Nowadays the conspiracy theory is fully adopted to explain different events, but it needs a cultural and logical premise, the demonisation of the enemy. Frankfurter's aim is to examine the phenomenon and the process of demonisation, which leads to interesting results over the longue durée; moreover, the discussion deals with the social claim for a purge. Following discussion of some trials and severe sentences, the author, using a multidisciplinary approach (above all, historical, religious, anthropological and psychoanalytical), analyses the satanic ritual abuse panic and the consequent violent need to eliminate the convicted. Through the examination of some paradigmatic historical events, Frankfurter highlights similarities among those. Although there is no evidence for Jewish ritual murder or the witches' Sabbaths, this does not prevent it being identified as an evil, especially if the one accused is the other, whose image is built up in terms alternately bestial, demonic and amoral. The question of evil and of its performance is the framework for a panic which, according to Frankfurter, had its genesis in ‘the encounter between the local religious world and larger, totalizing, often global systems’ (p. 7). But there are some important consequences, because if evil is identified with Satan, real crime may be dangerously devalued. This book raises many questions and provides some answers in attempting to elucidate the process of demonisation.