Cults are a fascinating subject matter, perhaps because they tell us something about human psychology, interactions, and our need to belong to something bigger. Or maybe they fulfill our morbid curiosities? Either way, as far back as the 1930s, the film industry has looked to sects, communes, and secret societies as a source of inspiration for big-screen (and small screen) features.

Early on, such films tended to focus on satanic and occult groups, primarily drawing inspiration from fictional sources. Then, however, real-life started to seem stranger than fiction in the post-Manson-family and Peoples Temple world. And the ’70s and ’80s saw something of a boom in realist cult-featuring films. Today, movies about cults are going through a resurgence, often mixing fantasy and realist elements to subvert expectations.

Here we’ll be looking at ten of the all-time greatest films that feature cults from the classic era to the modern.

Related: 10 Former Cult Members And Their Chilling Stories

10 The Sacrement (2013)

This incredibly meta film sees A.J. Bowen and Joe Swansburg play two vice journalists documenting their co-worker Patrick’s (Kentucker Audley) attempt to infiltrate a commune and find his sister. Said commune puts up a friendly and cooperative front, but, as you might expect, allegations of abuse and brainwashing soon surface.

Basing its story on the Jonestown Massacre, The Sacrament certainly pushes the boundaries of good taste at times. As such, it’s not a film for everyone. But, those who can stomach it will find a movie that’s so dread-inducing they will likely struggle to look away. This “found footage” film is definitely one to watch.^[1]

9 The Seventh Victim (1943)

The oldest film on this list and the first decent film to feature a cult, The Seventh Victim, is undeniably lightyears ahead of its time. The film sees a young woman named Mary (Kim Hunter) on the search for her missing sister Jaqueline (Jean Brooks) across New York City. Acquiring the help of one Dr. Louis Judd (Tom Conway), Mary soon uncovers a mysterious and sinister group of Satanists who may be behind her sister’s disappearance. It may sound like the beginning of a cliched flick, but it doesn’t play out as you might expect.

The Seventh Victim initially struggled at the box office and received mixed reviews. Such was probably not helped by the multiple cuts made during editing that rendered the narrative incoherent. Nonetheless, it has since become something of a cult classic, its obtuse story only adding to its appeal.

If you do check this one out, keep a lookout for the proto-psycho shower scene that even Hitchcock would have been proud to shoot.^[2]

8 Midsommar (2019)

You knew this one would probably be on here somewhere, right? Ari Aster’s previous film, Hereditary, is just as good and also features a cult, but Midsommar’s take on the genre is more original and interesting in scope.

The film sees recently traumatized psychology student Dani (Florence Pugh) and her distant boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor) head to a Swedish midsummer festival with a group of friends. There, bad trips, culture shocks, and a shocking conspiracy await.

The magic of Midsommar is how it turns the viewer so against the film’s less-likable characters that it “indoctrinates” them into the cult’s way of thinking. “That’s the trick we’re playing,” Aster once said during an interview. “there should be a perverse thrill… having this thing happen that maybe you want to happen… but it should also be troubling.”^[3]

7 Sound of My Voice (2011)

Substitute schoolteacher Peter (Christopher Denham) and writer Lorna (Nichole Vicius) are a couple who have set about making an expose documentary on a secretive cult whose leader claims to be from the future. But when the couple manages to infiltrate the cult, they soon find themselves questioning what is real and what isn’t.

The Sound of My Voice was initially meant to be the first part of a trilogy. But unfortunately, no sequels have ever materialized. Regardless, this clever low-budget flick stands well enough on its own, opening up questions about faith, identity, and the psychological power of persuasion in the process.^[4]

6 Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)

Many films deal with how cults indoctrinate people, but only a handful look at what happens to the survivors. Fewer still handle the subject half as well as Martha Marcy May Marlene (say that five times fast).

The film follows Martha (Elisabeth Olson), a 22-year-old who has just escaped an abusive cult and is living with her sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) and her sister’s husband Ted (Hugh Dancey) in their lakehouse home. There, she suffers from the psychological scars of her past and soon begins exhibiting strange behavior, leading to friction within the household.

Sidestepping the usually fantastical slants of other films for a more realistic one, Martha Marcy May Marlene may not be the most joyous of watches, but it is no less compelling. Critics also thought so, leading to the film taking home an award for best directing at the Sundance Film Festival^[5]

5 Ticket to Heaven (1981)

Based on a nonfiction book by John Freed about his and his friend’s experiences with a cult, Ticket to Heaven is another film that opts for a more realistic approach to its subject matter. The result, however, is just as terrifying as any horror movie could ever be.

The film is about a young twenty-something schoolteacher named David (Nick Mancuso) who is brainwashed by a cult that uses sleep deprivation and starvation to mold its members into money-hustling disciples. David is soon left gaunt and mindless; his only hope lies in family and friends who plan to rescue and deprogram him.^[6]

4 Cult (2019)

Described as an “endearing, amusing, and heartfelt feature debut,” this 2019 film finds laughs and humanity within a subject usually confined to the horror and thriller genres.

