Moral panics rise from fear. They usually occur when some image or stereotype sticks in the popular imagination, growing and festering, turning isolated incidents into a wave of paranoia. Different decades and cultures have produced their own panics, from the American fear of juvenile delinquency in the s to the vampire lynch mobs in Malawi in One of the ignition points for this phenomenon occurred in when a young college student named James Dallas Egbert III disappeared.
Born in Dayton, Ohio, Egbert was considered a child prodigy. Talented with technology at a young age, the year-old Egbert enrolled at Michigan State University as a computer science major. The table-top game designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson first appeared in On August 15, , Egbert left a suicide note.
Egbert certainly was dealing with issues that could have led to suicide, including pressure over his school performance, possible drug use, and the fact that he was grappling with his sexual identity.
While examining a board with a pattern of pushpins, Dear realized that the arrangement of the pins suggested the shape of campus buildings, including the power plant. By this point, the investigator had put together a few theories; Dear got permission to search the steam tunnels under the school, based on the power plant design.
In the tunnels, Dear found evidence that Egbert had been there, including items that suggested that Egbert had gone to the spot intending to take his own life. However, Egbert was nowhere to be found. Dear disclosed some of his theories to the media, but decided to keep some of the information out the press, notably anything related to specific personal problems.
