We exploit the 1983–1992 Satanic Panic as a natural experiment to identify the political effects of fear-based entertainment media. Using two independent proxies for panic exposure across 176 Designated Market Areas—predetermined NBC affiliate delivery strength and geographic proximity to Satanic Ritual Abuse prosecution epicenters—we find that both predict excess Republican presidential vote-share gains of approximately 0.5 to 1.2 percentage points in 1988, relative to the pre-panic trend. The two instruments have opposite demographic profiles, making single-confound explanations implausible. The case proximity effect fully reverts by 1992, consistent with credibility collapse after the McMartin acquittals and the FBI’s 1992 debunking report; the NBC effect decays more slowly, consistent with the absence of a localized corrective in markets that received the panic through national television. The convergence of two instruments with distinct demographic profiles identifies fear-based entertainment media as a direct persuasion channel, operating independently of institutional religious infrastructure.