So what’s it about? Well, it’s another film about a documentary crew trying to make a movie about a cult. But, instead of a dark and crazed secret society, they uncover a group of oddballs and outcasts just looking for a place to call home. But unfortunately, something mysterious is going on with its elusive leader, and the group’s vulnerable members may be on a collision course with tragedy.

A comedy based around a suicide cult is undoubtedly a hard sell, but Cult is not the exploitive piece you might assume. Instead, we have a film with a heart of gold filled with characters that will ultimately endear themselves to you. That’s not to disregard its humor, though, which this film has in spades, from unusual song parodies to the cult’s bumbling attempts at recruiting and inducting new members.^[7]

3 The Master (2012)

The Master sees Joaquin Phoenix as Freddie Quell, a WWII veteran struggling to adjust to post-war life. Depressed and prone to violence, Freddie soon finds himself recruited into a philosophical movement known as “The Cause.” There, Freddie does his best to follow the teaching of the group’s leader, Lancaster Dodd (Phillip Seymour Hoffman). However, he soon finds himself at odds with Dodd’s inner circle, who view him as a potential threat.

The Master is an unashamedly challenging film but an undeniably fascinating one too. If nothing else, it certainly went down well with critics, winning several awards and receiving several Oscar nominations. The film is relatively open to interpretation, and many have drawn comparisons between “The Cause” and the Church of Scientology. But, whatever you make of it, it’s a must-watch.^[8]

2 Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

When a young and timid Catholic woman named Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) moves into an old New York building with her husband Guy (John Cassavetes), the pair are befriended by their new obtusely welcoming and eccentric neighbors. But as Rosemary falls pregnant, alarming hints of a strange conspiracy against her begin to emerge, one that her husband appears to either not notice or be in on.

This 1960s horror classic is as suspenseful and terrifying as any film you’ll ever see. But Rosemary’s Baby initially seemed to be a doomed production. Scheduling problems and director Roman Polanski’s meticulous attention to detail meant the film went over budget and off schedule. Not helping matters was the hell that Mia Farrow went through to finish the feature. Not only did she have to walk into real incoming traffic to shoot one scene, but her husband Frank Sinatra would serve her divorce papers on set via his lawyer.

However, it would all seemingly be worth it in the end. Upon release, the film received critical acclaim, and supporting actress Ruth Gordon bagged a Golden Globe and Academy Award for her efforts. Later, in 2014, the film was selected for preservation in the national film registry by the Library of Congress.^[9]

1 The Wicker Man (1973)

Once described as the “Citizen Kane of Horror,” The Wicker Man might be the greatest film about cults ever made. And, no, we’re not talking about that Nicolas Cage film with the bees.

The Wicker Man sees a deeply religious and conservative police Sergent, Neil Howie (Edward Woodward), head to a remote Scottish island searching for a missing girl. Unfortunately, he soon finds himself quite at odds with the local populace, who live a pagan lifestyle, seemingly dictated by the island’s owner, Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee). Howie begins to believe that the girl may have been murdered as part of some ritual, and with May Day fast approaching, he races to uncover the truth before the islanders claim another victim.

The Wicker Man is another film that plays tricks on its audience, the unlikability of its protagonist blinding audiences to the deeds of the “quirky” islanders. Christopher Lee, who played the film’s antagonist, would actually go on record to call it his best movie, and who are we to argue?^[10]

When we think of cults, we typically think of hippies, drugs, a little bit of weird love, and, eventually (usually), horrific deaths. At  we’ve spent some time with various cults before. So we thought it was about time we looked at the top ten fictional cults created by the brilliant minds of writers like Ryan Murphy, George Lucas, and, yes, Stan Lee.

While many of these may pale in comparison to the likes of Jim Jones and the People’s Temple (LINK 2), many are infinitely worse, and we should probably feel relieved that they remain on paper and screen. Luckily, they have not made their way to the scheming minds of the narcissistic men and women who could bring them to fruition.

*Spoiler Alert*

Related: Top 10 Evil Cults You May Not Have Heard Of

10 Cult (American Horror Story)

Cult, as featured in American Horror Story, was influenced by the propaganda that had been part of the fear and anxiety-inducing reporting of many major news outlets when Donald Trump took office. The show’s writer created intense anxieties and phobias for Sarah Paulson’s character, possibly intended to reflect some of the same concerns that could be felt by those who supported Trump’s views and those of other marginalized groups.

Although the show directly mentions Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, it ultimately took a deeper look into how people in power retain their position by manipulating others’ fears by leveraging social media through fake news and propaganda. The terrifying season also touched upon important historical figures to deliver flashbacks and insights into some of history’s best-known cult leaders, including Charles Manson.^[1]

9 The Cause (The Master)

The Master was much more than just a Scientology movie, even though they tried their best to stop its production. Set in Post-War America, Joaquin Phoenix plays the role of a delinquent that refuses to be tamed within the new up-and-coming factions, not even by “The Master,” played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman. The factions make up The Cause, a group devoted to separating man from his animal instincts. Where this film actually takes a turn from the other popular fictional cult storylines is that it comes up with the notion that the real dependent in any brainwashing organization is the leader, not the follower.

