ELOAH: The Body Explains Itself In Scripture

Every once in a while a cult leader suffering from narcissism of the highest degree writes their own scripture to perpetuate the myth they’ve created of themselves. This happens with creative individuals who’d like to convince the people who follow them that their own words are those of God. Such is the case with the man who runs The Body, and we’ve got an exclusive sneak preview of his text before it hits the next edition of the Christian Bible. There’s so much ridiculous, self-aggrandizing scripture to pour over that a religious studies major is needed to make sense of the collection. Before an expert can translate this garbage, a blog post that contains a few slices from the mind of an active cult leader is being released that hints at the greater collection. The internal writings are a little scary, but there’s high comedy in an email we’re publishing where leadership tries to explain the group to an outsider with biblical word salad that goes on and on while saying nothing at all.

ARTICLE

The Psychedelic Journey Of The Source Family

The Source Family was a cult built in the 1960’s with resources from a guru who ran a popular vegetarian restaurant in Los Angeles. What makes the group especially noteworthy is that they went on to spread their gospel through heady psychedelic rock music unlike anything that came before it. Writer Jamo Lorswal explores the life and times of the group’s leader, “Father Yod,” on a journey of influence that runs through a few cramped compounds before the jamming starts. It’s a story of a cult buried in the counter culture that became an unlikely musical inspiration after the group disappeared. This is a wild trip with a hell of a soundtrack. Note: The Source Family were definitely a destructive, abusive cult that made people’s lives miserable when they weren’t rocking, but the group became harmless after a Darwinian sports disaster took out the head of the church. We think the art can be enjoyed these days without encouraging any of the madness.

Digital Traces
Of A Hidden Cult

Sometimes a cult goes so far underground it’s almost impossible to keep track of the story from outside the bunker. Keeping tabs on an organization like this can be quite frustrating, especially when there’s a history of abuse that conveniently happens to end when the data stops coming in. This is has been a hurdle from the jump when it comes to the cult this website was originally designed to expose. There’s just very little to come by online about The Body that tells the story discovered in our internal reporting. For those who doubt the validity of survivors, the absence of obvious search results on Google can be enough to end any discussion about the mysterious group. However, there are records out there if you know what you’re searching for. In this second chapter of a series exploring what The Body left in its wake, we’re taking a look at some of the most interesting things we’ve found searching for this elusive organization on the internet. The article includes what’s believed to be the most revealing piece of information published to date about the brass behind the bullshit.

Left Alive And Unchanged: The Heaven’s Gate Website

It’s been two and half decades since Heaven’s Gate ended with the deaths of 39 of its devotees in a mansion on the outskirts of San Diego. The members are all gone, but the cult’s website is still alive on the internet after all this time, kept preserved in the exact state it was in before the tragedy. Domains aren’t sold in quarter century increments, so who the hell is maintaining the URL? In this article writer Maddie F gets to the bottom of the mystery. Heavensgate.com isn’t the only thing worth examining when it comes to the death cult’s relationship with the internet either. After some investigating it’s clear that the entire organization was propped up by money earned through the web 1.0. This is a story about the website of a cult, written for a website about cults. Learn something new about a subject people will never forget about.

Ervil LeBaron’s LDS Trail Of Death

Ezekiel Gacee and Graeme Burglar tell the story of Ervil LeBaron, a Mormon preacher who orchestrated the executions of as many as 30 individuals he considered enemies, including a few of his 50 children. The killing spree was carried out by members of LeBaron’s Church of the Lamb of God under the pretense of by-gone LDS theology know as ‘blood atonement’ which Brigham Young conceived in the 19th century. God apparently told Young that for those who strayed too far from a righteous path the only way to earn salvation was through the sacrifice of blood.
Ervil LeBaron’s case is so extreme that it’s hard to find many equivalents for his destruction in the world of cults or even organized crime generally. Why did it happen? The question at the center of this story is one of toxic dogma and the legacy of fanatical polygamists in the LDS church. ‘The Mormon Manson’ was a rare breed of killer destined from birth to become a powerful figure in an isolated sect of the LDS that was already a cult when he entered the picture.

