Episode 9 - Chasing the Comet, part 1 Artwork

Professional Weirdo Podcast

Where I research strange stories and tell them to you. Because, let’s face it, I’m gonna research this anyway and blurt it to someone, might as well be a willing audience. Some of these stories might get dark, morbid, murdery…. so listener discretion is advised.

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Professional Weirdo Podcast

Episode 9 - Chasing the Comet, part 1

September 04, 2025 • Season 1 • Episode 9

I didn't know what I was getting into when I started this episode. And that's what a lot of people in these stories probably thought, because we're talking about cults. Join me, won't you?

This episode contains mention of abuse, murder, suicide, and the sexual abuse of minors. Discretion is advised. If you are ever struggling and need help is available by calling 988 in the U.S. or visit this site for resources around the world: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/suicide/suicide-prevention-hotlines-resources-worldwide

Songs I recommend with today’s episode can be found on the Spotify playlist I made to accompany this podcast:

Sheep by Mt. Joy
I’ll Believe in Anything by Wolf Parade
Cult of Personality by Living Color
Superstition by Mr. Stevie Wonder

Sources for today's episode:

Sound mixing performed by Brother Jay from The Rule of Scary podcast - check that out if you’re a horror movie fan! And hey! Thank you for listening to my stories. Keep it weird out there.

To find song recommendations for this podcast, check out the Spotify Professional Weird playlist

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5jIkaamOZlCwtd2peUk9lF?si=0238d524a374492d

Email me at professionalweirdopodcast@gmail.com

Hello again. Welcome back to another episode of the professional weirdo podcast. Glad you’re here. I know it’s taken me longer to get this episode out than the 3 weeks schedule. The topic I picked for this one ended up being a lot to dig through and write up… let’s just say I didn’t realize what I was getting into when I started on this. Which is probably something said by several people in this episode’s stories. Because we’re talking about cults. There turned out to be so many interesting stories about cults - wacky stuff, scary stuff, shocking stuff, stuff I’m not sure I have adjectives for…. One of my goals for this podcast was to keep it a “snackable” size, so I’m making this a 2-parter. I’ll follow soon with the rest, but for now, here we go. And like I said, there’s no telling where this will take us. Join me, won’t you?

This is Episode 9 - Chasing the Comet, part 1

Welcome weirdos, to the Professional Weirdo podcast, where I research strange stories and tell them to you. Because, let’s face it, I’m gonna research this anyway and blurt it to someone, might as well be a willing audience. Some of these stories might get dark, morbid, murdery…. so listener discretion is advised.

A common theme for cult leaders is being guided. Maybe by a higher power, old religions or philosophies, or spirit guides. Listen, I myself have felt guided at times, and if it’s a spirit guide directing me, here’s what I can tell you about it: It likes Reese’s peanut butter cups. That’s when the vibrational currents from my spirit guide are the strongest. When it’s telling me to eat Reese’s peanut butter cups. Not much else though. I’m really not getting much guidance from any spirit guide beyond that, as far as I can tell. But definitely, for sure, I’m often guided to eat Reese’s peanut butter cups. And that’s our rating scale for this episode - 1 to 5 spirit guides. (No, not peanut butter cups).

A quick heads up for today’s episode - bad things happen in cults. There are heavy themes in these stories. We’ll start with the lighter stuff for this first part. But if the topics of murder, suicide, or sexual assault are not something you want to hear about right now, you might consider skipping the part 2.

Okay, spirit guides, lead the way.

Much like the yellow brick road, the path into a cult is carefully paved. Oh, sure, it starts innocently enough. The first stage is The Big Idea. It’s a proposed solution, something that eliminates people’s problems. Typically targeted at those who are struggling, alienated, looking for a sense of purpose, feeling like they’ve been dismissed and unrecognized. But not anymore. Because now, there’s The Big Idea. And it’s usually disguised in a coded language. People can ‘transcend’ or ‘elevate.’ Through their dedication they can ‘move to the next level.’ It’s group-specific language that bonds the people in the group, and leaves those on the outside in the dark.

Step 2 is Love-Bombing. Not just anyone gets to be included in the group. Only the special ones are invited. Only those who show promise can be included. Others are undeserving. The people in the group will be saved. The people not in the group will be left behind. They will suffer, because they aren’t special. Those in the group will finally, through their work and dedication, be blessed with happiness.