As the narrative continues, we come to realize that “The Master” may be a liar, a philanderer, and a miserable alcoholic. Still, his fixation on wanting to understand the world through his own vocation of “making it up as I go along” shows that he is a depressed and lonely little mouse rotating within his little exercise wheel forever. He ultimately becomes the most human of all the cult leaders on this list.^[2]

8 The Sith (Star Wars)

Though many may not realize it, The Sith, also referred to as the Sith Order in the Star Wars franchise, is a fictional cult. The ancient religious order of Force-wielders was dedicated to the dark side of the Force. Propelled by their feelings, including hatred, rage, and self-interest, the Sith were manipulative and fixated on gaining control and power. The order attained the pinnacle of its control under Darth Sidious, the Dark Lord of the Sith, who accomplished interstellar domination after a thousand years of plotting.

Within one generation, however, the deaths of both Sidious and Darth Vader would signal the end of the order of the Sith Lords. While Darth Vader’s death marked the Sith’s demise, it brought balance to the Force. However, even though the Prophecy of the Chosen One prophesied the demise of the Sith, it never prophesied the annihilation of the dark side.^[3]

7 The One (Caprica)

The ephemeral spin-off of Battlestar Galactica did an excellent job of getting on the inside of the cult known as “The One,” a religious cult that chose to believe in a single deity above all others. Hence all those BSG references to “thank the gods.” Zoe Graystone is at the center of the plot, a teen murdered and revived through a software program created by her father. Her new self will finally be put inside a machine: aka Cylon, the first sentient toaster.

Another cool twist to the series was the virtual world populated by Zoe and her peers. They jacked into a chaotic nightclub that promoted murder and sex with no consequences whatsoever if they needed to let off steam. Although many found the series unoriginal, the principal of the school did have the habit of convincing her students to commit suicide for “the cause.”^[4]

6 Hydra (Marvel)

HYDRA is a totalitarian organization committed to ruling the world. It was established in remote times, previously as a cult oriented around the extremist veneration of Hive, a strong Inhuman who found himself exiled to the planet Maveth by other bygone Inhumans. As of his expulsion, the cult has been intent on bringing him back to Earth to begin a terrestrial power grab. Over hundreds of years, the cult has continued to evolve, having taken many forms, with its most recent incarnation brought to life shortly after the rise of Nazism in Germany under the command structure of Johann Schmidt of the Nazi Schutzstaffel.

HYDRA was secretly rebuilt within S.H.I.E.L.D. by Schmidt’s top scientist Arnim Zola. She was recruited to the organization during Operation Paperclip, following his failure at the hands of Captain America in 1945 and the eventual death of Johann Schmidt. The ultimate objective of HYDRA was to dissolve governments of the world to create an authoritarian, totalitarian, global state, thereby removing any challenges to their new world order. ^[5]

5 Homeland (Split Image)

American college student Danny Stetson is a clean-cut gymnast with Olympic gold aspirations when he’s lured to Homeland, a religious youth-oriented community, by Rebecca, a beautiful girl. There, the charismatic cult leader, Neil Kirklander, immediately starts conditioning him to assume that his new life now has the true significance it had been missing.

Every minute with the cult causes young Danny to come even more and more under the influence of the cult’s enigmatic leader, and he eventually refuses to go home. In their anguish, his parents decide to recruit someone to kidnap him. The modern-day bounty hunter has some experience in “de-programming” and attempts to undo the emotional harm that had been done to him. In short, this storyline focuses on the traumatic psychological adjustments that accompany any cult member’s road to recovery.^[6]

4 Daughters of the Amazon (Y the Last Man)

The extremist Daughters of the Amazon maintain that Mother Earth cleansed herself of the “aberration” of the Y chromosome. They specialize in the vandalism and destruction of sperm banks, destruction of all “patriarchal landmarks” such as churches and temples, the theft of food and equipment (believing that women should not be gatherers but hunters), and the assassination of transgenders and male impersonators.

As we come to learn in these unique comic books, the Daughters could be identified by their single breast, as the other would always be removed during their rite of initiation. Buying into the anger and rage of the manipulative Victoria, we learn that these women eventually begin to fade out even though the movement remains very strong in New York.^[7]

3 The Cult of Killers (The Following)

The Following is half Charles Manson and half Hannibal with a side of the seven deadly sins in Se7en and a lingering touch of Edgar Allen Poe. Kevin Bacon plays former FBI agent Ryan Hardy, who has to deal with his greatest capture: the infamous serial killer Joe Carroll, who’s been found guilty of murdering 14 women.

