The most famous cults in American history are embedded in our cultural imagination. We’re fascinated by how they start, what it is about their leaders that is so enigmatic, and whether, as it seems, they always end badly.
As Sarah Steel, host of the podcast Let’s Talk About Sects, writes in her book Do As I Say, “Cults prey upon vulnerabilities that are core to our species: our need for acceptance, to be part of a group, to connect, to feel safe. Cult leaders themselves manipulate, dominate and control because, sadly, those are also very human behaviors. If you know where to look, you’ll see cult-like behavior showing up in other parts of society too.”
Teen Vogue looks at seven of the most prominent cults that took hold in the U.S. over the past 60 years, from apocalyptic UFO groups like Heaven’s Gate to sex trafficking cults like NXIVM.
The Heaven’s Gate cult embraced aliens
Heaven’s Gate was the first well-known American cult to use the internet to recruit new members. The group also made much of its money by designing web pages.
Heaven’s Gate was founded by Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Lu Nettles, who went on to call themselves Bo and Peep. Applewhite preached that the end times were near. Members of Heaven's Gate spent months following a particularly extreme version of the “Master Cleanse” diet, drinking nothing except a mix of lemonade, cayenne pepper, and maple syrup.
The group believed its members could be beamed into the “Next Level” in their living bodies via an alien spacecraft. But after Nettles died of cancer in the mid-'80s, Applewhite changed his philosophy: To climb to the Next Level of existence, death might be necessary.
On March 26, 1997, the dead bodies of 39 cult members were found. They had timed their suicides to the passing of the Hale-Bopp comet, behind which they believed a spacecraft was traveling. The chief medical examiner for San Diego County said the suicides seemed to be a result of mixing drugs with vodka and suffocation with plastic bags over their heads. During the autopsies, authorities found that some male members had been castrated, though the castrations were not recent. A reporter who infiltrated the group said Applewhite believed castration would make platonic relationships easier and that the cult had strict rules barring sex.
In 2020, Vice reported that there are four remaining followers of Heaven’s Gate.
NXIVM recruited women into an abusive inner circle
NXIVM, led by Keith Raniere, ostensibly started in 1998 as a self-help organization. Throughout its existence, some 18,000 people participated in workshops run by the group, which framed itself as a means for ambitious people to find self-actualization, fulfillment, and happiness. But the reality of life inside the core inner group differed starkly from these rosy promises.
NXIVM included a secretive inner circle in which women were branded with Raniere’s initials and some were coerced into having sex with him. They were pushed into strict diets bordering on starvation and had to offer some sort of collateral, such as naked photos or a recording of disparaging remarks against loved ones, with the understanding that such collateral would be released if they told of its existence.
When a report of the branding of women was published in the New York Times in 2017, the Justice Department launched an investigation into NXIVM. The original investigation focused on whether Raniere forced women to have sex with him, but it eventually widened to include accusations of identity theft, extortion, forced labor, sex trafficking, money laundering, wire fraud, and obstruction of justice.
Raniere wasn’t the only one on trial. In 2019, former Smallville actor Allison Mack testified in court that she brought women into the fold under the guise of a mentorship program, but they were actually used as “slaves” and some were required to have sex with Raniere, who was called “Vanguard” within the organization.
After being convicted of racketeering, sex trafficking, and child pornography, among other crimes, Raniere was ultimately sentenced to 120 years in prison. The testimony of Lauren Salzman, who joined NXIVM after her mother cofounded the group, was critical in convicting Raniere. Salzman herself, as the highest-ranking member to take the stand against Raniere, avoided prison time and was sentenced instead to probation and community service. Mack pleaded guilty to racketeering and conspiracy charges, and is serving a three-year sentence.
The Manson Family murdered Hollywood power brokers
By the end of the summer of 1969, the Manson Family, led by now-infamous cult leader Charles Manson, had killed at least nine people (they were suspected of 35 murders total) and plunged the country into a state of terror that likely helped inspire the Satanic Panic of the '80s and ’90s.
In the months leading up to the summer murders, Manson held his followers in thrall at the Spahn Movie Ranch, where they lived communally; Manson traded room and board with the ranch owner for sexual favors from his female followers. A narrative took hold that the Manson Family's murder spree was motivated by Manson’s desire to start a race war, yet it appears the killings were also born in part from Manson’s rage at being rejected from the Hollywood stardom he sought.
Terry Melcher, a record producer, had at one point been trying to help Manson get a record deal, but after Manson’s increasingly erratic behavior, Melcher distanced himself. Melcher used to live at the house where Manson instructed his followers to kill everyone inside, resulting in five murders. At the time of those murders, Manson knew Melcher didn’t live there anymore, but Vox reported that Manson seemed to “have the house fixed in his head as a microcosm of Hollywood itself — everything he’d been denied.” Among the five people killed were pregnant Hollywood actor Sharon Tate and Folgers Coffee heiress Abigail Folgers. The next night, the Manson Family added two more victims to their list.
After a 1971 trial, Charles Manson was convicted on seven counts of first-degree murder for these killings. Though Manson wasn’t present on the night of the murders, he was considered to be the driving force behind them, which led to his conviction. He spent the rest of his life in prison, where he died in 2017 at age 83.
