Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 485 - The Family: Australia's Most Notorious Cult

Episode Date: December 15, 2025

In the 1960s and ’70s, yoga teacher–turned–self-proclaimed messiah Anne Hamilton-Byrne built one of Australia’s most shocking cults—an LSD-fueled blend of New Age mysticism, stolen children, and her own delusions of divine destiny. With doctors, psychiatrists, and academics convinced she was the Second Coming of Christ, Anne created The Family, a secretive compound where kids endured years of isolation and abuse. Be VERY thankful you’re not in this CULT! CULT! CULT!To help Cody, go to: https://halodentalnetwork.org/nominate/#nominateYou'll need to add the following info: Name: Cody Allen  City:  Bridgeport  State: Pennsylvania  DOB: 02/02/1989 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the early morning hours of Friday, August 14th, 1987, police raided a sprawling compound, surrounded by barbed wire and hidden deep in bushland, located near the Lake Resort community of Eildon in Victoria, Australia, roughly a two-hour drive north of Melbourne. Children were taken or rather rescued from their childhood home, taken from the adults they had been raised to believe were their parents. What happened to those children was devastating. Their lifetime of trauma literally began at birth for many of them. where within seconds they were snatched from their biological mothers, then illegally transferred into the care of people

whose perception of reality, justice, and ethics had been wildly distorted by a strange mashup of LSD, yoga, and blind devotion to a manipulative, delusional narcissist. Anne Hamilton Byrne. A woman, a small gaggle of followers that included several medical doctors and psychiatrists, lawyers, nurses, and academics, truly believe what's the second coming of Jesus Christ,

sent back to earth to prepare the world for doomsday. Why was Anne claiming this? Did her family history of schizophrenia have anything to do with it? Did she truly believe she was Christ? Had the psychedelic soaked culture of the 1960s and a bunch of newly invoked new age teachings distorted her worldview to the point where she actually thought that was possible? Or was she a charismatic opportunist,

a cruel psychopath who knew exactly what she was doing all along, destroying families and hurting children to fulfill her selfish desires for wealth and some warped notion of what a perfect family should look like. Today we'll uncover how Anne built her cult, one that has been described by many over the years as the most notorious cult in Australian history. Out of teaching yoga, targeting academics and psychiatrists to be her first followers, creating rituals aided by massive amounts of acid, fucking a random gardener to gather intel on her first big recruit and so much more in today's happy holidays be glad you're not

in this cult cult cult edition of time suck this is michael mcdonald and you're listening to time suck you're listening to time suck happy monday welcome or welcome back to the cold of the curious, let's get weird, you fucking weirdo. I'm Dan Cummins, Lord Suckington, King of Otter Island. A much smaller version of Beaver Island that a lot of people haven't heard about, don't even worry about her to look it up. Royal fanfare trumpet aficionado

and you are listening to Time Suck. Hail Nimrod, Hail Lucifina, praise be to good boy, Bojangles, and glory be to our resident songbird. I know we haven't heard him sing for a while, but he's still around, Triple M. I have just one wonderful announcement, and then we will get into an episode

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We actually had a last-minute large donation coming that allowed us to help a family that really stood out, a single dad who's a veteran, three kids, the mom sadly died by suicide, and now they're going to have, you know, a much better holiday than the otherwise would have. Hail Nimrod for helping meet sacks who are dealing with a lot of pain and stress this time of year. Big thanks to St. Joan, my mother-in-law, who cries every time she talks to me about working on this project for all of her wonderful efforts to coordinate with the parents and ensure that the kids

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and now it is half past Colt o'clock we're fucking late and I need to jump into another wild story right now Anne Hamilton Byrne, I was born Evelyn Grace Victoria Edwards. A poor child raised mainly in an Australian orphanage who many years later transformed herself physically, psychologically, and spiritually, and to Anne, a multi-millionaire Messiah with hundreds of rich, successful, and well-connected people under her spell. Seemingly intelligent people who became putty in her plotting conniving connive.

hands ready and willing to be molded into something new into whatever Anne wanted them to be. We're going to cover her life from the very beginning today in the timeline, starting with years of childhood trauma followed by better days as a yoga instructor. And then we'll examine how one British author in particular and professor became seduced, manipulated, played like a chess piece, like a fiddle to aid Anne Hamilton Burn in creating one of the most infamous cults, if not the most infamous cult in Australian history. A cult that quickly evolved from a drug-fueled meditation group of sorts into a big grift that made and millions and millions, tens of millions of dollars, enough to buy wonderful

properties all around the world, multiple countries, a cult which despite so many warning signs, member escapes, media interest, evaded true detection and criminal investigation for decades. We'll dive into the dark and depraved ways and acquired children, dozens of them, and then raise them under strict abusive conditions to carry out her spiritual teachings, you know, once most of the world was destroyed in an apocalypse. We'll cover the abuse they endured and the LSD they were dosed with. Dark and fascinating stuff today, so on brand. Let's hop into our timeline and check it all out.

Shrap on those boots, soldier. We're marching down a time-suck timeline. On December 30th, 1921, a massive earthquake cracked open the ground, creating a ravine so deep in a little Australian town that it connected the fourth level of hell with the earth's surface for the first time in 666 centuries. Before local authorities were able to close the ravine and literal portal to the underworld, a creepy little blonde baby demon girl crawled out. And she would be taken and adopted by two fucking. idiots foolish enough to think they could somehow shower enough love and affection on this demon to turn it into a decent human being and Bielzebub laughed at their arrogance, sharpen his pitchfork and wait for her to grow up and become powerful enough to bring enough evil into the world

to open the portal back up wide enough for all of hell to follow him up to the earth's surface where he would reign as king. Or on that same December day, that definitely did not happen. We would remember that. And instead, something much less dramatic did. Anne Hamilton was born, Grace Victoria Edwards in sale. We don't have census data to know what sales population was back in the 1920s, but based on how much smaller the population of the entire state of Victoria was back then, we can estimate it was likely no more than a thousand billion people, right? I feel confident about that.

Or less than 2,000 people, or maybe much less than that. It was described in one source as a small rural town with one main street, a collection of farmland surrounding a tiny commercial district. It's an old town by Australian standards, founded in 1844, less than a decade after Melbourne, sits just a few miles off of the coast, due east, 135 miles or 216 kilometers from downtown Melbourne. The town first began to really grow in the early 1850s, thanks to a nearby gold rush. A railway line followed and further help with growth. A building boom took place between 1855 and 1865, whereas, many of the town's now historic brick buildings were built.

It looks super cute. It feels pretty touristy based on some walk-through videos, some drone videos I watched on YouTube. It has an adorable little tree-line main street with some old brick buildings, some slightly more recent art deco buildings, center parking, lots of quaint shops, and there's a bunch of wildlife around due to it sitting on a marshy floodplain. The Thompson River and Flooding Creek both skirt the town,

as to a number of lakes and the La Trobe River, also nearly touches the town, all kinds of water. A great place by the looks of it to fish, enjoy water sports, and small town life. And I bet for a lot of kids, pretty idyllic place to grow up. But not for Evelyn. And I will continue to primarily refer to Anne as Evelyn for now until Anne's new identity emerges. Evelyn was the daughter of Ralph Vernon Edwards, an Australian man who, like many men at the time, had gone to Europe to fight in World War I. upon completion of his duty

Ralph married Florence, an Englishwoman from Wandsworth in South London, and the two would not experience marital bliss. The not-so-happy couple quickly settled in sale, where Ralph worked as an engine cleaner on the railways when he did work. There, despite not really seeming to care for one another,

they did have seven kids, and Evelyn was the eldest, and she would quickly take on the role of de facto mother to her younger siblings. Neither Ralph nor Florence were capable or willing to care for their brood with any consistency. Ralph frequently ditched his wife and kids for long sense of time doing God knows what, probably drinking, sleeping around, enjoying a taste of the single childless life.

And you know what? Who can blame him? Right? He figured it out. He figured it out. He got a great life hack. He figured out the cheat code, how to have his cake and eat it to, and who can be mad at that? He got to taste the comfort of having a wife and kids, but also could leave them,

whatever he wanted, to actually have fun. He won. He fucking won life. No, he was a real shithead. On at least one occasion, he left to avoid debt collectors. Just left his wife to deal with him while she also had to raise their kids while having no money to raise those kids. Talk about shoveling some extra stress on your spouse. Eventually, he disappeared altogether and was classified as whereabouts unknown.

Finally went out to grab some milk and smokes. Just thought some version of, you know what? Fuck my family. They're dragging me down. I'm sick of it. I'm out. How many times have we seen that come up? in the backstories of both cult leaders and serial killers.

Because her mother, Florence, could also not care for her or her siblings, for a different reason. After her dad, Ralph bounced, Evelyn and her siblings ended up in an orphanage. So why wasn't mom able to effectively raise the kids either? Well, tragically, she was extremely mentally ill. Florence frequently heard voices, saw things that were not there. She thought for a while that she was a medium, who could communicate with the dead at will. At some point in the 1920s, likely listing to the voices, she kept hearing and following their advice, she set her hair on fire on a public street and sale.

Eventually, Florence would be officially diagnosed with schizophrenia, a condition marked by hallucinations, a distorted sense of reality. While experts still don't know the exact nature of schizophrenia, its exact causes, something to keep in mind in regards to the formation of the family cult is that it tends to run in families, meaning Florence's children, obviously including Evelyn, significantly more at risk of developing schizophrenia than people without the affliction in the family tree. Numerous twin and family studies in recent years

have indicated that genetic factors can explain 60 to 80% of the risk for schizophrenia. According to two recent studies, one conducted in 2015, the other in 2019, environmental influences such as complications during childbirth, early life adversities, growing up in early, urban settings and migrant status are thought to interact with genetic predispositions to affect the likelihood of developing schizophrenia. And Evelyn would definitely experience, you know, plenty of early life adversities. Her mother Florence would spend over half her life committed to various

asylums. And as she bounced from mental institution to mental institution, her unattended children were left to fend for themselves for long periods of time, scraping together what little money they had to feed themselves when they weren't taken from her care entirely. off and on, starting at the age of just five, Evelyn and presumably her siblings lived at Old Brighton Orphanage, a place that would be demolished in 1963 while attending Sunshine Primary School in the working-class suburbs of Melbourne. We don't know how bad her childhood was in this place.

Later on, Evelyn, as Anne, would rewrite the real painful version of her childhood with an invented and fanciful one. In the later retelling, Anne's education was upgraded from Sunshine Primary, a state-run school to Furbank Girls Grammar, a private Anglican Day in boarding school, and her ramshackle childhood home became, quote, a grand mansion with massive grounds. Her unstable British mother was transformed

into a fiery red-haired Scottish woman descended from French royalty, and her absent law-of-aiding father became an inventor and a close friend of legendary war hero T.E. Lawrence, whose activities in the Middle East inspired the 1962 Oscar-Wulming Oscar-winning film Lawrence of Arabia. And also said her entire family could astral project. They could travel out of their bodies and into the spirit world.

So that's fun. And then when she was three, she realized that, quote, Mummy was different and started seeing her not only as her mother, but also as her spiritual teacher. Uh-huh. At three. And that Mummy had her own teacher, a Tibetan guru, who was instructing her in yoga.

Okay. She said, there was no doubt about it. My mom was with a guru at the time. A lot of spiritual polishing had to be done to gain the necessary and deeper understanding of this thing called yoga. And will later say that she met her mother's guru at the age of 14. Some students follow the inner master who never shows himself on this plane, mother said. And in the physical form, others will find a guru in the earthly body who spends a lot of time on all planes, teaching their disciples how to leave the body and helping them if they become entangled in a morass.

of psychic difficulties. Totally. 100%. Florence's death certificate will give her religion as Church of England. So that other Eastern stuff probably didn't happen. There's no evidence outside of Anne's word to support claims that, you know,

she was meeting with a Tibetan guru on some other plane of existence. On brand, for a cult leader. I actually can't think of a single one off the top of my head who has not rewritten their past to some degree. Not much is known about most of Evelyn's teenage years.

There's a big gap in the records where her paper trail goes cold. Was she abused at Old Brighton? It's very possible. I found an article from January 2013 in the Bayside Local Review titled Institutional Child Abuse, Brighton's House of Horrors. The article tells the story of Amelia Smith, who endured years of abuse while living at Melbourne orphanage in Brighton, including the forced adoption of her daughter born in 1959, and that That was what the orphans changed names, I should say over the years.

Between 2008 and 2013, a number of prominent Australian politicians made big sweeping apologies for the physical, psychological, and sexual abuse of literally hundreds of thousands of Australian children placed into state institutions in the early and mid-20th century. The problem was apparently extremely pervasive. There were no true watchdog organizations looking out for these kids, and when the kids did lodge complaints, they were routinely ignored the abused children. were just written off as liars for the most part. If she wasn't abused herself, at the very least, Evelyn knew that the complaints of kids in places like these were routinely ignored.

She also knew thanks to her mom, how one could be committed to an asylum. And she will use this knowledge years later to nefarious ends. In 1941, Evelyn Grace Victoria Edwards reemerges into the historical record at the age of 19, when she found herself one step closer to realize in a childhood dream of hers

of having a big family. Evelyn had met a man, Lionel Harris, at a fruit market. She accidentally bumped into him right after he shoplifted a ripe honey-dumelon. He carved a crude hole into it with his pocket knife and was just about to try and fuck it in the bathroom.

Sorry, that was crude and unnecessary. I apologize. Those are two things I hate as you know. No, no. She ran into him in the bathroom where he was screaming in pain because he had shoplifted a bottle gourd and shoved it up his ass so far

that he couldn't get it out and he had really hurting he was panicking but evelyn was able to get it back out using just her teeth and that's how he knew she was his one true love no what no that was exceptionally crude and unnecessary uh be gone with sophina uh she just ran into him at the fruit market that's all i know i don't even i don't even think bonsai bob was there uh lino was a young royal australian air force officer and evelyn and lino quickly fell in love got married and soon after had a baby they named judith uh the couple was thrilled but Their joy was to be short-lived. According to a blog written by Ben Shenton, a later victim of the family cult, he was in the cult as a child.

Lionel was supposed to be stationed in Australia on military duty during World War II. But then he went AWOL. He went missing for months and months. Finally, military police tracked Lionel down, found him hiding out with Evelyn at the couple's home back in Victoria, Australia. According to another source, the cult of the family docu-series, two years after Judith was born, and I'm assuming after the aforementioned arrest, Lionel applied to leave, or applied to leave the Air Force, excuse me, out of grave concern over his wife's mental health.

Doctor's record showed Evelyn had been diagnosed with depression, postpartum depression perhaps, likely had been neglecting her daughter, Judith. Lionel feared that Evelyn had inherited her mother's mental instability, and maybe she had. He was eventually discharged from his military duties on compassionate grounds and took up work as a car salesman to support his young

family. Perhaps this was an early indication of Anne's, you know, Evelyn, Anne's ability to be manipulative to get what she wanted, exert influence over those around her, or perhaps she was genuinely unwell in this case, and Lionel was simply a devoted husband. The family of three, Lionel, Evelyn, and Judith would not remain a trio for much longer. That's because Anne and Lionel were preparing to become a family of four, only not through conception. Rather, they had started the process of trying to adopt a baby boy from a barnardo uh excuse me barnardo homes a children's charity which sent kids from the uk to australia for adoption uh makes sense i mean if you're a young mother and very likely struggling with serious mental illness i mean the best thing you can do

is to adopt a baby that's a great call everyone knows that bringing another child into an unstable home is the very best way to make sure everyone involved is super happy uh it's not clear actually why they chose the adoption route. The couple was quickly approved, and soon their baby boy was waiting for them down in Sydney. But then, in early 1955, disaster struck. Lina was literally driving to Sydney to pick up their son when two cars collided at an intersection and caused a pile-up January 10, 1955. He was about three hours drive away in Bathurst, New South Wales, when his car got caught

right in the middle of this carnage, and Lionel Harris died in the wreckage at the young age of 33. By then, Lionel and Evelyn had been married for 13 years, and Evelyn was devastated to lose her husband. Her family of three, instead of becoming a family of four, had become a family of two. And that was how it would remain, at least for the next decade plus. Unlike most cult leaders, Evelyn did not jump into the cult game until a little bit later in life. She wasn't deeply religious in the years leading up to it either. Wasn't in another cult, figuring out how it operates, how to incorporate, what works, into her toolkit.

