Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 508 - John of God: Ghosts, Grift, and Psychic Surgery

Episode Date: May 25, 2026

For decades, hundreds of thousands of desperate people (maybe even millions) traveled to rural Brazil seeking miracles from João Teixeira de Faria — better known as “John of God” — a self-proclaimed psychic surgeon who claimed spirits healed others through his body. But behind the stories of supernatural cures, celebrity endorsements, and spiritual enlightenment lurked allegations of fraud, manipulation, and horrific abuse.  Merch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com  Timesuck Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v Want to join the Cult of the Curious PrivateFacebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :) For all merch-related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste) Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast Wanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast. Sign up through Patreon, and for $5 a month, you get access to the entire Secret Suck catalog (295 episodes) PLUS the entire catalog of Timesuck, AD FREE. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Heading right back to Brazil again this week for a very different reason. Jow, Texaria, DeFaria, also known as John of God, is a self-proclaimed medium and psychic surgeon from Brazil. Joao ran a wildly profitable spiritual healing center in the rural city of Abidjania, called the House of St. Ignatius of Loyola, or just the Casa, for short. Joao claimed for decades at his treatments, which consisted of anything from meditation and prayer, to shoving forceps deep into a person's nose to scrape into a patient's eyeball without anesthetic or antiseptics

or cutting into their flesh and pulling something out with his fingers could cure any ailment. And then it wasn't really him performing these miracles. No, no, no. It was one of his many spirit guides. Ghosts, basically, that took over his body, possessed him and healed the unhealable.

How cool. Millions of people came to see him for physical and spiritual ailments, often making donations to the CASA or purchasing Joila's special herbal prescriptions to ensure they would be cured. 60 Minutes Australia would estimate that he earned over $10 million a year from prescription sales alone. Joal received coverage on CNN, ABC, even the Oprah Winfrey Show,

which brought even more tourists from all over the world. There were, of course, skeptics. People who thought in healing benefits were just placebo effects, but their voices were drowned out by the thousands and thousands of believers and stories of miracle cures. There were also rumors of something much darker going on. There were reports from young women who were invited to private sessions with Joao, where they were reportedly sexually assaulted under the guise of healing themselves or their loved ones. For decades, these reports were dismissed as nothing more than rumors, spread by opportunistic women who were trying to tear down a spiritually powerful man.

Victims were told they were lying, that they didn't understand that it was all part of the healing process, that if something was done to them, it was for their own good. This week we'll talk about how Joao used locals' belief in spiritism, a reincarnationist and spiritualist doctrine born out of a 19-century seance craze to get people to believe that it was totally normal for a man to use the spirits of past healers to help cure people in the present of their afflictions. It's going to be another wild ride in this week's cult, cult-cult-adjacent, faith-healing, grifters and ghost sedition of TimeSuck. This is Michael McDonald, and you're listening to TimeSuck. You're listening to TimeSuck Well, happy Monday And welcome and welcome back To the cult of the curious

I hope you're doing great I'll be doing fucking great How about that? Dan Cummins, the suckinator Guy who will never, and I do mean never explore uncharted Amazonian territory And you are listening to TimeSuck Hail Nimrod, Hail Lucifina,

Praise B to Good Boy Bojangles And Glory B to Triple M And now question Are you ready to learn about some really weird and fascinating shit? Are you ready for another reminder of how absolutely fucking insane and illogical our species so often is? Okay, good. Me too, motherfucker.

Me too. We'll be starting things off today by talking about your childless uncle. What the fuck exactly is going on with that guy? I mean, why doesn't he ever date anyone? Anyone that you know of anyway? Why does your mom still talk about how weird he was when he was a kid when she gets drunk? Why is he so hyper-focused on his nieces and nephews, especially his nieces? It's weird.

I mean, you tell yourself he's just a really sweet guy that he just loves kids and kids love him. The people should make such a quick judgment about him that he shouldn't be reduced to some negative stereotypes just because he'd rather volunteer at the local gymnastics studio and spend his weekends with nine-year-olds rather than people's own age. But should you be alarmed? Yes.

When are you going to fucking say something to him? When are you going to worry less about creating a, quote, needlessly uncomfortable situation and, quote, really hurting his feelings and damaging your relationship with him forever, and more about your kids. He has an old Hannah Montana post in his bedroom for fuck sake. Wake up, Nancy.

The writing isn't just on the wall. The wall is nothing but writing. Okay. Glad we got that out of the way. That was unpleasant. We're not going to be talking about that at all anymore going forward. Instead, in a moment, I'll go over spiritism. A common religion in Brazil,

one that not everyone who practices it defines as a religion or thinks of it as a religion. And the foundational beliefs of John of God's cult, not really a cult organization. I wouldn't consider it a cult, but it's culty. Followed by a timeline of this group's development and how its leader was eventually brought down after being a grimy, grifty fucking creep for his entire and sadly very long adult life.

According to Joe Nickel, an author, skeptic and heralded and widely respected paranormal investigator who passed away last year at the age of 80, rest in peace, a good dude, who investigated John of God's little group, spiritism, quote, is essentially spiritualism, a belief that one can communicate with spirits, but with the added conviction

that spirits repeatedly reincarnate in a progression towards enlightenment. In Brazil, which is steeped in superstition, and has a climate of belief in African spirits, spiritism has become a powerful religious movement overlaid onto Catholicism that may involve mediumistic searches for past lives and even so-called psychic surgery. The beliefs of enslaved Africans brought to Brazil syncretically mixed with Catholicism for centuries, eventually opening the door for unique merger of Christianity and Spiritism. As written by the Sydney Morning Herald, like a constantly revamped car,

spiritism has come to accommodate all manner of esoteric add-ons, from reincarnation to past lives and nature worship. Spiritism hasn't been around that long in the grand scheme of life-guiding religious or quasi-religious belief systems. It first evolved, not in Brazil, but out of American spiritualism, which began with the Fox Sisters, who I've talked about here and on Scare to Death before on many occasions. Their stories were sharing here again today, a wild case of butterfly effect. When you trace today's grifter all the way back to some old upstate New York seances.

In March of 1848, two young teenage sisters came up with what they may have considered as nothing more than a fun prank in Hidesville, New York, which wasn't even a town, but rather a named rural community in Wayne County, a little east of Rochester. Maggie Fox and her younger sister Kate claimed that there was a spirit communicating with them by making otherworldly wraps on the walls and furniture of their house. Then when their mother asked how many children she'd had, the spirit appeared to wrap out the correct number. She was amazed. Then one of their neighbors reportedly witnessed these sounds and words soon spread as more and more people witnessed this phenomenon, that there was something strange and supernatural going on at the Fox household, that these girls were speaking to essentially the living dead.

But were they? Maggie and Kate may have in fact been making these noises by subtly cracking their knuckles, toes, and other joints, something Maggie literally confessed to, in an interview for the New York world some 40 years later in 1888. She would then quickly retract that confession, for the record, but still, regardless of what was true, by that point this childhood prank, if that's in fact all it was, had spun way out of control.

And now the adult sisters had become, famous mediums whose notoriety and money that they were making inspired countless others to jump into the medium game. The Fox Sisters and their public seances help spark a whole spiritualism craze in the United States and Europe built on the belief that it was possible for living humans to communicate with the dead. Within a few years of a word of the Fox sisters coming out, something called table turning spread, a type of seance in which participants sit around a table, place their hands on it, wait for rotations. The table was purportedly made to serve as a means of communicating with the spirits,

the alphabet would be slowly spoken aloud, and the table would tilt at the appropriate letter, thus spelling out words and sentences. Are you pictured on a nice period piece horror movie set from the 19th century? Within a decade, these table turning sessions led directly to the creation of so-called talking boards or spirit boards, precursors to the Ouija board. Flat services marked with letters, numbers, yes, no, and other symbols, used in seances to again supposedly communicate with spirits.

Participants place their fingers on a moving pointer or planchette, which spells out messages. They become popular enough by the 1880s that people were thinking of commercializing them, commercializing them, and then in 1890, a Baltimore medium and practitioner of spiritualism, Helen Peters Knowsworthy, coined the term Ouija Board and patented it. Helen, born in 1851, was far more interested in death than the average kid growing up. She and her siblings would often take buttons from dead soldiers after civil war battles near their home. Her sister Mary would marry an entrepreneur named Elijah Bond, who had invented a talking board with his business partner Charles W. Kennard.

Naswether became a stockholder in the Kennard Novelty Company, but they needed a marketable name before manufacturing the board. And one night in 1890, they decided to hold another seance, and during this seance, Nazworthy repeatedly asked the board what it wanted to be called. and it spelled out O-U-I-J-A. When they asked what that word meant, the board answered, good luck.

As more and more people began to engage and what had already begun to be called spiritualism by the early 1850s, backing up a little bit, I began to draw a lot of interest not only from board housewives, grieving mothers and fathers, mystics and spiritually curious and religious leaders, who largely condemned it as a cult and satanic,

but also from academics, intellectuals, and scientists, very curious as to whether it was real or not, which makes sense, right? I mean, who doesn't want to try and talk to those who have passed on? Who isn't curious, at least a little, about what might lay ahead for all of us? Or if there are other entities living all around us,

you know, invisible for the most part, but possibly able to become known and be communicated with. Very exciting. And not all of this was brand new, to be clear. Various people going back to records from the world's first civilizations, and likely people long before that

have had oracles, necromancers, and others who have clenely. to be able to walk in both this world and the world of the dead in some form. But this was the first time it really turned into a large movement like this. And even if some people truly were talking with the dead, let's just spend a little disbelief, entertain that. Many others at the very least saw this as a great opportunity to cash in and take advantage of other people's grief.

Fraud became widespread, unsurprisingly, and a number of mediums and spiritualists were taken to court and convicted, quite a few of them, of various fraudulent crimes. Also, interestingly, on the other end of the spectrum, a number of skeptics and scientists who investigated this phenomenon ended up becoming believers, such as chemist and physicist William Crooks, evolutionary biologist Alfred Russell Wallace, Nobel laureate, Pierre Curie, and physician and famed author Arthur Conan Doyle. Even famed inventor Thomas Edison attended seances and got so excited about them that he wanted to develop a so-called spirit phone, an ethereal device that.

that would summon to the living, the voices of the dead, and also record them for posterity. It's fucking crazy. This movement, of course, didn't say isolated to America for long. It quickly spread throughout the world. The only in the United Kingdom did it become as widespread as in the United States. Spiritualist organizations were formed in America and Europe, such as the London Spiritualist Alliance,

which published a newspaper called The Light, featuring articles such as evenings at home in spiritual seance. Ghosts in Africa. Chronicles of Spirit Photography. It also featured advertisements for mesmerists and patent medicines and letters from readers about personal contact with ghosts. In Britain, by 1853, invitations to tea among the prosperous and fashionable often included table turning, and soon afterwards, Spirit Board sessions. By 1897, spiritualism was said to have more than 8 million followers between the U.S. and Europe alone. Also important to know, that spiritualism was primarily a middle and upper-class movement,

especially popular among well-to-do women, women who, unsurprisingly, became big targets for grifters due to their means. American spiritualists would meet in private homes, typically for seances, sometimes at lecture halls for trans lectures, at state or national conventions, and even at summer camps, attended by thousands.

Books on the supernatural began to be published more and more frequently for a growing middle class, such as 1852's Mysteries by Charles Elliott, which contains, quote, sketches of spirits and spiritual things, including accounts of the Salem Witch Trials, the Lane Ghost, and the Rochester wrappings. There was also the Night Side of Nature

by Catherine Crow, published in 1853, that provided definitions and accounts of wraiths, doppelgangers, apparitions, and haunted houses. My perfect fodder from my other podcast scared to death. Mainstream newspapers treated stories of ghosts and hauntings as they would any other news story. An account in the Chicago Daily Tribune

in 1891, quote, sufficiently bloody to suit the most fastidious taste, tells of a house believed to be haunted by the ghosts of three murder victims, seeking revenge against their killer son, who was eventually driven insane. In the 1920s, jumping ahead a little bit, numerous psychic books were now being published. Such books were often based on excursions, supposed excursions initiated by the use of Ouija boards. I should also note that while spiritualism is oftentimes called a religion, it's really not. it doesn't have anything equivalent to a Bible or the Quran or, you know, some unified set of beliefs outside of just believing in a pretty vague sense

that the living can interact and communicate with the dead. The movement was always extremely individualistic with each person relying on their own experiences and readings to discern the nature of the afterlife, something that also made it very easy for con artists to exploit since there was no official doctrine or rules. Used to bunch of people, claim it a bunch of fantastical shit. also while you might link spiritualism with theosophy, they both grew and developed primarily in America and Western Europe

in the mid and late 18th century, or 19th century, excuse me, and share some similarities. Madame Blavatsky was actually very critical of spiritualism and distanced theosophy from spiritualism as far as possible and aligned herself with Eastern occultism. And then linking all this to our topic today, there was a dude named Alan Cardek, a French intellectual who began to promote a version of spiritual

called Spiritism, which combined spiritual communication with reincarnation, popularized by 19th century French romantic socialists. Spiritism also established a peculiar relationship with the philosophy of positivism. While positivism rejected theological and metaphysical explanations, valuing only empirical and scientific knowledge, Kardek sought to integrate this vision with the belief in the existence of the spirit and in communication with the dead. Thus, spiritism presented itself as a, quote, positive faith, attempting to reconcile the rational and investigative method of positivism with the faith-based belief in the immortality of the soul and in reincarnation.

Cardac appropriated the scientific language of the day in an attempt, one that largely worked, I should add, to give legitimacy to his doctrine, structuring it as a kind of spiritual science that offered evidence of life after death and promoted a reforming morality. in a context of a widespread social and religious crisis in the 19th century. Now, let's learn a bit more about this dude before moving forward. Alan Cardac was once a schoolteacher from Lyon, France, when he codified the new spiritist practices he came up with, now known as the Cardicist Spiritism, often just called Spiritism, with his 1857 publication, The Spirit's Book.

He then founded the magazine Spiritist in 1858, as various forms of spiritualism, including his, you know, spiritism spread further throughout Europe. The movement reached his peak in Europe in the early 20th century when in 1917, the Vatican, formerly forbade Catholics to participate in any spiritist sessions. Catholic Church used to worry a lot more than now about competition. After this declaration, the movement gradually decreased in Europe,

but interestingly, it expanded in South America, especially in Brazil, where it had already existed for decades and where it now, became more popular than it is anywhere else in the world. As early as 1858, Brazilian elites heard about the new spiritist doctrine in Europe. The first Brazilian spiritist

gathering appeared in the state of Bahia, then in Rio de Janeiro in 1865. Brazilian intellectuals also collaborated directly with Cardex Spiritist magazine. Really resonated down there. Spiritist newspapers were introduced in Brazil and the Brazilian spiritual

federation was founded in 1885. nearly a century later at 1959, there were now 3,600, approximately, spiritist centers throughout the country. A decade earlier in 1949, some Spiritist federations had met in Rio and signed the noble pact, which committed them to remaining faithful to the fundamental concepts and core tenets of cardicist spiritism. And the core tenets of Cardassist spiritism are existence of God. God is defined as the supreme intelligence and first cause of all things. things sovereignly just and good. Immorality, or yeah, immortality, excuse me. A little different word. Sounds similar, but very different meaning. Immortality of the soul. Spirits are distinct

from the material body. They are created simple and ignorant, but evolve towards perfection, existing before and afterlife. Reincarnation, aka plurality of existences. Spirits undergo multiple successive physical lives to advance intellectually and morally repairing past mistakes. Communicability of the spirits, aka mediumship. Communication between the living and the dead is possible through mediums, providing evidence of the afterlife and also, and this is big for today's subject, spiritual guidance. And finally, plurality of inhabited worlds. The universe is populated by spirits and earth is not the only place with life.

