Cults

I hardly see people talk about cults compared to serial killers or mass murderers, so why not.

List of some infamous ones

- Manson Family
- Aleph/Aum Shinrikyo
- Solar Temple
- Jonestown
- Branch Davidians
- Heaven's Gate
- Ant Hill Kids

What cult do you find the most interesting
or
what aspects of how cults are made do you find interesting?

basically what do you think is fascinating

The oddities of Heaven's Gate is always amusing to me despite it being grim. I've always had an interest in the Branch Davidians as well but that's most likely because of the waco siege and the mystery behind that.

I've been researching the Manson Family for quite a while. The most interesting thing for me was the further prison life of the perpetrators. Susan Atkins was denied parole even having a terminal illness and eventually died in 2009, but I don't think that Pat or Leslie will ever walk free one day because of their connection to Manson, despite being model prisoners and so on.

Susan Atkins even had an opportunity to attend art classes in prison which I find rather curious, and other convicted members also had many opportunities to join different classes and programs and have active lives even being incarcerated.

Unfortunately, her site founded by her husband is long gone, but I've managed to save some of her works:
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I quite have some interest in the Order of the Solar Temple, I find them weirdly fascinating. Also I have interest in Heaven's Gate, they are weird but not as fascinating as the Solar Temple to me, Branch Davidians and the Manson Family. I had some interest in Aleph/Aum Shinrikyo, but really that died now (it was mostly because of the parody games lol). I never really took an interest in the People's Temple, just never really, I know like the basics of it, but not really interest in them.
Also, I have interest in Pana Wave, which while certainly didnt do bad of a crime than the cults I mentioned before, they were weird and did some criminal stuff. Like they kidnapped a seal that went to Japan and they did, because they believed if the seal wasnt returned to the Artic Circle the world would end. There were fears of them, in 2003, when they say the world would end, because it was Japan after the sarin attacks, but nothing really happened. Also five members were arrested for beating a man to death to remove "harmful waves". Which apparently those beatings were usual against other members to remove "harmful waves". They really didn't like those electromagnetic waves, also basically they dressed in white, the surronding area where they lived in the mountain was white, by them putting fabric to protect themselves of the electromagnetic harmful waves. And when they warned people of the doomsday with whites vans with protective symbols attach to them, they didn't really liked the reporters with cameras, saying they were emiting harmful electromagnetic waves, and only accepted them after the reporters covering themselves and the camera in white cloth. Basically the cult was weird and while somewhat tragic, the tragedy pales in comparasion to the more infamous cults, so I have an interest in them.
Also like the Vampire Clan is interesting, even it was basically edgy teenagers, but it is sure weird to me.
Also the Brazilian cannibal cult Cartel is certainly disguting and weird. I mean it was basically just three people, but still is weird. And I find weird that one of the people they killed, a woman who was part of that, basically was the mistress of the leader, took the name of the woman they killed and her less than one year old daughter at the time of the murder and the cult raised as their own daughter, they also fed her human meat, including the flesh of her mother, they also sold cooking with human meat to other people, which ups to me the shock factor of this group. Some could say this isn't a cult, but I count it. I guess.
There is other cults I have interest in like Adam Family, Family of David, United Pentecostal Church of Brazil (the one run by Francisco Bezerra Morais to be specific, since there are other groups with that name), and a all much more that are rather obscure really.  But really what I find interesting is odd they can be from edgy teenager believing himself to me a vampire to a cult believing in that a man was pearl in his boby that emits bacteria killing radiation (note I have no idea if this one actually exists, since I could only find very few info on it). Oh well, hope this isn't a completely awful reply.

More recent cults are pretty interesting, due to how they use social media to gain new members. NXIVM is pretty well known because of their 'leader' being sentenced to prison recently.

Some spree killers are narcissists and/or psychopaths (IE: Breivik), but most are neither.

Some cult leaders are psychopaths (Manson apparently), but most of them are narcissists (Raniere,
Hubbard).



The mechanism behind cults and spree killings is entirely different. Having said that, one can spot similarities between narcissistic murders and narcissistic cult leaders.

Starting a cult requires intelligence, charisma and organizational/advertising skills. It is not easy, most narcissists lack these. So cult leaders are not only unique from all spree killers, they are unique even among other narcissists.