She was busy being a single parent for quite a while. And in the 1950s, single parenthood was pretty scandalous, even for a widow. Society definitely looked down its nose at unwed mothers, and the law echoed such prejudice. Single mothers were considered unfit to provide a suitable environment for children and many unwed pregnant women were strongly encouraged, aka coerced, to give up their babies for adoption. A practice we'll look into a little later in the timeline.

Naturally, this also meant that single women were not allowed to adopt. which meant that Lionel's sudden death didn't just rob Evelyn of a husband it took away her chance of a much long for a second child unless she wanted to remarry. She'd been so close to bring that baby boy home like hours away and the rug had been

pulled out from underneath her in the most cruel painful way. The double blow rightfully devastating and Evelyn's reaction to it was fucking weird. Whether to gain sympathy or avoid pity or maybe this was some mental illness manifesting, Evelyn spun the

tragedy into a fanciful spy saga, and she would tell people that her husband had been murdered by a Russian secret agent, because her husband was a secret agent, working on behalf of Australia. What is big deal? I harass her husband to death. It's fine. It happened. We'll move on. With your soft shame, cock and corner, we'll move on.

You never know when Chiquotillo might still appear, that Russian monster all these years later. Maybe Chiquotilla murdered her husband. This may have been her first foray into telling a big lie about her past and gaining a lot of sympathy and intrigue when she did, and that, you know, had to have felt good. And I imagine she probably started to tell other lies. I am, you know, kind of speculating here. Maybe sometimes getting caught, other times being amazed by what strangers would accept. I wonder if she tested all sorts of lies with people building up her ability to reimagined, you know, how the world saw her.

Just based on what happens later. Evelyn riddled with grief and left alone to raise her young daughter in a cramped humble Melbourne flat, did for sure begin to reinvent herself. She became obsessed with plastic surgery now, built a glamorous new identity. You can find pictures of her as a young woman in early 20s and then as a woman in her early 40s and doesn't look like the same person at all. Like she really changed her appearance. So then in the late 1950s back enough a bit, around the age of 36 or 37, Evelyn becomes Anne.

And she didn't just change her first name. Evelyn, Grace, Victoria Harris became Anne Hamilton. It's weird move, right, just to shift your identity like this, just completely change your name. Part of this big identity shift was and getting really, really into yoga. There was uncertainty about the exact date yoga arrived down under, but it's generally accepted. The yoga reached the Australian shores in either 1949 or 1950. The timing coincides with Michael Wallin, a white Russian yogi, who had been teaching yoga in Shanghai, China, and emigrating to Australia after the Communist Party took over China. Side note. I put the words Michael Volun Yogi into YouTube to try and find out

how to correctly say his last name. The first two videos that came up were titled Yoga is demonic and Yoga is an open door to demons. I had no idea there was so much demonic speculation around yoga. What a world. I never stopped being terrified by just the volume of magical thinking and stupidity just going on in this world. And just real quick. because it's very entertaining. Before moving forward, since many of you have been asking for the return of this segment,

let's look at some of the comments underneath these demonic yoga videos in today's Idiots of the Internet. Idiots of the Internet. Both these videos are shorts. This first is posted by the Lionheart Church YouTube channel based in Georgia, and I strongly believe that Lead Pastor OTH

who will be speaking here is 100% full of shit. This is craziness. The description of this video, simply, yoga is an open door to demons. Devon, I cast a demon out of a woman. And so I just hijacked him for a moment. I asked him, I said, is yoga bad? Bad, bad. He said, of course, it's bad, especially the crane pose.

There's plenty of other forms of exercise for you to focus on that. Just stretch. You know what I'm saying? That's all you're just, just stretch. That's all you got to do. What is it about that one thing that's forbidden? You got to do that one thing, even though there are 90 other things that you can do.

What? I had no idea that this was a thing. This was a concern that a lot of people have. In case you missed it, this real pastor who feels, to me, more like a Saturday Night Live fucking caricature than a actual human being, is claiming that he helps someone named Devin exercise a demon from some woman's body,

and then he either talked to Devin or he talked to the demon afterwards, I think Devin but it's not entirely clear to me and Devin or the demon told him that yoga is very, very bad it's very, very demonic

especially the crane post. So going to the comments on this video first comment is, yeah, I like it. It just says, he's serious with a laughing emoji. Like, what are you doing, dude? Then user Michael Hardin 4383 comments how about doing crane pose while meditating high on the devil's lettuce?

Is that a straight pass to hell? Probably. It probably is. Empress Pizarro comments, there's plenty worse things than yoga like men projecting and pretending no at all. God put me in isolation to keep me from getting contaminated. Smiley face emoji. I think Empress Pizarro is simultaneously saying that this is ridiculous to be worried about yoga being demonic

while also you know not seeming mentally stable themselves Sprocket 99 posts maybe if you're a weak soul and you connect to the ether and get attached to but I don't believe yoga is actually all caps evil okay

most those words were misspelled by the way and then me need money replies to Sprocket 99 with you don't believe in God or know about God you are new age at best i can tell okay all right okay thanks for chiming in uh george phillips 55 posed a confusing take on all this is this guy for real i have died for all caps minutes more than once back to lowercase if anyone had deacons it was me there's lots of like dot dot dot within all this and then stop listening to people tell you

quote no and all caps quote you are bad read the bible dot dot dot read everything dot dot dot now help others don't quote hurt demons dot dot dot help people george george i want you to get some help i want you to uh take some remedial classes at i don't know local library or community college just uh work on your communication skills and i want you to get it and start you know seeing a therapist yeah it feels like you have a lot of shit going on my favorite comment was left by god the human who wrote you know what else is bad lying because you made that shit up and you and me both know it fair and now i just want you to hear a bit more of the other video that popped up right away the one described as yoga is demonic oh my god i don't know who the guest is in this short video doesn't say in the caption posted

by michael knolls who has a lot of followers a disturbing amount uh based i'm not not a fan uh here's a bit of what this guest has to say. I'm just going to come right out and say it's because yoga is the practice that invokes the demons. So when you're practicing yoga constantly, you are entirely demonized. And so not only is your flesh kind of at enmity with the truth of what yoga is, but the demons are too. They don't like to hear that.

Yoga. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. this this little short has almost 5,000 comments alone just so many views when you're practicing

yoga constantly you're entirely demonized she said that's an interesting take I don't want to spend more time you know away from our comment or excuse me

our topic so I'll just share one comment from the nearly again 5,000 on this video most of whom agree with her by the way and there are so many other videos like this Tay vang 3953 posted

that is why Asians practice Tai Chi Fuck what Because fucking yoga is demonic You think that a lot of people in Asia Practice Tai Chi which I guess is heavenly I fuck I can't I can't with these people Maybe the coming apocalypse

And we'll start to preach about You know soon here in this episode Maybe that's a good thing Maybe we do need an apocalypse Maybe the world needs to be cleansed Of so many terrifying idiots Of the internet idiots of the internet

hopefully that was an entertaining deviation and you know what and will become pretty evil and she will teach a lot of yoga that will coincide with her descent into evilness you know what so maybe they're on to something I mean they're definitely not but it's a funny connection Michael Wallin

by the way back to him a.k.a. Swami Carmananda started Australia's first yoga school the Sydney Yoga Center around 1950 and is recognized as the nation's first yoga teacher as we know it today then just a few years later in 1953 Swiss National

Margaret Suggestman was studying yoga in India and the mountains of Tibet supposedly everybody likes to talk about being some fucking mountains of Tibet with this shit when she received an instruction from her guru Michael to go teach yoga to the west which took her to Melbourne

where she also began teaching of course another weird you know, about being sent around the world by your guru at all. Both Michael Vaughlin and Margaret's suggestions, yoga schools became very popular. By the mid-1950s, women in their 30s, 40s and 50s, women like Anne in Australia were the demographic who seemed the most fascinated by this shiny new thing called yoga.

It was seen as glamorous and hip and a little bit taboo. It drew suspicion. Athletic and spiritual, yoga promised a workout and also a doorway into a new kind of spiritual well-being that was not part of Western. religion and therefore seen by some as satanic just like those youtubeers said right yoga pants tight revealing yoga pants worn by fit health conscious bendy women that is how satan gets you get out here lucifina to help and of course uh is one of these women and soon it seems after

she began taking classes uh she started to think that she could lead these classes she was ready to go full yoga, full evil. She wanted more access to her fellow evil students to gain influence over them. So early on, she decided that she wanted to start teaching yoga, teaching would of course give her direct access to a large number of the wealthy, you know, a wealthy

board middle-aged women. In 1960, when Anna's 38, Margaret Suggestman opened the Gita School of Yoga, which merged endocrinology, the science of hormones, and glands with the yogi, yogi teachings of Tibetan gurus,

Or something like that, maybe it merged a bunch of silly nonsensical bullshit with a bunch more silly nonsensical bullshit. As a top female yoga instructor in Australia, Margaret had the kind of influence that Anne craved. And one day on a windy, rainy day in Melbourne, Anne saw her opportunity to get a few private moments with Margaret. Margaret was pulling down some awnings outside of her yoga school, and she needed some help. Anne primed and ready to seize an opportunity stepped in, introduced herself as a physiotherapist and nurse. maybe she was maybe she wasn't the two women connected and anne soon began working alongside margaret training to become a yoga teacher not long after that meeting anne started to teach yoga classes at margaret's yoga school but not exactly the way that she had been taught and was viewed as a fantastic teacher and students flocked to her classes but very quickly her classes started to change and they became very unconventional they became increasingly spiritual maybe even occult like for example one day a young male yogi taking making Anne's class disagreed with her and Anne cast a spell on him at least at least she thought she did she went to the kitchen when they were cleaning up a former cult member would later say

and she muttered he's not going to be here tomorrow he's going to be very sick the next day the man was sick and she thought her spell worked you know or was a coincidence either way she starts to think she can cast spells now and this is the final straw for uh uh uh Marget, it's, her name is spelled a little weird. I don't know if it's Margaret or Marguite. It's Margett. Margett who now asked Anne to leave the yoga school. Sounds like the right call.

And Anne did leave, but she was not done with her devil yoga. And now before we talk about what she does next, time for today's first to two mid-show sponsor breaks. If you don't want to hear these ads ever again, please sign up to be a space lizard on Patreon. Help us make monthly charitable contributions. Get the catalog, ad free. get episodes three days early and more. Thanks for listen to our sponsors. Hope you heard a deal that makes sense to you.

And now let's return to somewhere around late 1960, early 1961, when 40-ish Anne, fresh off getting kicked out of her yoga studio for casting spells and being a weirdo, opens her own studio. And gathered the connections she had made at the Gita School and opened her own yoga studio in Turok, an exclusive suburb in Melbourne, that was and apparently still is synonymous with wealth and privilege. One of the most exclusive and desirable communities in all of Australia. Outside of a large number of apartments, aka. Flats, it reminds me of Beverly Hills, just kind of poking around on the internet. Turok was a kind of place where affluent middle-aged

housewives sought a form of liberation that did not involve tapping out of their privilege, gallivant and around Asia, or given up the materialistic joys of life. Many of these women felt stuck and deeply unfulfilled. Many were going through midlife crises. Their children had grown up, their husbands were out having affairs with younger women, and there was nothing they could do about it. In those days, divorce was a much bigger deal, was much harder to follow through with than is now. It was incredibly shameful and carried a much larger social stigma. These women, feeling trapped, sought solace in someone like Anne, who told them that middle age was the perfect time to begin their real journeys. Just like back at the Gita school, Anne's yoga classes

did not focus on just yoga for very long. Her classes quickly morphed into a bizarre blend of exercise, teachings on Hinduism, Buddhist mysticism, and Christian beliefs, with elements of the occult, like consulting astrologers and even holding seances with Ouija boards sprinkled in. All sounds a bit schizophrenic. Women, some of whom would end up in her cult in a few years, came to Anne seeking inner peace, and she used their interest in yoga in Eastern mysticism to lure them into something else, a new belief of hers that was rapidly evolving as she continued to develop it. In those early days, Anne drew inspiration for her teachings, primarily from the Siddhartha and the Bhagavad Gita.

The story of Siddhartha is the story of Siddhartha, Gautama, aka the Buddha, an Indian prince, born into a life of luxury, but when he eventually sees that real life is filled with suffering, he renounces his privileged existence to become a wandering man and an enlightened being. the second text The Bhagavad Gita is a 700-verse Hindu scripture consider the most sacred in Hinduism and it presents a dialogue from roughly 5,000 years ago between the warrior

Arjuna and his charioteer Krishna who is an avatar of the god Vishnu. In the text Krishna tells Arjuna to uphold Dharma in the world which in simple terms means choosing the path filled with duty, righteousness, and morality. And in the 1960s, Dharma seemed

to be in short supply. The fear of nuclear annihilation following the Cuban missile crisis was very real, felt all around the world. A general malaise hung in the air gave way to more esoteric thinking. Women especially were questioning mankind's appetite for destruction. Men dominated nuclear debates while women drove a great deal of the nuclear disarmament movement, sharply criticizing the patriarchal expectation to be a man, which translated to demonstrating an unfailing readiness to fight for one's country. Men were being seen by many as being inherently destructive, and women were seen by many as being inherently nurturing, and many women felt it was their gender's responsibility to protect the

children and future generations. This mentality worked out in Anne's favor. She leaned on the mood of the era and on the emerging popularity of various ancient religious texts to plant the seeds of a more fulfilled life in these women. Sir Reverend housewives didn't have much clout in those days, but that it mattered to Anne because as she grew her yoga following and built her reputation as an in-demand yoga teacher turned new age guru for wealthy women desperate for spiritual guidance she was actually planting the earliest seeds of something much bigger to come anne was still dreaming of a big family but her notion of a family was starting to take a different shape no longer biological no longer traditional in any way starting to look a lot more like a cult her family would be her

followers and of course knew that the women she was teaching yoga too were not really her family not yet they could leave her at any time and that scared her to make them a true part of her family she decided she needed to destroy their existing families cut the ties that bound them to their traditional lives cult cult cult and knew that if she could get them to leave their husbands their families would disown them because divorce was still a scarlet letter back then and that would be perfect they'd have no one but her and others devoted to her to turn to and thus she could have control of these women for life. So the big question now was, how the hell could she convince women to turn their backs on

everything they had ever known and proverbially, or even literally, follow her out into the wilderness by convincing them that she was no normal human, that she wasn't just a guru, she wasn't just a prophet even, she was a god. She was literally Jesus Christ returned. Damn that yoga demon. That yoga demon really got into her. To make this crazy plan work and needed to find her first true, incredibly devoted follower, someone who is respected, reputable,

someone who had become her recruiter who could give her claims credibility. And so that was how Anne came to zero in on, not a woman, but a man, Dr. Rainer Johnson, a highly respected British physicist and author to take on this role. Love that we have a Dr. Johnson in this tale. We don't have a Richard,

so Dr. Johnson will have to do. Let's meet this son of a bitch. Without him, Anne never becomes a cult leader and is relegated to yoga guru. Johnson had been born in Leeds, England in 1901. He was discovered to be academically gifted at a very young age, a child genius, graduated first-class honor student from Oxford University, where he studied nuclear physics.

Pretty fucking smart, dude. 1922, Rainer received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of London. Also, married a fellow scientist, Mary, who would receive a master of science from the University of London, and they would have two daughters. also while slaving away on his PhD program Rainer became interested in parapsychology study a shit like telepathy ghosts psychic powers that fell outside the realm of normal science he became connected with the famous society for psychical research in London and not going to lie I kind of love that anyone listening who also listens to scared to death is not surprised

but also still aware that a strong intense devoted belief in non-scientific things like this can take you if you are not careful into some pretty dangerous places, grounded in a little more than your desire for things to be true. Soon, Johnson veered further into alternative religions and away from traditional science, even while he landed a professor's job in Australia. In 1934, he was appointed the third master of Queens College at the University of Melbourne, a prestigious position that he would hold until he retired many decades later in 1964. And while he taught scientific classes, mainly physics, it seems. Personally, outside of class,

he was growing more and more interested in metaphysics and spirituality. Alternative religions. He authored books on the paranormal and the spiritual world, including the imprisoned splendor in 1953, nurslings of immortality in 1957, and Watcher on the Hills in 1959.