Inside The Rod Of Iron Ministries

Lisa Mildred visits a gun loving sect of the Moonies in the fourth installment in her series of first hand accounts of interacting with active cults. In this edition, our author goes to temple with a right-wing religious organization that’s crazy about the second amendment and pretty relaxed about the global pandemic. It’s a fantastic story about a cult that’s wormed its way into popular discussion over the year, but this exclusive is less about the threat of danger that arises from militant Moonies than it is about the gift shop. Our intrepid reporter puts herself at risk to purchase the crown in this incredible tale of lust for the ultimate cult souvenir.

An Interview With Cult News 101

We discovered Cult News 101 while scouring Instagram for the most interesting cult accounts on the web and became fascinated with whoever was pulling the strings. The account, which is also active on other social media platforms, is something of a cult news aggregator that pulls stories about different groups from across the globe and presents the most vital information in the original articles alongside handsome black and white images of their subjects. The amount of stories in the archive is staggering and a hell of a commitment for founder Patrick Ryan, who primarily works as an exit councilor.

In this interview we find out Ryan has been up to these tasks since the early days of the internet and get some advice about reaching people on the inside, but the primary focus is the man’s own cult story which paved the way for a career fighting the good fight.

CHECKING IN WITH #IGotOut

It’s rare that a cult story is good news, but such is the case with #IGotOut, a movement seeking to become the #MeToo of Cultland with a campaign designed to share the stories of survivors. In this interview, we talk with the women who started the hashtag and became hero’s in a field that desperately needs an organization like theirs. This conversation is about how the hashtag came to be, where it’s headed and why it’s important to share these kinds of stories.

Reverse Rumspringa: Amish Immersion Part 1

You’ll want to zip up your zipper for this! In part one of a double feature on the Amish, Lisa Mildred takes a trip to Lancaster County in one of her many fascinating (and verifiable) excursions to the edge of Cultland. This immersive, often hilarious story includes buggy rides, garment doctrines, rumspringa let down, and a dip into the philosophical- What kind of life is one living if listening to The Beatles is forbidden by God? This vehicle is anything but slow moving, so hold on to your (church mandated) hats.

Also included in this story is an elective conversation with the author about why the Amish are at home on a website that’s all about destructive cults. Listen to it before diving into the story or breeze on by the media player; the Bishop is not going to make that decision for you.

Sects & The City:
Amish Immersion Part 2

Caution: You might fall neckbeard first off your handsome wooden furniture when you hear what our friend Eli has to say when he gets a taste of freedom in the stunning conclusion of one writer’s strange dalliance with the Amish. In a word: Yikes! In two words: Double Yikes! This fish out of water story goes sideways quickly when the role of cultural tourist is reversed, as this time around our reporter welcomes to New York City a geriatric man who doesn’t understand how the world works. It’s a tale of endurance and, uh, the triumph of the human spirit...

Alright, this is hard to sugar coat. There’s more vivid details about the sex life of an elderly Amish man in this thing than you could fit in grain silo, and it’s between 7,000 and 8,000 times more awkward than it sounds, but this TMI bonanza is impossible to put down from the first unprompted overshare. If you can find a route to the end of this story with your wholesome ideas about the Amish intact, well, you might just be a tiny old Amish man on a farm somewhere in Lancaster County. Put down the computer, Eli! It’s a sin against God!

TBI Recommended:
The Right Way To Tell The Manson Story

There’s a No New Manson Stories policy in TBI’s fine print a reason. The half century old corpse of the most notorious cult story ever told has been picked over so many times there’s simply no way to have a fresh perspective without adding a tree to a dense forest of half-baked sensationalism that’s inevitable in a horse this dead or simply running headlong into Conspiracyland. That said, we’re opening our Recommended series with a gem of a convoluted Manson story that, convictions be damned, we can’t recommend enough.

You Must Remember This takes on the White Whale and succeeds in spite of its spin by starting with a bibliography and cramming each piece into an admittedly squishy but vital narrative. We’re hosting all 12 parts of what just might be the definitive version of a story that shattered the world’s perception of what a cult could be.