But first! Step 3, which is the promise of a New Life. Here’s where some pressure happens for members to commit to a change. Like signing up for a membership at the gym. Up until now, the big bad world has been interference for the anointed, taking from them. But now, things will be different. It’s here that a line is drawn - us vs them.

Step 4 is Growth. Now that a person is in and living this new life - it can only get better. This is the expansion phase. Just a little work, some sacrifices, to get the bigger rewards. Any outside ideas or individual thinking should be left behind, or else it will hold a person back from their full potential.

And now that a person might be riding on the high of their new life, their new group, their new promise of a special future, things are going to get a little harder at step 5. Rites of Passage. The old ways are over and that Includes jobs, friends, and family. Maybe even personality traits, names, worldly goods. It’s at this point that any previous support base is severed. Now a person is dependent on the new group.

Step 6 - Isolation. Information from the outside world is shut off. It doesn’t matter - likely the group is told it’s all lies anyway. The only truth is what the cult leader, or leaders, tell you. You can’t trust other forms of information, because it’s meant to distract you, fool you. There’s not need to be asking questions. All the information is given to you and anything else is a trap. Now, the paranoia is setting in. The only thing you can trust is the cult.

Step 7 - Hate Bonding. Over time, there might be cracks in the narrative that’s coming from the cult. Maybe the ascension isn’t happening as planned. Rather than allow the idea that the cult’s beliefs might be wrong, someone must be blamed for the disruption. The cult will need to manufacture an enemy to target - the outside world, a subset of people, the authorities, all of the above. The hate is another thing to bond the group.

Step 8 - Traitors. While hate can energize and motivate people, thankfully, hate can exhaust others. They don’t have the stomach for it, even when they’ve come this far. Extreme attitudes or actions from within the cult might have a few questioning what they are told. Or maybe in the climb for power, cult leaders start to turn on each other. To keep people in check, traitors are identified. They are to be exiled, or punished. The traitors are seen as agents from the outside, which can seem like confirmed evidence that the world is really working against them.

Now we’re at Step 9 - Witch Hunts. Again, it’s almost comforting to know that the cult model is not sustainable. Some people just can’t bear it out - the isolation, the hating bonding, turning on others in the group. The attempts to stamp out uprising escalates from identifying single traitors, to groups of traitors that might be working against the common goal. And the reaction to the traitors escalates as well. Punishments become more harsh. Perhaps they have to prove their faithfulness through tattling on or punishing others. And a person’s participation in the darker side of the group just embeds them more through shame. How can they return to the outside world and admit the part they’ve played?

Step 10 - Persecution Paranoia. Things are heating up. Maybe the cult has drawn the attention of the outside world. Maybe they’ve crossed some legal boundaries. The isolation and hate-bonding steps from before fuel the story that the evil outside world is descending upon the group, working against them. Fear galvanizes the group. And it’s usually here that violent plans and weapons start to come into the picture.

Step 11 - Attack. This can be toward other cult members who have started to question the actions of the cult and are maybe organizing escape. Or an attack at perceived outside threats.

Step 12 - Final Conflict. Because here’s where it self-destructs. We’ll get into the stories and see a variety of ways this might happen.

And before we jump into the stories, I want to describe another thing that kept coming to my mind as I read about these cults. It’s called Sunk Cost Fallacy. It’s probably impacted us all at some point on a smaller scale, but it’s certainly a major factor in why people continue to stick to a cult through all these steps. If you haven’t heard of it, sunk cost fallacy is a trick our mind plays on us when we’ve invested ourselves into something. It could be really simple, like gambling. I’ve put all this money in and lost, surely the big win is right around the corner. We have a very hard time coming to terms with the fact that we’ve maybe made the wrong decision, so we just keep going, with the hope that if we stick it out long enough, the evidence of it being a good decision will finally show up. And by calling it quits, we’re finalizing on our losses. It shows up in all kinds of ways, big and small. I for one have a hard time giving up on a bad book. I have shelves of books with potential. And books I’ve read and would happily reread. But instead I’m going to grudge-read my way to what I’m logically certain is going to be a horrendous and disappointing ending, with the silly hope that the author will clean up this mess in the end. One quote I read explains that the impact of loss feels worse than the prospect of gain, so we just get stuck. And here are some stories about people who have sunk literally everything, and just keep going.