The imprisoned splendor has chapters on reincarnation, karma, mystical experience, telepathy, clairvoyance, the survival of death, etc. Nurslings of Immortality is all about Douglas Fawcett's philosophy of imaginism, which argues that reality, said to be inherently psychical, is sustained in existence by God's developing imagination, and by the imagination of innumerable other sub-intelligences.

The book explains how imaginism works, how it contrasts with a scientific worldview, the nature of psychical research, the religious point of view, the birth of systems within a cosmic context, the adventure of being man and reincarnation, evil causation group souls and more the watcher on the hills examines 36 cases of supposed mystical and spiritually transformative encounters experienced by ordinary people the higher self the soul

the personality higher mystical experience and cosmic consciousness are all examined so clearly this dude not afraid to examine pretty much fucking anything uh was not opposed to entertaining a belief in you know some some pretty out there stuff easy to see why anne wanted to meet him like he was perfect for what she had in mind. She was so calculating, which makes me think that her formation of her cult had nothing to do with familial mental illness, had everything to do with her being a con artist.

Dr. Johnson was nearing the end of his academic career when she met him. He was 60 years old, had been searching for proof of something more than science could show him for decades. He desperately wanted to believe in something truly mystical and life-altering. He was ready. He had become fixated on a personal quest

to achieve a true mystical experience. And right before he met Anne, he had truly started to believe that he had been chosen by spirits to speak to his generation about the real true nature of the universe and human existence. He was entering his mad scientist

whack-a-doodle era. In 1960, the then-Australian prime minister Robert Menzies opened to Winget Queen's College in Dr. Raynor's name. He makes him even more prestigious. He's so well connected, he's so well-respected, He's also, you know, strongly searching for this powerful spiritual experience. He's waiting for a fucking guru, waiting for someone who claiming to be a prophet or a God.

And Anne is dreaming of becoming a well-connected, well-respected woman. Of course they meet. 1962, Anne started a casual relationship with a man named Michael Riley, a very calculated move. Riley was her pawn. He just didn't know it. This relationship was essential for Anne to conduct reconnaissance on Dr. Rainer Johnson. Michael was Dr. Johnson's Gardner. And literally started fucking this guy's gardener

in exchange for intel on him. Ah, and began quietly siphoning inside information from an unsuspecting Riley on the impressive Dr. Johnson. Meanwhile, she was also befriending and flirting with people at Queens College, a place she had no business hanging around at, who began drip feeding her even more details about Dr. Johnson, his home life, and his relationship with his wife. She was such a snake.

Eventually, Anne had gathered enough intel to make her move. And what a move it was. Very shrewd. On December 22nd, 1962, this is so dramatic. In the middle of the night, Anne Hamilton dramatically shows up on Dr. Rainer Johnson's doorstep. She knocks on the door, introduces herself when he answers, introduces herself to a very confused, still half asleep, Dr. Johnson. She quickly says she is a clairvoyant with an urgent message to share with him. she tells him that she knows he is traveling to India very soon with his wife Mary

and she is there to warn him that if he does that she's going to get quite sick well Dr. Johnson instead of reacting with some version of okay yeah cool thank you but fuck off if you ever show up my house again at any time I will call to police you fucking lunatic now he's grateful and dazzled by Anne's uh you know uh prescience her her her you know knowledge of future events He really wanted to believe that he was in the presence of a true clairvoyant. His trip to India was only days away, so now he didn't have to wait long to see if her warning was going to come true.

A few days later, after apparently decided he's willing to risk his wife's health, Dr. Johnson and his wife fly to India. All goes well for a couple days, but then Mary falls severely ill with acute dysentery, a really bad form of diarrhea, basically. Narly but, and this is important, very common amongst Western travelers to India at that time. and for sure knew it was a common affliction. People traveling to India from Australia got sick often back then. She played the odds, and you know what? It worked. To Dr. Johnson, Mary's illness was all the proof he needed that A,

and was exactly who she said she was, and B, there was a supernatural force out there after all. He found it, and it came in the form of an attractive, flirtatious, charismatic woman showing up at his door in the middle of the damn night. upon their return to Australia Dr. Johnson and his wife both eagerly fucked Anne Hamilton's brains out.

No, they embraced her. And now told Dr. Johnson that she had received a divine plan and he was a very important part of it. Oh, how fortunate. And told them that she had experienced external life and had a perspective outside the constraints of physical being,

you know, due to her astral projections, et cetera. She had traveled through the cosmos, astrally, and now had returned to Earth as the Messiah. And Dr. Johnson and his wife didn't blink. They didn't ask her to leave. No, this was incredibly affirming for Dr. Johnson. He was fascinated with metaphysics,

the study of things that exist beyond the earthly, and believed he had come into contact with the woman who was living proof, or so she claimed of experience beyond physicality. In the 1930s through the 1950s, there was a lot of doubt and disinterest in metaphysics as a point of study because of logical positivism. The movement that insisted only science

and verification mattered. But by the 1960s, interest in metaphysics was appearing again in academic and spiritual circles. And while Dr. Johnson was described as a very kindly old man and very clever,

he was also described by former cult member Sarah Moore as, quote, very, very, very gullible. Dr. Johnson and Anne also bonded over Helena Blavatsky. They both had read

a ton of her teachings. If you want to call him that, always love it. When that completely, complete fucking maniac shows up in an episode. And she always seems to show up if we dive into a cult-based in Eastern or New Age beliefs. She deserves a little summary. Madam Helena Petronova or, excuse me, Petrovna, there we go.

Madam Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, known to her followers as simply HPB, which sounds a lot like an STI, was one of the most eccentric and influential mystics of the 19th century. Born into Russian nobility in 1831, probably. hard to ascertain what's true about her origins because she was caught in so many lies about her early life and some of her supposed family members who vouched for her also caught in lies

but she claimed to have psychic gifts that she began to experience very early in childhood also claimed to have ran away from home and what was then Russia what is now the Nipro Ukraine and her teens that embarked on decades

of globe-trotting adventures that blurred the line between possible truth and very creative definitely not true autobiography and she insisted it almost certainly mostly made up that she traveled with

Bedouins, lived with Tibetan monks, studied magic in India, survived, shipwrecks, got into sword fights, and had various spiritual assassination attempts made on her. Also may or may not have, but definitely fucking did fake a few seances and materialized spirit letters

with the help of a hidden cupboard. Oh yeah, she had a hidden cupboard. Do you have a hidden magical cupboard? No. Oh, how sad for you. H-P-Bs, I always want to say different letters, her hidden cupboard, really a controversial bookcase slash recess in her room with the Theosophical Society headquarters in a dire India, examined in 1884 by the Society for Psychical Research as part of their so-called Hodgkin, or Hodgson report, a 200-page report in which Lovatsky was described as one of the most

accomplished ingenious and interesting impostors in history. The report alleged it was a secret compartment used to produce supposed supernatural phenomena in very natural but just sneaky ways. Basically, the SPR concluded that she was a highly skilled grifty weasel woman pretending to receive messages from the Great Beyond,

but in reality, she was nothing more than an old-timey David Copperfield illusionist writing messages herself. Backing up a bit, in 1875, she co-founded the Theosophical Society with Henry Steele, cot another doucheback and william q judge a third doucheback a movement dedicated to blending eastern religions western occultism and whatever ancient secrets blavatsky claimed to have psychically

downloaded from immortal himalayan highlander super wizards known as the mahottmas hbp was a creative powerhouse a proto new age influencer one of history's greatest self mythologizers what she was very likely not was someone who actually possessed mystical knowledge given to her from gods, aliens, the dead, et cetera. Her two massive books, 1877's Isis Unvealed, and 1888's The Secret Doctrine became the foundational text for modern occultism and seeded ideas that later spiritual influencers would adapt, including the leaders of many cults, like Anne Hamilton Burns, the family, New Age spiritual movements, and even bits of pop culture fantasy.

And now before jumping back into Anne's story, since she leaned on a lot of Blavatsky's teachings and the formation of her cult ideology, Let's look a bit more at the teachings of Theosophy. The really short version, the short summary of Theosophy, is ancient aliens meets Buddhism meets Victorian psychedelia. Now for an explanation, it's a bit more depth. At its core, theosophy aimed to uncover the world's hidden spiritual truth by synthesizing Hinduism, Buddhism, Hermeticism, an ancient esoteric spiritual and philosophical system based on ancient Greek beliefs, alchemy, and astrology, and more. aposticism, cabala, Victorian pseudoscience, and some very creative myth-making.

She plagiarized all kinds of ancient religious beliefs, mix them into a new recipe for a dish no one had eaten before, adding a lot of her own made-up ingredients, to become the godmother of the New Age movement, even though I would bet that most New Age adherents today don't even know her name. Her theosophy insists that it possesses the true ancient history of humanity. Far older, weirder, more catastrophic than anything lying archaeologists have ever uncovered. Stop hiding the truth from us. Since she's not the star of today's show, but this shit is so entertaining. Let me provide a very distilled version of Theosophy's most extreme teachings, such as Atlantis and the Weird Wizard War. Blavatsky absolutely claimed that

Atlantis was real, populated by psychically gifted giants. You heard that right. And was eventually destroyed because of a cosmic war involving all kinds of occult superpowers. According to HPP, the Atlanteans were the fourth root race, an evolutionary stage of humanity before us. They had third eyes, supernatural abilities, some dope as fuck, psychic technology. Some turned evil and misused their powers. Others warred with rival ancient races. Ultimately, their misuse of magical knowledge caused their lost continent to literally sink and disappear.

It all comes across as part fantasy novel, part ancient astronaut theory, and part Victorian fever dream. Moving along, the following teaching of HBPs is one of the ideas that later New Age figures, Nazi occultists, and countless conspiracy theorists have mined for decades. The seven root races, aka humanity, Pokemon evolutions. Blavatsky claimed humans evolve through seven great cosmic stages. Each with sub-races. Stay with me. Here's some highlights. The first root race was purely ethereal astral beings with no bones, no organs even,

just floating, glowing proto-human things. The second root race was the hyperboreans, giant asexual telepathic beings living near the North Pole back when it was a tropical paradise, which would be 55 million years ago. The third root race was the Lemurians, towering brown skin beans who reproduce by budding like magical potatoes. They lived on the lost continent of Lemuria, also had functioning third eyes, but on the back of their heads. And some of them are currently living inside of Mount Shasta, California. Oh, fuck yeah, bro. Right? This all sounds so legit. Uh, the fourth root race is the Atlanteans, magical giants with psychic faculties. They built flying machines

powered by thought, as one does. They ultimately were destroyed by wizard infighting. Such a shame. The fifth root race is us. How the fuck did we move backwards to us? The previous two root races were way cooler than us. We're just regular-ass humans with no cool psychic powers at all. Fucking sucks. And then there's root races six and seven, which is going to be future evolved beings, who will eventually redevelop psychic powers,

live in unity, and transcend material existence. Unfortunately, there's no timeline for exactly when that will happen. The entire system reads like an AD&D campaign, written during someone's psychotic break. Now, let me learn you a thing or two about the Mahatmas, the secret Himalayan psychic super wizards Blavatsky received much of her wisdom from

thanks to telepathic communication Theosophy claims that all of its teachings come from a cadre of immortal adepts Ascended masters Living hidden in remote mountainous parts of Tibet And Nepal, why? Who fucking knows? They could live somewhere with a much more hospitable climate

But they choose to hide in fucking snow mountain caves The names of these masters include Koot Humi, Moria and Jejwal Excuse me Dejwal cool I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing notes correctly And who fucking cares

Because this is just shit she pulled out of her ass Blavatsky insisted She had telepathic access to these beings Who precipitated letters Into physical space For her followers These manifested letters Critics have noted

That the Mahatma's handwriting Suspiciously resembles Helena's handwriting Theosophy taught and teaches that these masters have managed the spiritual evolution of humanity kind of like some type of cosmic DMV. Theosophy

embraces reincarnation, but it's added some layers of cosmic administration. Your soul passes to various planes after death. You spend centuries in a bliss realm, aka Devachan. Then you are reborn into the appropriate root race stage, and you just keep going

until you become a master, unless karma says otherwise, in which case you fucking yeated back into the primordial stew to be reborn again. Blavatsky claimed advanced theosophical initiates could achieve powers, including, but not limited to, right? If you follow her teachings, you can do the following things and more. Telepathy, teleportation, clairvoyance, materializing objects out of thin air, seeing both past and future, entering astral realms, influencing the weather, levitation. Basically, if you study theosophy long and hard enough,

you'll become the newest member of the X-Men. HPV, I mean HIV, I mean HPB, even demonstrated some of these powers at seances until investigators notice trapdoors and accomplices. So Anne Hamilton-Bern took Blavatsky's wack-a-doodle cosmology, all that shit I just went over and more dead seriously. Or at the very least, she became very, very fluent in theosophy speak, and pretended to believe it in order to achieve her goal

of being worshipped by people she believed would never leave her, her chosen, and brainwashed family. She believed, or again claimed to believe that she was a reincarnated spiritual master, that the children she adopted slash kidnapped were advanced souls forming a new root race, that the family was preparing for an apocalyptic shift in human evolution,

that suffering, including the abuse she inflicted, was spiritually purifying. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Closing this side quest on Madame Blavatsky, While HPB herself never founded a cult, her writings gave later charismatic leaders like Anne a ready-made mythological framework to claim a godlike destiny. And again, Dr. Rainer Johnson, also super familiar with all this bullshit, a believer of the teachings of HPB, you know, or at least like close to a believer. You know, which has a lot about this academically brilliant man, but maybe, you know, little too open to whack-a-doodle claims of self-proclaimed spiritual master's man. And it wasn't long before Dr. Johnson became totally enamored with Anne.

He became her puppet, began sending her referrals, mainly friends, some of whom were suffering personal crises. Dear God, feeding the desperate to a burgeoning cult leader. During the cult's early days, Dr. Johnson continued working as a master at Queens College, a post-university, strongly deplored once his associations with Anne and her cult came to light years later. The university would maintain that no university students were ever lured into her cult, nor recruited for it.

And there is no evidence actually to suggest that they were. Dr. Johnson, along with his wife, Mary, and their daughter, Maureen, made up Anne's first followers and literally recognized her as Jesus Christ returned. When I come across to like this, my mind often wonders over to, like, what like the close friends and family of these people must think of things like this? Like, imagine going to spend Christmas for Hanukkah with your family. And suddenly your parents, like, can I talk to you about something? we have truly wonderful news

we recently met a local yoga teacher who is Jesus Christ and we'd like you to join us in worshiping her so we can all survive the upcoming apocalypse okay mom can you pass me the ham I just feel like this isn't something I should weigh in on on an empty stomach

for the honor of being the first to truly recognize who she really was and proclaimed Dr. Johnson as John the Baptist reincarnate how exciting for him what an honor great news kids New Jesus just named New John the Baptist So dad is New John the Baptist So it seems only natural

That you know He shouldn't have to help with cooking or cleaning up the dishes this year Soon with the cold membership Still small enough to count on one hand Anne and Johnson would begin drawing up strict guidelines For their future followers based on a mixture of Eastern theosophical and Christian religious beliefs In 1963 now the family

Is officially founded With Anne as the founder and Dr. Raymond her as the Rainer Johnson as the co-founder. And if Dr. Johnson needed any more conviction in Anne's powers, 1963 was also the year she performed her first documented miracle. According

to the book The Family, authored by Chris Johnston and Rosie Johns, another source we leaned on quite a bit for this episode. In May of 1963, Anne's biological daughter, Judith rolled her car in the outskirts of Melbourne, fracturing her skull and wounding an eye pretty badly, I guess. And Dr. Johnson

wrote that Anne saved her in a diary entry. Her mother immediately organized spirit help. And a week later, Judy left the hospital much earlier than expected and in good shape. Oh yeah, that couldn't have come from medical treatment. That definitely came from organized spirit help. Johnson told his wife, quote, I think this is the most Christ-like person I've ever met. So that's cool. This cemented Johnson's belief, if it wasn't cemented already, that Anne was truly Jesus reborn as a woman. A weird, very flexible, plastic surgery-leaven, Flaughty-42-year-old woman.