When the season kicks off, Carroll is imprisoned, but his followers are on the loose and are wreaking havoc to sustain his murderous activities. As expected, Carroll escapes halfway through the first season and reveals he is the ultimate cult leader. In flashbacks, we are shown how he achieved some of his best recruitment while being held in a maximum-security prison. The highlight of the first season happens when the two are face-to-face. “Why are you surrounded by death? Death is fuelling me.” taunts Joe. “Me too,” Ryan says. Unfortunately for fans, The Following was canceled after the third season.^[8]

2 The Creedish Church (Survivor)

In this eerie novel, we learn about The Creedish, a religious cult that established its own 20,000-acre colony in Nebraska. They managed to live here without creature comforts, including televisions or phones. Every firstborn son would invariably be named Adam, and this firstborn son would be the only son who could get married and stay within the colony. The younger boys were all named Tender (as they had to tend to your every need). Every girl would be named Biddy (as they had to do your bidding).

Upon reaching 18, Tenders and Biddies would be christened and promptly sent out to the outside world to take up some form of domestic work. The Adams would stay in the colony and go on to get married (in an arranged marriage, of course, to a bidder chosen by the church). After that, they would proceed to make the Creedish babies as if there were no tomorrow, to raise them from Adam to the Elder. The Creedish often had a wide variety of mental problems. A lot of them were chronic masturbaters, while many others had problems with kleptomania. A major part of their theology was known as “The Deliverance.” Once this was called, all the Creedish had to kill themselves the moment they heard the word. ^[9]

1 The Island Cult (Gather the Daughters)

Gather the Daughters is a macabre and bleak story about a fictional island cult where being female is such a terrible fate that when girls are born, all the women cry together. Incest between fathers and their daughters is permitted until the girls reach adolescence. At that point, all women are expected to become Stepford wives and breeding objects for such an inbred culture where high rates of genetic abnormalities and infant mortality eventually become alarmingly high. Any so-called “defectives,” the disabled and elderly, and anyone else who is a burden on this isolated community are murdered.

The story doesn’t say how or when the cult first isolated itself from the rest of the world, but it appears to take place in our current timeline or in the near future. Due to an increase in the number of birth defects, the cult sends out trustworthy males known as “wanderers” to recruit new members and collect necessary goods while rejecting modern medicine and other creature comforts available to everyone on the mainland. Definitely not a story for the faint-hearted!^[10]

Just below the surface of our polite society, it’s not really a surprise for many of us that there are doomsday cults. A 2020 study by BioMed Central Geriatrics found that roughly 1.25% of people had persistent death wishes, and that was among people who did not have underlying mental illnesses. Of even that group less than a quarter admitted being suicidal. That’s a lot of the general population that would respond well to a group that tells them that it will all be over soon without necessarily bringing the stigma of suicide into it. 

Some of these brought the eyes of the world upon them for sheer spectacle. Others had influence that spanned the globe and lasted for generations if not to this very day. Such is the bewildering, passively self-destructive spirit concealed in society.

10. Plymouth Brethren

One of the earliest known surviving doomsday cults is generally reported to have been founded in 1831 near Dublin, Ireland. It was founded by the clergyman John Darby and his non-clergy associates, such as the lawyer John Bellett and Anthony Groves, a dentist. This was not really an issue for the group since they claimed they all directly studied the bible and consequently didn’t need a clergy that was separate from the congregation. After reaching the United States in 1860, it expanded to roughly 50,000 members. Along the way, it picked up some bizarre beliefs, according to John Spinks, a member for 22 years. For example, members are not allowed to go to theaters or even watch television. A rule which emerged in 1964 said that all pets were to be put down as a distraction from God. Such is the commitment to the doctrine that members are to attend a service every day, except on Sunday. Sunday they’re supposed to attend five.   

The influence of the Plymouth Brethen’s doctrine is most felt today in the popularization of rapture media, the Left Behind franchise being the best known example. It helped its spread and longevity that John Darby avoided a mistake that many of the other doomsday cults listed here avoided. He didn’t specify a date or even a year, just that the rapture and tribulation would happen at the end of the “Church Age”, the last of seven ages that he described in dividing human history. 

9. Society of the Woman in the Wilderness

While the Plymouth Brethren brought doomsday beliefs to America relatively early, they were old hat compared to a collection of German immigrants led by Johannes Kelpius that arrived in Philadelphia in 1694. Their name was a reference to Revelation 12:6 where a woman flees into the wilderness and is nourished by God. As that implies, their goal was to set up a community of their own in the frontier wilderness and await the end of the World before the year was out. They were of numerical necessity a tight knit group, as they held that the number 40 had spiritual significance and thus they kept their ranks at forty people. They also settled on Wissahickon Creek because they determined it was at 40 degrees longitude and built a 40 foot tall tabernacle, particularly difficult to do with the tools available at the time and only wood for a construction material. From their numerically significant tabernacle they watched the skies for signs the end had arrived. 

It must be said that not everyone in a doomsday cult is exclusively a glum drone. By Colonial American standards, the cult was actually relatively enlightened. They built the first observatory in the American colonies and brought the first telescope. They wrote popular music that circulated for centuries. In the years after 1694, the forty of them peacefully joined the surrounding Lutheran societies. Shame more cults aren’t so amiable. 