And then real quick, some fundamental concepts of spiritism include the peri spirit. And this is supposed to be a semi-material body that links the immaterial soul to the physical body. Parasperit is the fluidic body of spirits that allows them to interact with the physical world, float in the atmosphere, transport themselves. You know, when we die, this ethereal skin of sorts keeps our soul intact. It's like a fucking ectoplasm saran wrap. Evolution. All buildings have the potential to evolve with spirits classified into three main orders, imperfect, good, and pure. Free will and moral responsibility. Human actions are based in free will, with moral responsibility for choices leading to consequences in future lives. And finally,

charity as morality. The moral foundation is, quote, without charity, there is no salvation, focusing on moral improvement rather than strict ritual as you go through these reincarnation. heart-a-sacist spiritism also smartly connected itself to Christianity by adopting the moral teachings of Christ as its core guide, viewing Jesus as the ultimate model of the evolved, reincarnated spiritual body, just humanity perfected. It reinterpreted Christian tenets through a belief and reincarnation, mediumship, and the evolution of the soul, considering itself to be the, quote, third revelation that completes and explains the gospel. Allowing people to believe themselves to be spiritists and Christians fueled a fucking ton of growth, unsurprisingly, right? Shrewd business

move. And something we've seen here over and over with various cults and new religious movements, right? The easiest way to gain followers to your new belief system is to ground that system in another older, accepted belief system that people have grown up in and become familiar with. Thanks largely to the syncretic mashup of spiritism and Christianity, the largely Catholic Brazil, experienced a surge of spiritism in the 1950s, according to time of magazine during the taking of the 1950 census, about 900,000 Brazilians declare themselves as spiritists. And thanks to spiritism, being part of mainstream culture, more and more people started to revere not just mediums, but medium healers, spiritism's version of the faith healer.

And these people became some of them national celebrities. And one of those healers, the most famous one, was a man named Chico Xavier, a so-called psychographer. And what is Psychography? Well, I'm glad you asked. It's also sometimes called automatic writing, and it's a claimed psychic ability allowing a person to produce written words without consciously writing them. Practitioners engage in automatic writing by holding a writing instrument and allowing alleged spirits to manipulate the practitioner's hand. The instrument may be a standard writing instrument or maybe one specially designed for automatic writing such as a Ouija board's planchette. Davier would be one of John of God's main inspiration.

and really his primary inspiration. Over a period of 60 years, Xavier wrote, or rather, spirits using his body as a humble vessel, wrote almost 500 books. Yep, nearly 500. And thousands of letters, supposedly again through this process of psychography. He dutifully served as a writing vessel to share the message of all the helpful noble spirits working through him who would conveniently never share in the profits he was making.

he sold an estimated 50 million copies of his books, 50 million, claimed that all the revenue was given to charity, and that is bullshit. But that's what he claimed. His most popular work was probably 1944's Nassolar, Life in the Spirit World, also known as Astral City. A book adapted into a hit Brazilian movie in 2010 called Astral City, a spiritual journey.

And then two years ago, oh, I got a sequel, yay! distributed by Disney less. No less. Yeah, cool, cool, cool. This book tells the true story, obviously true, of Andre Louise, a supposedly prominent doctor who lived in Rio de Janeiro,

a formally prominent doctor who shared his entire story after he was dead. After dying, Andre Louise found himself neither in heaven or hell, depicted in the teachings he had received during his Catholic upbringing, but rather in the so-called umbral, a spiritist region,

where less than perfect souls face the consequences of their unfortunate actions, you know, that they committed back when they were alive. After a while, he's able to perceive the presence of Clarencio, aka Clarence, a friendly spirit who've been trying to help him all along during his time in umbral. Clarence then takes him to Nassolar, which translates to our home, the spirit colony or astral city, where Andre becomes acquainted with the intricacies of afterlife and reincarnation. And we're all very familiar with astral cities and spirit colonies, right?

Right? Vibrant communities in the spiritual realm where discarnate souls, aka spirits live, recover, work, and receive ongoing education after death? Yeah, who isn't excited to die and then find out you have another fucking job? And you have to go to school on top of it.

That's awesome. Often described as existing near earth, these colonies are places for spiritual evolution, work, and study acting as intermediate areas for souls preparing for future lives. Very cool. for followers of spiritism, very sci-fi. The story of Andre Louise, psychographed by Chico Xavier, is considered a narrative based on real spiritual experiences.

The locations and events described in Nassilar are believed to reflect actual places in the universe and real occurrences in the spirit realm. Nassalar is depicted as a highly organized spiritual city where a bunch of discarnate spirits live, work, learned under the guidance of higher order spirits. the colony basically serves as a kind of spiritual rehabilitation center where soul residents work on their moral evolution and prepare for future incarnations 100%. Would you like to hear a passage from this incredible true story? Of course you fucking would. Please enjoy some celestial teachings from Chapter 31, the vampire,

to get a further taste of what believers in spiritism will leave. It was 9 o'clock at night. We still hadn't rested, except for briefs. moments during which we discussed various ways to solve spirit-related problems here. A patient begging for help there, another in need of comforting magnetic passes. When we went to assist two patients in Ward 11, I heard screams in a nearby ward. I instinctively moved toward the noise, but Narcissa quickly stopped me. No, don't. That is where these sexually unbalanced patients are. The scene would be too painful to look at. Save your

or emotions for later. I didn't insist, but thousands of questions rushed to my mind. A whole new world was unfolding for my intellectual examination. I absolutely had to remember Laura's advice at every moment, so as not to become distracted from my duty. Soon after nine, someone arrived from the back area of the enormous complex. It was a strange-looking little man, who seemed to be a humble worker. Narcissa welcomed him kindly.

What's the matter, Justino? What is it? The worker was a member of the sentinel core, of the chambers of ratification. He was distressed and answered. I've come to inform you that a poor woman is begging for help at the large gate that leads to the agricultural fields. I think she must have escaped the attention of the frontline sentinels. Why didn't you yourself see what she wanted, inquired the nurse? The worker made a scrupulous gesture and explained,

according to our regulations, I couldn't because the poor woman is covered with black spots. "'What?' replied Narcissa, alarmed. "'Yes, ma'am. "'Then the case is very serious.' "'I was curious and followed the nurse across the moonlit field. "'It was no short distance. "'We saw the silent trees of the vast complex, "'side by side as they rustled gently in the soft breeze.

"'After walking for more than a mile, "'we came to the large gate mentioned by the worker. "'There before us, on the other side, "'stered the miserable figure of a woman begging for mercy. "'I saw nothing but the shadow of the unhappy creature. who was dressed in rags, and had a grotesque face and legs covered with open sores. But judging from the alarmed look stamped on her ordinarily calm face, Narcissa seemed to see many more details that I could not perceive. Children of God, cried the beggar, unseen us, give shelter to a weary soul.

Where's the heaven of the elect so that I may enjoy the peace I've longed for? The mournful voice moved my heart. Narcissa, in turn, also seemed to be moved but spoke confidentially. Can't you see the black spots? No, I answered. Your spirit's sight still is not sufficiently trained. After a short pause, she continued, If it were in my hands, I would open the door right now,

but on dealing with creatures in this condition, I can't make that decision on my own. I have to talk to the chief warden on duty. She approached the unfortunate woman and spoke to her in a caring voice. Please, just wait a few minutes. A lot of fucking red tape in this place. We hurried back. For the first time, I met the director of Sentinels of the chambers of rectification.

Narcissa introduced me and then reported what had happened. He mouthed a meaningful gesture and remarked, You did right in telling me about this. Let's go. We went to the gate. When we arrived, the chief warden, brother Paolo, carefully examined the newcomer from the umbral and stated. For the time being, this woman can't receive our help.

She is one of the strongest vampires. I've ever seen, she must be left to herself. I felt scandalized. Wouldn't we be neglecting our Christian duties if we abandon this suffering creature to her fate? Nassisa seemed to share my view and was quick to plead. But Brother Paolo, is there no way that we can shelter this miserable creature in the chambers? If I allowed that, he explained, I would be betraying my responsibility as a warden and pointing to the beggar who was waiting for a decision and shouting impatiently, he exclaimed to the nurse, Narcissa, have you noticed anything else besides the black spots? Now it was my instructor who said no. Well, I can see something else. Answered the chief warden.

In a lower voice, he suggested, count the spots. Narcissa looked at the unhappy creature and replied after a few moments, oh, 58. With the patience of those who know how to explain things lovingly, Brother Paolo continued. Those dark spots represent 58 children, murdered at birth. On each of the spots, I see the mental image of one of those destroyed little ones.

Some were clubbed to death, others were suffocated. This unfortunate creature was a professional abortionist. She used to exploit the affliction of an experienced young women and committed these terrible crimes under the pretext of easing their consciences. Suicides and murders. may sometimes present mitigating circumstances,

but her case is worse by far. I was astonished, as I recalled the medical procedures that I often witnessed up close during my earthly days, when in order to save the mother's life, it was necessary to sacrifice the unborn child because of the danger.

However, Brother Paolo was reading my mind and added, I'm not referring to legitimate measures that make up part of a trial of expiation, but to the crime of murdering those who are just beginning the journey of their earthly experience, endowed with the sublime right to life. Displaying the sensitivity of a noble soul, narcissistic pleaded. Brother Paolo, I also made many mistakes in the past.

Let's help this unfortunate creature. If you would allow it, I will treat it with special care. The chief warden was impressed by her sincerity, but answered, my friend, I realize that all of us are indebted spirits. However, we have in our favor the acknowledgement of our weaknesses and the willingness to expiate our debts. But for now this creature wants only to disturb those who are trying to work,

spirits who bring sentiments hardened by hypocrisy and destructive energies, which is why we have a guard service in our colony. And smiling expressively, he continued. I'll prove it to you. The chief warden approached the beggar and asked her, Sister, what do you wish of our fraternal cooperation? Help, help, help! she replied tearfully.

but my friend, he said assertively, we must learn to accept expiatory. He fucking loves that word. Expeatory suffering. Why did you often cut short the lives of fragile little infants, who with God's permission were about to begin their earthly struggles? Upon hearing this, she threw a terrible fit of hatred and shouted, Who's accusing me of such infamy?

I have a clear conscience, you wretch. I spent my existence on earth, helping motherhood. I was charitable and pious, good, and pure. According to the living picture of your thoughts and actions, that isn't so, said the warden. I believe, sister, that you have not yet experienced the benefit of remorse. When you open your soul to the blessings of God and acknowledge your needs, then you may come back here. Angrily, the woman shouted, devil, sorcerer, servants of Satan. I shall never come back.

I'm looking for the heaven. They promised me, and I plan on finding it. Yeah, that's how people talk. Assuming a firmer attitude, the chief warden spoke with authority. Please go your own way. you are longing for isn't to be found here. The droids you're looking for, not here. We live in a house of work where patients are aware of their evil and want to be healed with the help of workers of goodwill.

The beggar objectively, insolently, or sorry, the beggar objected insolently. I haven't asked for any remedy or assistance I'm seeking the heaven I deserve after having done so many good deeds. And shooting us a dreadful look of extreme wrath. She discarded the appearance of a wandering infirm person and walked firmly away as though completely in charge of herself. It's crazy you can be fucking gumped up up there.

Brother Paolo gazed after her for several moments, then turned to us and added, Did you see what the vampire was doing? Her criminal condition was obvious. And yet she was pleading innocence. She is profoundly wicked, and yet declares herself good and pure. She suffers desperately and feigns tranquility

she has created a hell for herself, yet pretends to be looking before heaven. What in the first? the fucking dystopian sci-fi pulp fiction El Ron Hubbard was that. Holy shit. My favorite part was the vampiric professional abortionist clubbing aborted babies to death, like a fucking seal hunter. I'm sure that's super common.

Love how that professional abortionist vampire was apparently only abhorting late-term babies who were in their final fucking trimester when they were aborted. Never fetuses who would need to be clubbed or smothered because they're a little puddle of cells that don't have fucking lungs. many saw and still see Chico Xavier There's nothing more than a very financially successful drifter With a good imagination, peddling horseshit But many others

Revereed and continued to revere this dude To this day in Brazil And the fucking guy who claimed all that shit is true 2009, the Brazilian government gave the name Chico Xavier To a passage of an important highway in 2006 He was elected history's greatest Brazilian In a contest performed by Apocopause, a magazine.

There are busts of him, memorials dedicated to him all over the country. A little more about this guy before we move on, since again, he is John of God's primary influence and role model. Right after today's first to two Mitcho sponsor breaks. If you don't want to hear these ads ever again, please sign up to be a space lizard on Patreon. You can help us make monthly charitable contributions, which we do every month, you know, with a scholarship included, get the catalog ad-free episode three days early and more.

Thank you for listen to our sponsors. Now let's learn a little bit more about Chico Xavier. Chico, born Francisco de Paola, Condio, Xavier, was born in April of 1910, died in June of 2002. On May of 1927, when he was 17, Xavier's sister Maria was having some sort of mental disturbances that he and others around her believe were caused by spiritual sources. 100% had to have been that. Couldn't have been mental illness. Definitely with spirits fucking with her.

And shortly thereafter, Zaviere began to financially support his sister with his apparent medium capabilities. After being introduced to the spiritism doctrine, he soon claimed he received a message from his dead mother, in which he recommended he studied the books of Alan Cardac. Right, sounds about right. Okay, Mom! I'll get to studying. Fuck! Did not expect you to keep nagging me once you were dead.

Zavier would go on to quickly found the spiritist center, Louise Gonzaga, in 1927, linking it with Catholicism. He began to dabble in psychography in July of that year under the guidance of some benevolent spirit. He later claimed that several deceased poets began to manifest through him, but they did not specifically identify themselves until 1931. Zavia became widely known in 1931. Man, it's crazy. He lived a fucking long-ass time. He was doing this stuff when he was so young. When he published his book, Parnassus Beyond the Tomb, which contained 259 poems allegedly composed by 56.

deceased, Brazilian, and Portuguese poets. Totally. Makes sense. Good for him. That year he claimed to have met his primary spirit guide Emmanuel, who once lived in ancient Rome as Senator Publius Lentilus, and was later reincarnated in Spain as Father Damien, and then later still as a professor at the Sorbonne in Paris. Ranger told him that he would write 30 books through him. How generous.

Manuel also instructed Xavier to be loyal to both Alan Cardac and Jesus Christ, even if that went against the religious beliefs. He let him know that Jesus was a man who had achieved a perfect life and philosophy after having been reincarnated a fucking shit ton of times, and after he attended so many fucking spirit classes in astral cities and shit. Xavier would call Brazil the adopted country of spiritism and appear on the nation's most popular talk shows in the 60s and 70s, becoming a big celebrity and helping to establish spiritism,

his flavor of cartisist spiritism, as one of Brazil's major religions that now had over 5 million followers. a religion again without a real biblical equivalence it's not really religion but people call that in sources call it that uh you know and because it didn't have some you know core document all kinds of mediums none of them quite as well known as chico were putting all kinds of spins on this shit and more and more of these spins were involving various forms of spiritual healing uh spirit is practicing their own fucked up versions of medicine uh which is illegal in brazil was becoming a real problem and more and more spiritist societies. It was becoming more and more common for a medium to channel a spirit

and prescribe some sort of spiritual cure for serious and often incurable illnesses. Of course it was. That's how people could make quick money. Brazil's criminal code had actually first addressed this growing problem way back in 1892, containing three articles focusing on the illegal practice of medicine, faith healing, and charlatanism. Anyone practicing medicine without proper accreditation could and often did face jail time. Estimates very wildly, but today's spiritism likely has about 14 million followers, the largest concentration being in Brazil with maybe up to about 6 million. While once outlawed for a short time in Brazil,

spiritism now considered a, quote, religion of public utility. Followers of spiritism have opened and continue to open. Nurseries, hospitals, fucking shitty hospitals where people don't actually get real medicine. Schools, they're taught nonsense, and all kinds of other stuff. They continue to try and cure ailments, read snake oil, sell it to people, torture them with false stuff. who struggled with any number of diseases and afflictions. So that was a bit of a detour I know,

but it needed one to help understand why so many people were willing to believe John of God's claims that if he didn't know all that would come across as much more fucking crazy than they already will. They believe this shit because many of them, if not most of them, had grown up,

believing that all sorts of people talk to spirits, that the dead are always all around us, and sometimes they work through mediums to help us out. This was a mainstream belief in many parts of Brazil, still is. because in addition to spiritism, there were and there still are other similar belief systems. Now, let's find out how John went from the son of a working class family to a wealthy spiritist grifter. In today's time-suck timeline.