He convinced himself that whatever she said was true, that if something was confusing, who cares? O.G., Jesus' disciples in the Middle East, they were often confused and doubtful. A Messiah doesn't need to make sense, okay? Dr. Johnson's fanatical endorsement was worth its weight in gold.

The family, led by both of them in a way now, started off as what seemed like a discussion meditation group. They would meet at Anne's home in Fernie Creek in the Dandenong ranges, a leafy community surrounded by trees, hills, and waterfalls. Very pretty, about an hour's drive from Melbourne City Center. This allowed cult members to maintain their professional high-flying careers back in the city while also participating in what was quickly becoming a cult.

In early 1964, Dr. Johnson retired from the school and devoted his life to the cult. He and his wife purchased a property just down the road for man, and the gatherings were transferred there. Before moving forward, I should point out that while today the cult is most common referred to as the family back then to members it was known as the Great White Brotherhood and that is not a nod to some kind of white supremacist organization by the way the name's a nod to earlier theosophy influence groups like Guy and Edna Ballard's

IM movement we've talked about those fucking whack-a-doodles that movement claims that St. Germain it's still around in some form there's still a handful of members It claims that St. Germain, one of the ascended masters of the Great White Brotherhood, perfected beings of great power who supposedly communicate via human messengers, appeared on Mount Shasta, a dormant volcano in Northern California. Not the Lemurians, but close. The Great White Brotherhood are believed to be a group of spiritual guides, and the Lemurians, you know, a purported ancient civilization as I went over,

some of whom are connected, though, to the Brotherhood. the Great White Brotherhood Also known as the Ascended Masters Are a spiritual hierarchy Lemurians, a mythical root race From the Lost Condon of Numuria As we went over And some of the Lemurians

Do live in a hidden crystalline city Kind of like Superman So I can fortress of solitude Named Telos Beneath Mount Chasta Okay? Do you see? Do you understand? It's all pretty fucking straightforward

If you're humming along at the correct vibrational frequency And if you're keeping your aura nice and clean and lotion up And your chakras polished or some shit This idea Of cosmic journeys, past lives And advanced spiritual beings Might sound familiar

And may have also been drawing from Likely was drawing from The teachings of another cult That we covered here a long time ago The Church of Scientology Have been founded by El Ron Hubbard That fucking wonderful mystic prophet god That alien fucker

in 1954 and taught that humans or excuse me Hubbard getting these whack deals mixed up Elron Hubbard taught that humans carried past traumas that clouded their ability to experience reality

but through his dionetic auditing they can reach a state called clear Anne's followers were soon going to be subjected to a different version of getting clear in the form of clear reins almost exactly the same word which we'll get into shortly but while Hubbard was vehemently anti-drug

and Anne's growing cult drugs are everywhere Fuck yeah bro Cult cult cult! Where's the orgy? But before I really dig into Anne's Incorporation of Psychedelics Into the formation of her cult Time for today's second and two Mid-show sponsor breaks

Thanks for listening to those sponsors Hope you heard a deal that appeal to you And now let's talk about how Anne used Psychedelics to help launch your cult early members of the family regularly dabbled in magic mushrooms in LST. Okay, now I'm listening, Ann. Now I'm open to you being new Jesus. Sorry, I've doubted you.

Maybe you are the Messiah. These substances would become a major part of what Anne called the pipeline, a chemical bridge between skepticism and spiritual surrender, used to soften resistance and make her followers putty in her hands. Anne saw how gullible and moldable people were under the influence of mind-expanding substances, and she began plotting where and how she could access. a generous, undisrupted supply of LSD. A little bit about acid. LSD had been first synthesized in 1938, thank you very much,

Mr. Albert Hoffman, then truly discovered by Albert to be a psychedelic drug in 1943 when that gem of a meat sack went on one of the coolest bike rides of all time, and by the 1960s, it had become the drug of choice for the global counterculture movement, spilling out of clinical settings and government experiments into the real world. In Australia, LSD was used in clinical psychotherapy throughout the 1950s and 60s. But by 1966, regular reporting, read propaganda of good kids turned bad had pushed it into moral panic territory. Nixon's war on drugs led to psychedelics being classified as Schedule I substances in the U.S. And access tightened up not just in America, but around the world.

And by the 1970s, the legal supply would have or would almost completely dry up in most places. But before any of that concerned her, Anne was focused on her next important recruit, Dr. Howard Whitaker in L.A. Elastee evangelist, a guy with access to so much LSD, and a leading psychiatrist who was beating the drum of allowing the use of LSD and treating psychiatric conditions. And you know what? I got to give Anne a lot of credit. She was a piece of shit, but she wasn't stupid. She was so strategic with her early recruits. Dr. Johnson was a monumental get, and Whitaker would be a huge as well.

I can't think of an equivalent cult leader when it comes to this style of recruiting. I mean, typically they target wealthy people or the desperately curious who are often down in their luck or both and also since most cool leaders are horny dudes they go for young and impressionable attractive women but Anne was not driven by a lust for sex that didn't cloud her judgment with any of this

she was driven by a lust for power a certain type of power to have a group of people who would worship her and be completely devoted to her and also money you know as you'll see very very clearly driven by a desire to become wealthy in the early 1960s Whitaker her next targeted all-star recruit was conducting a pioneering LSD study at New Haven, this private psychiatric clinic housed in a, quote, glorious Gothic mansion, built in 1892

by wealthy T-tycoons. That sounds fucking incredible. I'd love to trip there, minus any cult shit, or maybe just minus like too much cult stuff. Tripping with some cult members might lead to a really fun story to tell people at parties later. While Howard's initial LSD study was legitimate and above board, once Anne's influence reached him, it would be exploited to oblivion. Dr. Whitaker at the time was feeling lost

in his religious beliefs and was introduced to Anne Hamilton through his good friend, none other than respected colleague, Dr. Rainer Johnson. Of course. Without Dr. Johnson, none of what follows would have probably ever happened.

He was the key Anne used to unlock her inner cult leader. Whitaker was also immediately taken with Anne, who wasted no time, initiated him into her group with some kind of ceremony that lasted for about two hours. Decades later, Whitaker told police that in this ceremony, quote, the initiate promises obedience to the teacher.

And Anne claimed that because of her guru status, she was able to take over responsibility for resolving their karma, leading them towards ultimate liberation. Uh-huh. Now, when Anne and her posse were not at the Fernie Creek, or now, no, going forward, when Anne and her posse aren't at the Fernie Creek headquarters, she spent a time at the New Haven Psychiatric Clinic,

deepening her relationship with Whitaker also befriending other prominent psychiatrists such as Harry Bethune and John Mackay Mackey and even New Haven's owner Joy Villamick Holy shit was she clever and conniving All three of those people would also join the family

and as a result New Haven began shifting towards a new spiritual therapeutic approach This is fucking wild The 60s were such a crazy time So much curiosity, so much seeking And at times definitely way too much curiosity. curiosity, way too much seeking. The New Haven Psychiatric Facility

became the family's primary recruiting ground. And very soon, it would also become the side of a bunch of strange punishment and torture where LSD would be misappropriated for increasingly cruel and sinister purposes. Sectaligned psychiatrists soon obtain LSD free of charge from the health department, or they did.

I shouldn't say soon they were obtaining this. I mean, which is fucking awesome. Which I had that access. Medical grade LSD? Can someone please tell me how to get a lifetime supply that? I won't deal, I promise. I mean, I'll definitely give it to friends and some strangers who seem cool.

But that's it. Come on, LSD lab tech, listen to this show. Hook me up. Anne was networking at New Haven, but not solely at New Haven. High in her own supply, her confidence growing by the day. She also extended her reach

into judicial, legal, academic, other medical circles in the state of Victoria, reasons for which will become apparent shortly. Also kept teaching yoga. And students of hers are being plucked out as potential initiates and referred to New Haven under the guise of requiring psychiatric drug therapy to sort out their lives.

But instead of truly getting that therapy, they'll just be dosed with a shitload of LSD, groomed and brainwashed to believe that Anne is the Messiah. 1965 now. New Jesus marries a gardener. Michael Riley. Man, the Messiah loves to fuck Gardner's, I guess. But their marriage lasts only one year. What?

New Jesus got divorced? You'd think the son of God, or I guess the daughter of God in this case, someone who, you know, one over her first big father with claims of seen the future, would have seen a divorce coming and not married that dude. And, you know, been pretty against divorce. The divorce might have had something to do with Riley being admitted to New Haven during their brief marriage,

where he spent most of his stay under the influence of a lot of acid. This shit is so bonkers. I was worried this all wouldn't be crazy enough after last week's King of the King of Beaver Island episode, but I think I'm wrong. After the disillusion of her marriage and moved on with the new man, Bill Byrne, described by former cult children as nothing more than a handsome rich compliant handbag perfect that's all new

jesus really needs some arm candy right a hard dick when she needs that it scratched a handsome yes man to give her more credibility let her appear like the wholesome matriarch messiah also bill is loaded bill was a wealthy englishman he ran a huge construction business in uh taralgan a city of nearly 80 000 also victoria uh was a member of the local city council had four children uh the day anne hamilton Hamilton met Bill, would change both their lives forever, and met Bill at New Haven, where his son was receiving treatment for drug use problems, and decided right then and there, after undoubtedly learning that he was loaded, that he was the man she was going to marry. Marry next. But there was a problem. Bill Byrne was already married to Mayburn, and May was not stepping aside easily.

She was a fighter. She refused to let Anne break up her family, or at least tried to refuse. Fucking shocked the new Jesus is the homewrecker. Didn't see that coming. he has changed a lot since Nazareth, almost unrecognizable. Anne was determined to have him. She wielded her connections,

arranged for May to be admitted against her fucking will to New Haven under the pretense of mental instability. That is evil. She knew that if you had two psychiatrists, if you could get two of them to agree that somebody needed to be committed, they would be involuntarily committed

and there wasn't shit they could do about it. And she had more than two psychiatrists under her spell. so she could just have anyone committed at this point if she could just trick them into showing up to the clinic once poor Mae Byrne was admitted she was heavily sedated given all kinds of drugs including LSD to keep her confused

and by the end of her stay she and Bill were no more he'd been granted a divorce right she also had friends and did that were like judges my god she had her lover's wife institutionalized so she could steal her husband knew Jesus is fucking ruthless Anne changed her name from Anne Hamilton to Anne Hamilton

Burn now used what happened to May as a warning to other sect members if they dared cross her she would threaten them with institutionalization and that would happen sometimes because of her influence

oh my God how did she convince so many highly educated people not to push back against this behavior why are you know so many seemingly smart people were first attracted to Anne

and the family is of course up for debate she was clearly very persuasive extremely charismatic. Didn't hurt that at this point in her life, she was also, you know, very attractive. But lots of people are very attractive. And almost none of them pulls off shit like this.

Just like Madam Blavatsky, there was some intangible type of magnetism she possessed. She was exceptionally skilled and playing up to people's egos, making them think that by joining her cult, they were going to be part of the most important inner circle in the history of inner circles.

According to Fran Parker, an early member of the family, all the men in the cult were completely infatuated with Anne at this time. They had huge crushes on her. Bill in particular was beglomered by her. Fran compared Anne to being an enchantress from ancient ages that could, quote, enslave people with a glance.

But infatuation had to cross the threshold into devotion and blind commitment somehow, and Anne needed both the men and women to believe that, with her help, they could exist forever in a spiritual sense having vanquished the past. All of Anne's initiates would come to believe that. They would come to accept, Anne's proclamation that humanity was in its final

carmic cycle, that after this life, there would be no further reincarnation for them. They had ascended through accepting Anne as Christ. They would live forever in blissful harmony and survive the upcoming apocalypse. Thank you, New Jesus. And with that kind of acceptance came total obedience. Former member told journalist Gerard Riled that Anne was their living master, quote, the very center and soul and substance of the way of salvation laid down by the Supreme

father. Without the love and help of the living master, no soul could ever be liberated from the material world. But as powerful charisma, an exceptional ability to sell bullshit as truth. Good looks and flirty charm fully explain how a room full of doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, academics, lawyers could end up believing that the woman in front of them was actually Jesus Christ. Well, it seems that LSD help with that. All sect members were taken to New Haven, where they were administered LSD in various ceremonies, and while in an especially fragile mental state, while their minds had been opened up more than one can open a mind naturally to accept new information on a deeper level, they came to believe she was Jesus Christ. According to Lex De Man, a lead

investigator into the criminal case that we'll try to take Anne down later, quote, once they were administered the LSD in a dark room, the door would appear open and here would be Anne standing in a flowing white gown. Behind her was a bucket of dry ice which permeated like smoke and under the hallucinogenic drug LSD they were made to be convinced that they were seeing the almighty.

They were seeing Jesus Christ. It's fucking wild. Former member Dave Whitaker was a teen when he was in the cult and his father also a cult member and a doctor injected him with LSD numerous times over a period of several days for one of these ceremonies. He said quote,

Anne would come in every now and then and sit down beside me and whisper in my ear, who is Jesus? And then somehow the thought would pop into my head, you're Jesus. And then she'd say,

That's right, David. You always knew I was the Lord. This is fucking diabolical and darkly brilliant. It actually reminds me of, I think it's called the Leap Ceremony in this new show on Netflix called Wayward,

if any of you have seen this. They had to have been familiar with this. LSD helped Anne get deep, deep inside their minds. Former sect member Andrew Ogilvy admitted, quote, I went through a period where I would have died for Anne. Under these mind-expanding drugs, one was able to regress through one's life and back into past lives. This was clearing, clearing out things of the past.

You had to go to Anne to get the clearing. In addition to mandating obedience, and also secrecy regarding her rituals and some of her teachings to not draw unwanted attention to what she was doing, Anne also flattered her followers, delighting them with revelations, that they were on a noble path that they had earned the right

to advance spiritually into a future divine adventure. Oh boy. She was very gifted at making her followers feel exceptionally special such an important skill

for a cult leader. I've been waiting for you and would say when first meeting a potential recruit you are special. And it's so sad that so many of us meat sacks get so lonely

and beaten down by life that that's all it takes to pull us into a cult sometimes. Just somebody telling us that we're so special. once in the cult There was only one rule Do absolutely everything

Ann said According to former member Dave Whitaker That included what to think What to wear, what to eat Who to marry, who not to marry Total obedience Doesn't get much more culty than that

To further help understand How a cult like this forms sociologists William Sims Bainbridge And Rodney Stark pointing to three formation models The psychopathology model When a leader's personal psychological issues like delusions, trauma, or a need for control, lead them to create a group around their ideas.

The entrepreneur model, when someone sees an opportunity to gain followers or resources by offering something new or exciting, like a spiritual product, teaching, or lifestyle. And then the subculture evolution model, when a group of receptive people already interested in alternative ideas come together around a leader's message. And Anne in the family's case, all three models perfectly converged. her childhood trauma her yoga new age lifestyle the 1960s counterculture that was all about throwing off the established order and throughout the 1960s anne's young cult would continue to grow they would eventually have several hundred followers no exact figures known decades later some former cult members described this period as being a very gradual immersion into new values in a tale as old as time no one ever thought they were getting into or were already part of a cult and started not only recruiting wealthy professionals, but remixing their lives now. At her request, they changed their names, they left their marriages, they signed over all their assets, which were often substantial,

even had children with new partners at her behest. She had total control over them. But then this all created a new problem for Anne. She'd broken up families to build her cult, but she still had no real family of her own except for Bill and her grown daughter, Judith. She was surrounded by devoted men and women who worshipped her, but she also wanted more children of her own. And Anne needed a way to build a family that did not rely on giving birth herself, for she was nearly 50. By the early 1970s, most members were donating a majority of their income to Anne. Many had given Anne a ton of cash and other assets that accumulated long before they met her. She was flushed with cash, and this money, you know, created new possibilities for her and her cult.

