Now they preach that they are in a war of good versus evil. It's unclear how many members the group still has. Jones taught a blend of Christianity, socialism and communism, with an emphasis on racial equality. He eventually attracted several thousand followers. By , the population there had swelled to about Around that time, some members warned American media of mass suicide rehearsals at Jonestown. Congressman Leo Ryan flew into Jonestown to investigate. He, three journalists and a cult defector were shot to death.
Later, Jones had his followers kill themselves by drinking a cyanide-laced drink. In this photo, bodies are placed on Army trucks after the mass suicide. The cult attracted young, elite university students and graduates who believed that the apocalypse was near and that they would be the only ones to survive. In , members carried out a sarin nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subway system, possibly in an attempt to bring about the apocalypse, and possibly to keep authorities from shutting down the group.
Thirteen people died, and thousands were injured in the attack. Thirteen members of the group received death sentences. The first seven, including leader Shoko Asahara, were hanged in early July , and the remaining members were executed later that month.
The cult was never banned in Japan, and lives on in offshoots including Aleph and Hikari no Wa, which have an estimated 1, followers today. In , authorities found 12 male bodies on a ranch in Mexico, near the U. They would later find three more. They told police they thought the human sacrifices would protect their drug smuggling operations.
When the suspects were asked who murdered an American victim, Mark Kilroy, they named Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo, 26, the leader of the cult, and Sara Aldrete, a student at Texas Southmost College, known as "the witch.
Constanzo and Aldrete fled to Mexico City with three cult followers. By the time police tracked him down, they found Constanzo and another follower both fatally shot. Constanzo had instructed his follower to kill him to avoid arrest. Aldrete and the other follower were arrested on the spot.
As the cult became more doomsday focused, it got more followers, who brought in more money. But in the s, authorities in Canada began investigating the group amid accusations of sexual misconduct, and people started to leave. In , a man who spoke against the cult was killed in his home, along with his wife and baby. Days later, two Solar Temple buildings in Switzerland went up in flames. Investigators found 48 bodies inside. Some were shot, some were found with bags over their heads and some had been injected with tranquilizers.
Joseph Di Mambro's gun was found during the investigation. He and his family were among the dead. Then, in , a Solar Temple building in the Swiss Alps was found burned down with 16 bodies inside. Five more members died in a burned Quebec house in In all, 74 cult members and former cult members died.
David Koresh began leading the group in , abandoning many of the original teachings and adopting the belief that the end of the world was near. Koresh kept "spiritual wives," some of whom were underage. The government also had eyes on the group because they believed Koresh was stockpiling weapons. The raid led to a shootout that left four agents dead, followed by a day standoff with the FBI. On April 19, federal agents launched tear gas to try to force people out. Soon after, the compound erupted in a massive blaze.
Eighty-two people, including Koresh, died. The Russian doomsday cult was founded by Pyotr Kuznetsov. The group broke off from the Russian Orthodox church.
In , about 30 members of the group holed up in a cave in Russia's Penza region. They said they would commit suicide if authorities intervened. Children were being beaten, locked in isolation and exorcised. Aged 10, I was forced to be silent for a whole year. My group was clearly extreme. Most are nothing like this. But where does the leap from religious community to a full-blown cult running a teenage Armageddon army camp happen — and who are the people caught up in them? A few years ago I flew to San Francisco, bought a truck and started a journey into the underbelly of religious cults in the US.
I wanted not only to find out why people join, but also to hear about the experiences of children who are born into these worlds, just like I was. In hindsight, it was a potentially dangerous and traumatising mission for anyone to take on, but especially for someone with my history and experience. Sometimes in an instant. Many people imagine cult members to be typically unstable, homeless, addicts or on the spectrum. Perhaps this provides comfort that there is a separation between us and them and that we could never do that.
The reality is that they are predominantly middle-class, educated people like my parents. My dad joined first. Both of their recruitments happened within hours of meeting the group — decisions that happened so quickly but last until this day. Membership of alternative groups is rising fast, especially among women and those aged over Is it easier to fall under their influence now? New religious movements are moving from geodomes to video calls. After we arrived in that Midlands village when I was 12, we came out of hiding to face the press.