The Manson Family murders continue to be some of the most sensationalized murders in America, with blockbuster movies and books based on the summer of 1969 still topping charts 50 years later.
David Koresh’s Branch Davidians lost their lives in a standoff with the federal government
Within the walls of David Koresh’s Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, what Koresh said was law. He claimed that he was a messiah spoken to by God. According to Texas Monthly, he assured his followers that God was guiding him to have sex with young women. The publication also reported that celibacy was enforced among the men in the cult, “all earthly marriages” were annulled, and the women belonged to Koresh. Plus, Koresh told them, the apocalypse was coming. They must be prepared for Armageddon. As an offshoot of Seventh-Day Adventists, who hold that Jesus’s second coming is imminent, the Branch Davidians, a group founded decades before Koresh became a leader, were primed to believe in the end of the world.
A kind of end did come on February 28, 1993, when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) executed a warrant to search the Waco compound on suspicion of illegally stockpiling weapons. The raid resulted in a 51-day standoff, and the combination of gun violence and a fire left around 77 people dead.
It is still debated whether Branch Davidians or ATF agents started the fire that engulfed the compound. For years after the infamous Waco standoff, some members of the Branch Davidians continued to worship in a church built on the building's remains.
Children of God
The Children of God changed its names many times, and ultimately extended its reach far beyond the United States. But it was started as Teens for Christ in Huntington Beach, California in the late 1960s by a man named David Berg. Like many cults, it promoted an apocalyptic message, promoting the idea that Berg was God’s “endtime” messenger, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. It also promoted an extreme version of free love.
According to the BBC, Berg encouraged sex between members regardless of age or relationship as a way of getting closer to God — a rule that resulted in rampant child sexual abuse and incest.
Berg dispatched members throughout the world to function as missionaries and live communally, ultimately rebranding the organization as the Family International in 1978. The organization was enormously successful, at one point counting some 10,000 members around the world, according to Britannica. Celebrities including Joaquin Phoenix and Rose McGowan were born into the cult, according to Esquire.
Many former members, including writer Lauren Hough, have talked openly about their experience of abuse while growing up in The Family. Esquire reports that Berg was under investigation by both Interpol and the FBI by the time of his death in 1994.
The Peoples Temple church ended with a mass murder-suicide
Although Jim Jones's name later became synonymous with a mass murder-suicide that left 909 people dead, he was known in the 1950s as a civil rights leader. Jones, and the church he founded, the Peoples Temple, were politically active and socially progressive. The charismatic church leader seemed to be committed to a society free of racial segregation and poverty. (Lost in many accounts of Jones’s history is the fact that the majority of people who joined his church were Black Americans inspired by his sermons of racial equality.)
In August 1977, amid mounting accusations of financial fraud and physical abuse, Jones invited his congregants to move to what he promised would be utopia: Jonestown, a community of hundreds of dedicated followers in the jungle of Guyana. Once in Jonestown, Jones became increasingly erratic, partly due to to a steady diet of amphetamines and barbiturates. Food was scarce, rules were rigid, and mock suicide drills were enforced.
The situation turned even darker during a November 1978 fact-finding visit from California congressman Leo Ryan and a group of his aides and journalists. As the group attempted to depart Guyana for the U.S., gunmen from the Temple ambushed them on the airstrip, fatally shooting Ryan and four others. (Current California representative Jackie Speier, then legislative counsel to Ryan, suffered five gunshot wounds in the attack.) That same day, Jones and more than 900 of his followers ended their lives in a mass murder-suicide. Approximately 300 of those who died were believed to be children.
The congregants chose — or were forced — to consume a cyanide-laced drink; children were given the concoction through syringes. Jonestown was the origin of the phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid” and, until 9/11, represented the “largest number of American civilian casualties in a single non-natural event.” (Side note: The people at Jonestown didn’t drink Kool-Aid; it was actually Flavor Aid.)
The Rajneeshees tried to steal an election and poisoned their neighbors in rural Oregon
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was an Indian guru who brought thousands of disciples to form a commune near Antelope, Oregon. What started as a purported utopia of free love eventually descended into chaos, leading to the largest bioterrorism attack in United States history. As a guru, Rajneesh — who owned 93 Rolls Royces and said he was the world’s greatest lover – believed that sex was fun, materialism was good, and Jesus was a madman.
The town of Antelope, which had a population of under 100 people, was not pleased when the guru set up his commune, including an intricate farming system and airport, in its backyard. During the power struggle between the cult and the town, Rajneesh brought in 5,000 unhoused people to vote in local elections and sway the county’s power to his followers. State officials learned of the voter-fraud scheme and halted it in its tracks.
In retaliation, the Rajneeshees poisoned local restaurants ahead of the November 1984 elections. After ingesting salmonella sprayed on salad bars in local restaurants, 751 people got violently sick. In 1985, the FBI learned that the Rajneeshees were behind the attack, but by then Rajneesh’s second-in-command, Ma Anand Sheela, had fled to Switzerland. She was later extradited to the U.S. and sentenced to 20 years in prison for her role in the scheme, though she served only two and a half. It remains unclear whether Rajneesh himself was aware of the poisoning plot but he was not charged in connection with the attacks.
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