Anne's influence expanded as her property portfolio increased. The cult's motto was unseen, unheard, unknown, but as the group grew, to hundreds of people sworn to absolute secrecy that they needed more room and that room had to be secluded. So Ann built a chapel in the Dandahongs named it Shantini Catan Lodge

meaning abode of peace named after an ashram and Tagore India. And Shantini Catan Lodge was a low-line red brick building which became the family's temple, cementing the cult and giving it focus. Colt members would gather twice a week to hear sermons from men either in person seated on a purple chair her throne under a large crucifix

or recorded onto a cassette tape. If any of those old sermons still exist on tapes, it doesn't seem they have made it online yet, which is unfortunate. Anne announced to her followers that they need to start collecting children to rebuild humanity.

This is how she can get her family after a coming nuclear apocalypse or some other ecological catastrophe in which humanity will perish. Weird to me that New Jesus couldn't be more specific. Which is it, New Jesus? Nuclear apocalypse or some other ecological catastrophe. And when, exactly,

is it? Was Anne's responsibility as New Jesus with the help of the family to prepare the next generation to re-educate the world and carry on her teachings when the time came? Totally. Anne was apparently pretty paranoid when it came to the possibility of nuclear war. That may

have not been some bullshit fear tactic. She seems to have actually been concerned that a nuclear apocalypse was imminent. She became more and more paranoid in general as time went on, that unbelievers, that critics, people who thought she was nothing more than a grifter was going to try and kill her. So she started buying up more and more properties, taken over entire streets

in the outer Melbourne suburb of Fernie Creek because she wanted strength and numbers and protection. All the money she was taken from followers allowed her to buy a lot of privacy. And then in 1971, the family bought a five-acre compound, surrounded by a barbed wire fence, hidden amongst dense bushland, named it Kai Lama, a reference to Buddhism, and it was situated in Lake Eildon, a popular now, but pretty quiet than a holiday spot in Victoria. the property was known as up top and was where anne and the adult cult members or excuse me and it was far from where anne and the adult cult members lived in fernie creek roughly a three hour drive uh fernie creek was now where the ritual centers would be located where the chapel was where all the anne worship would happen and where most of the adult members will live the lake eilden property is going to be where anne's children are going to live her new kids

right after they bought the compound in 1971, children started to arrive, seven at first, all of whom were the biological children of various sect members. Ben Shenton, for example, was just 18 months old when his mom, a devoted cult member, sent him to live the new children's compound, away from her. She would live back in Fernie Creek. She straight up just gave her baby boy over to her cult leader to be raised in the kid version of a puppy mill. Other cult members would soon go through a legal adoption process, process and then once they had their adopted child, they would hand the baby over to and

and the baby would grow up in the compound. This is fucking bonkers. Anne turned to her to her inner circle in the medical sphere and instructed the Colt's doctors, nurses, and social workers to keep an eye out for children in need, like Wayne Callister, whose mother had given birth to him when she was just 16. Years later, when Wayne was a child, his mother suddenly collapsed and Colt nurse Elizabeth Whitaker swooped in, offered to let Wayne stay with her temporarily. while his mother was sent to the hospital and then she handed him straight over to Anne's Colt. According to some reports,

Anne would even get her corrupt doctors to make single mother sick to poison them so that they were not physically capable of taking care of their kids and then she would be able to snatch them. Again, Jesus has changed so much. Ooh, man, maybe he's fucking salty about getting crucified or something.

I don't care for new Jesus. Despite orchestrating all of this blatantly shady shit. Anne's followers continued to worship her like a God, and they were willing to do anything for her, which was good for Anne because she wanted more kids. She continued to exploit an already broken system to get them. Back then, there were no pensions or support systems for young mothers, having a kid out of wedlock carried huge shame, as I mentioned earlier, but also wasn't rare. One baby in 12 was born to an unmarried mother, who was often cast as unfit by just default. This was before IVF became available in 1980. For infertile couples, desperate to have

kids, the pregnant single mother-to-adoption pipeline became the answer. These adoptions were often closed and the baby was removed immediately before any contact could be made with the birth mother, a practice rooted in the so-called clean break theory, which held that if a baby was separated from its unmarried mother immediately at birth and placed in a stable adoptive home, the kids' personality would be shaped entirely by the new environment rather than genetics. I mean, it's definitely not true, but that's what they thought back then. The system was also crawling with systemic abuse, started the moment a single mother walked into the antinatal clinic, desperate for help, but that help often never came. Anne Hamilton Byrne had her network of sex doctors and social workers watching for pregnant teen girls who came to the hospitals for routine checkups or, you know, various health concerns.

and insiders would stamp the mother to B's hospital card with an A to alert labor ward staff that others had made the decision and not the mother, which would determine how the delivery would now go. And then during delivery, mothers would be forced into stirrups, shackled to the bed, sedated into submission. Many reported hearing the door slammed before they could even hear their newborn cry, their child taken against their will. And there wasn't shit they could do about it. Not really. They didn't have enough money to lawyer up and fight. and doctors and other staff would just explain to the police

if the police were called that this had been done in the baby's best interest. In some cases, birth mothers were even told that their baby had died when they hadn't. In other cases,

mothers were falsely told that their kids were born malformed or disabled, just evil shit. Anne would also perform miracles in exchange for kids. She would select doctors who were willing to cooperate,

sometimes have them deliberately inflict an illness. I mean, this is alleged, but people seem pretty sure this happened. And, you know, sometimes having them deliberately inflict an illness on the mother of a young child. And once the mom was bedridden and weakened, Anne would appear an offer to cure her, but only in exchange for absolute obedience and the surrender of the child. To explain the ever-growing herd of children showing up with the compound, Anne apparently told members that she was the mother of every arrival, like the biological mother.

Even though some of these babies, you know, weren't even like newborns. But you know what? It's miracles. That's how miracles work. They don't have to make sense. She would apparently even wear maternity clothes, despite being in her 50s now.

Later, she kept doing this following having a hysterectomy she had in the mid-1970s. Did I mention that cold members were still frequently being dosed with LSD and being brainwashed and to continue to believe that Anne's a Messiah

and that she's able to pump out babies in her 50s without even showing signs of being pregnant. The children adopted, stolen, handed over whatever, were all given the last name Hamilton Burn and raised to believe they were the biological children of Anne and Bill

they were siblings no matter what they actually look like they were told this in addition to the adopted children the offspring of other sect members would come visit the house on the weekends sometimes stay for long stints that might even last for years in some occasions

at the cult's peak 28 kids lived at the property at the same time and at least half believe that the Hamilton Burns were their biological parents you know, there to love and take and care for them But of course, Anne would not actually love and care for them She would do weird shit though

And one of the kids to look as identical as possible So she groomed them to resemble one another and her She would have her own hair bleached white blonde And she would have their hair bleached white blonde Except for the few kids who were allowed to keep their natural hair color Because it was a good match for Bill's dark hair The kids would also be given identical haircuts dressed in identical outfits

you can find picks of these kids online and it's so fucking creepy like they have been dressed up to look like they're playing cult kids in a cult movie it just is cartoonishly culty many years later conspiracy theories will emerge that WikiLeaks

Julian Assange with his white hair that some have described as bleach blonde had been a family cult kid he does kind of look like he's one of those kids he's not but there is a connection In the 1970s, when he was a kid, his mother's boyfriend, some amateur musician named

Leif Manel Hamilton, was a family cult member. So that's a weird connection. Anyway, Anne dressed her kids in old-fashioned matching velvet smocks with polished dress shoes. They look like a big homegrown Von Trapp family. It's so weird. She told her followers that these kids were, you know, again, to be a new race of humans.

According to one former cult kid, they were bestowed with a response. responsibility to be the perfect children who would save the world, no pressure. Anne would grace her kids with her heavenly presence sometimes adorned in pearls and diamonds and designer outfits, covered in Chanel perfume. She would

frequently play the harp and sing songs and perfect pitch soprano to the kids. I imagine her sitting on a giant pillow made it look like a fucking cloud while doing this. This is insanity. A quick glance, Anne looked like her version of the perfect mother with a picture

perfect family that she'd always dreamed of. and this image had a purpose marketing and would film happy family videos or have them filmed which then acted as recruitment tools

showing off her beautiful you know bleach blonde children she's singing beautiful songs with them to entice new weird cult members I got I tried so hard

to locate one of these old videos online but just couldn't find one like there'd be like tiny little clips of them and some documentaries but just not enough oh man would have been a great get some of these children

will later claim that they were bribed with chocolate to act and sing, which was a good bribe, considering they were often starved. Misbehavior in the family could mean going without food for the kids up to a full week. The kids' daily lives, not heavenly. They were rigidly structured, as lives are

often in cults. At 6 a.m., they would wake up and make their beds. Then they would shower, boys and girls on alternate days. Then the kids' day really began with one hour of Hatha Yoga. A fucking hour followed by 15 minutes

listening to recorded sermons by either Anne or this Indian guru she liked named Mukta Nanda a dude who by the way faced numerous credible accusations later in life of having sex with teen girls

decades younger than him telling them it was part of some important ritual that would give them more tantric energy or some bullshit fucking 99% of the time if a coal eater or guru has a dick he's going to stick it in places that is not legal

following listening to some bullshit sermon came 15 minutes of mantra chants then another 50 or then 50 minutes of meditation sorry then 15 minutes to set up school room which have been approved by australia's department of education breakfast was at eight it consisted only of fruit uh and was not a big fan of the food pyramid i don't think uh the kids then did three hours of schoolwork followed by another hour of meditation oh man because we all know little kids love to sit still and meditate uh uh uh uh uh Lunch was steamed vegetables and fruit. No one gave a shit about protein, followed by three to four hours of more schoolwork. Then the kids would pack up their classroom, and from 5 to 9 p.m., they would mostly meditate again. Fucking enough with a meditation.

And then they would have a bland vegetarian dinner, like a late dinner, and then finish homework, read spiritual texts on Hindu, Buddhism, theosophy, Christian beliefs, you know, whatever fucking Anne was mixing together, and then go to sleep. That would be an intense, schedule for anybody, let alone a kid, with no room for basic play or real enjoyment or just

vital nutrients. Cult experts argue that this is deliberate, of course. You know, we've seen this kind of shit, you know, so many times before. Keep your followers constantly busy. Keep them tired, malnourished, confused, break them down so that they will believe anything you tell them. A researcher Jesse Meekle, in her work on imposed anorexia, suggests that leaders like Anne use extreme food restrictions to keep members.

Yeah, tired, physically feeble, and disorientation. but what happens when these kids disobeyed because of course they're going to disobey their kids how could they possibly stick to a rigid schedule how could they resist trying to like steal extra rations when they were hungry well when they did that they would be punished severely the responsibility of handling or disciplining the kids fell to women called aunties this is some fucking handmaid's tail shit for a long time the aunties were patricia macfarlane elizabeth whittaker and margot maclellan three women fiercely loyal to anne who enforced her strict orders as if their lives depended on it.

They were under constant pressure to keep unhappy and maintain their grip on a house full of kids who were not theirs, and they were not afraid to use for us. If the kids, you know, did something as trivial as wearing odd socks or a dirtied smock, they were severely beaten to the point of being covered in bruises with a belt or a bamboo stick typically and or they would have their heads dunked into buckets of cold water for long enough to make the kids think they were going to drown. several former child members would talk later in interviews of how traumatic it was to hear or even watch other kids be beaten or half drowned screaming fighting to run away to end their punishment according to one cult auntie margot the strict rules and regulation were for the aunties just as much as they were for the kids and had told them that the spiritual path was a brutal one and that sometimes they would have to do hard things they didn't want to do enduring these hardships was just part of the auntie's spiritual training and benefit not just punishment for misbehavior children. And the children, the little children, also regularly dosed, not just with LSD, but also

with Valium and Magadon, to benzodiazepines that can leave you feeling disoriented and confused, and psilocybin, the active, psychoactive substance and magic mushroom to, quote, keep them in line. Holy shit. Cannot imagine being dosed with fucking LSD or similar substances as a little kid. Reality's already soft, right? It's very soft along the edges when you're a kid. Your brain is so underdeveloped. As soon as they reach their teenage years, the kids would be forced into, quote, clearing sessions, similar to the hallucinogenic rituals,

the adult members endured, or, you know, would endure during initiation. This is so fucking crazy. They would be deprived of food and sleep, locked in a dark room for days, dosed with LSD intravenously every couple of hours. Holy M.K. Ultra. That's some secret government program level of brainwashing.

Every time I start to think I've heard it all When it comes to Colts Something like this comes along Just continually amazed By the sheer volume of insane life choices And crazy scenarios that various humans Have pulled off on this planet over the years The truth might not actually be stranger than fiction

But it definitely gives it a run for its money From time to time While the kids were drugged And would ask them questions like Can you look at why you're so wicked Why don't you do what you're told And badge them about creepy shit like sexual desires, and, of course, remind them that she's Jesus.

According to the book The Family, the shocking true story of a notorious cults, again by Chris Johnson and Rosie Jones, a child member named Sarah in her first session, quote, saw her skin falling off. She saw bones and maggots in a corpse. She felt alone in the universe, and she remembers Anne laughing at her and calling her names.

So that's fun. Children were given their first clearing session when they were 14, but again, they were often dosed many times before this. Many victims would never truly fully recover from the level of hallucinogens they would consume during these clearing sessions. There's rumors that, you know, some of them ended up institutionalized for the rest of their fucking lives. Yeah, I bet.

Given LSD doses every few hours for days? How did Anne rationalize all this? Dr. Rainer Johnson's diary describes Anne's plan in a 1970 entry called Suffer the Little Children to Come Unt to Me. He wrote, viewed as a piece of organization with devoted and sacrificial help. It is staggering in its outlook. excuse me, yet it was planned with the consciousness of its magnitude and the great responsibility

of its undertaking. Only a great master, equally at home in this world and the next, could have hoped to carry it through. It amounted to this. A group of children, some already born here, some yet to be born, were brought together, fostered and adopted and trained from the beginning of their lives in as perfect conditions as could be provided. Their health was meticulously supervised in all aspects of their welfare and education were considered and provided for. Before they came, it was known by the master, when and where, and to what parents they were coming and what qualities they potentially brought with them from past lives. It is safe to say that the future age will see them, unknown though they are as custodians and continuers of the work their master has set

going in many parts of the world. I'm not sure that explains how Anne rationalizes. I am sure that Dr. Johnson had lost his fucking mind. He somehow believed the children's living conditions were near-perfect and essential to nurture the children required to carry Anne's spiritual work around the world. They needed to have their brain scrambled to properly and totally digest the master's teachings. By the mid-1970s, the family and their crazy teachings had gone global, and Anne expanded the sect into England and America by massive overseas properties including Broom Farm, a big tutor estate in Kent. In 1977, one of the original cult children, Wayne Callister, who traveled to England with Anne, fled Anne's cult property

in England at the age of 17. A child fleeing a spiritual community should have set off alarm bells, but it would be many more years before authorities began to look more closely. As later reported in an article in the September 5th, 1930, or 1993, 1933, we're going to travel back in time. The 1993 edition of the Canberra Times, Wayne was taken from a strict Catholic upbringing in a Queensland foster family and went with his birth mother to live in the family's Fernie Creek compound.

he told a reporter about being dosed with all the drugs. I've already gone over, said that from time to time, children would vanish. The rumor was, he said they had died from drug overdoses. Wayne said that drugs were the basis of most of the sex teachings, that they were used as a tool of persuasion for clearings and healings. He said that when he was 10 years old, he saw his sect mother for the last time lying comatose on the kitchen floor after ingesting an almost lethal cocktail of various drugs. He wouldn't see her again for two decades. A few years before being interviewed for the newspaper, he had tracked her down to a nursing home where she had been living for years unable to care for herself.