Well, found this cult related "murder" pretty weird and interesting.
For starters, there was a man called Mark Steven Foster and he was the owner of a company called Quanta Press Inc., a CD-ROM company that existed in the early 90s and was making a lot of money, being at a time the biggest producer of CD-ROMs in America, basically the company was big and could get very bigger in the future as the techonology of CD-ROMs, become more common. But the company went in to a downfall, because of Mark, since he would spend the money in a luxury life style and not really improve or develop the CD-ROM techonology he was selling, and basically after a while the CD-ROM techonology of the company were outdated and weren't selling, and in the end the company had to be close. After that he would start working as a phamarchist and would start being audited by the IRS. But he had a plan to solved his financial problems.
On July 18, 1997, a motorist driving through Douglas County, Wisconsin happened upon the body of a man lying on the side of the country road. The body was wearing all white clothes and that man was Mark Steven Foster. He had been shoot by a .44 caliber rifle and in his shoe a note was found which read on one side "Jack Frazier isn't here, but it's Jimmy Bailey? or look alike?" On the other side of the note was "Geez it's 3 toughs. Hope I'm OK.". The people mentioned on the note were his wife, Sarah Foster, exs. Ultimately them were found to have confirmable alibis and didnt do it. Outside of that, the police found that Mark lived with his nephew Brent A. Thompson, his wife and a roomate called Gregory A. Friesner. Ultimately odd stuff were considered about the people that lived with him, like the fact the nephew reported his uncle missing on the morning of July 18 and the fact the other people didnt really had asked how he died or something. Basically, investigators obtained a search warrant for Mark's house and they found that the attic was painted in bright fluorescent paints, there was blood like substances spread out on the walls and floors. The investigators also found their business cards there, which hinted that the people who were there were angry with the cops and they were trying to put a hex on them. Basically, Mark had become a leader of a Santería group. One of the believes of the group he was the leader was that ut was possible to transfer one’s consciousness into another person, but to do that, the another person had to kill, so the person can transfer consiousness with the killer. So Mark had done a life insurance of 300,000 dollars and had plan of someone killing him, then transfer his consiousness to the person he killed, frame the exs of his wife and claim the insurance money. And the killer would Friesner, his second-in-command, and would obtain Foster’s priesthood and soul in return. Ultimately there was no evidence until there was confession by Thompson, that he and Friesner took part in the killing with the consent and participation of Mark Foster, Thompson drove Foster and Friesner to the murder site, dumped the gun in the St. Croix River after the murder, and then lied to authorities to misdirect them. Ultimately Thompson was sentenced to three years in prison due to his cooperation, while the person who killed him, Friesner, was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Antrovis was an anti-semitic UFO cult started in Poland during the early 1980s.
The cult's leader was Edward Mielnik, who said that Virgin Mary visited him one night, begging him to save Slavs by using aliens. By the late 80s, his teachings spread throughout Poland, the Netherlands, & Germany.
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(Edward Mielnik)

The cult believed that two million years ago, aliens visited Poland from the planet, "Atlanta." They sent Slavic people to live on Earth, claiming that they were the greatest beings with the purest blood. Around the same time, a spaceship carrying Jews landed in another region of Poland. The Jews began to take advantage of the Slavic tribe, convincing them the center of the universe had moved to another mountain. The Slavs moved to this mountain while the Jews moved to the Slavs former mountain. Using the energy from the center of the universe, the Jews created Gotlieb, the father of Jesus. This resulted in Jesus becoming half Jew & half Slavic. The Jews attempted to manipulate Jesus into joining them, but he favored the Slavic tribe.
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(depictions of aliens by Mielnik)

The cult also believed that the end of the world was coming. The cult planned to escape doomsday by using spaceships that could only be powered by the magical energy of central Europeans. They said they created Hitler in order to wipe out as many Jews as possible to ensure that the spaceships worked. In response, the Jews created other dictators, such as Stalin, to wipe out Polish people. Doomsday was supposed to take place on May 15, 1992. On that day, spaceships would arrive to evacuate them to the planet "Miranda."
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(Depictions of spaceships by Mielnik)