Children of the Waning Star

Hot off the noise of TikTok is a new self-proclaimed cult called Children of the Waning Star. It began on July 11, 2025 when a woman named Gigi Jarvis (which sounds like a name I would make up to prank call friends) posted a video saying it was day 1 of her starting a cult. On day 4 a commenter suggested the name of the cult and she liked it. As the days went on, other comments indicated that people were hurting themselves as part of the cult, but it’s hard to tell how serious those claims are. It’s TikTok. Folks didn’t like that people were playing around with something that, as we’ll see in upcoming stories, can be deadly serious. Gigi Jarvis made another video proclaiming that they were “not a cult” and the whole thing is starting to sound like this star is waning. 2 out of 5 spirit guides.

Rajneesh Movement

I have to tell you about this next one, but if you are digging all this cult talk, truly, you should go check out the documentary called Wild Wild Country on Netflix for a deeper dive. There are interviews and news clips and former members telling the full story of the Rajneesh movement. This group started when Rajneesh, also known as Osho, started speaking publicly in India in 1958. His message touted free love, science, meditation, technology, and capitalism. He drew a following, which included wealthy members who provided financial backing. Osho also seemed to surround himself with motivated women to help organize and push his cause. Followers were known to adopt new names and give up their clothing to wear orange robes. As the group went international through meditation centers and group therapy sessions, they were met with different responses. The Soviet Union banned them. Their attempts to build a huge, international headquarters in India was repeatedly blocked. But they founded their largest community near a town called The Dalles in Oregon when in the early 1980s they purchased more than 64,000 acres that had once been the Big Muddy Ranch. They started building out the campus and moving members in, reaching a population of 2000. The size and plan for the property took locals by surprise. Soon tensions were growing between the rapidly growing community and the town. It started small and civil at first, through legal disputes, then got into some questionable actions on the cult’s part to rig local elections by bussing in unhoused people from local cities to vote in favor of members that were running for office. But as the wheels of change seemed to move too slowly, they escalated to bio-terrorism by moving through local restaurants and shops and contaminating salad products with salmonella. In the end 751 people got sick, with no fatalities. I know this will be a shock to you, but that tactic didn’t bring them the political power they had hoped. Instead it exposed them to investigation, which also led to the discovery that they had been wire-tapping and had planned to put poison in the water supply. That tipped the scales of justice in Oregon, with charges against Osho’s current secretary, who had been the mastermind behind these strategies. Osho was deported back to India and was able to continue the cult, despite the media attention it had gotten in Oregon. Osho died in 1990, but the movement continued to thrive. In 2000, the Osho International Foundation reported a revenue of between $15 and $45 million dollars from running stress management seminars for corporate customers like BMW and IBM. There are still several centers operating around the world today. 4 out of 5 spirit guides.

Love Has Won

Heads up - there’s 1 death in this story.

When you think of cult leader material, I’m gonna guess this next person isn’t what comes to mind. It’s a woman named Amy, born in Kansas in 1975 and later raised in Texas, getting straight A’s through school, singing in the school choir, and going on to have 3 kids and managing a McDonald’s. But that’s where we start. While it was said that Amy Carlson had strange ideas about things in her early adulthood, like talking about starships, the big step happened in the mid-2000’s when Amy’s interest in New Age philosophy motivated her to visit online forums related to the topic. On one of these forums - Lightworkers.org - another poster going by the name Amerith WhiteEagle told Amy she was a divine being. As confirmation of this, Amy sited paranormal experiences, including a voice that told her she would one day be President of the United States. Driven by what she felt was fate, Amy left her husband, kids, and extended family in 2007, joining WhiteEagle in Colorado to be leaders of a group called the “Galactic Federation of Light.” Within 2 years, they took their message online, posting their first Youtube video. Carlson was called “Mother” and WhiteEagle was called “Father God.” As it would turn out, “Father God” is not a permanent position. Amy left WhiteEagle 5 years later with one of her followers. Together they moved to various locations and extended their following through the internet, calling the group Love Has Won. In 2020 they moved to a rented property in Kauai in Hawaii where Amy started publicly claiming to be the Hawaiian volcano goddess Pele. There’s a lesson here - don’t move into the middle of a culture and try to leverage their beliefs to make yourself a figure of worship. They might not like that. In Amy’s case, the locals protested for multiple days around the rental property, lighting fires and chanting Hawaiian prayers, and throwing eggs and rocks at the house. The mayor of Kauai stepped in to negotiate, leading to the peaceful departure of the group, back to Colorado. They had only been there for 1 month.