She was incapable of communicating with him, totally unaware of her surroundings, her mind had been destroyed by Anne's experimental drug cocktails. Wayne ended up becoming a social worker so he could look out for kids in the system like he was and do a better job of protecting them than anybody ever did for him. So good on Wayne. Hail Nimrod. February of 1979, Joan Willamick, the woman who ran the New Haven Psychiatric Clinic, died and she left control of the hospital in her will to none other than Anne Hamilton-Burn, which is awesome. Doesn't matter that she wasn't a psychiatrist. She's new Jesus. This marked Anne's transition from having spiritual power to direct institutional power. However, around the same time, Anne's control over her kids started to slip, and cult members started to vanish.

In 1980, a 10-year-old girl named Kim Holm went missing. For the first time, the Australian media caught wind of the family, which had somehow managed to avoid scrutiny for almost two decades. Kim had been born into the family. Her mother, Patricia, had met Anne through evil Satan yoga, naturally. and then on Anne's orders had quit her job as librarian to become a nurse for the cult but of course

one day Kim's father Hans dropped Kim off at Patricia's house noticed a suspicious white car parked in the driveway after Hans and Patricia divorced and had ordered Patricia to leave her husband Patricia fled with Kim and Hans filed a missing person's police report a smart guy

he had written down that suspicious white car's license plate and kept it and now the police were able to trace it to the Colts Lake Eilden compound where the kids were held police searched the property but could not find Kim and for some reason didn't seem all that bothered about the dozens of other kids living there all with the same surname of Hamilton Burn

all with the same fucking weird bleach blonde haircuts and old-timey outfits the whole thing was dismissed as some type of domestic dispute fortunately Kim and Patricia will eventually be found many years later living in Auckland, New Zealand where they'd fled. Before moving forward former member Fran Parker said she was able to get numerous followers

to divorce their spouses and was sometimes by threatening them with institutionalization. If they didn't, which we went over before, she would allegedly say, again, it only takes two psychiatrists to commit you. And as mentioned earlier, she had more than two psychiatrists under her spell willing to do new Jesus' biddy.

While Anne did not get any trouble regarding the Kim Hall in runaway situation, the media were now beginning to grow curious about the family, and that made Anne nervous. She needed to make it harder, she felt, for her to get in trouble. So she started to twist reality further, and she started to change members' birthdays,

to change relationships between members, even change their names where they were from. For example, in 1984, the Australian-born Sarah Hamilton-Burn, later known as Sarah Moore, suddenly became a New Zealander, and it was no longer a twin but a triplet, according to newly falsified legal documents. That type of shit became a common ploy of ants when taking children now.

She'd forged documents claiming that the new children were actually the twin or a triplet of someone who was already in the cult, in addition to making it harder for authorities to find kids taken in by the cult this was Anne's way of demonstrating power over not just the family but the entire world of facts. She used this as

proof of her ability to alter reality it will. But the rewrites didn't hold for long. Again, the original children, they're getting older, harder to control. And as the horrors wore on two cult children, Sarah Moore and Leanne Crease finally will have enough. As a

teen, Sarah began rebelling, stealing shit like toast and butter from the aunties, This progressed to stealing food from outside the property Encouraging her pseudo-siblings to do the same Leading them on night raids to steal food from neighboring houses Such a sad form of teenage rebellion Not sneaking out to a party or have sex No, just sneaking out to get a fucking snack

Then in 1986 came the first escape 16-year-old Leanne finally snapped After being violently slapped in the face by Anne She slapped her back, well done Judas had slapped new Jesus And now she had to escape She escaped out of a window, bolted down to the lake, ran until she reached a nearby house where she called the police. And for a very brief moment, it looked like Anne Hamilton Bird might finally have to face some consequences.

When an officer arrived at the neighbor's home, Leanne told him all about the beatings, about the time she'd been beaten with the belt or a bamboo stick, how she'd ended up covered in bruises, barely able to move. She spoke of starvation, saying she went a full week without food once before. she spoke of LSD dosing and strange rituals, you know, the woman claiming to be God, but sadly because the truth was so outrageous, the officer didn't believe her. Instead of rescuing her or checking up on the remaining children, the officer phoned the aunties who convinced him that, oh, Leanne's crazy. She's mentally unstable. And now Leanne was placed in foster care, and her claims totally ignored. She will struggle to adjust to life in the outside world. It terrified her. She didn't know how to function. She didn't know how to cross a fucking road, how to navigate anything. in everyday life. One day, she walked into a bank and asked them to give her $50 to buy some new clothes because she didn't know how banks worked. She had just totally lost. 1987, things that the family shifted when Ann and Bill fled overseas, worried about

being investigated in Australia or having their compounds raided. They went to live in Hawaii first, then over to the UK again. But of course, Anne still controlled things back in Australia. She understood that appearing normal protected the cult. So she decided that some of the older children would be able to be a lot. allowed to attend a real high school now. She figured they were so brainwashed and indoctrinated that betrayal was unlikely, but she'd be wrong, while living overseas, and adopted a much more lax attitude towards her children, became

disinterested in spending much time and energy controlling them, which you know it's fair. You know, it's got to be exhausting, being a controlling cold leader. It's hard work. Why do I have to keep reminding, you dipshit I'm new Jesus? Why can't just do whatever the fuck I say when I say it? Oh, I'm so sick of autonomy for other people. She started allowing Sarah and some others To make friends outside the community

Sarah will move to live at Wimbra Another one of Anne's property She had so many properties We don't even know many properties she had Where she would finish her high school studies There Sarah joined a ballroom dance class Made two new friends, sisters Kathy and Helen She would join their family for dinner

Every now and then And she began to quietly confide in them And their mother Erica About what life in the family was actually like And Erica and her daughters were like What the fuck? Fuck. No, I've never dosed my girls with massive amounts to LSD. What? No, we never talk about the second coming in Doomsday.

Sarah's new friends told her that what she was living through was highly abnormal. And now for the first time, Sarah started to truly understand how fucked up and controlling her upbringing had been. And she began to refer to herself and other kids, you know, in the cult as POAs or prisoners of Anne. One night after Erica drove Sarah home, Sarah invited Erica inside to see what the compound was really like, you know, so she could, like, show her like, I'm not bullies. this is like how it is and that was a direct breach of anne's rules and the aunties reported it immediately and sarah was excommunicated from the cult new jesus was like out bitch don't at the compound door hit you hit you on the ass on the way on the way out erika fortunately took her in put a roof over her head and importantly introduced her to a private investigator named helen d

who helped sarah locate her adoption records which was the first step to figure out who she actually was sarah was terrified to have been excommunicated she thought she was now curse to die, her soul was damned. She thought that, you know, because she had been, of course, you know, taught to think that. But then a bright spot. In the outside world, Sarah will find and reunite with Leanne. And the two adopted sisters could not stop talking and thinking about the siblings they had left behind now. They feared for their safety.

Anne was set to return to Australia in a couple of months, and they knew exactly what would happen as soon as she arrived. The LSD clearing sessions would start up again. the thought of their younger siblings having to suffer through such a traumatic ordeal made them sick. They went back to the police, provided more statements, including detailed records of abuse at Lake Eilden, and then guided the authorities straight to the property. In the early hours of Friday, August 14th, 1987, the state of Victoria, federal police, or like Victoria, state police, and federal police, they raided Lake Eildon responding to what they believed was, you know, somewhat of a standard child abuse case.

Bill Byrne was present during the raid and was away Although he was not charged Bill resisted the police Cleaning tightly to a child Forged an officer To physically wrestle a child from him Authorities had seen enough

To remove the children From the isolated compound And place him into protective custody While they investigated further Sadly the youngest child they rescued Exact age not given Suffered from psychosocial dwarfism Living in such a harsh

Uncaring environment Had prevented her growth hormones From being released And upon being rescued from the cult, she immediately started to grow again. The detectives scoured every inch of the property in their investigation. They found coffins buried in sandy graves, sent the bones inside of those coffins off for analysis. They soon realized that a lot of kids were missing. Only knew the whereabouts of 14 of the kids.

There were supposedly a bunch more, so where were they? It was now obvious to detectives that there was far more to this case than child abuse allegations. So was this investigation going to bring the cult down? Well, no. In 1988, according to Sarah, police informed her and Leanne that, quote, due to the statutory limitation of 12 months from the date of abuse, the authorities were unable to proceed with prosecuting members of the family for what they had done to us. Fuck, that's fucking crazy.

The system had failed them. Luckily, though, just a few months later, a routine call would bring Detective Lex Demand into the family's orbit. The call was regarding an incident involving Roland Whitaker, a rebellious teenager whose mother Elizabeth had a reputation as being one of the cruel as aunties. Rowland had attempted to burn down a Catholic primary school in the hills. Roland then 17, known to the police for a string of arson and petty theft charges in the area. And Demand set out to investigate the arson further. While he did so, a constable warned him, Roland's one of the kids tied up with that cult.

Don't get involved. Strange advice. Demand would not take it. In 1989, a police operation code named Operation Forest would be set up, headed by Demand, who led a small team of five other detectives pulled from the drug squad. Operation Forest Task Force called for a Royal Commission to fully investigate what appeared to be the acquisition and administration of LSD and other controlled substances to underage minors and systematic failures in government agencies to detect and stop

these alleged illegal activities. But tragically, this will never be acted upon. Why? Demand and his team were very strapped for manpower and resources, tragically underfunded. And adult SEC members, all of them currently in the compounds, flat out refused to talk poorly about their leader. They would not incriminate her. The police's only hope of prosecution lay with talking to the kids. And in January of 1990, detectives began to interview children from Lake Eilden, but it didn't go smoothly. There were endless hiccups. Due to, again,

a lack of resources, detectives were not able to travel very far to conduct their interviews. Also, the kids had been conditioned to distrust police heavily. They believed the police were there to hurt them, that they were evil, totalitarian thugs, always on the lookout for small children, to abuse, to incarcerate. They also had no frame of reference to understand that the treatment they were receiving was actually abuse. As a result, the kids also remained loyal to Anne.

They didn't want to portray their God or their parents, no matter how much pain they were in. Still, authorities kept trying. Lex Demand and other Operation Force task force members began to grow close to several of the kids. Their trauma deeply affected the investigators who felt helpless in getting them the justice they needed and deserved.

Out of sheer frustration, task members leaked documents related to a lack of proper police funding to the press to escalate matters. And now politician Robert McKellen, a member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly, demanded to know why no charges had been laid out for what he described as illegal medical experimentation, similar to what went on in World War II in Nazi Germany. But still, the investigation doesn't really move forward. Despite governmental pressure for answers, there was also pressure from within the police to stop the investigation due to what appears to have been corruption, it seems Anne likely used some of her wealth to bribe people in high places, including

within law enforcement, that crafty bitch. Supervisors told the task force to just give it up. Two members would walk away because the stress of all this was taking a too great a toll on them, but Lex Demand would not quit and soon investigative journalist Marie Moore joined his hunt for answers and she began tracking down senior members of the cult. During her investigation, Marie also started to bond with the cult children and slowly earned their trust. But then there was another problem with the investigation. No one could find the leaders. Demand was told Ann and Bill were in the U.K., then later that they were in the U.S., maybe

New Zealand, and within the U.S., you know, maybe New York, maybe Hawaii. Meanwhile, investigators along with lead prosecutor Carolyn Douglas, continued to pour over massive amounts of material trying to see if there was absolutely anything they could use to charge some of the SEC members with something connected to abuse that would stick, but they were finding it impossible. There was no sufficient evidence outside of the testimony of a few exiled members. There was nothing in writing, no photographs of bruises, no hospital reports, no police reports. They couldn't actually find stores of LSD or any other drugs.

And another obstacle stood in the way of prosecution. After the initial raid, the children had been housed together instead of being separated for questioning. And prosecutors feared that N and Bill's highly paid defense lawyers could then attack any testimony those kids gave as being contaminated right they had a chance to collude there were also psychological considerations the children risk being branded as liars by the defense team in court forcing the children to testify and be cross-examined or relive abuse risk severe retramatization finally if prosecutors couldn't go after the child abuse directly they decided to turn to something else how anne obtained the kids in the first place they knew there was a lot of dishonesty in that area so they shifted their focus

are trying to prove it, and they'll get a lucky break. Lex the man heard that a man named Peter Kibby had recently left the cult. Kibby had been the sex lawyer, and had handled property transactions and documentation for births, adoptions, and identities. He had a lot of intel regarding the

cult's interworkings. He was the key to unlocking the cult's illegal activities. Police already had birth documents proving that the kids were born in Victoria, but former member Sarah Moore had suddenly become a New Zealander, a move made possible because Anne, with the help of Kibby, had falsified her documents.

At least that's what the police suspected and wanted to prove. Lex De Man and Kibby had Kibby arrested, excuse me, on fraud charges for producing a false statutory declaration now. For a lawyer, this charge could have resulted in Kibby losing his ability to legally practice law in Australia. Would he turn on his former Messiah to get this charge dropped? Lex DeMann thought he might, in large part, because Kibby had a condition that made the thought of living behind bars, you know, inconceivable to him, a lot harder than it would be for most. OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder. Showering, for instance,

could sometimes take the man hours when his OCD was especially active. You might go through three or four bars of soap in one shower. After his arrest, Kibby quickly made bail and then surprised the police by calling them. Turns out Peter Kibby was furious about how his life had turned out. And he was out for blood. No need to rely on that OCD. He told police, quote, I have information about Ann that might help with proceedings. Over the course of the the next four months, Kibby slowly opened up more and more. I'm sure he was worried about incriminating himself, showing detectives how he and Anne together forge various birth certificates.

Now Lex Demand had the first tangible piece of evidence to arrest Anne and Bill Hamilton Byrne. While he could only pursue them on a minor charge, conspiracy, and perjury for falsifying birth certificates, it would at least be enough to bring them back to Australia for prosecution. But still had to find them. Lex was not 100% certain where the fuck they were. But he knew they were currently splitting their time between the U.K. and the U.S.

Anne used the telephone as a way to maintain control over the cult from abroad. Before the raid, she would sometimes call the aunties from overseas and ask them to administer beatings over the phone so she could listen. That sick fuck wanted to hear the kids screaming. Now that she knew the police were after her, she was far more careful about when and who she called. Lex Demand sought the help of the FBI, Interpol, Scotland Yard to help track her down. Police briefly even pondered trying to infiltrate the cult by sending in an undercover

officer, but they instead hoped that surveillance might be enough. But that was going to take a while. Ann and Bill owns SEC properties all over the world. They could bounce to and fro from. By this time, Anne was worth an estimated $50 million, U.S. dollars, with some sources saying her net worth could have been as high as $150 million through property, land, and cash donated by followers. Holy shit.

Over in the U.S., FBI agent specialist, Hilda Kogat was assigned to this case, one of many agents from various countries Coga worked out of the FBI's New York field offices operating from a satellite station in Orange County, New York and specialized in, she specialized in violent crime, armed robberies, and kidnappings. And on May 27, 1993, Sarah Moore, who was living in Melbourne and studying medicine

at the University of Melbourne, received an important phone call. It was Ann. It was Mommy. You know, they were still in touch, despite Anne having kicked her out of the cult. Anne rarely called, but today she had a bone to pick. some cult members had turned on her, some more cult members, and during the conversation, Anne let it slip that she was in America.

Sarah immediately called Operation Forest, who reached out to the FBI. At this point, they've been on standby for months. Before she could make a move, Hilda needed to confirm Ann and Bill actually were at their house in Hurleyville, a hamlet in Sullivan County, known for its secluded properties. That's where Sarah thought she was. When Hilda arrived at the address, she found an isolated home on a country road. It's problematic because it didn't offer any good hidden spots where she could surveil the property without being seen.

