent on inciting a race war.
He was taking down these groups from within. And Scott was good at it — people confided in him their most audacious plans for mass violence and domestic terrorism.
In the second season of White Hot Hate, host Michelle Shephard gives you an unvarnished view of a life undercover. Because after a 28-year-long career pretending to be somebody else, Agent Payne is ready to tell his side of the story.
This series was produced alongside a book co-written by Scott Payne and Michelle Shephard titled Code Name: Pale Horse: How I Went Undercover to Expose America's Nazis.
More episodes of White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse are available at: https://link.mgln.ai/v4CYdq (https://link.mgln.ai/v4CYdq)
27 Jan 2025
Satanic Panic Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
A body is pulled from the ocean, and a race against time to capture one of the world's most wanted criminals begins.
Uncover: Sea of LIes is the story of a con man who couldn't stop lying. A tale of murder, stolen identities, fine art, a diaper bag stuffed with gold bars, and a crime solved by a Rolex watch. From rural Canada to coastal England, he lied and deceived at every turn.
Award-winning podcaster Sam Mullins (Chameleon: Dr. Dante & Wild Boys) takes you inside the world of a devious scammer whose trail of destruction crosses continents and decades. So who is he? And how did this ruthless villain finally get unmasked? More episodes of Uncover: Sea of Lies are available at: https://link.mgln.ai/Zi47fM (https://link.mgln.ai/Zi47fM)
27 May 2024
Satanic Panic Introduces: The Six Billion Dollar Gold Scam
It was the biggest gold discovery in history...until it wasn’t. In 1995, Canadian mining company Bre-X announced to the world it had found a significant amount of gold deep in the jungles of Indonesia. Stock prices soared as investors worldwide fought to stake their claim. But when Bre-X’s chief geologist mysteriously fell from a helicopter over the jungle, the story of the billion dollar discovery began to unravel. Nearly three decades later, no one has ever been held accountable. In the new podcast, The Six Billion Dollar Gold Scam, host Suzanne Wilton takes you from the jungles of Indonesia to small town Alberta, Canada, to investigate what really happened and find out more about the man behind the biggest goldmine fraud of all time. Produced for the BBC World Service and CBC by BBC Scotland Productions. More episodes are available at: https://link.chtbl.com/9CSp5nOS (https://link.chtbl.com/9CSp5nOS)
7 Feb 2020
Satanic Panic: Trailer
Throughout the 1980s, Satanic cults were widely believed to be preying on children — torturing and terrorizing them as part of dark rituals. Across North America, there were hundreds of false allegations, scores of unjust criminal trials and countless lives torn apart. But never any real proof. By the early 90s, the panic reached the tiny Prairie town of Martensville, Saskatchewan. And nearly 30 years later, the people touched by it all are still picking up the pieces. So what happened? And why do so many still believe to this day? Originally launched by Uncover on February 5, 2020.
6 Feb 2020
Episode 1: 'It was such a perfect place'
Police Officer Claudia Bryden is drawn into a bizarre case unfolding in the peaceful Prairie town of Martensville, Saskatchewan. What starts with a single complaint about an alleged sexual assault in a home daycare grows into something bigger and more disturbing than anyone could have imagined.
5 Feb 2020
Episode 2: 'It was hell'
By June 1992, nine people face nearly 180 charges related to the sexual abuse of children who have attended a home daycare in Martensville. Journalist Dan Zakreski revisits the sites of the story that dominated everyone's attention, including a ‘Devil Church,’ and reflects on his own role in spreading the story. Then, we meet a young mother searching for answers who shares her own heartrending story of a childhood turned upside down by the Martensville Nightmare.
4 Feb 2020
Episode 3: ‘You got to be friggin’ kidding me’
As the number of suspects continues to grow, rumours of an underground Satanic cult whose members include police officers have taken root. Saskatoon Police Officer John Popowich finds himself facing “the worst things that a human being can be accused of.”
3 Feb 2020
Episode 4: ‘There is still time to wake up'
A local activist in Saskatoon, Marjaleena Repo, says she knew instantly that the accused were innocent, victims of nothing less than mass hysteria. Though she sounds the alarm in any forum she can find, her warnings are ignored.
2 Feb 2020
Episode 5: The Many Martensvilles
As devastating as the Martensville Nightmare is for all involved, it’s just one piece of a much bigger picture. FBI special agent Ken Lanning spent the ‘80s trying to figure out what the hell was happening across North America, and why.
1 Feb 2020
Episode 6: ‘I remember telling them nothing happened to me’
How does it come to be that hundreds of children across North America and beyond report such similar crimes? How has a phenomenon that’s never seen a proven case become so real in the minds of so many? And what does it mean for the children at the centre of it all?
31 Jan 2020
Episode 7: What good can come of this?
Far from healed, the Martensville Nightmare remains an open wound for those who lived through it. And yet for the rest of us, the history is all but lost — a symbol of the broader failure across the board to face the effects of the Satanic Panic head on or to learn its lessons. But, some surprising good did emerge out of all the pain.
Inside a recent episode
Introducing: The Cult Queen of Canada from Uncover
Published 4 Mar 2026 · Transcript excerpt
[…] Now, the sign reads Command Center, Saskatchewan. For Shauna, this takeover felt personal. Absolutely personal and horrifying. I mean, losing the school was a big heartbreak for lots of us here. I mean, this is the job that I took leaving university. And then I taught here for 23 years until that school closed. I mean, it's a huge part of me. It feels like, you know, like it's been defaced. And the most intimidating part was Shauna had no idea who these people were and what they could be up to inside the school. We heard from some locals that when they tried to approach the group, the cult members would just stand there, filming them and refusing to speak. […]
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