So what did Love Has Won believe, besides Hawaiian volcano gods? It was a mash-up of Abrahamic religions, pop culture, and multiple conspiracy theories like 9/11 denial, Holocaust denial, QAnon, the Covid pandemic being an elaborate plan, and school shootings being fake, reptilians, and a mix of ancient Sumerian deities. It also had a heavy dose of New Age spirituality, including reincarnation. Amy and the group claimed Amy lived 534 times over her 19 billion year life. She had quite the resume of previous lives, including Cleopatra, Marilyn Monroe, Joan of Arc, Harriet Tubman, and Jesus, and in one of her many previous lives, Donald Trump had been her father. Amy also claimed to be the queen of the lost continent of Lemuria, a continent from a legend that told it had sunk into the Indian Ocean. According to Amy’s teachings she said Lemuria had a special technology that was stolen, and that’s why Atlantis sunk. She was able to save the special technology, but didn’t ascend yet because humanity wasn’t ready. But Amy’s group believed that the Lemurians now lived in Mount Shasta, California. If this is getting to be pretty confusing, don’t feel bad - maybe you’re just not good cult material. But take a deep breath, because there’s more. Followers explained that Amy found them in times of struggle due to various reasons, like addiction, illness, or trauma. It was believed they were stuck in a 3D illusion in this world, and Amy was leading them into the 5th dimension. They believed they were light workers, fueled by consuming colloidal silver. The thing to fear in this group’s world was an evil cabal that was controlling everything in order to keep the world running in a state of “low vibration.” Given that the Love Has Won group was known to make homophobic, racist and anti-semitic comments in their videos, and felt that HITLER had been a lightworker, I’m questioning if maybe the cabal might have been the good guys? Followers believed that Amy had birthed all creation and would be leading 144,000 people into the 5th dimension. The group had spirit guides called The Galatics who spoke to Amy. They were largely made up of celebrities like Whitney Houston, Steve Irwin, Carrie Fisher, David Bowie, Gene Wilder, Prince, Chris Farley and Rodney Dangerfield, among others. But the busiest of these Galactics was the archangel Zadkiel, an angel from Christian and Jewish faith. But the Love Has Won group knew this angel as another celebrity, known to the rest of us low vibration people as…. Robin Williams. Amy and her followers felt that they were in communication with the spirit of Robin Williams. Which is super icky since he’s not alive anymore to deny his affiliation with their ideas. You might have noticed that many of the celebrities that they claimed as their Galactic A-team (their words, not mine) have died. Convenient, because I would have loved to hear what Carrie Fisher had to say about this group using her name. In the videos the group would share a collage of celebrities, but also demonstrated that they didn’t know them very well, as one of them once referenced Elvis while pointing to a photo of Patrick Swayze. But back to Robin Williams. Amy would deliver orders to her group, saying the direction was from Robin Williams. At risk of swaying you all to this super solid line of thinking, I’m going to share some words from a member of the group who is quoted as saying “I have seen Robin Williams come through Mother God because she’s on alcohol.” Listeners, I don’t know how many of us have imbibed, but I’m betting even on our best, maybe worst, drinking binge, we have not received orders from Robin Williams. Especially since this person goes on to say that sometimes Mother let certain things through because the followers needed to hear it. Like when, through Amy, Robin Williams told this person that he had taken Mother God’s joy away by making her the world’s worst quesadilla. Okay, I’m starting to feel like maybe Robin would at least laugh at that part.