8. Laodicean Remnant Adventist Church

In Brazil’s capital city Brasilia, one of the most common ways that the practice of enslaving people is kept alive is through religious indoctrination through fringe groups. For example in 2018 a series of police raids found that a church called Igreja Cristã Traduzindo o Verbo (roughly translating to “Church Translating the Word”) was subjecting 565 people to uncompensated labor. How do they do it?

Well in the case of the Laodicean Remnant Adventist Church, which was raided in March 2019, 79 people were put into forced labor by promising them that they would achieve salvation before the world ended through their work. They had to sleep in tents, use dangerous machinery while sleeping near containers of dangerous pesticides, and all while having to pay for their own food and other necessities. At the time of the raid, the slaves claimed that they didn’t want to be freed and hadn’t sought police intervention. As a result Brazil’s police were prevented by law from removing them from private property against their will. 

7. The Ant Hill Kids

As heartbreaking as the situation from the previous entry is, what we know is not nearly so harrowing as what Roch “Moses” Thériault inflicted on his followers. The excommunicated member of the Seventh Day Adventist church began assembling his couple dozen followers on the promise that the world would end in February 1979, and to that end they drifted from community to community until they settled in Burnt River, Ontario in 1977. There their main connection to the surrounding community was selling baked goods at the local general store. 

The passing of the date of doom did nothing to lessen Moses’s sway. He adopted a strange habit of performing all surgeries on his followers despite not having a medical background, including unanesthetized amputations, castrations, and appendectomies. Not only were the followers too afraid of him to leave until one Gabrielle Lavelle staggered away from the compound in 1989 while missing a recently amputated arm, but some were so under his sway that they would take punishments of hitting their own legs with sledgehammers. Thériault was ultimately arrested in 1989, sentenced to life imprisonment in 1993, and met his personal doomsday at the hands of another inmate in 2011.   

6. Heaven’s Gate

One of the most tragic groups, this group treated as a laughingstock in the 90s began in 1975 under the influence of former music teacher Marshall Applewhite and his wife Bonnie Nettles as the Human Individual Metamorphosis after they read the Book of Revelation and saw a reference in Chapter 11 Verse 3 to two witnesses to the end times (“And I will appoint my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth”). that they believed would be them. That year they held gatherings in Oregon and California where they believed a UFO would transfer them to a higher state of being. When that didn’t happen, they moved to Texas for a couple decades of commune living. In the ’90s they got involved in early web development. 

As of 1994, Applewhite’s statements specified that he did not believe suicide would be necessary for ascension. Still the group had taken on such habits as cleansing themselves by only consuming tea, pepper, and maple syrup. There was also their belief in uniform action, hence one of their last public activities being going out to eat and all ordering the exact same meal. It was also why when they committed group suicide in three waves in 1997 because they believed their souls would be transferred to bodies in a spaceship following the Hale-Bopp Comet, they were all wearing matching black shirts and black shoes. 

Regarding the infamous fact that Applewhite and others were castrated, there are a few points we’d like to end on. First, only eight of the 18 male members had voluntarily undergone the operation. In the second place, a former member reported that even the members themselves were laughing and giddy about having the operation at the time. Perhaps there are some celibate (or not) individuals that can understand the sentiment. 

5. Children of God

While Applewhite put great value in sexual purity, David Berg emphasized essentially the opposite. Not that he began his commune in Huntington Beach, California in 1968 with that as the initial mission statement. For the first ten years, it was a self-isolating cult that claimed that by abandoning traditionalist values they were actually closer to the original spirit of Jesus Christ, who was sufficiently anti-establishment that the Pharisees convinced the Romans to execute him. But even the most radical interpretation of Christ’s teachings would have difficulty justifying the practice introduced in 1978 that the perpetually isolated Berg referred to as “flirty fishing.” 

Essentially a recruitment tool, it was free love to the point of prostitution. Berg rationalized it by citing the verse 1 Corinthians 6:20 that since our bodies belong to God, using them to spread the faith is still righteous. It was sufficiently successful that it swelled the ranks of the cult to 14,000 at the height, and an estimate was put forward that 223,000 services were performed through it. It also allegedly led to large amounts of child abuse. 

Prostitution for God basically ended by 1987 when the AIDS epidemic made it no longer viable. Berg set a hard deadline that the world would end in 1993. Instead he himself ended in 1994. With its central figure gone, the cult shriveled down into the much smaller Family International. 

4. Church of the Almighty God/Eastern Lightning

Ever since the religiously-motivated Taiping Rebellion of the 1850s and 60s cost roughly 20 million people their lives, Chinese authorities have had little tolerance for fringe religious movements, creating an entire anti-cult task force called the Beijing Counter-Cult Association. One of the cults that has drawn the most attention is known as both Church of Almighty God and Eastern Lightning. It is based around the belief that an obscure woman from the Henan Province in central China who was believed to be a reincarnation of Jesus Christ. One of the few things consistently claimed about her was that she failed her government entrance exams, which coincidentally is a second aspect she shares with Hong Xiuquan, the self-proclaimed reincarnation of Jesus Christ who led the Taiping Rebellion. Her obscurity is intentional, as most members are not allowed to know her whereabouts or have contact with her.  