Shrap on those boots, soldier. We're marching down a time-suck timeline. So, uh, Joao, Texara, the Faria, uh, born in the municipality of uh, uh, Koshu, Kachua'ayah, Koshuayra, June 24th, 1942. Later described himself as a simple farmer, his father was a tailor and John, and I will just call him John,

or John of God, for the most part. It'll be better for all of us. The youngest of six children. According to Maria Helena Machado, historian and biographer of John, Goyas was a place full of devotional Catholicism. This is where he grew up again. Individuals practiced an old version

of Brazilian Catholicism, where people have direct and very personal relationships with various saints. Another belief system, very similar to spiritism, actually. Talking to saints, basically talking to dead people. John's family were Catholics, and he described himself as a Catholic and a devotee of Saint Rita of Kasha, the saint of the impossible,

to whom many miracles have been attributed. Rita's a fucking wild saint. She's often portrayed with a bleeding wound in the middle of her forehead, symbol of partial stigmata, representing the wounds of Christ what he received when he was nailed to the cross, she was while she was alive apparently according to several sources big into mortification of the flesh which can be every bit as insane as it sounds mortification of the flesh can also mean just merely

denying oneself certain pleasures right like permanently or temporarily abstaining from fasting you know not having meat alcohol sex avoiding some area of life that makes the person's spiritual life more difficult or burdensome but that's not all that was going on with rita it seems appears she also practiced self-flagellation according to numerous sources whipping her own back like a fucking maniac until it was bloody with a scourge with seven tales

representing the seven deadly sins as a way to feel some version of Christ's physical pain as he carried his cross prior to his execution as he was beaten and that's fucking bad shit crazy that's very concerning so clearly growing up John was used to people believing it

and doing some really weird shit in the name of God John grew up in a home of blended spiritual beliefs. He described his mother as a feverish Catholic, very devoted, who reported having visions of Mother Mary speaking to her. So that's interesting. And she also practiced tarot card reading.

His father was an herbalist who harvested and sold Garafada, this traditional folk remedy in Brazil. It's a homemade mixture of medicinal plants, bark, roots, sometimes alcohol. That is 1,000% snake oil nonsense that is still sold all over today. there is literally no scientific evidence that it works for many of its touted uses, particularly for fertility. So John grew up in a household

where people claimed to communicate with the dead and where they sold Snakewell, the two foundations of his later faith-healing spiritist empire. John only received about two years of formal education. He stopped going to school in the second grade, supposedly never learned to read or write.

Just a humble, simple healer. His father taught him how to tailor clothing but he eventually left home in search of other work. No age referenced as far as when he did that. But he got jobs apparently doing things like digging wells, laying bricks, you know, manual labor jobs, never, you know, stuck with one job for long. According to John's own lore, that we definitely cannot and should not trust. At the age of nine, he predicted that a sudden storm would destroy houses in a local village.

The weather was clear. People dismissed his vision. But then, 50 homes damaged by tornado force wins. He also claimed to the age of 16, he was sheltering under a bridge when the spirit of a beautiful woman appeared before him and directed him to a nearby church. I mean, yeah, okay, I believe this one. Sure, yeah, sure, totally. He said that the woman who came to him was none other than St. Rita of Kasha. Okay, now this still feels, you know, totally plausible.

He said that he fainted once he arrived at the church. And then later when he woke up, wouldn't you fucking know it? There was a big crowd of people gathered around him. And then he was told, how cool is this? The while he was unconscious, he became possessed by the spirit of King's. Solomon and he healed a whole bunch of people. Fuck yeah, bro. Oh, yeah, that totally happened. I'm going to file that right under, uh, fucking no, didn't.

That marked the start of John of God's career as a healer. I mean, it actually didn't because there's no fucking way that happened. If that happened, then you can prove it, I will fucking behead both of my children in front of you. But I won't have to do that, because for sure that never happened. According to a 1995 book on John, after dropping out of school, he was, quote, forced to live as a wanderer, traveling from city to city, healing the sick, living from their donations of food.

Did that start when he was like nine or like 11, 12? Never made clear. He claims he spent years traveling to different villages around Brazil. And that soon his spirit guide told him he needed to expand his work to reach more people. Great job, spirit guides. Way to fucking push your boy. John also claimed that the famous medium who he met Chico Xavier met him, told him he should travel to the super easy to pronounce town of Abidjania.

Habagianya, Abadjianya, something like that, in the state of Goyas, to fulfill his healing mission. Abadiana? I'm probably fucking completely butchering that Portuguese word. Already had a reputation for being a place

where paranormal events occurred regularly, so it seemed like the perfect place for him to take advantage of, I mean, set up shop and help people. Although sources do not give an exact date, it seems like John moved this little town in the late 70s. He performed his first healings in town

around 19, At first, he just sat in a fucking chair near the town's main road, and people, I guess, just started to show up seeking cures for illnesses. Gradually, his client base increased, and eventually thousands of people were coming to see him. You know, sure, why not? Why go to a doctor when you can just see fucking chair dude in the town square? Let his spirits knock out that gown. By the early 80s, John had built and developed his healing center called Casa de Dom Anasio

de Loyola, or do Loyola. House of St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Catholic Jesuit order, this guy, even though there was nothing Jesuit about John of God, where millions of people would eventually come to be healed in the coming decades or so he has claimed. A lot of people have, though. For over 40 years, he held sessions on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays,

seen up to allegedly 10,000 patients a week. It's a lot. He's cramming a lot there in those days. From Saturday through Tuesday, he lived at his farm outside the nearby city of Annapolis, where about 400,000 people live now. So, you know, he had a nice work week cut out for himself. Three busy days, but three days.

A visitor to the Casa would be sorted into first time and second time lines. They were also required to wear, apparently to make it easier for John to see their spiritual aura. Of course, white. You can't show up to a spiritism house of healing wearing some obnoxious Hawaiian shirt and expect to get your MS cleared up.

You silly goose? Get the fuck out of here, dummy. you need to dress more like a hospital orderly from the 1950s, or that one guy from Fantasy Island, or Colonel Sanders, if you want to be healed. Despite any of them to dress in all white, John of God also claimed he could view each individual as a hologram. Pretty cool. And he could see every aspect of their well-being.

I mean, you would think that if he had that kind of hologram power, it wouldn't matter what they wore, but you know what? Whatever. I'm no spiritist. First timers were led to the Great Hall, where staff members would lead a group prayer, and a TV would play a loop of John performing, quote, spiritual surgeries. More on what the hell that is later.

The first timers then went into the so-called first current room where people would meditate, according to author, Heather Cumming, who seems like a fucking lunatic, a person who became one of the official translators for John of God, and was a so-called daughter of the Casa and a shamanic practitioner, just so you get a feel for who the source is. The room is a, quote, spiritual washing machine, where each person's energetic field is cleansed on all levels. Oh, thanks for clearing that up, Heather.

I bet that's totally true. And also every time I come, diamonds and gold shoot out the end of my dick and my balls sing a flawless rendition of journeys don't stop believing. The stated purpose of the room is to generate, quote, current or fucking spiritual power that John's spiritual helper slash guide entities can use to tap into to then perform their healing work. Okay. People could and would remain in the current room for hours at a time, right? Just fucking making spirit gas to fuel the spirit engine or something.

They were instructed not to open their eyes or cross their arms because, or legs. Don't cross your legs either because that will cut off energy flow. It's interesting that magical healing energy is pretty fragile. After leaving the current room, the first timers got to see John sit in a chair at the end of another room. Motherfucker loved a chair, loved a nice chair. He would briefly talk to each patient and write them a spiritual prescription. and by briefly sometimes just like a few seconds. Yeah, if I can get out here.

Next. That's how he's seen all these thousands of people. While John did not charge for these consultations, his treatments are where he made his fortune. The cost of rented out crystal beds for $60 an hour. Do not tell Lindsay. And the gift shops sold books, CDs, DVDs, tote bags, t-shirts, coffee mugs,

pendants, postcards, travel pillows, glow in the dark, John's stickers, and blessed crystals. Blessed crystals. What a world. What a great profit margin. those must have since it costs nothing to bless them. But you get to charge more. Gift shop also sold blessed water, as did the Spiritist Cafe.

Oh, more solid profits. But their biggest revenue generator was Pasiflora, the flower of the passion fruit plant. Oh, Pasoflora, the vessel for the spiritual prescriptions written by John, which cost about $25, you know, U.S., a bottle just a few years ago before he got shut down. I found, while researching this, excuse me, a bottle of 60, of these things online from nature's answer for $14. I guess they're cheaper because they're not blessed.

This plant does act as a natural sedative to reduce anxiety and improve sleep quality. It works by increasing levels of GABA in the brain, which lowers brain activity, promotes relaxation, helps ease nervous stomach pain and menopausal systems, might also help with ADD and ADHD and even drug withdrawal from nicotine and opioids. It does have benefits. numerous studies have shown it truly does help with anxiety and insomnia for many people. More studies need to be done on its other supposed abilities, but it is not a cure-all. Nothing is.

And you don't need to get it from some spiritish quack. 60 Minutes Australia estimated that at the peak of his operations, John was making over $10 million a year from selling this fucking passion fruit flower. Other sources claim he's making up to $14 million a year. The intentions of John's spiritual prescriptions were said to be trained. transferred to the Pasoflora these capsules at the time of purchase. How convenient. John himself was quoted as saying, For each case, there is a specific spiritual dosage of that medication.

Uh-huh. But all the bottles have the same amount on them. But it's customized, totally. In your mind it is. According to one of the volunteers at the Casa, the person opens it and puts their mind into the purpose of those pills. The cure for cancer, the cure for AIDS. When the person is going to open the medicine,

when they take the first pill, they must think of its purpose because the energy is on the tip of their fingers. When you take the pill, then it will be ready for the treatment you've asked for. Well, if that was true,

you would think there would be some research out there about it, but of course there isn't. And also, if that was true, why would you need to visit this dipshit? Just buy some online

for less money, if I can have it dropped off your door, and then just, you know, think about your own intentions. Touch it with your own intentions at home. In between watching episodes, of, I don't know, some show on Netflix or something.

John was most well known for offering spiritual surgeries that he claimed could cure literally any ailment. Fuck yeah. Patients were offered a choice between receiving a visible or an invisible operation when they were consulting with him. And this is actually pretty normal. My doctor does the same shit. You know, when I show up, he's like,

do you want a visible exam or do you want an invisible exam? And I always choose the invisible one. And then he leaves the room, leaves him in there alone. And he comes back about five minutes later and he asked me how the exam went. I didn't even realize it happened, right? Just like your doctor does, I'm sure. John also claimed that spiritual physicians

could perform surgery on the patient via a surrogate. If the actual patient couldn't make it. Oh, what an option for the person always on the go, right? How convenient. Hey, Tim, I have too many meetings this week. I just can't miss. I do not have time to have that lung tumor removed.

Would you mind go into the hospital for me? Just get my surgery knocked out on my behalf. patients younger than 18 Sorry about that lip smack That's probably aggressive Patients younger than 18 are older than 52 And those who could choose invisible operations Were instructed to sit in a room and meditate

Strange age cutoffs Only a small percentage of people Of any age ever chose the visible operation If that was chosen John would use some energized mineral water And also the spiritual energies Of the volunteers themselves in the current room Right, that spirit gas there

Fucking making by thinking really hard To help him work his mojo magic and by Moja Magic, I mean torture slash carnival tricks. His practices included inserting scissors or forceps deep into a patient's nose or more fun, scraping a bit of the white off of the patient's eye with no anesthetic or antiseptics or making random incisions into somebody's body,

then sometimes inserting his bare fingers into their flesh, no anesthesia, no disinfectant, no gloves. Who'd this guy think he was? Dr. Rock from the Anheel kids? Sometimes you'd pull out large, chunks of matter he claimed were cancerous tissue more on all this later also and i really love this following surgeries patients were told to follow some very strict and unusual post-operative protocols do not ingest black pepper don't eat pork don't drink alcohol don't have sex of any kind

including masturbation for 40 days interestingly no mention of smoking crack or eating say two dozen donuts a day or, I don't know, shoving a hot wheel, you know, a little car replica into a condom and shoving that condom up your ass. So that stuff apparently is totally fine for the healing process. That's what I took away from that. The CASA also featured a so-called museum full of discarded crutches, wheelchairs, canes, and glasses from completely cured patients who would no longer ever need that shit. Oh, A-plus props.

Awesome set dressing. This guy had his griff really worked out. The back room also had a glass cabinet filled with jars, uh, contains, alleging tumors, gross, and other obtrusions. Ooh, chef's kiss. Another nice theatrical touch. You might be wondering how a man with no medical training, who only fucking had a second grade education,

who performed these spiritual surgeries. Well, it wasn't him doing it. John claimed that while he was performing these surgeries, he was channeling, taking over, taken over by the spirits of people like King Solomon and other deceased doctors. I don't know about King Solomon. King Solomon is said to have lived during the 10th century BC.

I would not want him to over. oversee any surgery. Hard no, hard pass. Medical practice, a wee bit different back then. I would want him to oversee me having a fucking hang nail removed. But he was a magical healer, you say. Picks for it never happened. One healer entity that frequented the Casa was Oswaldo Cruz, a physician who helped eradicate yellow fever in Brazil. And also a hard know to that motherfucker, dude died in 1917. Really do not need to have him oversee any medical procedure on me. Another entity that entered his body was Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order, that Catholic order.

He died in 1556. No wonder, later investigations found out that his healings didn't do shit. And people he claimed to have cured died all the fucking time a little while later. He was picking the wrong spirits to heal people. God damn it. He should have tried to find like a real-life Dougie Hauser who, you know, died like the week before. Somebody modern.

Or maybe partner with Thrive. There, that's what he should have done. He could have slapped like a few Lavelle Thrived Dermaph. fusion technology, DFT, astral healing, spiritism patches on their hologramed oras, and cured anything from chronic back pain to cardiac arrest to cancer. If he's not driving, you're dying! In total, John claimed you could channel 38 different entities who all performed healing miracles.

Wow, what a roster. I wonder what they were doing when he wasn't actively using them. Just kind of hanging out in some astral city, right? Stretching, staying loose, you know, waiting for the, in the proverbial batters box, tell it was their time to step up to the plate and swing. John was said to even take on the physical characteristics of whatever spirit he was channeling. For example, when channeling the spirit of St. Ignatius, he would walk with a limp. So it had to be true.

