Cult Following: The Extreme Sects That Capture Our Imaginations-and Take Over Our Lives

by J. W. Ocker

Overview

“A must-read for those with a taste for cult narratives.”—Publishers Weekly

From the author of Cursed Objects and The United States of Cryptids, an eye-popping compendium of the 30 most infamous, audacious, and dangerous cults in history

Have you ever wondered how ordinary people end up enmeshed in extreme cults? Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about history’s most notorious cults—and the psychology of the people who join them—is packed into this accessible, engaging volume. Walk in the footsteps of those who were lured into such sinister groups as:

• Branch Davidians: This cult was waiting out the apocalypse when the FBI infamously raided their compound in Waco, Texas.

• Los Narcosatánicos: This group of drug traffickers in 1980s Mexico committed human sacrifice and believed their leader had magic powers.

• Breatharianism: Breatharians believe that humans can live on air alone, and their founder claimed to have gone without food for seventeen years.

• NXIVM: This twenty-first-century cult attracted Hollywood actresses and engaged in sex trafficking, forced labor, and racketeering under the guise of personal development seminars.
• Heaven’s Gate: The Heaven’s Gate UFO cult ended in the suicide of thirty-nine members who believed they would ascent to a spaceship after death.

In this fascinating collection, weird history expert J. W. Ocker sheds light on the terrifying attraction of cults, demonstrating the elasticity of belief, the desperateness of belonging, and the tragedy of trust.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781683694120
Publisher:	Quirk Publishing
Publication date:	09/10/2024
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	55,055
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

J. W. (Jason) Ocker is an Edgar Award winning travel writer, horror novelist, and blogger. His previous nonfiction books include Poe-Land,The New England Grimpendium and The New York Grimpendium, A Season with the Witch, the New York Times-reviewed Cursed Objects, and The United States of Cryptids. He is the creator of the blog and podcast OTIS: Odd Things I've Seen (oddthingsiveseen.com).

Read an Excerpt

Cult is a scary word. Like terrorist. Or leprosy. Sharknado. Even people in cults don’t like the word cult. Dictionary definitions do little to encapsulate the fear and loathing the word inspires. Merriam-Webster simply describes a cult as “a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious.” The Oxford English Dictionary gets us a little closer to the creepy connotation with “a relatively small group of people having (esp. religious) beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister, or as exercising excessive control over members.”
Noted psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, in the 1991 paper “Cult Formation,” goes deeper. To paraphrase, the three elements of his definition are:
 
1. A charismatic leader who often becomes an object of worship
2. A process of indoctrination
3. A mechanism of exploitation, whether that be financial, sexual, or otherwise
 
Now things are getting scary. But it gets even worse.
Cults often seem to end badly—whether in mass suicide, mass murder, or mere public embarrassment. Such as Heaven’s Gate members dead in their bunks, stomachs full of phenobarbital and applesauce. Or Chen Tao in their white clothes and cowboy hats despondently leaving their suburban Texas neighborhood when UFOs didn’t arrive on the day their leader promised. Or Game of Thrones fans turning off their TVs, gobsmacked at how eight years of investment and dedication were rewarded with anticlimax. And there’s always the good rule of thumb that if a group’s leader wound up dead or in jail, the group was probably a cult.
Despite these multiple definitions, and despite the stranglehold cults have on the public imagination, it’s surprisingly difficult to define a cult, or even to recognize one. For example, there’s a thin, blurry line between a religion and a cult. Lifton’s definition can easily apply to any religion—but the imperceptible delineation between a cult and a religion might just be its level of success. Religions are big. Mainstream. And as for ending badly, religions are large and influential enough to absorb or withstand crimes, scandals, and tragedies within their structures and continue on, ties straightened, collars starched, and halos burnished, in a way that smaller sects cannot.
To complicate the definition even further, cults can form around more than just religious ideas and goals—from the scientific to the political to the commercial. The Remnant Fellowship Church was based on dieting, for goodness’ sake. And, of course, we’ve expanded the definition even further with the term cult following, which we use to describe obsession and fanaticism about pop culture.
But what if I were to tell you that, despite all the fear and strangeness and danger that cults can bring up, joining a cult is one of the most human things a person can do?
We all want to belong to something greater than ourselves. To be accepted by like-minded people. We all want to believe that our ideas about the world are the ultimate truth of the universe. Cults are that straightforward: purpose, community, and understanding how the world works. Who doesn’t want all those things?
And we are all followers. Even the most egotistical alpha out there follows something or someone. We follow parents and bosses, experts and mentors, cultural norms, laws of the land, and scientific consensus. We follow market trends and fashion trends and social media trends. We are programmed to follow.
Still, nobody actually joins a cult. At least not consciously. According to the cult expert Dr. Steven Hassan as quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald, “People join communities, not cults.” And cults can offer a legitimate sense of community and all the benefits that come with it—friendship, dedication to a cause, stability, shelter. At least at first. The grisly end that many cult members meet with is often the final step in a years-long indoctrination process of members that begins with a lengthy honeymoon period, devolves into increased isolation and control, and culminates in tragedy only once every other escape route is blocked off. Some people never realize that they’ve joined a cult. Some realize it and defect from the group, while others realize it too late. Often, as in many relationships and commitments, followers put up with the bad because there is enough good present in the situation, or keep going because the sunk cost fallacy has convinced them they’re in too deep and payoff is just around the corner.
Cult members are often unfairly derided as naïve, brainwashed followers when in fact, the research shows this couldn’t be further from the truth. (And it’s worth noting here that the concept of brainwashing is not supported by medical or psychological evidence—see page 236 for more.) Research from religious scholar Lorne L. Dawson’s book The Sociology of New Religious Movements shows that the average cult follower is middle to upper class, highly educated, intelligent, ambitious, curious, and idealistic. I’m willing to bet that description fits many of the readers of this book.
            Anyone can be easily tricked by a person or group they’ve come to trust. Those same human longings and needs to connect with others and to belong to a group also make us extremely susceptible—especially during the most vulnerable times of our lives—to being taken advantage of by the unscrupulous and deluded. And here’s where cults really get scary: cult leaders. Cults wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the people who start them.
Joining a cult and starting a cult are two different impulses. One is an attempt to find acceptance and purpose, the other an attempt to control and exploit. But the most effective cult leaders are more than power hungry, egotistical, and charismatic (although they definitely need to be those things). They also need to have some new—or at least new-seeming—and often seriously strange ideas about life.
Within these pages, we will look at thirty of the most fascinating cults in history, from cults that believe extraterrestrials control our destiny, to cults that believe our feet hold the secrets of our future, to cults that believe eating is unnecessary.
And that’s not just because the stranger the cult, the more interesting its story—although that’s certainly part of it. More important, the stranger the cult, the more we learn about the elasticity of belief. About the desperateness of belonging. The tragedy of trust. And the vulnerability (and weirdness) of being human.
The cults in this book are organized not by what they believe in (e.g., UFO cults or doomsday cults), but by what their adherents sought by being part of the group: truth, protection, purpose, salvation, betterment. The things we all seek. Because that’s how you join a cult: by being human, and by searching for those things we all need and desire.
And that’s probably the scariest thing about cults: not the damage they are capable of, but how relatable their members’ search for meaning is, and how slippery the slope is to joining one.