So she got creative. She recruited help from a local post office employee, rode along with a postal driver on their daily route, quietly surveying the home. And sure enough, FBI agent Hilda Kogan saw that Ann and Bill were there, and she let Operation Forest know. And now, Lex Demand flies to America to escort the Hamilton Burns back to Australia. June 4, 1993, at the crack of dawn,

Hilda Kogut and the FBI squad arrive at Ann and Bill's home knock on the door yelling, open up, we have a warrant. Bill opened the door almost immediately. Several moments later, Anna appeared in the living room, wearing a robe,

looking like she just stepped out of the shower. What Hilda found surprised her, Anne looked nothing like the ruthless cult leader she'd expected. She looked frail and old. According to Hilda, Anne, quote, looked like a woman that had had a lot of reconstructive surgery.

I love this part. including a hairline that pretty much started in the middle of her head that's how many facelips she'd add oh my god I love that description a hairline that pretty much started in the middle of her head and she's not wrong there are videos there are videos and photos online of New Jesus back in 1993 when she was arrested and the 71 year old cult leader

does indeed look at this point in time like her hairline starts at the very top of her head it is something her middle age good looks have 100% left the building at this point. She looks like a fucking witch now. Her husband Billy, he's looking a little cray cray himself in 93. The handsome

power couple now looking like, you know, crazed cultists, like something out of a horror movie. Anna and Bill are charged with perjury and conspiracy to defraud. Their first court appearance posed to rest is in White Plains Court in New York where Anne and Bill are granted bail and they're ordered to wear electric uh, excuse me, electronic ankle

bracelets to have their, you know, movements monitored. And send a letter to her followers around this time. It's writing some culty shit. The invisible forces are guiding us and leading us on, my friends. It is also important for you to know that it has been revealed, certain

tests in which we have failed. So this has given renewed trust and confidence, because it showed a lot of people that despite apparent failure all this stuff that has gone on with the Hamilton-Burned kids by maintaining a steadfast mind and keeping our face turned toward that wondrous light.

Fucking no idea what that means. maybe stay strong don't rat on your Messiah I don't know four days after the arrest around 50 cult members in Melbourne met up at the old Shantini Katan Lodge

for an emergency meeting to talk about how to diffuse this crisis that lodge is still around by the way abandoned but still around I found a YouTube video of two guys who broke in and wandered around it is creepy

definitely could be used as a set in a movie about cults their lawyers fought tooth and nail to block extradition and insisting Anne's weak heart and Bill's kidney stones made them far too sick

to fly back to Australia. Kidney stones? He can't fly because of fucking kidney stones and knew Jesus as hard as too weak to fly? Isn't this supposed to be strong enough to survive an apocalypse?

They simply could not and would not survive the stress, their lawyers said. However, when a doctor assessed them, they were found to be in perfectly good health. Of course they were. Anna Bill kept fighting extradition, though.

But then while Bill was being held in the Westchester County Jail in New York, one of his cellmate got straight up murdered. And then Bill was like, I'll go. I'm over it. No, I'll go. I'll go. I'll leave. And also, they were just being pursued on minor charges. So Ann and Bill are now extradited to Australia from the U.S.

Their trial is set for November of 1993, but they are still only charged with minor offenses. Charging Bill and Ann with the full extent of their heinous crimes at the moment was not possible. Because of the principle of specialty in international extraditions in Australia at that time, which stated that an extradited person could not be sentenced, detained, re-extradited,

or charged for any offense other than the one for which extradition was granted. So that little loophole, you know, worked out well for them. Colt membership was at least plummety now, though. There was a little chance of recruiting new cult members now that Ann and Bill had been arrested and newspapers and tabloids were labeling them

as dangerous cult leaders on a nearly daily basis, and they look crazy as fuck. I think they lost a lot of their members this time, too. Annabelle will each plead not guilty to one count each of conspiring to commit perjury and one count each of conspiring to defraught. But they will both be found guilty of both charges. Sadly, during sentencing, their ages are taken into account, though. Anna and Bill, both in the early 70s. And the judges noted they had already spent three months in jail in America.

So therefore, and nearly 73, Bill 72 will not serve further jail time, and that is buck and weak. their only punishment is a $5,000 fine each for falsifying documents of three children. The maximum penalty for those offenses was $60,000 in five years in jail. It's a fucking candy-ass judge. Eight aunties are arrested, charged with making false social security claims

and collecting government benefits they were not entitled to and had instructed them to claim sickness benefits, invalid benefits, and aged pensions while working as nurses, and then they would send their checks straight to her. the aunties appealed but their appeals failed all but one will serve short jail sentences around six weeks each and they'll live out the rest of their lives as free women following ann and bill's arrest along with intense media coverage and public outrage one might expect to see the cult members uh you know see the truth and get out but that didn't really happen for a while most actually stayed uh the kids left though uh and continued you know they were taken uh during that raid so that's that's good uh and continued to insist that their actions were a genuinely benevolent act that she and Bill out of the goodness of their hearts

had rescued and taken in a bunch of handicapped kids Anne's version of the family story was this while teaching yoga and working at New Haven in the early 60s quote some rather important people approached New Haven matron Joan Villamec with several handicapped children in need of a loving family and arranged adoptions within her yoga community

out of the goodness of her heart out of the goodness of her satanic, bendy, tight leggings she denied ever using LSD and anyone, denied ever claiming to be Jesus, and said that the only reason for using fake passports that she had was to make, you know, getting through customs easier. According to Ann, the whole thing was, quote, just so sad. We all thought, not just myself, we had the best advice from psychologists and welfare workers to let them feel that they were part of our home. Anne maintained that her controversial methods were driven by a genuine desire to help troubled kids who were beyond

repair, and she had their best interest in heart, at heart. After her trial and returned to preaching sermons at the lodge, but at least while she previously spoke to hundreds, now post arrest, there would never be more than like 20 members at a time. In early 1995, Megan Dawes, the daughter of two cult members, sat for an interview about all this. She surprisingly praised the family. She defended Anna Bill, insisting that, quote, the children who alleged imprisonment and abuse were led into false memory syndrome by psychologists after the raid. I mean, you know, not a bad thing to believe it, but I don't think it true. Could have happened, but I don't think it did. said, for Megan, the horrors reported by former members were simply distortions.

Another steadfast supporter was Michael Stevenson Helmer, nephew of former Australian Governor General Sir Zellman Cohen. He maintained just until the end that Anne was persecuted and oppressed solely on religious grounds. In 2009, at 87 years old, Anne agreed to an interview, the only one I can find online, with Australian TV host Carl Stefanovic, who seems to be a gem of a human, by the way. I've watched various interviews he has done over the years. he's fantastic

Anyway during the interview Stefanovic read aloud a passage from Sarah Hamilton Burns' 1995 memoir Unseen Unheard Unknown Regarding being abused And simply deny the abuse Saying kids can make things up

We've all been kids He read a passage Or the passage he read said Anne had a stiletto healed shoe in her hand And she started hitting me A stiletto healed shoe On my bare backside with a shoe After about 20 or 30 hits

She got tired and Bill took over Anna got really fucking weird during this interview. Her cult persona came out. Check out this awesomely awkward exchange between Carl and Anne. This is on 60 Minutes Australia. Carl has asked Anne how she feels about Sarah having attempted suicide. And this is how it goes. Does it hurt you that she has tried to take her own life because of the way she was brought up?

Of course it does. It's not the way she's brought up. It's the way it handled and the way it went out. We didn't have everything that we needed. We had most things. I bought the bigger house because of the likes of little Sarah. You thought a house would make everything right? Well, I just thought we'd give them more room.

People don't try and take their life because their house is too small. You're not smart enough. For what? In your heart. What's in your heart is not the same. I don't know what you mean by that. No, of course you don't. He just switches gears after that

And ask her a new question That's such a fantastic exchange I want to use that on somebody in conversation Just out of nowhere And she leans forward really intensely while she does it Just lean forward out of nowhere And be like, you're not smart enough What? For what? In your heart

What's in your heart is not the same I don't know I don't know what you mean by that No, of course you don't Carl gives the best What the fuck is she going on about Looking to the camera during that exchange we gotta hear the last part of that exchange one more time when she leans forward and speaks her crazy

you're not smart enough for what in your heart what's in your heart is not the same i don't know what you mean by that no of course you don't i wish there was more just interviews with cult leaders after their fall on a that i can find on youtube just in general it's always so great when they've like you know been in a cult for a long time and they've been in a cult for a long time and they've had all these, you know, followers just accept whatever nonsense they say as, like, divine truth. And in that weird little echo chamber, they get so much stranger. And then when you take them out of that and they speak to a regular person, it's just fucking gibberish. Oh, it's so good.

Following Anne's trial, Lex Demand, after the Operation Task Force, had compiled a 30,000-page dossier on Anne's alleged activities, he concluded that, quote, I have dealt with hell's angels. I've dealt with a lot of bad crooks She was the worst She was evil He'll spend the rest of his career Lamenting not being able to put her in prison In the years following the raid and arrest

The aftermath was devastating of course For many former members One of Peter and Barbara Kibby's sons Attempted suicide at 16 Then succeeded at 20 Their other son has no memory of anything that happened to him Before the age of seven

And Barbara believes that's because of the cult And what happened to him at the kid's center In uptop near Lake Eildon both the kibby boys had grown up at up top and had sent barbara kibby peter kibby's wife away to england for over a year telling her all look after your sons leave them with me and barbara agreed and when she returned both her boys were deeply fucked up uh sarah moore the colt's first child the runaway hero who saved her siblings went on to

become a doctor but her life far from easy filled with pain trauma and depression in 2005 she was charged with forging prescriptions for pethadine for herself She claimed she sought relief with the painkiller for pain caused by an incision made in her abdomen during some weird initiation cult ritual. At her hearing, magistrate Nunziot Larosa spared her a conviction in jail time, taking into account the deprived and abusive life she had endured growing up in Anne Hamilton Burns' cult. She attempted suicide in 2008, spent the remainder of her short life in a wheelchair, before passing away from heart failure in 2016 at just 46. As for the graves at up top, I mentioned earlier, the missing people. Turns out the graves were actually for dead dogs, dead pets. Regarding the missing cult members, some did die from drug overdoses while others were committed to institutions like New Haven.

For the surviving cult children, a whole new wave of trauma awaited them. Many went out to search for the truth about who they really were only to discover that nobody knew. Their so-called parents within the sect were not their biological parents. For many, there was no record of their births in any official registrar. you know, Anne, of course, wasn't their actual mom, Bill wasn't their dad. After years of identity searching in trauma, Roland Whitaker, now going by his real name of Adam Lancaster, finally reunited with his biological family, only to learn his mom had already passed away. He will say, there's a huge sadness that I actually never got to at least give her a cuddle.

Or say, hey, I'm your son. Upon being rescued from the cult, victim, Anoree, Trina Byrne, who discovered she'd been sold to the cult, found out her mother had committed suicide, in quote, or die by suicide, and, quote, Not only was Bill not her father, but he was actually her grandfather. His son Michael was her real father. Despite everything she endured, Leanne Crease puzzled many in Australia, shocked her cult siblings when she asked Bill to walk her down the aisle at her wedding.

As she explained in the cult at the family docu-series, she'd always been a daddy's girl and held no ill will toward Bill. Her rage directed entirely at Anne. So she was obviously still psychologically fucked up. Bill died in 2001, and you know what? Good. Fuck that guy. Unrepent to the bitter end

And continued to lead the cult What was left of it In 2004, she was admitted to a care home with dementia Where she lived out her final years As still technically a cult leader With a few followers and a millionaire. On April 29th, 2017,

The Long Running American Investigative Journalism series Another 48 hours did an episode on the family In it, they interviewed numerous former cult members Most of whom we've already talked about. Adam Lancaster explained that while Anne herself Was high on LSD, she had this vision that she had to collect

all these kids from birth yeah everyone was taking it and included he and Dave Whitaker whose parents were senior cult members said she told followers that she needed to collect the children because the end of the world

was coming notice of the population of the world was going to perish quote she was preparing us to re-educate the world what was left of it former member Sarah shortly before she died

when asked why Anne started collecting a bunch of kids said I think she simply said about it as a project you know I'll collect as many kids as I can Once she became the leader of the cult I think she could get whatever she wanted I think one thing she wanted was lots of little children

Little perfect little children and perfect little dresses With perfect little blonde hair Yeah it's kind of like she collected kids like Like my wife Lindsay now just collects like sunny angels Like they were just fucking dolls for her A former child member Ben Shetton Said that he grew up in fear in the cult Due to the abuse dished out by the aunties

Quote if someone wet the bed They'd get cold showers One of the boys had asthma He was wheezing and sniveling, and the nurses put him outside in the cold at night. Detective Lex De Man said in his interview for another 48 hours that he still often breaks down and cries when he thinks of the kids, and he ended the episode by saying, Some might find this a bit harsh of me to say, but to me, it will be a great day when they bury that bitch six feet under. Two years later, I love that quote. Demand got his great day.

June 13, 2019, Anne Hamilton Burn finally died at the age of 98. That wretched old bitch Almost made it to 100 All that devil yoga Stretched out her longevity, I guess By the time of her death The family had dwindled To a tiny band of loyal followers

Few hung on to the very end Like I said Few were willing to speak to the press Except for Michael Stevenson Helmer He visited Anne regularly In her aged care home Denied she had dementia At the end

Insisting instead that she lived in quote Christ consciousness That dude's mind was just fucking mush He would often speak out about Anne's magnetism to the media right up until she died saying she just radiated out don't you know that haven't you experienced that dude that's the acid talk in michael too much michael also took to the media to challenge a memoir sarah quote or sarah more wrote insisting that there was an awful lot of goodness

that went on there too that's never mentioned by those dear children who are victims and will remain victims until the day they die they never mentioned the good times do they according to michael Anne had once personally helped the Dalai Lama escaped to India to avoid Chinese persecution. She's such a good person. But that never happened. Anne's only biological daughter, Judith, later known as Natasha, moved

to the U.S., or excuse me, to the U.K., to start a new life. No longer involved with the family. She became estranged from her mom long before New Jesus died. Anne's only biological granddaughter, Rebecca, participated in the cult of the family docu-series. As in 2019, she was still grappling

with the weight of her grandmother's legacy, trying to understand whether her grandmother had meant to do what she did. Oh, she did, Becky. She did. Your nana was a piece of shit. Only your emotional connection to her is keeping you from seeing that. The leader of the family cult was a fucking monster who destroyed families in people's minds. Some still speculate, though, that Anne was not a monster, that she, you know, suffer from schizophrenia.

That's why she did what she did. Others proposed she was just a woman too broken by a troubled childhood and a warped vision of motherhood that drove her to violate every fundamental norm of what it means to be a mother to live. love, nurture, protect, and be selfless, but get the fuck out of here. So many people struggle with schizophrenia. So many people have troubled childhoods. Almost none of them do what she did. Not going to give

her a pass. At least one psychologist who reviewed the family case, ultimately concluded Anne Hamilton Burn was a true psychopath. Bingo. Yeah, let's get out of this timeline. Good job, soldier. You've made it back. Barely.