Because St. Ignatius had his leg shattered by artillery fire during a battle in 1521. In an interview, John once explained that when a spirit enters his body, he feels some sort of heat that makes him a bit dizzy. This is accompanied by, quote, intense spiritual peace and an indestructible happiness. Okay. Sure, yeah, that explains it. moments later he would be fully replaced by the entity and no longer aware of what was happening. Totally. John Amassed a full staff of volunteers and devoted followers from Brazil and abroad had about 50 staff members working at Casa at the peak of its operations and an unknown number of employees working at several area mines and farms he owned. Heather Cumming, that fucking whack-a-doodle weirdo, author of a biography on John, came to the Casa in 2000 as a student of Reiki and shamanism.

during her visit she wrote that the entity aka John invited her on stage to observe a surgery and then Heather passed out she recalled quote I suddenly felt a surge of energy very pleasant but very strong and then I woke up on a stretcher

I was crying and medium John asked me why I told him I'd experience unconditional love for the first time oh my god lady get some fucking therapy Heather sounds like daddy issues led you into this grift

Heather was born and raised in Brazil by her Scottish parents owned a hotel in that little town of Abidjania when she first met John at God. Jardell Wagner, volunteered at the Healing Center, recounted witnessing the entity at work in his interview for the 2021,

four-part Netflix docu series, John of God, the crimes of a spiritual healer. He said, there's John the man, the human being, and there's John the medium who channels the entity. You can see the difference. When he channels one of our brethren,

enlightened entities, he falls asleep and does not see a thing. This is the moment when the spirituality of St. Ignatius, St. John the Baptist, ooh, Dr. Augusto, it's the moment when John channels them and all the divine work begins. Mm-hmm. There's no way he could be faking it. He recalled how during sessions John would stand before them, often asking to take someone's hand before he started praying. Some of the entities that took over him were stiffer, while others were more talkative. Wagner explained, entities are enlightened and evolved spirits that come here to serve

people in the name of God, and they serve as an instrument or a tool to our brother, John of God. When John's work was done, the entity would disappear. John would be himself again. And he would have absolutely for sure no memory of what had happened. Uh-uh, he definitely wasn't role-playing. Uh, Wagner continued, while we are here, the medium has already channeled the spirit there. But the treatment keeps happening outside as well. The entities are enlightened brothers, are among us doing their job. So many people got healed outside. And a Sharp, a therapist, and writer, not good at either, said in her interview, I've known John for 30 years. I've visited every guru out there in this world.

Every single fucking one, Anna, get out of here. She said, the number of miracles that I've actually seen and can prove that this man has performed is absolutely amazing. Shut the fuck up, Anna, you're full of shit. Amazing things. I brought in so many people dying of cancer, hopeless cases that he would heal just by touching them. Good job getting those people killed.

There's no way they were healed, Anna. And his husband suffered a heart attack in 1986, but the same thing. then experienced a miraculous healing, according to her. The doctor who examined him three months later called he and Anna crazy, saying, these are two different hearts. He had a transplant. I have nothing else to say. Anna doesn't sound like a very good therapist.

Another supposed success story comes from Angela Homature, a volunteer, former volunteer at the Casso. In the 90s, when Angela was in her early 20s, she said she began to experience fainting spells. She was hospitalized a few times, diagnosed with a brain tumor. Angela eventually lost her sight, experienced severe headaches. Her doctor told her she had 40 days to live. Angela's father-in-law told the family about a medium in Goyas

who performed spiritual surgeries. Angela initially thought to herself, These people are crazy. Let me die in peace. Let me just rest in peace. Your first instinct was right. Not the dying part, but the crazy part. Still her family believed a spiritual medium across the country could heal her.

Angela agreed to go because, you know, they were desperate. When they arrived, they saw buses full of people waiting to see the medium. They all gathered around this small house about 8 a.m. John approached the crowd, asked Angela's husband to take her inside where he would be waiting to operate on her and heal her. Her husband had to carry her inside because she was so weak. But once she was inside, she was able to stand, quote, being supported by the hand of that entity. Or John was hold her hand.

John started talking about her tumor and where it was located. He said earthly doctors could not remove it because then she would die. And he picked up a long pair of scissors, put them up her right nostril, always with the nose. She couldn't feel them inside her. John then instructed Angela, child, count with me. He twisted the scissors 21 times, and she felt the pressure in her head subside. I heard it inside my head as if a bone had cracked, she said. And she blacked out.

When she woke up, the room was in a room with a sink. John came from behind her, put one hand on her shoulder, one on her stomach, then applied pressure. She vomited some blood in the sink. And then a woman picked up what looked like a stake. Angela said she was then healed. She said, the woman who arrived on Wednesday, unable to walk or see, and the Angela, left on Friday, I walked out of my own. But did that happen?

An investigation I will share before we're done did not find legitimacy to any of the healing claims that they looked into, like not fucking any of them. With a supposed success of his healing center and his rising national fame, John was able to start other business ventures. He bought a thousand acre cattle ranch nearby that I referenced briefly. Also became a partner in some emerald and gold mines in Goyas. Got rich, entered the mining business.

Staff would insist the majority of his wealth came from farming and mining, not sales from the Casa, but that's bullshit, because a lot of the people working in the Costa were unpaid volunteers, also got married several times over the years, and had an unconfirmed number of kids with his wives from various affairs. Sources vary, but the general consensus is at least nine kids. Seems like with a lot of grifters, he has worked very hard to keep his private life private, which makes sense considering how insanely shady he is, as you'll soon see. John's success eventually caught the attention of Brazilian authorities. He was arrested several times, apparently. early on for practicing medicine without a license jailed once also charged for performing

unlicensed tooth extractions for people who had difficulty accessing an actual dentist in rural areas. He alleged he was once beaten by the police causing him to realize needed protection and from that point on he would have a few armed goons surrounding him. He would tell his congregation about how he had to bribe authorities

because spiritual work could not happen in the open and yeah so it seems as if he bribed local authorities about a lot for a lot of things, for decades. A district attorney who investigated John reported that he sent her death threats indirectly through a relative when she went to try and prosecute him. John denied that and said in a 2005 interview, there's a lot of jealousy.

People talk. What dictates is the conscience toward God. Hello, guru speak. What dictates is the conscience toward God. I wish some people said something like that. They would immediately be punched in the face by somebody. It wasn't just authorities who thought John was shady, though. A lot of volunteers and visitors at the castle will notice shady happenings as time goes on.

Let's now hear from Michael Baylott, a former tour guide who brought pilgrims to the castle for years before it became disillusioned. After today's second of two, mid-show sponsor breaks. Thanks for listening to those sponsors. Hope you heard some deals you liked. And now let's head to 1998. Here from Michael Baylott, former tour guide, who once brought pilgrims to the casa. Back in 1998, Michael started reading about shoddhapes. shamanism. At the time his wife was experiencing a bunch of health problems, he was desperate,

right? That's when these predators get you. He read about people where we were receiving miraculous healings and John of God was mentioned. He was so impressed with what he had heard that he and his wife took a trip to Brazil. And they liked what they saw so much they moved there. After Michael, his wife decided to move to Abidjania, a little town permanently, one of the owners of a little inn in town approached him and was basically like, so what are you doing here? And that's how Michael found out that by around the year 2000, John of God essentially owned this fucking town. And if they were going

to stay there, they would have to play by his rules if they wanted to keep access to John's healing powers. They would need to ask John's permission or the permission of one of his assistants speaking on his behalf before opening a business, hosting a party, wearing their hair a certain way. Those are just a few of the many unofficial

rules of this town that John ran. Since almost all the town's tourism was focused on the Casa, local business owners were extremely financially dependent on him and felt enormous pressure to do what he wanted. Before John arrived, Abidjania had a population of about 6,000 in a rural economy. By 2020, there would be over 20,000, and it would basically be an economy based on pilgrimages to his fucking center. Many years earlier, Braz, Gontillo de Salva, mayor of Abidania, from 1973 to 1977.

He'd never heard of John. but then one day his friend called him, said there was a healer in town and that his business could promote the hotel and lodging sector in this town. The friend involved at Braves or invited Braz and John over. They agreed that John should come to this town

and stay permanently and the town would essentially cater to him. And for, you know, many people, this relationship worked for a long time, you know, financially. Local businesses profited immensely from his healing center, from the taxi drivers to the butcher shop. In order to succeed,

new businesses eventually had to be, quote, entity approved, which they apparently at one point were advertising with posted signs. And that's a new one. Imagine being such a fucking weirdo, such a diehard follower of this guy. If a business was not entity approved, you just wouldn't go. Hey, let's pop in here real quick and grab a sandwich. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, do not go in. Oh, God, this bagel shop is not entity approved.

That was a very close call. Michael agreed to follow John's rules shortly after moving to town. he started to see John in a different light. Later describing what he noticed about a typical day at the Casa, he said that when John came in each morning, he did not instantly go into a trance due to the spiritual energy of the place, like he professed.

Instead, he would scope out, noticeably just be scoping out young women who would travel to see him and consistently picking the most attractive ones and then invited them to private healing sessions. Mm-hmm. Cotto, Tukado, a former accountant for the Casa, noticed this too.

that John would typically call the prettiest women up to him, the women who had come without their husbands or travel companions. He did not usually call seriously wounded people or unattractive people. In his interview for the Netflix docu-ser, Tercato recounted how he got involved with the CASA, said he had traveled to this little town seeking treatment for his stomach ulcer. At first, Tercato intended on staying for just a week, but then John asked him to stay for 15 days, then for a month,

and then he ended up spending two years there. He did accounting for the CASA also became John's personal accountant during that time. He said that during his first six months, he was in awe of John. He recalled John coming into his office and feeling like he was talking to Michael Jackson or the president. Funny comparison. But he said everything changed when one day he saw a teenage girl who looked like she was

about 17 or 18, a girl who was staying at the local hostel crying. When he asked her what was wrong, she told him John had abused her, had tried to touch her. He also said the hostel owner seemed very worried about people seeing her crying and told her, calm down, don't do this. the girl's own mother told her she was just confused right how fucking sad but the girl was adamant

that something happened because something did that she was going to the police then John showed up two minutes later told the girl that she was lying and threatened to take legal action against her if she didn't stay quiet

and after that she quote simply disappeared and never returned hopefully they did not kill her Tercato left Abidiana two years later fully healed but was quick to point out

he didn't think that had shit to do with John's spiritual powers Following the first accusations of sexual misconduct, John and his staff made concerted efforts to keep accusers quiet, and visitors continue to come from all over Brazil and some internationally, their numbers growing year by year. In 2001, Australian writer Robert Pellegrino Estrich visited and then published The Miracle Man,

The Life Story of John of God, which was the first English book about John. After this book was published, the Costa began attracting people from all over the world. Pellegrino Estrich, a former jewelry show, shop owner, air traffic controller, and supposed Rakey Master first met John in 1995 when he had traveled to Brazil

with his wife. He described Abidjania as a crap hole when he arrived. You know what? I don't love when people say the word crap hole. Just a fucking shithole. Just say shithole. Grow up. But John told him, Robert, you will write a book that brings the whole world to Abidjania, and so I

did. Pellegrino Estrecht's book brought in a lot of people from Europe, making him an extremely valuable member of the Casa. And I want to add that Robert Pellegrino Estridge looks like a fucking dipshit. He's got a pencil stash and a fedora. And check out this cringy description of a book that he wrote about John. John of God is arguably the most powerful medium alive at this time and most surely ranks amongst the greatest of the past 2,000 years. A medium as defined by the Oxford Dictionary is a person who is a spiritual intermediary between the living and the dead.

John not only communicates with spirit, he incorporates the spirit entity. He is literally taken over by the spirit and in so doing, loses consciousness, waking a few hours later without any knowledge of his actions during the incorporation. Whilst in entity, his body is used as a means of conducting physical surgery and seemingly miraculous healing of the sick by the spirit entities who work through him, his gift is not hereditary. It is not a learned technique, nor is it transferable to any other person. At the age of 16, he accepted the responsibility devoting his life to spirit and corporation

for the purpose of healing the sick. He accepted a lifelong task that would demand much of him and frequently repay him with abuse, personal deprivation, persecution, and unlawful incarceration. To be trusted with such an awesome responsibility requires a strong, moral, righteous, but humble man with unquestionable integrity. As if these restrictions and Puritan criteria were not enough, he must also provide his service free of charge to any, to negate the criticisms of skeptics and to ensure that his divine gift is not

denied. Dude. Must have been hard to write that book with John's balls in his mouth the entire time. He was, you know, putting it all together. Unquestionable integrity. The greatest of the past 2,000 years. Stop. I picture him showing this to John before sending to the publisher and being like, did I do it right, Daddy?

Is it good enough? Am I a good boy, Daddy? Do you love me? The increase in tourism due to this kiss-hast's book gave an even bigger boost to Abidjanio's local economy, many pilgrims. Many pilgrims were coming there on two-week tours now, arranged through travel agents. These tours cost thousands of dollars were approved by John, who, of course, took a percentage, a cut of the tour operations. Casa tour guide, Michael Baylot, who we met earlier. He would meet with John and local inn, aka Pasada owners, who would ask foreigners to go back home and do presentations for his healing center.

That would entice more people to travel to Abajanya. John wanted more foreigners visiting the Casa because they had more money. dudes making millions and millions a year but still not enough. Don and his staff also traveled around Brazil to grifts slash heal others elsewhere. Started doing that around 1980. At his height, he would draw crowds of up to

20,000 people apparently. Allegedly he even held the president of Peru at some point with some random affliction and the mayors of different Brazilian town securing his status as a quote, national treasure in the eyes of many. And while he was doing that, according to former volunteer Marcelo Stadado,

many staff members and local business owners were fully aware of more and more credible sexual assault allegations being leveled against John. Estaduro lived in the Casa for two decades. He said that for most of that time, quote, it was the most sublime and spiritual experience I could have ever lived through. He claimed he had many transcended and sacred experiences. That at first everything was genuine, but slowly over time, the Casa became more and more commercial as money started to circulate in town. Eventually, the Casa had a gift shop, a tea shop. It was all about the money. According to Staduro, The people who worked directly with John who later claimed they had never heard about assaults are full of shit.

They were acting like demagogues. And they knew that if their leader went away, they wouldn't have any more power to wield over anybody anymore. Right? That sounds about right. He said that many, many people knew about the allegations. It was an open secret that went back years. They did not report John because they're all making money off this motherfucker. John himself frequently brushed off allegations would even make jokes about them.

For example, back in 2001, he was captured on video, smiling and saying, John has many flaws. Love it when people talk about themselves in the third person. John has many flaws. He's a womanizer. He's a troublemaker. But I've never raped anyone. I never did.

Surrounded by a group of men, he also jokingly said, if I grabbed her and raped her, I'd have to marry her because she's young. What? He was also recorded saying, I'm old, but I can still get laid. Just not here at the home of St. Ignatius. Oh, wow.

Spoken like a true spiritual healer and humble servant of God. Yeah, I bet St. Ignatius told him to say that. Or maybe King Solomon. Probably King Solomon. That dude had, according to the Bible, what was it? 700 wives? 300 concubines? No one loved to fuck as many women as possible as King Solomon.

A dude must have had a real dirty dingus, getting that much strange in the days before condoms. February 10, 2005, ABC ran a news report about John on Primetime Live in the U.S. The program featured five people with different medical conditions, who had supposedly been healed forever by John of God. Quoting the program. The first traveler was Matthew, Ireland, of Guilford, Vermont, who was told he had a quick-growing, inoperable brain tumor. He had undergone radiation and chemotherapy treatments, but almost two years after he was diagnosed, and after three visits to John, his tumor had shrunk.

Annabelle Sclipa of Boulder, Colorado, has not been able to walk since her spinal cord was nearly severed in the car crash in 1988. But after six visits with John, she's doing fucking backflips. No. she says she can now feel a sensation in her legs and can nearly balance herself standing between handrails something her physiotherapist said was unusual with her type of injury. Mary Hendrickson of Seattle was diagnosed

with chronic fatigue syndrome and powerfully debilitating allergies. She now feels much more energetic. There's no way I would feel this way if something hadn't changed inside me, she told Primetime Live, something's made a difference. David Ames of San Francisco was diagnosed

with Lou Gehrig's disease in April of 2003. His nervous system was slowly disintegrating and faced almost certain death. He has had no physical improvement but says his spirit has gained from his visit. Finally, Pat Sejack of Chicago, Illinois, diagnosed with the compulsion to push elderly people downstairs,

kick puppies off of cliffs, and drink the blood of children. He had met at his, quote, game show job. Children he had groomed, kidnapped, and then kept in cages beneath his home in his, quote, Kitty Town Fucklare. No, sorry. It's just been too long since Pat Sejack took a random stray here. The final person was Lisa Melman of Johannesburg, South Africa,

who discovered a year ago that she had breast cancer. After visiting John, her doctor told her it had grown, although less aggressively than he expected it to, and that she should still have surgery. ABC later gave an update indicating that two of these five subjects were making slow progress, or none at all, two were definitely worse, and one showed minimal improvement. No one was healed.