One of the group’s central tenets is said to be that they use violence as a recruitment tool. On December 14, 2012, the year the cult claimed that the World would end, an adherent took a knife to a school and stabbed 22 children. In October 2014, when a woman in a McDonald’s turned down an attempt at recruitment, five members of the cult beat her to death with chairs and a mop, then called her a demon while in custody. According to Pastor Dennis Balcombe, members have been told to kill their own children during the brainwashing process that usually lasts about six months. If those reports are accurate it’s hard not to side with the Chinese government against the cult. 

3. Shincheonji 

Founded in 1984 by Lee Man-hee, the Shincheonji Church of Jesus is devoted to the notion that only through Lee Man-hee is Jesus Christ reanimated and that only through him can followers escape damnation. As they’ve become one of the largest and most radical doomsday cults in South Korea, they’ve adopted such beliefs as the tenet that getting sick is a sin because it distracts a follower from being able to preach the word.

This cult briefly rose to world prominence in February 2020. Their extremely aggressive proselytizing and constant services in extremely crowded halls made them ideal superspreaders of the then newly emergent Covid-19 pandemic. One adherent known as Patient 31 was indicated to have personally spread roughly 75% of all cases in Deenghu, one of the first major cities hit in South Korea. Of all the doomsday cults in the world, so far they’ve come the closest to actually bringing it about. 

2. Supreme Truth

When Shoko Ashara began his group in Japan in the 1980s, he went a step beyond many of the cult leaders we’ve seen so far. He not only claimed to be a reincarnation of Jesus Christ, but also of Buddha, at least in terms of enlightenment. As excessively grandiose as that might sound, even before the group was given official recognition in 1989 his followers placed enough value in him that they paid for strands of his hair, his bathwater, and in at least one instance paid more than £6,000 for a drink of what was said to be his blood. 

For many people who were adults in the 90s, Supreme Truth is much more familiar as “Aum Shinrikyo.” Ashara’s assurances that humanity would end on its own from World War 3 became much less convincing for much of his following after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and after that the cult turned to violence. According to nonproliferation.org, Aum Shinrikyo launched seventeen terror attacks between 1990 and 1995, ten of which involved the use of poison gas. 19 of its own members were killed by other members for perceived disloyalty. Most famously the group attack the Tokyo Subway on March 20, 1995, killing 12 and injuring thousands more through gas exposure or trampling in the subsequent chaos.The inevitable crackdown led to the capture and execution of many of its most significant members and for the group to undergo such changes as changing its name to Aleph. However, there were reports ever since 1998 that the group might have not only recovered but resumed growth.  

1. The Family

Anne Hamilton-Byrne’s cult sounds like a Stepford Wives-esque satire of nuclear families. In the 1960s in Victoria, Australia she began forming a community that would ultimately include 28 adopted children, many illegally and being told she was their birth mother. The children were also dressed in the same traditional clothing along gender lines, had their hair styled roughly the same, and were put through rigorous domineering physical and emotional abuse. As Hamilton-Byrne had entered the yoga scene to cope with a traumatic loss of her first husband, she eventually also entered the psychedelics scene and became convinced she was Jesus Christ, that her family should also takes LSD while she gave sermons, and instruct her family that they would be the master race after the world ended. She was also able to recruit a number of wealthy women in unhappy marriages and LGBT members as well since they were marginalized in the society of the time,

Eventually the extremely unhealthy domestic situation compelled two children to escape in 1987, and their reports resulted in a police raid. The extremely wealthy Hamilton-Byrne evaded the law for two years, and when she was captured, she only was found guilty of one charge with minor fee before senility hit and she was deemed no longer fit to stand trial. She died in 2019, still using a doll as a substitute for her child victims. 

Speaking of doomsday, Dustin Koski and Jonathan Wojcik wrote Return of the Living, a novel about how ghosts get along years after doomsday has killed everyone.

Just below the surface of our polite society, it’s not really a surprise for many of us that there are doomsday cults. A 2020 study by BioMed Central Geriatrics found that roughly 1.25% of people had persistent death wishes, and that was among people who did not have underlying mental illnesses. Of even that group less than a quarter admitted being suicidal. That’s a lot of the general population that would respond well to a group that tells them that it will all be over soon without necessarily bringing the stigma of suicide into it.

Some of these brought the eyes of the world upon them for sheer spectacle. Others had influence that spanned the globe and lasted for generations if not to this very day. Such is the bewildering, passively self-destructive spirit concealed in society.

This is an encore of one of our previous lists, as presented by our YouTube host Simon Whistler. Read the full list!