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you only have one soul so sell it well huh that's a weird sponsor you know we've had a lot of weird sponsors but uh i feel like that one was pretty weird even for this show uh perfect for a weird episode such a strange story right such a strange story anne hamilton burn and the family cult yoga theosophy a claim of being the second coming to jesus kidnapped children extreme devotion to a cult leader aided by bizarre rituals incorporating what sounds like a massive amount of LSD, enough to keep people tripping hard for days. Cult members, many of them young children tripping their asses off while being brainwashed, a cult that would have never gotten off the ground if a distinguished college professor

and author and an entire psychiatric facility had not gotten on board with this. Multiple, highly educated, successful people truly believed that a 40-ish-year-old yoga instructing plastic surgery-loving single mom was a god who could perform miracles and see the future and they use their positions sometimes in downright evil ways to help convince others mainly affluent women taking yoga classes that they needed to say goodbye to their old lives including their husbands oftentimes give all their money to new jesus and join the crazy world inside a world she had built by largely plagiarizing the lunatic teachings of other wackadoodles who had come before her like madame blavatsky and made tens of millions of dollars

with his gift and she was barely punished she died a multimillionaire at the eight of almost 100, pulled that shit off for over half a century. It would be inspiring if it wasn't so evil. A single mom who was once an abandoned, impoverished child, completely transformed herself after her husband tragically died on the way to pick up their adopted child. She changed her appearance and her name, created and followed through with a business plan that allowed her to buy and live in lavish homes all around the world. That's one way to look at what she did. Another is a damaged, grieving, broken, manipulative, narcissistic psychopath stops at nothing, is willing to destroy families, childhoods, and people's minds, driving several to suicide,

leaving several others unable to live outside of psychiatric facilities, their minds permanently fucked, all so she could live out some weird, demented version of the perfect family and live in wealth and privilege to be worshipped as a god. Let's head to today's takeaways. five takeaways Number one, Anne Hamilton Burn and her aunties abused their adopted stolen and biological children so consistently that at least one failed to grow properly

due to the excessive stress they were placed under. Number two, Anne and the family cult used LSD to help brainwash both adults and children into believing that Anne was Jesus Christ reborn. Number three, Anne claimed that the primary purpose of the family was to build a super race of Victorian children, elevated humans who would be able to survive a coming apocalypse

and keep New Jesus' messages alive in the new post-apocalyptic age, I think. Number four, Australia's forced adoption scandal was a dark stain in the nation's history. Hundreds of thousands of Australian children placed into state institutions in the early and mid-20th century were physically, psychologically,

and were sexually abused in a broken system where single mothers were routinely exploited. Anne knew about that system. She had been a child inside of herself at one point, and she knew how to exploit it and did. Number five, new info, the Shantini Catan Park Association, SPA, one of the last remaining organizations connected to the family,

gave away one of its last major properties, Shantini Katan Lodge, to the Tibetan community in Canberra in 2021. The community accepted it, but the decision caused a lot of controversy, considering the family's ties to child abuse, drugs, and terror. It seems like there's like a handful of people still alive who are technically still in this cult. That's hard to figure out.

Anyway, within just a few years, after never actually using this compound, it seems, the community decided to sell it. And in May of this year, the 7.7 acre property located at 35 Belgrave Furny Creek Road in Fernie Creek, Australia, was listed for sale at $1.65 million Australian dollars. This is the property I watched those YouTubers trespass into an explore. The property has a gated tree-line driveway, opened up to a brick building with five bedrooms, three bathrooms plus several large open rooms where Anne used to give her sermons

in a car park. Could you handle living there knowing what went on there? Could you handle dropping acid there? I feel like that place might lend itself to an especially bad trip. You know, one where Anne, at least in your mind, makes a very unwanted cameo. Time suck. Top five takeaways. The family. Australia's

most notorious cult has been sucked. Thanks to the bad magic productions team For all their help and make and time suck again Thanks to Queen of Bad Magic Lindsay Cummins always giving me the space to work on these Thanks to Logan Keith The old Art Warlock helping to publish this episode Designing merch for the store at bad magic productions.com

Thank you to Laura Woods New researcher and Australian also Which makes sense for this topic Did a great job with the initial research Also thanks to the all seen eyes moderating the cult of the curious private Facebook page The Mod Squad making sure Discord run smooth and everybody over on the TimeSuck and Bad Magic Subredits.

And now let's head on over to this week's Time Sucker Updates. Updates? Get your Time Sucker updates. Today's first update from those sent in to Bojangles at Timesuckpodcast.com come from a sex maniac. M. I've slightly altered his name. His name's not actually M. Or maybe it is. Who wrote him with a subject line of Addiction Awareness. Hi, Dan, I wanted to thank you for suck an addiction.

As a recovering addict, it was nice to hear that I'm not alone, and that meat sacks have been struggling with addiction for centuries. And at the beginning of the podcast, you briefly mentioned sexual and porn addiction. Well, I appreciate you acknowledging that it is, in fact, an addiction, something that I struggle with, and I'm recovering from. Not many people think you can be addicted to sex or porn, including the American Psychiatric Association. Yeah, they have not labeled that as a true addiction.

I'll admit at first, I did not believe it either. Like all teenage boys, I'd watch porn on occasion, but I started using heavily in 2019 after a rough breakup. I began traveling for work shortly after, and then the pandemic hit. I was fortunate enough during the pandemic that my job as a geologist for an engineering firm meant that I was an essential employee and was able to work full-time throughout the pandemic, but those factors combined to really accelerate my porn use. I was using it as a way to cope with the feeling of loneliness and isolation

while stuck on the road away from home, locked up in a hope. hotel room when I wasn't working. I began looking at porn for hours a day. Every time I got the chance during my commute to work, anytime I got a break at work, my commute back to the hotel slash home, and after work until I went to bed, only stopping to eat and shower. At a certain point it got so bad that the free stuff wasn't enough. I began using pay sites like OnlyFans and spending hundreds of dollars each month seeking out prostitutes in every city I visited. I was never able to go through with them and actually meet though. I was single. I thought I was living my best life. I wasn't hurting anybody or myself, or so I thought, but I couldn't go to

sleep without looking at porn. I still told myself that I didn't have a problem that I could stop at any time. This pattern of behavior continued for several years. I met my now wife in 2022, and things were great. We had a couple problems here and there, but nothing crazy. But about a year in, things came crashing down on my porn use and associated behavior came to light. My wonderful wife, again, girlfriend at the time, was gracious enough not to leave me, but I didn't try to get better. I just tried to hide it better. I put on an act. I pretended I was getting help. Made her believe that I was changing. We got married in October of 2024, had a month of post-wedding bliss before everything crashed down again. They say that an addict will not change until they've hit

their lowest point. Well, I finally hit it. I began reading more into what porn addiction is, what it looks like, how it affects the brain. Much like drugs, viewing porn releases an abnormally high amount of dopamine in the brain. Over time, heavy porn use creates new neurological links in the brain between happiness and porn, causing erratic behavior, loss of impulse control, impaired decision-making skills, and impairing one's ability to regulate emotions, making the addict susceptible to depression and anxiety. Heavy porn is not to be linked to erectile dysfunction in men as well by desensitizing the human brain, creating highly reactive neural circuits, making porn more rewarding than actual human sexual encounters. Some studies have linked heavy porn consumption to a reduction

in gray matter in the brain as well, but that's a newer theory and needs more research. porn alters one's concept of reality, AIDS in a misogynistic mindset that women are little more than sexual objects to please men, instead of seeing them as actual human beings with their own feelings and desires. I am now on a path of recovery.

I have weekly therapy sessions to address underlying issues that may have led to my addiction. I've sought psychiatric help to address my anxiety and depression. I've joined a men's group called the Samson Society, which is a Christian-based support group for men struggling with porn and sex addiction,

and I've been sober for over a year now. But the road to recovery is difficult. In today's society where everything is sexualized, triggers are everywhere. Simple things I used to take for granted, like scrolling through social media, watching TV, playing games on my phone can be triggering. I'm not sorry for the long email.

I want to spread awareness of this form of addiction to hopefully prevent others from following myself and many others down a painful, difficult path. Thanks, Dan, for covering addiction, bringing awareness to the struggles that addicts and their families go through. Three out of five stars

wouldn't change a thing your loyal meat sack m well damn am uh thank you for sharing this very personal struggle struggle of yours and just being so informational in uh how you presented that uh email you know presented your your addiction uh i've never been truly addicted to porn but i have taken breaks from it for sure when i felt like i've been more interested in porn than actual intimacy i do think it's very dangerous i don't have like you know moral judgments about people making it as long as it's consensual and they're you know of a adult age and no one's being fucking exploited and mistreated. It's a whole

other thing I talked about in previous episodes. But yeah, it can definitely start to feel like it's warping your perception of reality. It definitely can. You know, sex is such a powerful biological urge in many, if not most of us. You know, it's always there lurking in the background already.

And it makes sense that porn, you know, gives it like, almost like the equivalent of like a dangerous adrenaline shot. And it takes our sexual urges to a very, like, dangerous, compulsive. of, you know, very, very just damaging level. So good on you for recognizing that you truly have a problem, that it was giving you more pain than pleasure, ironically,

and that you needed to stay away from it. I'm guessing to save your marriage and just kind of, you know, save yourself. And yeah, addiction can take so many forms. And it can create so many different kinds of damage. I figured there would be a lot of these kind of emails, and there have been. Here's another addiction-related email. Send him from an anonymous sack with a subject line of, great podcast on addiction can we get a shout out for alanon hi dan i'm a big fan of your podcast

really appreciate your latest episode on addiction one thing you didn't mention when talking about a a a a and 12 step programs is alanon family groups aka a fg or commonly just alanon alin on is a support group for people who've been affected by another person's drinking the format of alanon is basically the same as a a you worked all the same steps admitting you are powerless over another person's alcoholism and trying to find spiritual healing from the trauma of being around another person's alcoholism. Obviously, this is not necessarily a program targeted at a person who is addicted to a substance, but rather for the people around them who also suffer.

So I understand why you didn't mention it. I'm hoping you'll give it a shout out now in case you have any listeners who, like me, have had to deal with another person's alcoholism. I don't want to give my name or too many details about my situation because there's still a lot of stigma around this topic. However, I will say, I was living with my husband's spiraling alcohol addiction for a little over a year. He'd always drank heavily. Then at one point, it just devolved into a much more serious problem. I alternated between screaming at him or behaving passively aggressively towards him

because I thought I could somehow force him to stop drinking. My anxiety was high every night when he drank. I would listen with dread to the cracking sound of opening cans of alcohol in the next room. When I finally came to Al-Anon, I met so many people who had been in similar situations, and I learned there was nothing I could do to control his behavior, only my own. Al-Anon is truly a fellowship of support And I don't know how I'd be functioning right now If I didn't have it my life

My husband and I are currently separated Have very limited contact Due to actions he has taken while drinking I've been a single mom to an infant And a toddler for the last six months But I'm doing all right Anyway, if there's anyone who listens to your podcast Who might be in a similar situation

And have no idea what they should do to get help I hope they hear this Best Anonymous well yeah thank you very much anonymous for another powerful email very deeply personal email good on you for making what had to have been an extremely difficult decision to separate but a necessary one to protect you in your babies that shows you have some serious strength yes i'm familiar with alan on and i'm glad you wrote in about it addicts are not the only people hurt by addictions so are the people around them therefore it only makes sense

then when it comes to recovery addicts aren't the only ones who need support so So, you know, so do the people negatively affected by their addiction. I've heard nothing but good things about Al-Anon, and I hope it continues to help you through this very difficult time. Stay strong, Mama Bear. You are a true boss, bitch. I have so much admiration for strong mothers. Strong mothers raise amazing humans, and I wish you nothing but the best.

And now one more. So many great messages have come over the past few weeks. And I'll be sharing more of these soon. This is not about addiction. This is a sweet, funny sack, Cody Allen. who wrote in a message or sent in a message with a very attention-grabbing subject line of comedian Dan Cummins and Hunter Biden spotted doing adrenochrome in the stall called Old Glory. That's amazing.

He wrote, did it work? It's the most absurd headline I could think of. If you're reading this right now, I'm truly grateful. Let's travel back to 2017. Garing up for a long weekend. Five shows plus a New Year's comedy extravaganza, hosted by Who, the highly exalted Sir Sucks a lot himself, but I wasn't aware yet. What I thought at the time was, who the fuck is Dan Cummins?

Will he be funny enough for six shows? Sorry, Dan, but let's be real. That's a heavy weekend. If you haven't put it together yet, it was New Year's 2017 at ComedyWorks South in Denver. I was one of the door staff. Long story short, Thursday night, Dan's doing his thing, had the crowd hooked. Then it happened, a joke to set the tone for the weekend. Still one of my favorite bits to this day.

Have a guess. Here come the spoons, motherfucker. I remember physically laughing out loud, the radio buzzing like a what-the-fuck hotline. the staff was raving about how hard the joke killed and for five more shows it never got out oh man that's not so nice thanks I do remember that weekend actually this is also the weekend I was introduced to time suck

listening to my first episodes at Friday night hooked like Peter Pan's nemesis I was a time suck junkie that was my live introduction to the king of the suck and I've loved the journey since in hundreds of episodes I sit silently shedding tears listening to how this community changes people's lives from the giving tree

monthly donations all the no bullshit whipple driven advice stand hands out I feel the love and connectivity between meat sacks that gives me some kind of faith in humanity and hail nimrod so here are my spoons i need help and i don't feel good asking i'm creeping up on 40 my teeth are fucked i never had my wisdom teeth removed and they grew impacted in my jaw causing molars to be bombed out like bagdad in the last two years my molars have broken off leaving the impacted teeth exposed yeah i saw the pictures damn i have holes in teeth that need root canals teeth that grew crooked because of the pressure

now with broken teeth, I'm in constant pain, everything sensitive, I'm mostly stuck to sucking soft noodles. Trying to get work done, but damn it Dan, dentist, demand dollars, dictating different decisions during demanding destinies. How was that random alliteration? No, that was good. It was a fun way of saying, whenever I save up to get something done, life happens. The last time I had insurance, I got a treatment plan started. It was about $10,000 now without insurance, worsening conditions, looking more like $15K out of pocket. I'm not right. writing for monetary donations it is the holiday season there are families in need i'm pleading to the time set community for five minutes of their time and actually not even asking that i'm asking them to visit

the halo network website and flood the nominations for a fellow meat sack in need i've tried but understandably i can't nominate myself for help while i feel i'm taking advantage by writing to ask for help i don't have immediate resources to help get started with the work before it becomes unbearable this community rallies for strangers i'm praying for a hell mary i try to hand a hand on my own make my way but lately i've been struggling to catch up and i already owe the world and more to the only friend i have it would mean so much to me to have the confidence to smile and eat a steak i can only help i can only hope that this email finds you and the hearts of the amazing meat sacks out there suck hard hail nimrod three out of five stars never change a thing

p s sorry if the picks are disturbing it's not easy to take a pick of the inside of your mouth loyal forever cody allen from bridgeport pennsylvania born february second nineteen ninety nine nine You'll understand why I'm saying that in a second. Here, anybody listening. And then he left halodental network.org slash nominate slash hashtag nominate. Well, Cody, I actually remember, as I said, that weekend in Denver. It's been quite a while now, but that's when after doing stand-up for so fucking long. For over 17 years, fans finally started to actually really turn up.

It was a special weekend. I'm so glad you liked it. Sorry, you're in pain. My God, you just want to eat a steak. Good on you for sending in this message. I love the Halo Dental Network. I think we're going to donate to them again. They're a fantastic group.

I went to the link to halodendalnetwork.org. Cody, I submitted a nomination for you myself right before I recorded this episode. And I wrote the info. Anybody listening needs to nominate you in this episode description. Your name, city and state, your birthday plus the link.

It is all in the episode description. I'm leaving most of the regular things out of the description to not distract from it. So please, anybody listening, It won't take you five minutes. It'll take about 60 seconds, maybe two minutes to quickly fill it out. Just a few things, a few sentences on like why he should get this, why he deserves it, because he's a fucking cool dude, part of this community, his molars are broken off.

He can't, you know, fucking eat a steak. He's in constant pain. So hail Nimrod, please let us know if they pick you, Cody. Here come the teeth, motherfuckers. Next time, suckers, I needed that. we all did I don't know why I added plural I'm upset with myself

or say motherfuckers instead of singular that's how my brain works there's not multiple codies thanks for listening to another bad magic productions podcast be sure and rate and review

time suck if you haven't already but more importantly fill out that form for Cody way more importantly maybe don't start a cult this week by proclaiming yourself God recruiting gullible psychiatrists who help you dose spiritual seekers

with LSD so you can convince them your new Jesus I mean I'm not gonna lie doing that probably would be pretty fun in some moments. But also, you know, it's fucked up. So just fantasize about doing that instead.

And keep on sucking. Does it hurt you that she has tried to take her own life because of the way she was brought up? Of course it does. It's not the way she's brought up. It's the way it handled, the way it went out. We didn't have everything that we needed. We had most things. I bought the bigger house because of the likes of Little Sarah.

You thought a house would make everything right? Well, I just thought if we'd give them more room. People don't try and take their life because their house is too small. You're not smart enough. For what? In your heart. What's in your heart is not the same. I don't know what you mean by that.

No, of course you don't. They're saying that they were systematically... Ha ha! It killed me every time.