Subject David Ames died from complications three years after the program aired, July 16th, 2008, complications of his, you know, existing illness. You know, he probably put pepper on something. Maybe some pepper was in something he didn't even realize within 40 days of his treatment. Lisa Melman's breast cancer got progressively worse. She experienced chronic pain until she died in 2012. Probably had some bacon, you know, too soon after her healing. ABC host John Quix had an inflamed rotator cuff in his right shoulder.

He submitted to treatment from John as a test. He was instructed to undergo the invisible surgery, meditate for, for two days, followed of course by no sex, no pork, no alcohol, no pepper, and then wait 40 days to see results. He reported no change in his condition, but he did admit he didn't follow all the instructions. Fucking John, you couldn't not jerk off for 40 days. That would be frustrated, actually. Famous skeptic James Randy was also interviewed for this ABC report. James Randy, who died on October 20th, 2020 at the age of 92 was a Canadian-American magician, author, a very famous skeptic.

known to frequently challenge and debunk paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. Randy was the co-founder of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and the founder of the James Randy Educational Foundation. Dude started off under the stage name of The Amazing Randy was a very successful escape artist and illusionist for many years, then later chose to devote his time to investigating paranormal claims. He fully retired from practicing magic at the age of 60 and then retired from his foundation at the age of 87.

Dude wrote 10 books. first gained international notoriety as a debunker in 1972 when he challenged the claims of Yuri Geller who claimed to be psychic. Very interesting dude, who I admire greatly, who I could do an entire episode on. Randy heavily criticized ABC

for editing out the most critical comments he had made about John of God and therefore, you know, ended up giving John a lot more credibility than he deserved. Randy was interviewed on January 25th, 2005, asked to offer his opinions, observations for the prime time live broadcasts. He said he only got a few

seconds of air time in the final production. But Randy would criticize John's healing in depth on his website, where he would, you know, again say the things that he wished ABC would have aired. He wrote, quote, note two, that the John of God organization has set up a situation in which they simply cannot fail. If recovery is not experienced by their victims, it's not a failure of the magical forces, but the fault of the patient. They state that sometimes a person comes to them for a healing too late, so it doesn't

happen. if a patient doesn't have quote the right attitude or doesn't quote keep the faith the healing will fail if the rules are not followed no healing will occur they say that one has to wait at least forty days to see any healing well after the victim has well after excuse me the victim has left brazil and sometimes up to two years have to pass before any effect will be seen all this is a fail-safe scenario one i have come upon many times in the faith healing racket and racket is the right word man i have not come across a single single thing case of a faith healer who, after I've looked into them, I didn't walk away thinking that they were nothing but a complete and total morally bankrupt grifter. Fucking Benny Hinn, that piece of shit. That famous supposed faith healer. He was hospitalized in March of 2015 for issues related to atrial fibrillation, was treated in hospital for reduced oxygen levels.

Why? Motherfucker, why not heal your own heart after claiming to have healed so many others? Well, because he's a piece of shit. Just like John and God. who for decades has worn reading glasses, by the way, dude can't fix his own eyesight, but supposed to be able to fix yours. Get the fuck out of here.

Faith healer wearing glasses, right? That's a dead giveaway that they can't do shit. Every day. I miss that button. Faith healing is 100% of Gryftor's game, right? If back in the day King Solomon himself really claimed that he could faith heal, then in my mind he was just as

corrupt as the rest. Whatever blasphemy and logic collide, I choose logic. Randy wrote about the spiritual surgeries, quote, the dramatic forceps up the nose stunt, I told a producer, and clearly stated to the camera during the videotape session, is an old carny trick that my friend Todd Robbins tells me traces back to the Judah Wallas of India and was adopted from their repertoire by an American performer named Melvin Burkart,

first being done on this continent in 1926. It's now known as the blockhead trick, and is usually done with a heavy 4.5 inch, 30D, 30-penny iron nail, tapped up the nose and into the back of the throat, a clear straight path that seems improbable. It's performed today by easily more than

100 performers in carnivals and sideshows around the world, and John of God simply uses it to impress his victims, though he has a far easier time of it by using smooth nickel-plated or stainless steel forceps. And what's on that swab held by the forceps? Just what is that holy water

John of God uses? We don't know. Regarding witnesses claiming to have seen with their own eyes, John of God, pull out diseased tissue from patients of his psychic surgeries, Randy noted that he himself had performed the psychic surgery stone trick many times, including once on this night show with Johnny Carson. He wrote, quote, It consists of the performer apparently reaching to the body of the person on the table and extracting bloody lumps said to be tumors.

That was clearly presented as a trick, and I explained on this night show that it was done by exactly the same means that the fakers in the Philippines are still used in the, to cheat their victims. Imagine my surprise when Fred de Cordova, that's a night show producer, called to tell me that at the NBC TV Los Angeles office alone, they had received 102 phone calls following the broadcast, every one of them asking how to contact the Filipino psychic surgeons. The simple message that they were grifters had not gotten through, evidently. It's a slight of hand technique, where the surgeon palms the material, typically animal tissue,

using misdirection to make it appear as though the tissue is taken from the patient's body. It's a fucking magic trick. The person isn't even cut oftentimes. It's a card trick, just goryer. Randy also provided an explanation for John's surgery procedure where he scrapes a person's eyeball with the edge of a knife, writing, I believe that this is a variation of the usual trick illustrated on page 177 of my book Flimflam in which a knife blade is inserted under the eyelid of a subject with little or no resulting discomfort. With a Brazilian faker, the scraping motion gives it a much more fearsome aspect.

But for several good reasons, I doubt that any contact takes place with the cornea. The sclera, the white section of the eye, is relatively insensitive to touch. Try touching that area with a finger or any clean object, and you'll see this is true. The cornea, however, is very sensitive, among the most sensitive areas of the body. Incidentally, it's also the fastest healing organ, which accords very well with Darwinian standards. being able to see is one of our best sensory means of defense. Most persons, and I am one of them, have a difficult time watching the eye be touched. We tend to empathize with the situation, and I am sure that some readers are at this moment

involuntarily squinting in distaste as they read these words. Were that reactive to eyeball touching? Few persons will resist looking away when John of God seems to scrape an eyeball, and I noted that he is furtively watching the position of the camera as he performs the stunt, blocking the view with his body when a close-up is sought. right another trick a more dangerous one since he's actually cutting the person's eye a little bit but still a trick dude's not a healer he's a fucking carny uh randy also wrote about john uh bleeding his patients quote as described here elsewhere an adrenaline rush is often experienced by people who are under

unaccustomed stress or sudden shock we're all familiar with the counts of soldiers in battle who are wounded in ways that would otherwise cause them great pain and bring an immediate reaction but they remain unaware of the injury until the stressful conditions are relaxed. I've seen this happen with people on stage in front of a faith healer's audience, managed to do things that would have otherwise brought great discomfort and pain.

In the case of John of God's sudden incisions, and considering the relatively insensitive areas he chooses to make these cuts, along with the fact that the victims are told to keep their eyes closed, I'm not surprised at the fact that, so far as the Casa de Dominocio people will permit us to see, the victim show little or no reaction

to the cutting procedure. But remember that we are only allowed to see the incision, not the possible subsequent reaction after the cameras are taken away. Basically, John of God is a showman, right? The kind of huckster who has been around in various forms for centuries. Joe Nickel, another American skeptic and paranormal investigator, wrote about John for a 2007 edition of the Skeptical Inquirer journal. Nickel worked with Nat Geo on a segment for their Is It Real series.

The program was titled Miracle. Cures and included analysis of John a God. Nickel had a ticket to an event hosted by John in Atlanta. When Nat Geo contacted him, they worked together on their investigation. John did not perform any visible surgeries at the event because he would have been arrested for doing that in the States. But during the event, Nicol was chosen for an invisible surgery. He was wearing a disguise, using a cane, right?

Limpin. Like Randy, Nicol explained that the miracles psychic surgeons perform are just slight a hand, that the tumors they remove have been proven to be pieces of chicken intestines and cow blood. According to Nicol, the twisting of forcips up a pilgrim's nose is an old circus and carnival sideshow stunned explained to my book Secrets of the Side Shows, looking far more torturous than it is. The feet depends on the fact that unknown to many people, there is a sinus cavity that extends

horizontally from the nostrils over the roof of the mouth to a surprising distance, enough to accommodate a spike, ice pick, or other implement used in the human blockhead trick. So there you go, right? There's the explanation for all of his healing. side show shit dressed up in the language of spiritism, since his believers already believed in the concept of healing spirits before ever meeting John, spiritism gave him the blueprint for the contextual language to use,

carny tricks gave him the blueprint for performing his miracle, you know, healing tricks. Now let's move on to, outside of fame and fortune, the other primary motivation for John of God to run his grift. Sex. When John visited Sedona, Arizona in 2010, a police department there, the police department there, investigated him after a woman reported that he took her hands and placed them on his genitals.

The case never went to court. One of John's associates reportedly encouraged the woman to drop the allegations, probably bribed her. This case would be the first to really get people talking, though, about him being a predator. And eventually, you know, people are talking online now, right? The internet's more advanced. Eventually, a whole bunch of other women

will come and collectively finally take this motherfucker down. Let's hear from some of these brave women who spoke out against John, accused him as sexual abuse. They shared their stories for the judge. John of God Netflix docuseries. They came to the Healing Center at vulnerable times in their lives when they needed hope and support. Instead, were sexually abused by John who prayed on countless vulnerable women, hundreds

and hundreds, if not thousands. In 2010, still in 2010, business administrator, Andrea Manelli was living in Sao Paulo. She was 30 years old, married, a self-described super workaholic. Family had always been one of her most important pillars in life in addition to work. And in August of that year, Andrea's mother began to complete. plane of pain for the first time in her life. Her mom had never been sick, always taking care of the family.

Also naturally, they're very concerned for her. And after they consult various doctors and specialists, she is diagnosed with cancer. The prognosis is looking grim. The family's worried. Andrea's sister had just attended a lecture by holistic therapist Anna Sharp, who mentioned a medium, who performed miracles in the countryside.

So they asked their mom if she wanted to go there. She said yes, because, you know, she's fucking desperate and wants to live. So sad when you think about how many people visited this piece of shit over the decades, bought his fake pills, underwent bullshit surgeries because they were dying and desperate to live. How many of them didn't then bother with traditional Western medicine? Because they were so sure that the great John of God, you know, would cure them. This dude's body count probably way higher than any serial killer we have ever covered.

Andrew said in her interview, I think the home has an atmosphere that feels like a peaceful place. Then the volunteers of the home guide you. They say some prayers. They explain how the home works, call some people up to share their testimonials. So you look at all that and you think to yourself, wow, I can trust this place. They arrived in Abidjania on a Tuesday. The next day, they went early to see the medium for her mother's cure. When it was their turn, John looked not at mom, but directly at Andrea.

He grabbed her forearm with both hands, stood up. She remembered that she felt afraid. He asked her why she was there. And before she could answer, he replied to her saying, You're here because your mother has cancer. Andrew was so shocked she started to cry. John looked at her and said, You have a strong mediumship in you,

and you can save your mother. Andrea felt a mix of joy, surprise, hope, awe, right? No one had ever told her before. John then asked to talk to her after the session. Andrea said, looking back at some elements now, I can see there was something weird about it. When he locked the door, that caught my attention, but I didn't question him.

Then he asked me if I was wearing something metallic. I asked him, do you mean prosthetics or something like that? he said, no, are you wearing any metal? I said, I had earrings on, a ring, something like that. He asked me if I was wearing a bra. I said, yeah. And he said, you have to take it off because I'll do a cleansing and you can't have metal on your body. The process started with psychological abuse.

He begins by telling you a bunch of things like you will heal your mother. Do you want to heal your mother? If you want to heal your mother, you have to cooperate because if you don't, do what I tell you, your mother will die. Then that man who is almost six feet tall, obese, rude, screaming at you, asking you, you to do something so you don't question you say, uh, no, I'm not doing it. You think it's weird because he starts violating your body. So you say to yourself, something doesn't add up. So at first, when he started to abuse me, I started crying. When I started crying, he asked me, do you want your

mom to die? Then he started yelling, do you want your mom to die? That left me in a difficult position. And I thought, no, I don't want her to die. So you have to cooperate. Otherwise, she'll die. And you'll be responsible for that because you can heal your mom. Every time that he would touch me, I would cry. And every time I would cry, my mom and dad would listen outside. so his cruelty has no limits. He's capable of raping the daughter of a couple who are sitting outside, listening, as if it is something ordinary, with no remorse whatsoever.

He steals away much more than your faith. He steals a lot of things along with your faith. He said, I would be responsible for my mother's death. Who in good conscience would want to bear that responsibility? Who would want to pay the price to see if it's true or not? If he really has the power or not, I was not willing to. That's fucking evil. Raping the daughter of a woman dying of cancer

while telling her this daughter that if she doesn't go along with it, her mom's going to die. Oh, my God, right? No fate is too bad for this motherfucker. I would be cool with funneling a bunch of hide beetles into his butthole and letting them literally eat him from the inside out. Not sure if that's actually possible, but it might be, and I want it to be. When the family returned home to South Paulo, they were hopeful for mom's recovery.

Even Andrea, after being raped by John of God, still thought that he and her together could heal mom. Andrew's mom swept up in all this, believed John had cured her, and her tumor had disappeared. It hadn't. It was still there. Had not decreased in size. And her mom was admitted to the hospital for surgery. A real surgery.

Hour and a half after her surgery, the family gets a call. The surgeon told them he had witnessed a miracle saying, your mother does not have cancer. She has a benign tumor. We have repeated the test three times. She does not have cancer. And now the family firmly believes that John was responsible for transforming the tumor from malignant to benign. I will add the phenomenon of spontaneous regression, rare but not unheard of. Happens all the time with no faith healer intervention.

Andrew's mother wanted to go back to the CASA after she healed from surgery so they could thank John. Andrew's father was considering making a donation. During their second day at the CASA for the second visit, a young woman there approach, Andrea, asked her to go to the restroom with her. She then asked Andrea if John had ever done anything to her, and Andrew was surprised. She said, what do you mean? I don't get it. The woman asked if John had called her in for a person. private session if he had sexually abused her during that session. Andrew was shocked. She recalled

she felt like she'd fallen into a hole in the ground. But she now understood what was happening. She felt outraged, disappointed. How could she fall for the lie when it was so obvious? She went back to the casa to find John. She knocked on his door, tried talking to him. He wouldn't open it. But then she persisted. He opened it. She confronted him. She said, you're a pig. You're a piece of shit. You're a son of a bitch. How could you do this? He quickly called some assistance, some of his fucking armed goons. She saw their guns. And she left. she thought about reporting him back when he first had thought about it when he first assaulted her, but didn't because, you know, he's a powerful man.

But after this other woman told her that she'd been victimized also, and then she heard about reports from still more women, she knew it was time to come forward, and she wrote a nine-page statement about what happened to her. Andrew said in her interview for the docu-series, he can't cure anyone. He doesn't have the skill. He does have a structure that makes you believe, though.

Many people endorse him and give him credibility, from speakers who promote the home to the taxi waiting for you at the airport, to take you to Abjanya, to the Pasada owners who collect your information. They separate you from your group, your family, putting you in an even more vulnerable position,

and when you get in line, they give you some water that makes you feel dizzy. All this apparatus makes you understand that there is a well-structured organization to fulfill Mr. John, or excuse me, Mr.

John of God's, yeah, wishes. And what's in that water? Right, a little bit of LSD? Dude's drugging him with something to make the whole experience feel more mystical, right? Cloud their judgment. Let's now hear from Rajani Arruzzo, another survivor.