Amy’s health was declining. She’s announced to followers that she had cancer, but no worries, she had the cure for that, as well as Lyme’s Disease and other ailments. In videos she appeared emaciated and severely discolored. Consuming large amounts of colloidal silver can cause a blue-grey color to the skin. In April 2021 the group was staying in an RV park in Mount Shasta, I guess to be close to the Lemurians? But they had been asked to leave. According to the group Amy directed them to Ashland, Oregon. It was about this time that she had lost all motor control. She’d asked to go to a hospital, but given all her previous instruction to the cult about her higher purpose of ascending - taking all the world’s pain with her - the members refused. And shortly after that, she died. Shockingly, the Galactics didn’t come to get her. One of the members said he heard a “calling” to move the group and her body again. I’m guessing the “calling” might have been in the form of hotel staff asking if they needed towels, or when they planned to check out? They went back to Colorado into what they felt was their “mission house” to await divine intervention, as Mother had not given them specific directions on this part. So their plan was to wait with her at the mission house. According to the man who owned the property, while he HAD been involved with the cult, he had not heard from Amy in months, wasn’t home when they moved back in, and hadn’t fully given permission for them to do so. When he returned to his house he alerted the police, who went to the property. They were told that mother was “in rest” and found Amy’s mummified corpse within a type of shrine. She was in a green sleeping bag wrapped in twinkle lights. Her face was covered in foundation and blush. While some reports just said that her face was “eyeless,” the autopsy found they had not been removed, they had just been quick to decompose while the rest of her was mummifying. Special multi-colored glitter eyeshadow had been applied to where her eyes had been. She wore a tie-dye fleece shawl, as well as a faux fur scarf around her neck and two pairs of fluffy socks. A headband shaped like a crown was on her head. She weighed 75 pounds and was 45 years old. It was suspected that she had been dead for a few weeks. Her cause of death was from multiple factors, including alcohol abuse, anorexia, and chronic colloidal silver ingestion. There were no signs of cancer. Several members of the group faced a number of charges, including child abuse because yes, unfortunately, there had been children in the house with the corpse. As for the man who owned the house and had turned them in, he received no charges. Members of the cult claim he also cleaned out the $330,000 in the cult’s bank account and cut off contact with them. The group did post on their Facebook page that Mother had ascended. It had been claimed that she would take the pain of the world with her, but I gotta say, my hip still gives me trouble if I don’t practice good ergonomics while at the computer. While the original group website has been taken down, a faction of the group, now called 5D Full Disclosure, lives on. Yes, I have gone to their website. It has a page called “About Mom.” It tells her story in her own words, and let me read you an excerpt (I’m going to attempt to read this as the punctuation dictates):

“2 months after my son was born, I was laying him down for a nap and Archangel Michael appeared over his crib he said “It’s time” and then disappeared. So I went outside at that moment and said to love, “I don’t know what you want me to do, I have no clue but whatever it is, I completely surrender.” As I said this all the sudden the sun to my left magnetized to my heart, and then a huge river appeared out of my third eye. So I jumped into the River. This was the beginning of bringing the oneness energies or balanced harmonics back into Planet Earth =Heart. 2 days later I began receiving visions. My first vision was Adam and Eve making love“ OKAY, that’s enough of that. She goes on to say the angels tell her she’s the mother of all mothers. Which I question, since she left her 2 month old sleeping in the house alone to go outside and jump into her river vision? If you are interested in diving further down this rabbit hole, there’s a documentary on HBO Max you can check out.

While I can appreciate some twinkle lights, I’m giving this 1 out of 5 spirt guides for besmirching the names of Robin Williams, Steve Irwin, David Bowie, Carrie Fischer, and Gene Wilder - how DARE you?!