Editorial Reviews

07/08/2024

“Joining a cult is one of the most human things a person can do,” according to this lively survey. In 30 short, easily digestible chapters, travel writer Ocker (Cursed Objects) emphasizes that “nobody actually joins a cult.” Instead, they join what feels to them like a “community,” making the hallmark of a cult—its slowly building isolation and control—difficult for adherents to detect. He groups his chapters in sections classifying each cult by the human needs they fulfilled for members. These include “protection” (like that offered to the runaway youths of the Manson Family) and “purpose” (such as that promised by Japan’s Aum Shinrikyo cult—whose followers perpetrated the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attacks—which offered burned-out young professionals a sense of spiritual well-being that was later channeled into a desire to bring about the end of the society that had overworked them and repressed them spiritually). Punchily written (“Always be suspicious when an organization rebrands” is one of Ocker’s quippy but also salient pieces of advice), this survey is nevertheless quite rigorous, going surprisingly in-depth and avoiding prurient rubbernecking. Ocker provides lots of fascinating historical detail, like how the idea of “cognitive dissonance” was first named in the 1950s by sociologists studying the Seekers, the first UFO cult. It’s a must-read for those with a taste for cult narratives. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

A must-read for those with a taste for cult narratives.”—Publishers Weekly

Praise for The United States of Cryptids
“A deliciously nerdy chronicle that celebrates thinking about life beyond.”—Vice

“Thoughtful and well-researched...a worthy addition to any cryptid enthusiast’s library.”—AIPT Comics

“[Ocker's] breezy storytelling talents make for enjoyable reading.”—Booklist

“Essential reading for anyone with an interest in unexplained mysteries, folklore, mythology, and the supernatural. An inherently fascinating, impressively informative, truly exceptional, and unreservedly recommended addition to community and academic library Cryptid collections.”—Midwest Book Review

“I love folklore, so naturally, I also love cryptids, since they're basically the scary story versions of modern folklore. Which is precisely what I enjoyed about The United States of Cryptids.”—BoingBoing

Praise for Cursed Objects
“This book is so fun that I couldn't put it down. It reminded me that life is short, death is nigh and a little humor can help us seize the day just as well as a memento mori.”—The New York Times

“A visual feast of a book...this eye-catching miscellany is perfect for anyone who wants a treasure chest of weird trivia to peruse.”—Bustle

“Well researched....The entry about the Black Aggie statue in Druid Ridge Cemetery in Pikesville, Maryland, is especially chilling….The only question that remains is, who is courageous enough to brave the myriad scary (and true) stories within?”—Memphis Flyer

“I loved J. W. Ocker's Cursed Objects! This cabinet of cursed curiosities is insanely entertaining and dangerously informative, but be forewarned: you may be cursed with reading it late into the night once you open it.”—Lisa Morton, author of Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances and Ghosts: A Haunted History

“A deliciously scary and entertaining look into the spooky stuff of nightmares. Through rich histories, adorably macabre illustrations, and a modicum of hilarity, this book will entrance readers until the last page—if you survive that long!”—Lydia Kang, author of Quackery

From the Publisher