Razani came from a cartisist family, raised in spiritism, so she was primed to believe this bullshit. She remembered her mom supposedly channeling, guiding spirits when she was just starting when she was like two years old. Spiritism was always part of her household growing up. By the time Razani traveled to Abidjania. Her father had already been going there for a decade. For the last 10 years of her life, John and the Kasa had been part of her family's everyday conversation. Her mom had previously undergone several surgeries at the Casa with what she felt were good results. And so no part of Razani doubted that John had magical healing powers.

When she first went to the Casa, she was looking for spiritual healing. Razani worked a high-ranking government job, which she was being harassed to work, and was at risk of losing her job if she refused to go along with this harassment that is not ever fully explained exactly what it was. Razani was obviously looking forward to hearing what John had to say and what she should work on. young and beautiful. He quickly picked her out of the line. At first he was speaking in a low voice to the others, but then he raised his voice. Ask what she was doing there. He told her she was a medium, right? This is this fucking little formula. She's a powerful medium. She shouldn't be in line. She should be sitting in one of the medium chairs.

Then after that morning session, after making her feel special, John asked her to see him in his private room. Bazani waited about two hours until she was able to go in. Once inside, John looked at her, stared intensely into her eyes, something he did not normally do. And then he told her, you've got to cure me. Razani replied, who am I? I'm no one. And John said, I need your energy. And then immediately started to just unbutton his pants. Razani blocked out a lot of what happened next. She said she doesn't recall much about the assault, but knows, you know, it happened to her.

Razani told the producers of the docu series, many people don't believe it. And there are people like me who are actually abused. I know what happened because nobody told me I was there. I was not the entity. I did not feel the energy. It was not the energy. I didn't feel the energy. It was John himself.

He put his hands on his chakra, on his heart. As far as I can remember, he started to guide me, directing me, passing through his chakras. I can't remember what happened after he got to the sacral chakra. I can't because I was hypnotized. So when I woke up, I heard the voice of the entity. It was screaming. It was slapping my hand like this because I was already touching his penis. It was screaming, slapping both of my hands like this.

It was screaming and saying, not her. How do I explain that to people who don't know about spirituality? Who don't live this reality? Then I asked, why me? And he said he didn't know why. fascinating how she interpreted that through her lens of spiritism. Survivor Marina Brito

have been trying to get pregnant for five years. Doctors found nothing wrong with her. So she sought out spiritual answers. When she first met John, he told her she was going to get pregnant, but first the entity needed to see her. And then Marina, of course, was sent to the private room. Once inside, John instructed her to close the door. He sat in a chair in the corner of the room,

asked her to get on her knees in front of him, told her he was going to treat her so she could get pregnant. Started talking about past lives. said she was a powerful medium with strong energy, right, which was destabilizing him. Marina recalled, when he told me that, I didn't know anything anymore. I was led to do it, and I just did it. When I came to my senses, he had taken his penis out of his pants, grabbed my hand with his hand, and held it. But while he was speaking, he kept doing this with my hand over his belly on his penis.

When I tried to open my eyes, he said, close your eyes. Breathe, you're destabilizing me. Your energy is too strong. I don't know how long I was there. When I left, he told me, go back to the chain. I don't know what that means All part of his racket How many times

Had he already done that To somebody else before Right? Hundreds, thousands When Marina returned to the current room She started to question What had just happened She wondered what she should do

Decided to talk to the woman Who welcomed her into the Casa She told her that John had just sexually abused her And showed her his penis Made her touch it The woman said that If he did do that, that's fine That's just part of the treatment

These fucking pieces of shit Marina was not cool with that answer She showed up at the casa early one morning soon and afterwards when John is having breakfast. She demanded to talk to him and confronted the people who were with him saying that they knew what happened. They opened the door for her. They let her close it. They were all accomplices. John then told her, quote, I'm a sick man.

He claimed he was under treatment for cancer and she would end up killing him. Marina was then moved by compassion towards him and felt an urge to pray and took his hand. No, Marina. How the fuck did this guy admit he was being treated for cancer? How did that not set off so many red flags? He's the healer. Why would he have cancer? Marina later spoke to John's right-hand man.

This guy is known as Chico Lobo, the main administrator of the home, when she again came to her senses. Chica had been working with John for about 14 years at this point. He was once a councilman, vice mayor of the little town there. Marina told him that she had been sexually abused by John. She recorded their conversations, smart,

and she captured this guy saying, when you come to this world, which is the opposite of all you know, you must try and understand it better. I'm trying to explain that. the facts. I'm not taking sides. Here's the thing. It may have happened. Look into the biggest mediums in Brazil.

You'll find some interesting facts. They get this kind of radiation. We're not exposed to. It's instinct. There's human instinct. And there's energy instinct. Pretty sure that was his way of saying, look, calm down. All the big mediums sexually abuse people. It's just part of the

fucking grift. Marina told John that he must be held accountable. And that if he didn't do something about it, she was going to come back. She went to the police, but they did not seem to take her seriously. They didn't seem surprised by her report either. The chief police, a woman, told her there was nothing she could do. She was probably on the payroll.

While John of God keeps sexually assaulted women and not getting in trouble for it, his business grows. On November 17th, 2010, writer Susan Casey published an account of her trip to see John for O Magazine, which was subsequently covered on the Oprah Winfrey show. The article was titled Leap of Faith, Meet John of God. And then the episode would be titled, Do You Believe Believe, in miracles. Oh, for fuck's sake. In the article, Casey discussed her need to deal with the traumatic loss of her father who died suddenly in 2008. She couldn't escape the tsunami of grief. She wanted

if John could help her heal. Her grief was a physical weight she carried. She said she was angry at the world. Casey wrote about witnessing one of the visible surgeries. Quote, from my vantage point, only 10 feet away, the change in his body and demeanor was easily visible. Now his eyes were more intense. They flashed noticeably darker. His gait became stiff or his movements more deliberate. He turned to the three women standing against the wall, took the one close to him by the hand, and gently sat her in a wheelchair. Her eyes fluttered while as, uh, her eyes flooded white as she meditated. Reaching to the tray, he selected a short knife with a wooden handle, a cheap looking type that you might use to pair an apple with, and he held it up to the room, making sure everyone saw it sharp

blade, right, like a showman. He tipped her head backward, running his hand across her face, and he opened her left eye, holding the eyelid wide, and then he began to scrape the knife across her eyeball back and forth with visible pressure. Unbelievably, the woman sat absolutely still without flinching or recoiling. I had a hard time watching this, believing as I do, that the words knife and eyeball

should never appear in the same sentence. After what seemed like an eternity, devoid of trauma, he put down the knife. The orderly took the wheelchair and steered it into the infirmary. As she had the entire time, the woman appeared to be napping. How on earth could a knife across your eyeball not hurt?

Later, I would interview another recipient of this treatment, Connie Price, 62, from Jackson Michigan. There was no pain whatsoever, she said, of the five-minute scraping. I could feel the energy coming through him. I remember the heat pouring through the man's body. Price found the treatment beneficial. I can see a lot better now, she said. Casey wrote about the atmosphere of the CASA, saying, there are countless DVDs that document the entities performing surgeries, like the three I just witnessed. But somehow they didn't capture the inexplicable aura of calm that permeated

the scene. Web pundits often criticize these procedures as the equivalent of parlor tricks, noting that the nasal cavity extends farther than one might imagine or the scraping a person's eyeball is really no big deal unless he touched the cornea. But nothing, anybody could write, explain to me how it was that none of the women had so much as flinched or how after their encounters with the entities, so many people feel better. After watching tape of similar events, Mehmet Oz, this Dr. Oz, had his own theory. Those actions can stimulate aggressive immune responses.

It may be that what he is doing is tapping into a long lost hearing. healing tool that could be effective in treating other conditions. About her own experience, seeing the medium at work, Casey wrote, I wish I could tell you I felt something magical when I saw him, that when I kneeled down on the pillow at his feet holding the photo of my father, with Heather, author, Heather Cumming, that Wackerdoodle, translating in the current sitters in white all around me, a dazzling bolt of lightning shot down and cleared up every last sorrow.

Instead I felt nervous. And the entities seemed detached, rattling off some instructions in Portuguese, he waved me away quickly. he said he wants you to take a blessing and then come back later heather said putting an arm around my shoulders don't worry this is completely normal the blessing which consisted of a group prayer and took place in an ante room was over in three minutes i felt stunned and somewhat disappointed by the brevity of the experience but he was upbeat that's like a spiritual washing machine she said and he says he will help you she loves to talk about the spiritual washing machine in her article casey shared more stories of miracle cures one famous story from the cost is a supposed case of Luis Carlos Nunez, former accountant whose tumors were allegedly displayed in the infamous cabinet. Luis was supposedly healed of intestinal cancer in 1996,

but the following year, he was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and given three months to live. He was not offered chemo. He returned to the Casa, and John told him, I will help you, my son. You'll be healed. The cancer supposedly persisted, but Louise didn't die. Louise came to the Casa every other month for three years,

each time he would say, Father, there's this problem. John always told him, I'm taking care of you. Don't worry. On October 12th, 2000, Louise came to the Casa, was wrapped on a white sheet,

John shaved part of his head. He made a large incision where a growth protruded. According to Louise, enormous matter came out, yellow and white, a lot of it. And then he got the medical tweezers and pulled out a lot more.

He removed a kind of sack and showed it to me. Didn't hurt at all. John cleaned the wound with holy water, no stitches were needed. Probably because he didn't actually make a wound.

and Louise was allegedly now cancer-free. Now, how did you do that? Well, some speculate. He slapped a Lavelle, Dermifusion technology, DFT, King Solomon, Healing Spirit, brain cancer, be gone, patch on Louise's dome. If you're not thriving, you die in!

Of brain cancer! Another story is that of Jeanette Lodiah, who dealt with recurring cancer for 17 years. The cancer started in her knee, eventually moved into her bones. No treatment was working. She went to the Casa as a last resort. John told her to return 20,

times and she would be healed. This was difficult for Jeanette. She had to take a 40-hour bus ride from the south of Brazil, left her weak and nauseous every time. But she did it. She remained faithful. Eventually, excuse me, she said she began to feel better. But three years later, the cancer returned to her uterus,

and she had to have a hysterectomy. Jeanette returned to the costa, expressed her disappointment, but then John told her, don't be unhappy. I'm going to give you the present you hope for. Six years later, with no uterus, she became pregnant. Jeanette said her daughter was born April 26, 2000, despite the fact that not only just you not have a uterus, she also had no fallopian tubes.

And that never fucking happened. Literally impossible. This is some bullshit Casa propaganda. I looked and it couldn't have happened. Lavelle does not sell any thrive utero regrow smoothies or anything. Casey actually met Jeanette's daughter. In her article, Casey noted that not everyone who visits the CAS has healed, sometimes the staff say healing is spiritual rather than physical,

or the recovery is not as fast as expected. You must be willing to change habits and let go of things. holding you back. And also, no pepper, no dittalin, no pork, no alcohol for 40 days, can't forget that. According to Heather Cumming, the entities like spiritual obedience. Uh-huh. Over the years, the entities inside John have made many requests of patients, such as writing books, obtaining a pilot's license, telling people to stop smoking weed, because that causes a dense red aura. Oh, oh, fuck, my aura must be so red.

Just bloodshot is fuck. One day during her trip, Susan Casey attended a festival to celebrate St. Ignatius' birthday. She's able to see John with Heather acting as her translator. John took the photo of her father, asked her to sit in his current, totally normal, come sit in my current, until Casey was working on her and taking care of things for her and her family. Casey sat down and meditated. She recalled, quote, immediately I found myself floating in a lake at my family's summer cottage in Canada. It was a familiar place since I was about 14.

Every night I was there. What fucking drugs is he given? these people. Every night I was there, my father would accompany me on an early evening swim, driving his boat slowly beside me, making sure I didn't run into trouble or another boat's propeller. In the middle of the lake, I would often stop swimming for a moment in tread water as the sun dipped low, turning the water to bronze and washing the clouds with jewel colors. I would see my father with his golden retriever bear next to him looking out at the lake, a place he loved more than anywhere else. It was dreamy and beautiful. And instead of sobbing as I'd

expected, as I'd expected, I reveled in moments and conversations I'd have with my father. I felt as though I was literally reliving them. Three hours later, when a round of prayers marked the entity's exit and the end of the day, it seemed as if no time had passed. When I stood up, I felt shaky and woozy and mellow. Well, yeah, you were drugged. Only weeks after I returned from the CASA would I fully realize how powerful my time there had been, how, in fact, the grief weighing me down and simply disappeared, replaced by peace.

Maybe he's putting psilocybin in the water. People would remark that I looked lighter. Some claimed the difference was startling. I would hear myself laugh again, and before I left, Abidina, fucking that town. I would have the chance to speak to medium John privately. While he rested after a long afternoon, his face looking tired but content, and he would tell me, I am the happiest man in the world because I believe in eternal life.

Thanks to Susan Casey's gushing review of John's magical powers. On March 17th, 2013, Oprah's next chapter aired an episode. said where Oprah herself traveled to Brazil to meet this motherfucker. Once there, she interviewed Swedish patient, Magnus Kempi, and five Americans who hoped to be cured by the medium. Oprah completely endorsed this pile of shit,

and I'm not surprised. Oprah has done a tremendous amount of good in the world, but her wakadoodle detector never been great. John got far from the only dangerous nut who has managed to convince her that they're magical. John's global fame reached new heights after the Oprah episodes, but behind the scenes, accusations continue.

such as one in 2013 involving a 16-year-old girl. She claimed that she and her father entered a private room with John, who at this point is 71 years old, once inside, he ordered her to close her eyes, and for her father just to turn his back and keep his eyes closed, and then over her clothing, he fondled her breasts, her ass, and her genitals. Fucking clearly he was getting off on doing that with the dad in the room.

She later told her dad, and then they went to the police, and the case went to court. But the judge ruled that although the victim was vulnerable, it did not explain why she did not react because she was not alone in the room. Why didn't she say something to her dad? Because he's fucking scared and confused. The judge said that the acts of the defendant,

John, were immoral, but it did not characterize a sexual violation and he just was let go. Around this time, Casa Tour Guide, Michael Baylott, was growing more and more outraged and what continued to happen behind the scenes. In his docu-series interview,

Michael recounted how his friends wanted to invite John abroad. John agreed under certain conditions. He wanted to bring it up. entourage of eight to ten people. All them had to fly first class. He wanted to stay in a five-star hotel. He also wanted to bring a big container of his fucking possa flower pill bullshit and sell it. He wanted to charge people to come see him for the evening. He wanted to keep every penny of whatever money was spent on him. His terms were agreed to, and the first foreign country they visited was New Zealand. Baylot was disgusted that his friends were not alarmed by what he knew they were also seen.

He said that during the healing sessions at the cost of quote, when John sits there, supposedly incorporating and says to everybody in the room, you can't open your eyes. keep your eyes closed. The majority of the people in that room have their eyes closed. They don't see what's happening. What's happening in front of everybody, even people standing in the line, is that he molests women right there in the line. She goes up to him. He takes her hand. He puts it down his pants. He has an ejaculation. Her hand comes up with semen on it. Just fucking brazen. Baylotte's two friends who were afraid to go to the authorities about this, the ones taken in New Zealand. Then we're going to do anything. John continued to say that all the accusations were a lie,

but that if anybody was assaulting women, it was the entity, not him. Oh my God, he would use the old ventriloquist defense. I didn't say that horribly offensive thing. Puppet did. Notty puppet.

Bad puppet. What? I didn't touch you. I didn't touch your hoo-ha while you're sleeping and that was Charles Guttman. He touched your hoo-ha. Same man who has his hand in my ass

up to the wrist right now. Wee! Oh, Woody, where have you been, buddy? Probably drunk. Baylaa started talking to more and more locals, many who said they had no idea about the accusations, others suggest that John of God's inappropriate touching was, again, a healing technique. For fuck's sake, they couldn't have made it easier for this dude to do what he did.