Say the word “cult,” and you might imagine people holed up in a compound somewhere, convinced that the end is nigh. But in ancient times, cults were taken more seriously and often involved entire populations. This list looks at previously unseen discoveries that added even more mystery or gore to what we already know. From the correct etiquette for boiling a head to a naughty story written by a priest, here are ten finer details about ancient cults you probably didn’t know!

10 A Rare True Cross Scroll

The “Cult of The Cross” describes the rituals and beliefs surrounding the True Cross (the cross on which Jesus died). In 2021, an extremely rare artifact was discovered. Unfortunately, it was not a splinter from the True Cross, but it was a parchment closely linked to this chapter of Christianity.

Researchers have always known about the 500-year-old scroll. However, it kept disappearing into the hands of private collectors, meaning it could never be examined. When it was recently rediscovered, the artifact revealed a smorgasbord of exquisite illustrations that provided more insights into the Cult of the Cross. But two more things stunned the researchers.

First, such prayer rolls, which were constantly unfurled, touched, and kissed by worshipers, rarely survive to the present day. For one of them to remain intact 500 years later is remarkable in itself. Then there’s the intimate link with the lore of the True Cross. The prayer roll was likely created at Bromholm Priory in Norfolk. This place once attracted pilgrims because the priory’s own cross was said to contain a fragment of the True Cross. Called the Rood of Bromholm, the cross is now missing, but it appears as a crucifixion painting in the scroll.^[1]

9 A Cult Buried with Their Pharaoh

In 2021, archaeologists were digging at Saqqara, an ancient Egyptian burial ground, when they found a temple. The stone temple had three warehouses lined up on one side. These mud-brick storage areas and nearby shafts contained items that provided insights into a cult that worshiped a royal couple.

The temple was a funerary building constructed in honor of Queen Nearit. The building was next to the pyramid of her spouse, Pharaoh Teti, who ruled Egypt roughly between 2323 BC and 2291 BC. The shafts were also near the pyramid and contained the bodies of those who belonged to the cult. It would appear that they desired to stay close to the pharaoh, even in death.

The cult seemed to have flourished for over 1,000 years. Some of the items found inside the burial shafts provided clues about what mattered to them. An incredible papyrus, measuring 13 feet long (4 meters), contained a chapter from the “Book of the Dead,” a guide on how to navigate the underworld. Other objects also showed that people named their children after royal family members and that the gods Osiris and Anubis were important to them.^[2]

8 A Religion Older Than the Incas

We are still trying to piece together everything about the Incas, a complex society that once ruled the pre-Columbian Americas, from Columbia to Chile. Long before the Incas, however, there was an even more mysterious and elaborate society. This empire was the Tiwanaku state, and very little is known about them.

In 2013, researchers explored Khoa Reef in Bolivia’s Lake Titicaca. The reef lies near the Island of the Sun, a pilgrimage site for the Incas, who adorned the island with offerings and ceremonial buildings. However, as artifacts older than the Incas were found near the reef, it recovered a big piece of Tiwanaku culture. In short, they practiced a mystery religion that pre-dates the Incas by 500 years.

Besides beating the Incas to the lake, the Tiwanaku people also designed their offerings to be submerged in the lake. This clue came from anchors found near the items. The offerings included incense burners shaped like pumas, gold ornaments, shell and stone trinkets, and young llama remains. All this suggested that the Tiwanaku performed sophisticated rituals from boats and that the puma and the god Viracocha (found on gold medallions) were also important religious symbols to them.^[3]

7 Ramses II Had a Ram Cult

Recently, excavations at the ancient Egyptian city Abydos revealed a gruesome sight. Long ago, a single ritual had sacrificed 1,200 rams, and their heads were left behind in honor of Pharaoh Ramses the Great.

The ram heads were discovered in a storage area and needless to say, it’s a very unusual find. Some of the skulls were even wrapped in cloth, and one animal still had a bell around its neck. Not being able to resist, someone jostled the item, and amazingly, despite having been quiet for 2,000 years, it rang. The rare artifact might’ve been created especially for the ritual because it was decorated with symbols representing gods.

But at the end of the day, the discovery points to a ram or Aries cult that centered itself around Ramses II. One that potentially worshiped the popular king for 1,000 years after he died. Ramses II took the throne in 1279 BC and maintained power for nearly 70 years. He was known for so many great things that nine other pharaohs chose to call themselves Ramses too.^[4]

6 A Mysterious Skull Cult

Göbekli Tepe is a famous ancient site in Turkey. Built roughly 11,000 years ago, the builders were known for producing intricate carvings, tall pillars, and large stone rings. But they also left a few mysteries behind. There are no graves and no evidence that people even lived there, despite the fact that the site kind of looks like a town.

That doesn’t mean that human remains weren’t found. Over the years, 691 human bone fragments surfaced. However, seven skull pieces from three adults had experts flummoxed. First, they were found in a backfill mixture inside a stone structure. Nobody can explain why the skull bones ended up there. Deliberate carvings and drill marks on the fragments also pointed to a skull cult at Göbekli Tepe, but the markings gave no clue as to the purpose of such a cult.

