The most chilling cults you’ve never heard of… and why YOU could be the next unwitting member
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It’s easy to imagine that those lured into following deluded narcissists who demand unquestioning devotion to their wild beliefs – aliens, incest, the end of the world, even mass suicide – are somehow weak or stupid.
But, says JW Ocker in his new book Cult Following, joining a cult is actually one of the most human things a person can do.
‘Cult members are often unfairly derided as naïve, brainwashed followers when, in fact, the research shows this couldn’t be further from the truth,’ he writes.
‘Religious scholar Lorne L Dawson’s book The Sociology of New Religious Movements shows that the average cult follower is middle to upper class, highly educated, intelligent, ambitious, curious, and idealistic.’
He adds: ‘Cults can offer a legitimate sense of community and all the benefits that come with it – friendship, dedication to a cause, stability, shelter. At least at first…’
Thanks to documentaries like Wild Wild Country, we now have vivid images of groups like the Rajneeshpuram cult, which carried out the first known bioterrorism attack in US history.
And the chilling photographs in the aftermath of the Heaven’s Gate suicide pact horrified anyone who saw them, after 39 people were persuaded to take a mix of barbiturates, vodka and applesauce in a bid for interstellar immortality. They believed their spirits would join a spaceship that was hiding in the Hale-Bopp Comet.
We’re also all-too familiar with the Branch Davidians, whose 51-day stand-off with law enforcement in Waco ended with more than 80 dead in 1993, and, even more recently, NXIVM, whose followers included Smallville actress Allison Mack and whose leader is now serving a life sentence for human trafficking, sex offenses and fraud.
But what about the many other cults that never made it on to Netflix or into our collective imagination?
‘On an isolated mountainside in eastern Canada, a small group of people in matching tunics – mostly women – build a commune. The only one not pitching in is the group’s leader, Roch Thériault.’
This busy activity, writes Ocker, inspired Thériault to name his group the Ant Hill Kids. ‘But what sounds like the name of a children’s television show hides a level of brutality that is beyond shocking.’
Thériault had managed to persuade his small band of followers that the world would end in February 1979, and that their only chance of survival would be to travel with him to a remote part of Quebec.
The first red flag should have come around then, when he happened to rename himself Moses.
Of course, the supposed date of destruction came and went. But this self-styled Messiah managed to talk his way out of it.
And, Ocker writes: ‘Once his followers were in his thrall – exhausted from work, undernourished, and far from family and friends – he started beating, torturing, and sexually abusing them, maiming them via bizarre “medical operations,” and subjecting them to outrageous indignities, all in the supposed service of their spiritual purification.’
These atrocities included nailing a child to a tree and allowing the other children to throw stones at them, removing eight of his wife’s teeth with pliers, commanding men to break their own legs with sledgehammers, and cutting off people’s toes for punishment. And much, much worse.
Incredibly, his following grew – not because his message was so convincing, but because he insisted on getting every woman in the camp pregnant.
The horrific abuse eventually came to the attention of the authorities, and Thériault was sentenced to life in prison – but even that was not enough to dissuade his followers.
Content retrieved from: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13839445/chilling-cults-ant-hill-raelism-jonestown-members.html.