This is like a bad joke. This is like literally getting fucked in the ass by your doctor during your annual checkup and then not going to the police because you're like, I don't know, maybe that's just how checkups go sometimes. I didn't go to medical school. Finally, Baylai decided he'd had enough. He was supposed to pick up a group of 40 people to the airport, bring them to the, you know, Casa for a tour, but he just couldn't do it

anymore in good conscience. He wrote a letter informing them that it would not be safe for them to visit, that John was a fraud. Baylotte's email ended up getting back to the local Pasada owner who did a lot of translating for the group and that owner showed up one morning with the letter in his hand printed out. He told Baylor, uh, or Baylotte, excuse me, you don't, you don't understand one thing. Here in Abidjania, it only costs 30 reals for a man to pay to murder another person. and that's equivalent to about 60 bucks by the way right fucking big threat murder's real cheap uh bailout obviously picking up on what this dude was laying down

stop talking to the man went over found his wife talked to her and then afraid for their lives they left town within a week former accountant turcato who we met early in the timeline said he was also hoping something would be done but that he couldn't do anything himself because john was too dangerous his goons would say things to intimidate people there were rumors of extortion threats even murder

people from town who disliked john would rather stay silent, the risk going against him. Tricado also went in depth on some of the sketchy business dealings that was happening around town. He said John kept a lot of his cash and trash bags that he was stuffed in the ceiling. That depended on the week, the cost of it earned $25, $30,000, even $60,000. John had a dozen brand new cars, walked around with two armed bodyguards at all times because he claimed people wanted to assassinate him. According to Tricado, the hostels had to pay a monthly fee to John like he's a mafia don.

Taxi drivers had to give half their wages. to keep operating to him. People who brought tour groups needed John's permission, which they only secured with a bribe on payday. If people did not have money, Tercato had to tell Claudio the house manager

and then he would deal with it. Tricado didn't know how, but the money always showed up. John had capos, right? Enforcers, clearly, you know, hired muscle to shake people down. Michael Baylott also noted that multiple Posada owners

were instructed to tell John about any troublemakers or people asking too many questions, and he was kept informed about any wealthy business to town. John made a lot of money, you know, to anyone who expressed interest in crystals. He would tell them he had a certain powerful crystal that could cure like cancer, then sell it for an exorbitant price. I guess one man from South Africa paid 50 grand for a crystal.

2014, John visited Australia, hosted a live event from November 22nd to 24th that year at the Sydney Showground in Sydney Olympic Park, got a bunch more media attention. He was claiming to have healed over 8 million people now over the course of his life. Sessions at the Sydney Showground cost $295 for a single appointment, or $795 for three sessions. A head of his visit, a Sydney morning Herald published an in-depth piece on John and his success. The Herald reported that by 2014, John received almost 2,000 visitors a day, almost all of them received a prescription for herbs.

The average purchase was about $20,000. He's making about $40,000 a day in herb sales alone. The Herald interviewed 47-year-old, Johnna Sue Jones, diagnosed with ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease way back in 2001. She was given three years to live. Just seven months after her diagnosis, she needed a cane to walk. She tried mainstream medical treatments, herbalist medicine, acupuncture, nothing worked. One day her doctor mentioned that he had just seen a patient who had recovered from stage

four lung cancer after visiting some guy in the jungle of Brazil. John then wrote a bunch about John of God, his supposed miracle cures. She told the Harold, once I heard about it, I came straight here. She traveled to Brazil, arrived in that little town in the spring of 2002, was overwhelmed by a sensation of limitless love. She recalled that there were tears running down my cheeks. I had been a mother, and I experienced joyful moments, but nothing like that. John saw John the following day. He performed a visible surgery where he stuck a pair of forceps, upper nose, right?

One of his big tricks, quote, jiggling it around until the back of my throat filled with blood. After experiencing a severe headache for 24 hours, quote, it was like a veil had lifted, like I had a new brain. I wanted to roar like a lion. John has said medium John healed me spiritually, physically, mentally. He is pure love. That's what he is. She purchased land in Abidjania in 2004,

so she could be closer to the area's healing energy, would often walk around Shula's so she could absorb healing vibrations through her feet. Herald reporter Tim Elliott was able to go to Brazil, now visit the Casa, talk to patients and staff. Briefly interviewed John. Elliot asked John how these entities came to him, and he responded, I surrender myself to the highest being, and then the work happens.

When asked about the sexual abuse allegations, he quickly ended the interview, saying, I thought you came to talk about me, not other people. The reporter was able to ask one final question about the alleged misappropriated funds that were used to renovate his home as he walked away, and then John went into a long rant, said he was not a thief, that people who accused him of things were thieves. 60 Minutes Australia, which I love, by the way. They do great investigative journalism, aired a critical investigative report, October 25th, 2014, examining John's healing practices, how much money he was making, raising

questions about sexual assault allegations. This was actually a follow-up to a 1998 investigation done by reporter Liz Hayes. In part one of the follow-up, host Michael Usher, revealed that a woman who was declared cured by breast cancer by a spirit entity died a few later years later of cancer in 2003. Back in 1998, a woman with MS said she visited the Healing Center with the expectation of walking again. But in two days, 2014, she was still in a wheelchair. Her condition had greatly deteriorated. Her trip to the Healing Center had cost her five grand. Usher noted that none of the 40 Australians who made the trip to Brazil in 1998 that they interviewed, this trip that Liz Hayes joined, actually improved

when you really dug into their medical records. An Australian doctor who traveled with the crew to the compound in Brazil was horrified by what he saw. He said, the modern medical world could not condone this behavior in any way whatsoever. Michael Usher said ahead of John's event, I can understand people's faith. I can understand how powerful hope is. What I cannot tolerate is someone like John Faria taking advantage of people who only have hope left. I would say personally, do not go and see him.

It will be a waste of money. You will walk out of there hundreds of dollars out of pocket and be none the better for it. In part two of the investigative report, Usher noted that there had recently been two deaths at the CASA, that it warranted investigations, but no one had been charged, right? bribes again, I'm assuming.

60 Minutes interviewed John for their episode, but the interview was cut short when Usher started to ask about business dealings. John's employee told him that those questions were not on the approved list. Usher then asked John if he sexually assaulted anyone and asked about a sexual assault complaint lodged in the U.S., that one from Sedona, Arizona. John ended the interview, then actually said to Usher's translator, yes, your mother, when she asked him if he had abused other women. Jesus.

John soon returned and demanded to see the tape at the interview, but 60 Minutes was like, get the fuck out of here. They refused to give it to him. Yeah, dude, you're not actually powerful outside of that little town. Still, operations continued the Casa as normal, but in just a few years. It would all that long last come to an end when dozens of women came forward to publicly accuse John of sexual assault in a way that could no longer be ignored or suppressed. And then many more women would follow. December of 2018, now 76-year-old John of God, accused of sexual abuse, rape, and pedophilia by more than 200 women.

Over 200 accusers, women who did not know each other, women who did not commiserate before they made their accusations, women decades apart in age, telling eerily similar tales of sexual abuse that had gone back many, many years. On December 8, 2018, the talk show Conversa Combeal, hosted by journalist Pedro Beal, revealed that multiple women had provided exceptionally similar accounts of unwanted sexual advances. The woman said they were groped, forced to rub John's generals after being summoned to his private room for spiritual cleansings. four women accused John of abuse during the December 8th broadcast on air. The investigation was led by journalist Camilla Appel

started when Pedro Bial considered doing an interview with John of God. Appel looked into him to understand why he had such widespread support. She spoke to an acquaintance who lived in Aba Gianna. The source was reluctant at first, but then agreed to talk when Pedro Bial gave up on doing an interview

because he didn't believe in John's healing powers, and the acquaintance introduced Appel to several other women who all accused John of sexual abuse. now. Zahira Len Ki-Mouse, the only woman who agreed to be identified by a name on the show, she explained how she traveled to the clinic to heal her trauma from prior sexual abuse. My God. She heard about John from a friend. Saw the Oprah documentary. Thought if Oprah signed off on him. He must be good. During her visit, she was summoned, of course, for a private consultation.

Once they were alone, John placed her hands on his penis, instructed her to move them. After that, he invited her to choose a gemstone from his cabinet. And then during his second encounter, he forced her to have anal sex. She kept silent for four years, but then went public on Facebook before appearing on the show. She said, I always thought I was the only person. I was in my own emotional prison. When I realized I was not alone, I realized I was probably, I realized it was probably still going on and I had to go public. Another witness on the broadcast was American spiritual guide Amy Bianc, who took groups of foreign visitors to Abidjania. In the early 2000s, Bianc claimed she walked in once on a woman being forced to perform oral sex on John.

She said she then received multiple death threats From his fucking goon squad December 10th, 2018 Dozens more women came forward With reports of sexual assault They spoke to news organizations And the DA's office of the state of Goyos Which set up a task force now finally

In a day and a half after the talk show broadcast The task force received 78 complaints Investigation suggested the abuse started In the 1980s, if not earlier And occurred in and outside of Brazil Dude was doing this shit Like his whole life, he's constantly whole adult life.

The staff at the Casa now scrambled to cover their own asses. They thought maybe things would calm down after initial flurry of reports. The problem would work itself out, but it escalated. Some of the volunteers were conflicted. They did not know what to believe because they hadn't personally all witnessed anything, or so they claimed. The task force made up of five prosecutors. Prosecutor Patricia Otani said, we have a serious challenge ahead.

We want to show the victims that they can trust us, that even someone who is famous and internationally admired can be a investigated, but we also need to analyze each complaint before rushing to conclusions. The number of complaints led the prosecutor's office to set up an email address and a phone line, and in just 30 hours in early December, 2018, they received over 200 complaints from nine states, and another two claims from abroad. Some of the women were as young as 14 when they were sexually abused. One woman claimed she was abused for three straight days.

John lawyered up, once he realized the severity of the situation. His representative, Mario Rosa, said the accusations had taken on a lynch mob quality. Quote, it's like this person is being turned into a villain for the world to see. Yeah, dude, that's how it's supposed to work when the person is a villain. December 12th, 2018, the public prosecutor called for John's arrest. December 15th, John has declared a fugitive after missing his deadline to surrender to authorities. A warrant is issued for his arrest.

He has not found in 20 different locations searched by the police. Several newspapers report that John withdrew about $8.9 million U.S. dollars from several bank accounts on December 12th, convincing authorities he was planning to flee the country or hide the money in case of future compensation claims. Right? He fucking knows this is not going to go well for him. Which is crazy because why can't he just have all his spirit guides come to his defense, help him out?

Why not just get all his best dead lawyers, right? The world's best dead lawyers to help him with his defense. December 16th, John surrenders himself to the police on a dirt road near where he had been hiding in Abidjanania. Abidjania. The arrest was recorded. John said that when he heard the allegations, quote, I surrendered to divine justice and as promised.

I now placed myself in the hands of earthly justice. Okay. John told his followers before leaving, I thank God for being here. I'm still John of God, but I want to observe the Brazilian law. I'm in the hands of a Brazilian law. John of God is still alive.

May God's peace be with you. Oh, cool story, bro. After the arrest, police conducted search warrants on John's properties, according to one prosecutor, half the drawers in his house had false bottoms. Elevator went down to a secret floor with a panic room. Police found six guns, one with a serial number, filed off. Police seized cash equivalent to $300,000 U.S. dollars and over 100 pieces of what appeared to be quite valuable jewelry. Reports continued to come in throughout December of 2018.

One of the victims who came forward was John's own daughter, Dalva Texera de Sousa. She accused her father of beating and raping her for. several years until she ran home, ran away from home at the age of 14. Man, why are these guys always so fucking horny? Feels like this guy was just fucking or forcing hand jobs from numerous women around him on a daily base light, like many times a day and doing that when he was in his 60s and 70s still. Ah, man, might need to get my sex drive checked out. I'm just not nearly that horny.

And I'm not even 50. And I love sex, right? Lindsay's very sexy, but like, you know, a good movie, TV show. Those are also fun. Working on stuff is cool. Having a nice meal is fun. Sitting in a hot tub is nice. John of God's libido somehow just got stuck

at the level of like a 15-year-old boy who just can't stop jerking off. In her docu-series interview, Dalva remembered living with her mom, brother and stepfather. They had a good life together. She didn't meet her biological father John until she was nine.

He promised he would pick her up within a week so we could send her to school. At first she said she thought her dad was like a prince, but she later learned, quote, he was as good as he was evil. He had a different kind of care towards me. He was a different kind of care towards me. He was very jealous.

He wouldn't let me have any friends. When I was nine, almost 10, that's when he abused me for the first time. Damn. So just right away started. Just zero sexual boundaries for that slimy piece of shit. Go, butt beetles, go. Eat him alive. 2018, sadly not the first time, Dahlva had told her story.

Two years earlier, she reached out to a journalist and radio host, Diago Mendez, told him she enjoyed his show, had a story to tell him. In her interview, she described the severe physical and sexual abuse she had suffered at her father's hands. she said that in one incident John approached her with a candle, asked her to scratch the wax with her nail. Dalva asked why, and her dad told her he was performing spiritual work

with her through St. Ignatius of Leola, for fuck's sake. He then removed her clothing and his clothing and molested her for hours. In her docu-series interview, Delva revealed that her father's sex she abused her for the first time, right, when she was not quite 10 years old. At the age of 14, she started to date the man who would become the father of her children

without John's knowledge. John was infuriated when he found out. She was pregnant and then, quote, trampled me down all over my belly and beat her with a cattle prod. Then apologize and asked for forgiveness. Week after that, he forced her to get married. Then the following month wanted her to annul the marriage because he's fucking insane. Dalva decided to stay with her husband. She had kids with him at the ages of 14, 15, and 16, then got divorced a year after her third child was born.

Holy shit. Three kids and an ex-husband by the age of 17. Dad did a number on her, that motherfucker. She explained that she and her husband, fought often. She only married him to get away from her dad. She said she spent years of her life then trying to run away from John, who told her if you're not mine, you'll lose your children, your house, you'll lose everything you have. And she did lose nearly everything because of John. There was a time when her kids had nothing to eat but bread, water, and sugar. Seeing her kids

crying and hungry, she called her ex-husband, told him that she was sending the kids to him. She told her ex that she needed time to get back on her feet. He agreed to keep custody. And then she didn't see her kids for eight years. Describe that phase of her life as rock bottom. One day she hitchhiked, you know, to Abidiana because she had no money. John, of course, found out she was there, asked her for her forgiveness, told her things would be different this time. She tried to stay away from him, but he lured her in by promising to give her what she wanted most, her kids back. She agreed to stay with her dad because she wanted to be with her children more than anything else. And then John warned her that in exchange for this, she would, quote, have to be mine.

And the sexual abuse started up all over again. Fast forward at 2016, when Dalva's son, Paolo wanted to press charges now against his grandfather on his mom's behalf, who tried to bribe him so he would dismiss the case. John asked his other sons to go after Dalva, even offered her a house in financial assistance in exchange for her dropping her suit against him. Dalva encouraged journalist Theago Mendez not to publish his story in 2016 because John had too much power. She worried that if he published it, John would have him killed. And he waited now until the time was right and then distributed the material to the press once the story broke. By 2018, Davvo was living in Sao Paulo, had not seen her kids, you know, for six years, started using drugs, trying and forget her problems. But then John Founder brought her back to Abjanya, put her in a clinic.

One day his lawyer asked Dalva to record a video denying everything that had happened to her. She knew that if she wanted her kids to be safe, to get him back, she had to make the video. What she did, it was released in December 2018. While stroking her father's head, she said in the video, I want to say to everyone that this sweet man next to me, has never committed any sexual abuse with me. He has never left me, unassisted, nor my kids, my siblings, my nephews, and nieces. What you're doing to him is unfair.

It's all about money. I'm sorry for everything, Dad. Ugh. December 26, 2018. John is indicted for rape by deception and accused of abusing hundreds of women. Prosecutors revealed that the investigation began when they were approached by one of the most recent victims. The 39-year-old woman reported that on October 24, 2018, John and v. her into his office for a private session at the Casa.

