Consider the Massachusetts “satanic preschool” trials.

Here, “the possibility of satanic cult activity” was reified.

Let’s say that local secular  therapists were talking to themselves about how “creepy” those Christian preschools were.  Was there not a problem with their faith^Christian, as opposed to our university-trained faith^UnChristian?

Then the serpent joined their conversation, speaking through the mouths of children, telling them exactly what they already suspected.

The therapist’s “metaphorical” truths became “empirically” true.

How could the children’s claims be “metaphorically” true?

All families feel vulnerable to external forces.  What external force is more immediate than that little preschool down the street?  Parents never really know what is going on behind those closed doors. So their anxiety was written all over their faces when their child causally mentioned, while they read the New York Times on one fine churchless Sunday morning, that her preschool teacher touched her lips with a hypergalactic space probe.

The serpent converted the metaphorical truth of the therapists into an empirical truth.

Welcome to MA: First in Witch-hunts.