News vans and reporters camped outside of our commune for weeks on end. I would look beyond the gate at them in their denim jackets and then back at myself, ashamed. Sometimes scared, mainly intrigued. I would dream of the world beyond those gates even though I feared it.
Perhaps those teenagers and I were both looking through the same distorted glass, unable to focus on a true picture of either the outside world or the one I was living in, even though it was close enough to touch. I remain fascinated by cults. Children of God was established in the s by an evangelical preacher, David Berg. Based around the idea that God was love and love was sex, its followers lived communally and shared partners.
The actors Joaquin Phoenix and Rose McGowan above spent parts of their childhoods as members with their families. Numerous cases of rape, incest and paedophilia have emerged from the cult. His wife, Elaine, and two other women were also jailed for their part. The Smallville actress Allison Mack was sentenced to three years in prison in the US last week for her role in the Nxivm sex cult. In the small town of Knutby in the early s, the church, known as Knutby Filadelfia, evolved into a bizarre cult, revolving around the worship of a woman claiming to be the bride of Christ and a manipulative, predatory pastor named Helge Fossmo, who exploited multiple women in the congregation.
Among the many women who became victims of Fossmo was a young woman named Sara Svensson. Later, after Fossmo grew tired of her, the cult punished Svensson for her infidelity with Fossmo, who was already married to another member of the congregation — but directed Fossmo to carry out her punishment, which he did by locking her in a bedroom for months and subjecting her to gut-wrenching abuse at his hands. He decided to manipulate Svensson into carrying out a series of murders for him — and once again, he claimed to be speaking to her on behalf of God.
What to listen to: I first heard this story on the True Crime Sweden podcast. The Cults podcast also has a gripping two-part series on this cult Part 1 and Part 2. See also: Because of the language barrier, most of the media on this story is inaccessible in English.
There is one excellent, open-access academic essay on the church that is free to download and contains fascinating interviews with former and current church members — because, it turns out, the church is still active today. The Secret is perhaps one of the most pernicious bestsellers in history.
In the case of The Secret , numerous celebrities, including Oprah Winfrey , latched onto it and promoted its magical thinking — as well as one of its biggest proponents and his beliefs. His ideas had been challenged for years, particularly because he had a habit of turning his self-help workshops into grueling, physically dangerous marathon sessions.
The Rajneeshpuram was a commune created by followers of Osho Rajneesh, an Indian mystic who emphasized meditation, and whose teachings are still in wide circulation today. By all accounts, unlike many of the cults herein, Rajneeshpuram was a peaceful community, whose extremes were exacerbated by one small group of tyrannical leaders who constantly clashed with the local populace — and each other.
These tensions escalated throughout the decade and finally culminated in a heinous climax: One commune leader and her loyalists wreaked vengeance upon the surrounding locals of Dalles, Oregon, in what would become the largest bioterrorist attack in US history.
But hey, many of the surviving cult members still say the experience was one of the best times of their life! The other documentary, The Lost Women of NXIVM , is a minute Investigation Discovery exploration of four women who lost their lives while involved with the cult — which may have indirectly or directly played a role in their deaths.
Find it on the Investigation Discovery website or Amazon Prime. See also: If podcasts are more your style, there are several good resources. All cults are to some extent horrifying, but there are some cults that are seriously lose-your-lunch frightening, like real-life horror movies.
This particular cult even inspired several actual horror movies in its wake. Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo was a powerful Mexican drug lord with a very large following of family members and minions who believed he had magical abilities.
Constanzo was drawn to the Afro-Cuban religion of Palo Mayombe but distorted its tenets to justify his abuse. As part of his warped belief, he required his followers to abduct young men, upon whom he enacted sadistic rites in order to replenish his magic. Constanzo carried out this gory practice for years as an open secret on his Mexican compound Rancho Santa Elena — until he ritualistically dismembered the wrong man.
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