But here’s the weirdest thing. The people of Göbekli Tepe created stunning structures and art. Compared to that, the skulls were crudely carved. Perhaps the deep grooves allowed decorations to be added—or the skulls were deliberately disfigured to punish the dead individuals.^[5]

5 The Temple That Became a Tomb

Spain’s Carmona necropolis is packed with burials from the 1st to the 2nd century AD. One of its most famous structures is the Elephant’s Tomb (someone found an elephant statue inside). When researchers first looked at the grave, it became clear that the burial wasn’t a normal six-foot-under affair. Instead, the building’s elaborate design hinted at another purpose besides being a tomb. Eventually, Spanish archaeologists discovered strong evidence that a cult once used the structure. Indeed, the “tomb” had all the hallmarks of a Mithraeum, a temple dedicated to the Roman god Mithras.

For example, during the spring and fall equinoxes, sunlight would’ve entered the window so that the center of the chamber filled with light, possibly illuminating a now-missing statue of the god. Two of the cult’s most important constellations, Scorpio and Taurus, also lined up with the building. Other features it shared with known Mithraeums included a fountain and a room divided into three sections.

Experts now believe that, at some point, the devotees started to lose interest in the temple. Once the Mithraeum was abandoned by the cult, the structure was repurposed as a tomb.^[6]

4 Inca Worshipers Weren’t Equal

During the early 15th century, the Inca developed an elaborate solar cult to worship the Sun. Many of their rituals and beliefs have surfaced in recent years, but in the late 1990s, researchers uncovered something that hadn’t been recorded before—something that wasn’t very flattering. In short, not every devotee of the cult was considered equal during worship.

It started with the discovery of large stone pillars. Archaeologists have always known that the Inca had such ritual pillars, thanks to records indicating that they once existed in the Inca capital of Cusco. These pillars recorded the Sun’s location near the horizon during the June and December solstices, which were important days on the cult’s calendar.

While surveying the Island of the Sun, an Inca ritual hotspot in Lake Titicaca, researchers found the first pair of these solar pillars. They also discovered a platform nearby. All research showed that both features were designed to separate the elite from the lower classes during rituals. While the king and other ranked individuals worshiped inside the sanctuary, the rest gathered on the platform to observe the mesmerizing spectacle of the Sun setting directly over their rulers and the pillars. Such a sight would’ve cemented the elite’s power even more.^[7]

3 A Naughty Story

In 2012, experts deciphered a curious ancient papyrus. Written in an old form of Egyptian called Demotic, the text was not your typical story that praised a pharaoh or a god. Nope. This was a story about sex. Researchers believe that the author might even have been a priest. However, this wasn’t a case of a perverted priest writing erotica in his spare time. Instead, the papyrus might have served a very important purpose.

The fictional story includes singing, feasting, drinking, and ritual sex. All these activities are happening in the name of the Egyptian goddess Mut as acts of worship, not revelry. In other words, the tale wasn’t written to entertain anyone. Instead, the discovery suggests that such “cult fiction” existed to ease the discussion around controversial sex rituals and other contentious topics among priests.^[8]

2 A Cult the Size of Poland

In the 1960s, a survey team noticed a couple of rectangular stone structures in north-western Saudi Arabia. At the time, nobody realized the scope and cult-related significance of the buildings, which were later named “mustalil.” It wasn’t until more recently that tantalizing facts about the ruins began to emerge.

About 1,600 mustalil were found sprinkled across 116,000 square miles (300,000 square kilometers). Some had so many stones that they weighed more than the Eiffel Tower. Others were the length of four football fields and as wide as two. The monumental structures were all 7,000 years old, which made them older than the Giza pyramids and Stonehenge.

Their construction also showed the builders understood local materials and engineering and had a widespread belief system that demanded sacrifices. Stuffed inside small chambers of the mustalil were countless animal skulls. Since no other body parts were found, this suggested that the sacrifices happened elsewhere. Ritual artifacts found at the site also support the idea that this mysterious cult once spanned an area the size of Poland.^[9]

1 How to Boil a Head

In 2019, archaeologists were doing field work along the coast of the Red Sea. The team was excavating the ancient Egyptian port of Berenike when they discovered the remains of a temple. The two-room shrine had an Egyptian design and decorations—but the people who once worshiped there were not Egyptians. They belonged to a mysterious semi-nomadic group called the Blemmyes.

Almost nothing is known about the Blemmyes, so it was interesting to note that the temple suggested that they had adopted Egyptian beliefs. In this case, the building’s purpose was to worship the Egyptian falcon-headed god Khonsu. The discovery also revealed the cult’s etiquette for boiling heads.

An inscription found inside the temple read, “It is improper to boil a head in here.” Since many decapitated falcon skeletons were found inside, it’s safe to assume that the cult did not hack off human heads but, instead, those of birds. The rule also implied that worshipers had to boil falcons before offering them to Khonsu. Perhaps the heads were cooked, too, only it was forbidden to do so within the sacred walls of the temple.^[10]