The Yellow Deli

The Yellow Deli is an international chain restaurant that first opened in Chattanooga, Tennessee in 1973. They specialize in steamed deli sandwiches with bread made in-house and people recommend their Reuben. Their website has information about their locations and menu items and when you click on the “About Us” information it opens with information about their opening at the original location in TN, driven by the need to provide people with good food and connection, a place to sit and talk and meet your neighbors. And then it mentions a verse in the Bible talking about being filled with the Holy Spirit that can lead your life to being filled with a certain kind of fruit. Okay…. A little out there for an About page, but nothing too spooky so far…. Scrolling down it talks more about serving the fruit of the spirit and how the Yellow Deli was the Father’s gift to them. And says that the restaurant chain supports their community lifestyle. “Community lifestyle” is in quotes? And it goes on to explain that they actually live and work together. Scrolling down there’s more mention of Biblical verses, apostles, nothing about their bread recipes or where they source their meats from…. But eventually they’re talking about the last days described in the Bible and how they hope that things will be restored to the Way (capital W). And with that, they start talking about their sandwiches and invite you to come on it and try one! There’s a sentence tucked in there that says “if you want to discuss the deeper issues of life, we would also be happy to answer any questions you may have. Just ask!” And further down they write that their life is like “yellow for our souls” and they wrap up by saying “Let there be Yellow!” I can say with full confidence, I’ve never been so disturbed by an about page on a sandwich chain’s website… If you scroll to the bottom where there’s usually a batch of links within the site, there’s a link for “Disciple Sign In.” Okay, what is happening here? This feels like there’s more to this and that’s because, there is. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Yellow Deli is owned by a group called the Twelve Tribes. It’s classified as a Christian fundamentalist cult. It also started in Chattanooga, TN, founded by a former carnival barker. Their outward messaging has themes of love, but through investigations it’s been found that their beliefs are pretty extreme and they seem to have a lot of behavior control over their members. Uh, like making everyone work at a deli? That’s no shade on a good sandwich, but I just feel better knowing that the goods and services I purchase are coming from people who have free will. Anyway, to join the Twelve Tribes you have to give up all your worldly goods. Outside media is tightly regulated. And through investigations by the FBI it’s been found that they aren’t allowed to spend time with people outside the group. New members even go through training to get up to speed on how to talk to outsiders, which encourages them to avoid speaking to police. While questions are typically frowned upon in a cult, let’s ask this one together. … Is there a reason why they don’t want their members talking to the police? Could be from allegations of child abuse. Here’s where you might want to hit the 30 second jump to skip a quick description and quote from a member. One instance of child abuse was confirmed through video footage of children being caned. the children were removed and placed in foster homes. One former member is quoted as saying, “If you are not beating your kids, you are going to be in big trouble.” Another reason why police might want to chat with them is that their employees are not paid. They are working for the yellow, not the green. But speaking of a different kind of green, they ended up on the FBI’s radar another time because they were baking hallucinogenic plants and LSD into what they called ‘ritual’ bread and serving it to their members, unbeknownst to them. And this is despite their hard line again the use of drugs or alcohol. Playing with the typical cult bingo card, they have also caught heat for racism, homophobia, misogyny, sexual abuse, and… this is a new one! A violation of child labor laws in 2018 in New York related to children working in their cosmetics factory?

I count 32 locations around the world, so… be careful where you get your Reubens. I give this 1 out of 5 spirit guides, because this sandwich tastes of oppression.

The True Russian Orthodox Church

I don’t know how this next one worked. I’m not getting enough of those early “good vibe” steps happening to sustain the hardship that’s required later, but I’m also someone who is daily grateful for how we can turn a handle in our house and get clean water - and to the temperature of our liking no less! So I can’t figure out what could motivate the group to do what they did, but a heads-up, it does result in some death.

The True Russian Orthodox Church started when a group of followers of the Russian Orthodox Church didn’t think it was orthodox enough. So they put “True” in front of the name and added some restrictions. No eating processed food. No watching television. No handling money. No bar codes. No identification numbers or passports or anything like that. They felt that passports featured static imagery. I do sort of see a correlation between airports and hell. But once you’ve restricted yourself from handling money or eating peanut butter cups, what’s left to do? For them, go into a cave and await the end of the world, which their leaders Pyotr Kuznetsov told them would happen in May 2008. So in November of 2007, between 29 and 35 members went into a cave in Russia and threatened that if anyone tried to get them out, they’d blow the cave up. But the leader wasn’t there because he had been placed under arrest. And time went on. For 6 months the followers were in the cave. For 6 months members of the community, police, and the media waited for them to come out. Winter passed. Finally in March of 2008 it was reported that 7 women had come out and been treated by emergency workers. Three days passed and another 14 people came out because part of the cave had collapsed due to melting snow. A month later their leader attempted suicide and was taken to a hospital and later a psychiatric ward.