In order to fuel the spaceships, members began to cut off their own testicles & other body parts. Pregnant women in the cult needed to get their pregnancies terminated as well. The cult hated every other religion, as they believed every other religion was created by the Jewish aliens. At the height of the cult's popularity, there were 27 founding members, 15 "ordinary" members, & an estimated 600 others with involvement in the cult. Some members of government, the entertainment industry, & journalism also had ties to Antrovis.
After May 15, 1992 passed, doomsday was delayed to 1994. Antrovis became controversial after one of their members, 18-year-old Andrzej Cielecki, disappeared.
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(Andrzej Cielecki)

Cielecki became acquainted Antrovis after reading about it in a magazine. After joining, his behavior drastically changed. He began locking himself in his room, sitting motionless & looking at photographs of strange faces. He also believed that most foods were poisoned, & only ate mandarin oranges. On March 1, 1993, he grabbed his textbooks & walked outside, presumably to go to school, but was never seen again. The same year, a 16-year-old boy with ties to Antrovis also went missing, but no developments were made in either case.

Two years later, in April of 1995, a teacher was found bludgeoned to death in a river. His testicles were also removed. The teacher had ties to the cult, & exhibited strange behavior prior to his murder. Two surgeons, members of Antrovis, were questioned about his murder, but no one was ever arrested.
Antrovis was disbanded sometime between 1996 & 1998, although there is evidence that it still exists in a smaller capacity. The leader of the cult, Edward Mielnik, also disappeared after it was disbanded.

Further reading

• [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
  
• [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] (Polish Wiki)
  
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The Ant Hill kids always interested me because of the level of violence I think it's the only cult case that's disturbed me
Thériault claimed to be a holy being, and started performing unnecessary amateur surgical operations on sick members to demonstrate his healing powers. These "surgeries" included injecting a 94% ethanol solution into stomachs, or performing circumcisions on the children and adults of the group. Over time, Thériault's punishments became increasingly extreme and violent, including making members break their own legs with sledgehammers, sit on lit stoves, shoot each other in the shoulders, and eat dead mice and feces. A follower would sometimes be asked to cut off another follower's toes with wire cutters to prove loyalty. The abuse extended to the cult's children, who were sexually abused, held over fires, or nailed to trees while other children threw stones at them. One of Thériault's wives left a newborn child, Eleazar Lavallée, outside to die in freezing temperatures to keep him away from the abuse. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Arano wrote:

The Ant Hill kids always interested me because of the level of violence I think it's the only cult case that's disturbed me
Thériault claimed to be a holy being, and started performing unnecessary amateur surgical operations on sick members to demonstrate his healing powers. These "surgeries" included injecting a 94% ethanol solution into stomachs, or performing circumcisions on the children and adults of the group. Over time, Thériault's punishments became increasingly extreme and violent, including making members break their own legs with sledgehammers, sit on lit stoves, shoot each other in the shoulders, and eat dead mice and feces. A follower would sometimes be asked to cut off another follower's toes with wire cutters to prove loyalty. The abuse extended to the cult's children, who were sexually abused, held over fires, or nailed to trees while other children threw stones at them. One of Thériault's wives left a newborn child, Eleazar Lavallée, outside to die in freezing temperatures to keep him away from the abuse. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

I wish I was Thériault.

Not sure if it could be considered a "cult", but I find The Church of Euthanasia to be very interesting. It was founded by Robert Kimberk and Chris Korda who both sought to fix environmental issues through means of decreasing the human population, at least by a lot or by total human extinction. The four pillars of the group are sodomy, abortion, suicide, and cannibalism and was inspired by a dream Chris Korda had where a being criticized the state of Earth and asked why our leaders lie to us. It is registered as an actual religious organization by the American government.
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They're most known for their controversial ways of protesting which include hanging a swastika banner at a Boston polling center, doing a public "Fetus Barbecue" (with dolls of course), going to Pro-Life protests and holding up flags which read "Eat a Queer Fetus for Jesus", among other things (which can be found at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] The group later disbanded and Chris Korda admitted it was more of an "art project" rather than an actual religion, but their website is still up and you can find a bunch of archives of the church online.
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Anyone wanna join my cult, I am the true GOD

Aum Shinrikyo is the most interesting cult i've researched in my opinion

I watched a Heaven's gate 4 part documentary yesterday and have been watching jonestown stuff. Those are the two that intrigue me the most.