In May 2008, the world didn’t end. The live action Speed Racer movie was released. Maybe that’s what they were worried about. And the last nine members left the cave, due to the toxic fumes from the bodies of 2 members of their group who had died earlier. That was May 16. The authorities removed the bodies and within 5 days blew up the cave. I understand that. They said it was out of safety concerns but I would have approved that just for the sake of being tired of all the cave drama. 5 out of 5 spirit guides.

We’re in the thick of it now, so expect murder, suicide, the sexual abuse of children, blowing stuff up, and matching outfits. If any of that horrifies you, you may want to stop here.

The Remnant Fellowship

Two things that do NOT go together like peanut butter and chocolate? Strict Christianity and extreme dieting programs. But that’s what came together in Gwen Shamblin Lara, born in Memphis Tennessee in 1955. She was raised Church of God and studied dietetics and nutrition in college and used that background to create a faith-based weight-loss program in 1986 called Weigh Down Workshop. According to her, your genetic background or behaviors weren’t the only thing that might be making you overweight - you might need to pray more. No surprise that her program didn’t align with the American Dietetic Association’s guidelines at the time (to be honest, I don’t know what those guidelines were, but this is happening in the 80’s, when what was basically speed was marketed and sold over the counter to women for weight loss, so it’s all likely sketchy). But her program took off. It was introduced across churches, malls, hosted in homes, and held summer conventions. Gwen wrote a book that sold 1.2 million copies. Spoiler alert - cut your food in half and instead of wanting food, just love God instead. It’s just. That. Easy. Money was pouring in and when asked about where it was going, Gwen was a little shifty. She was living in a mansion and driving luxury vehicles. But she had said it was between her and God to know that. (I wonder what the IRS thought of that statement). She also claimed that half went to taxes and the other went back into the programs. I think it went under her hair. Because you cannot believe how high it was. You really can’t. I’ll put a photo on Instagram, but even if you don’t want to get on social media, you gotta google it. It’s amazing.

Anyway, it was around this time that she opened the Remnant Fellowship Church (because why not go tax free, babeeeee?). Wondering where the cult status comes in? We’re not very far in those steps - we’ve got language, and love-bombing, and rites of passage and new life - where’s the hate and isolation and “outsider” mentality? Right now it just seems she’s using Christianity to sell her weight loss program and as a tax shelter. Then Gwen sent an email. Gwen, drunk on power and maybe a little dizzy from the hairspray, announced in her email to her followers that the Trinity was not biblical. That got a reaction. Her next book was dropped, many of her staff left, she was removed from many Christian organizations.

It didn’t stop her. Gwen continued to push and claimed all those other churches were frauds and HER church was the one true church. And also therefore to give any money to her church only. Also included in her churches doctrine were some extreme teachings regarding the discipline of children. If you don’t want to hear about what that resulted in, give it a 30 second skip ahead right about … now. When followers Joseph and Sonya Smith’s locked their 8-year old son in a wicker box as punishment and so they could watch an online service conducted by the Remnant Fellowship, they returned to find him dying. Medical examiners didn’t just find evidence of immediate abuse that killed him, but also of chronic abuse from the extreme corporal punishment he endured at the hands of his parents. And his death raised suspicions around the death of his sibling, who had died 11 weeks before him, although that child’s death had been suspected to be from pneumonia or SIDS. Gwen’s church backed the parents, advocating for them on the website and paying for their legal defense. Despite this, they were convicted of child abuse and murder. And because of the church’s involvement, they were raided and investigated. No charges were filed.

Gwen’s climb in cult status came to an abrupt end when the Cessna Citation private jet that her husband was piloted crashed into Percy Priest Lake shortly after take-off in May of 2021, killing all aboard. It was determined the crash was due to the pilot’s “loss of airplane control during climb due to spatial disorientation.” And here’s a weird thing - in her will she left no money to the church. Huh. I’m giving this 4/5 spirit guides because this is a great excuse for me to eat Reese’s peanut butter cups as an act of protest. Because of the weigh loss program? You get it? Okay, it’s a stretch, but my spirit guide, Cap’n Crunch, is telling me it’s the right thing to do.

This is about half way into my written episode, according to a character count, so we’ll close here for Part 1. Part 2 will be coming soon. You know all the wrap up, right? Follow me on Instagram, tell your friends about the podcast, check out some tunes on my Spotify playlist for this podcast, and more than anything, as always, thanks for listening. Keep it weird out there!