Then he turned off the lights and sexually abused her. By the end of December, almost 600 women ranging in age from 9 to 67. God damn. Reported that they'd been abused by John. So obviously, not just women. Girls and women. 600 claims it all the way back to 1986. Unfortunately, the statute of limitations of six months limited the process.

That's fucking crazy. Six months statute of limitations. That limited the prosecutor's ability. to investigate these claims, but they still encourage women to come forward. Dalva could not have her father criminally prosecuted because of the statute of limitations with her, but did file a civil suit against him. January 9th, 2009, a judge ruled that John would face trial on charges brought by four of the women. He was accused to raping two of them using fraudulent means to sexually abuse the other two.

One of John's attorneys, Alberto Toron, speculated that the accusers were after profit, saying, lynchings are always potentially unjust and lead a society to find scapegoats and individuals. probably sounds better in Portuguese. Behind the scenes, many of the survivors were supporting each other with the WhatsApp group. Prosecutor Gabrielo Manseur created the Justice Wears a Skirt Institute and survivor Andrea Manelli

was appointed Director of Communication and Content to help sexual abuse survivors cope with all this shit. Justice wears a skirt helps women get back on their feet and recover after surviving sexual abuse. On July 24th, 2019, John's defense team announced they had left the case. Alberto Toron said he left the case with a heavy heart,

but John had experienced an economic strangulation. Okay, so you guys knew you weren't going to get paid what you wanted, and that his case was doomed. Got it. While preparing their case against John, prosecutors tried to get his right-hand man at Chico Lobo to cooperate with him, but then he mysteriously died in the spring of 2018

after refusing to help. Huh. December 19th, 2019, John is sentenced to 19 years and four months in prison for four rape charges, life in prison sentence basically for a 77 year old man. A lawyer said that they planned to appeal, asked for house arrest with electronic monitoring. He still faced additional charges related to 10 sex crimes.

Over 300 women had already pressed charges against him. But again, statute of limitations expired in many of these cases. In Brazil, the defendant is allowed to give their side of the story after victim impact statements and John's statement lasted an hour and a half. He claimed he didn't remember any of the women who accused him because it wasn't him. It was spirit. Oh, I was just a puppet. Damn, you horny Solomon.

you fucking set me up. January 20th, 2020, John was sentenced to an additional 40 years in jail, bringing the total sentence to 63 years and four months. Costa continued to receive visitors, but with no leader, the numbers dropped off exponentially. Costa was still being run largely by unpaid volunteers. Of course, you know, more people being grifted.

March of 2020, John has temporarily put on house arrest at the start of the pandemic due to age and poor health. Weak? Fuck that. Poor health, he's a healer. Tell him to just have his spirits, fix his ass up, then leave him in a cell. state prosecutors appealed that decision during his house arrest he was interviewed by the uh for the Netflix docuseries he was asked what he had to say about the accusations and he responded everyone who preached the word of god were nailed to the cross even his son was nailed to the cross if he went why wouldn't i what i told the authorities is what happened not what people are saying oh man the old jesus was persecuted too bullshit such a fucking tired old story i hate that one about as much as the yeah but Einstein also struggled in school but

Uh huh? Yeah, you did. But exception to the rule, people, not the rule. Einstein struggled in class, even though he was a genius, doesn't mean that you're a genius if you struggled in class. Just like you're probably not Christ-like if you're being persecuted. You might just be a stupid asshole. John was asked what he thought would happen to him and he answered, at this moment, I truly believe in the authorities. I put my life in the authority's hands. I put my life in God's hands. I am conscious that God will help me. But he didn't. September 15th, 2023. John is sentenced to another 118 years, six months, and 15 days in prison for rape, rape via fraud, and rape of a vulnerable individual.

This ruling combined 17 additional cases, right? Even though that statute of limitations was so fucking narrow, but he was just raping so many people. He was also ordered to pay damages of 20,500, seems very low. There have been other convictions. Currently, all of John's cumulative prison sentences add up to 489 years and four months in prison. His spirit guides have remained strangely silent. when it comes to questions over how they're going to get him out of this fucking mess. And now let's get out of this timeline.

Good job, soldier. You've made it back. Barely. Joao, Texerra, Defaria. John of God will not die a free man. Also, will not be punished nearly enough for what he did. And his story in some ways started long before he was born back in Hidesville, New York, in March 1848, when teenage girls, Maggie and Kate Fox, claimed they were talking to his story.

spirit who talked back to making noises. It sounded like somebody wrapped their knuckles against the wall or table. That led to a seance craze, which became known as spiritualism, which then led to spiritism, which then blended with Catholicism, a lot of isms down in Brazil, which led to people growing up believing the spirits regularly communicated with the living and that some people could use those spirits to heal others, which led to Chico Xavier, claiming that spirits wrote a bunch of books through him, books that influence and provided the blueprint for John of God to run his grift in many ways. Pretty crazy, effect, right? But what about the people who claim that John of God truly did heal them miraculously,

making the impossible possible, such as that woman who had her uterus surgically removed, still getting pregnant? Well, not a single one of those claims have ever been scientifically verified, not fucking one. There is no medical record of that woman or any other woman in history definitely having her uterus removed, then definitely getting pregnant later while having no uterus still because that is fucking impossible. That can't happen. Just like somebody who's blind can't become an NFL all-pro quarterback or safely race a motorcycle down a crowded street. Likewise, faith healing has never been scientifically proven to cure diseases or injuries through supernatural means. However, the power of belief has been proven to accelerate healing in some cases.

A large body of scientific research has suggested that the power of belief often expressed through placebo effect, mindfulness, and or spiritual practices can significantly influence healing. by triggering biological changes. And the faith system does not seem to matter. It's not about Christianity or Hinduism or Islam or Judaism or some new age stuff. It's about really, truly, powerfully believing that your prayers and your beliefs, etc. can heal you. The mind-body connection is real and powerful. And maybe there really is something mystical, magical or even spiritual and celestial to it all.

I hope there is. I actually believe there is. But how exactly it works has yet to be proven. A lot more research is needed. and one day I bet it will be figured out, but that day is not today. We do not know if spirits can truly help heal us, but we do know for sure that grifty, grimy motherfuckers like John of God are real, and that they will for sure nefariously take your money and possibly do much worse to you than that.

So be careful. Be careful, right? Protect yourself. Protect your loved ones in their most desperate and vulnerable moments for making a bad situation worse by falling into the clutches of these sick, selfish predatory fucks. Predatory. Don't, you know what I meant. Time for the takeaways. Time suck.

Top five takeaways. Number one, I will never be able to consistently pronounce words correctly. Number one, according to legend, 16-year-old John, was taking shelter under a bridge when the spirit of a beautiful woman appeared before him and directed him into a nearby church where he fell asleep. Then he woke up to find a crowd of people gathered around him, and he was told that while unconscious, the entity of King Solomon entered his body, performed healing miracles, and that marked the start of his career as a traveling healer. And that story is just as real as that one time I scored

1,000 points in an NBA All-Star game while being guarded by Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Shaquille O'Neal at the same time. Number two, in the 70s, John set up his home base in the rural Brazilian city of Abidjania, started off with nothing more than John, a chair, and an open road, but eventually expanded into a full compound that hosted visitors from all over the world who came seeking spiritual and physical healing. John offered multiple treatments for visitors. His most popular product was Pasaflora capsules, which he infused with a personalized spiritual prescription or didn't, but said he did. This was his biggest moneymaker, earning him upwards of $10 million a year at the height of his business.

Also offered invisible surgeries, allowing entities inside of him to work with the power of meditation. It's applied by other visitors, right? that spirit gas. The other option was a visible surgery where the entity would heal by cutting the flesh, scraping the eye, or shoving forceps up the nose

to remove things like tumors, but really fucking just pulling out magic trick, chicken, fucking liver bullshit. Skeptics have debunked these techniques as nothing more than impressive carnival tricks. Number three, John claimed that numerous entities

could enter his body at any time perform miracles. There was, of course, King Solomon from the Bible, as well as Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit Order, and Oswaldo Cruz a physician who helped eradicate yellow fever.

Number four, in December of 2018, the national talk show, Conversa, Cambial, aired interviews with women who were sexually abused by John. They recounted how they were groped and forced to rubbed John's genitals or worse after being summoned to his private room for a spiritual cleansing. Dozens more women came forward to news organizations in the DA's office, prompting an official task force. Within days, hundreds more women came forward, and John would eventually be convicted of enough crimes to be incarcerated for the rest of his life.

Number five, new info, how God's healer gets healed. In 2015, John would experience health issues that would force him to choose between faith healing and modern medicine. Do you want to know what one he chose? I bet you can guess. Yeah, modern medicine. John complained of stomach pain to his cardiologist, and yeah, he had a cardiologist. He underwent an endoscopy that revealed a tumor in his stomach and then had a 10-hour surgery and went through chemo. He was cured by modern surgery and modern drugs.

He did not initially report his diagnosis and treatment to the public. for obvious reasons, claimed he was hospitalized only for a hernia, which is still weird. When the truth eventually came out and he was asked why he didn't just heal himself, he replied, quote, what barber cuts his own hair? And you know what? That's pretty funny. I'll give him points for that answer. Time suck.

Top five takeaways. John of God, Ghosts, Grift, and psychic surgery has been sucked. Thanks to the Bad Magic Production team for help him making time suck. Thank you to Queen of Bad Magic. Magic, Lindsay Cummins, doing so much shit running our lives so I can focus on this stuff. Thanks to Logan Keith helping to publish this episode, designing merch for the store at bad magic productions.com. And thanks again to Olivia Lee for more great research. Also thanks to the All Seeing Eyes, who continued to moderate the cult of the curious private Facebook page.

The Mod Squad making sure Discord keeps running smooth. Everybody over in the Time Sucks subreddit and Bad Magic subreddit. So many awesome folks. And now let's head on over to this week's Time Sucker updates. Sucker updates. Unintentional, cringy co-worker, Adam. Send in a message to Bojangles at timesuckpodcast.com. With the subject line of fun with Cumminslaw. But was it fun?

I don't know if it was fun at all. Not for Adam. He wrote, hi, Dan. New Sucker here. I've been bringing time suck, uh, binge in time suck, excuse me, like a madman for the last four months after randomly discovering it in February. Oh, thank you. I love the time sucker updates, especially the Cumminslaw reports,

but I never thought it would happen to me. I'm a 42-year-old man. My field is mostly female-dominated, including a lot of younger women. I generally get along well with everyone and work really hard to be a professional and not make anyone uncomfortable. That's awesome.

Despite my best efforts, there are some women who are slower to trust men and honestly, I get it, given all the violent and pervy dirtbags out there who are overwhelmingly male, which is true. Anyway, there was a new coworker, female early 20s,

who has been very slow to warm up to me. But recently, I felt like we had a breakthrough and actually had some good conversations. Well, yesterday I was listening to the Bill Cosby suck when I walked into work. She was standing right by the door, and as I took my earbuds out and approached her to say hello,

the podcast resumed playing on my phone, speaker at full volume, while you were talking about how much raping Cosby did. I tried to explain what the podcast was about, but the confusion and disgust in her eyes made it clear she did not care. I guess you just can't win them all, Dan.

Thanks for all the free entertainment and making my life more interesting. Two out of three stars. Wouldn't change a thing. Your loyal meat sack, Adam. Adam, two out of three stars. Oh man, my ratings is dropping further. Here's how you fix this.

Next time you see her, ideally when no one else is around. Just tell her that you're disgusted by Cosby and that you don't think it's any, it's okay, excuse me. It's not okay for anyone to ever rape that much. And then just stand there and don't say anything else. And that, that'll probably fix everything up nicely. No, don't, no, don't do that. Don't do that. You might have to give that lady a lot of space for a while, a long while, maybe forever.

And don't ever talk about rape around her ever again. Not that you were talking about. Don't, don't let, you know what I mean. Sorry but not sorry, because your story really cracked me up. And next up, Super Sucker, Domali sent in a super gay message. She wrote, Dear Director Dan of the Danitarium, it is I. I love it when it's said and starts with, it is I, by the way. It is I, the gay from the first state.

I've emailed a little bit with Lindsay via Scared to Death emails, where I literally shared photos of my firstborn, because that's normal to do with your favorite podcast, right? My wife and I are from Delaware, and I have forced fed her Bad Magic podcast for the past few years to the point where she wishes Whipple was a real drink. Oh, fuck yeah. My real life Lucifina is on the right in the photo in our signature. Anyways, I saw this trailer and immediately yelled, I have the power!

And it felt the need to re-listen to the D&D episode. Do you think you'll go see He-Man? Trailer Link is here. Side note. I recently watched a documentary that taught me about an event I had never heard of, which was intriguing as someone who consumes an unhealthy amount of true crime content. If you're looking for a topic, or if I've just piqued your interest for your personal information, check out 77 minutes on Prime Video, gritty and graphic, but incredibly interesting,

and maybe enraging. I go back and forth on whether the rotten meat sack that perpetuated the attack deserved mental health attention or to be another victim of Dan's death detonator. As the space lizard and a Robert, oh man, thanks for all the content and the peak curiosity. I'm definitely a better woman since I started to listen. Domily. Domily, oh man, thanks for the message, and I sent your topic recommendation to Sophie. I had considered it a few years ago, but I don't know, just life, whatever, forgot all about it. Yeah, crazy mass shooting tragedy, a story from the 80s. Also, your Lucifina's hot.

Sick sleeve tattoo, you're both hot. Hail Lucifino. And you both look so happy and they love together. And your little girl is adorable, adorable little munchkins. So way to go, Mama. I think it's so cute how you put your family photo into your email signature. I've never bothered figuring out how to do an email signature, which is probably crazy. I have no, no signature.

regarding He-Man. Yeah, I think I will see it. I mean, I think it's probably going to be good. I don't know. I haven't read any reviews yet. But the budget's around 200 million. The cast is strong. Hopefully it'd be good.

What's funny to me is that the original cartoon actually not good. It does not hold up. Neither does G.I. Joe. I loved him as a kid. But as an adult, oof, pretty rough. Animation, not very good.

Writing, atrocious. Action figure, still cool. Yeah, thanks for the kind words. Very happy to be your podcast friend. and now for an email that had Lindsay and I in tears from laughing so fucking hard after she first read it to me Long Con Sucker Ariel

Sent in a message with the subject line of Your dad is a rapist She wrote Dear holy suck master and banana fucker You son of a bitch You had me fool with one of your sick jokes You got me so hard for a year Let me explain

Last year I had a baby girl And my oldest girl left for boot camp Three months later Air Force I had extreme postpartum on top of empty nest depression. I knew I needed to start exercise and help get the baby weight off and to help with the depression, so I started listening to Time Suck.

At first, I skipped around here and there. And in one episode, you mentioned what a piece of shit, what a piece of shit your dad was. Right there, I stopped the episode and decided to start from the very beginning so I could understand what happened with you and your dad and try and figure out who all the other characters were. What is a big deal? So I started at episode one.

As the episodes went on, I slowly understood who everybody was, but still no mention of your dad. And then you sucked yourself and I thought, okay, now I'm going to find out what the hell happened with your dad. Nope. So then I thought, well, maybe your dad did something after that episode.

So I kept listening with every episode, I'm like, okay, maybe he's going to mention it now. What the hell happened? Is his dad a rapist or what? Damn it, I need to know. So not until like episode 200, did you finally start with your dad jokes and where your dad was at

on this night or that night? Shit, I was so fucking pissed that I had been waiting for a year to figure out what the fuck happened to your dad. if he was a rapist or a murder, you sick, son of a bitch. I really thought your dad was a rapist. So I just finished episode 263, the freeway killer, a real piece of shit.

And in that episode, you said something along the lines of, God, I hope no one really believes my dad is a killer. And I'm sitting here listening and thinking, yeah, me, I'm the fucking idiot. They believe your dad was a rapist or a killer for over a year. So thanks. You got me, asshole. Anyway, absolutely love the show. And if you do read this on air, I was wondering if you could give the future me a shout

out from the past. Also, if you do read it on air, I won't know for at least a year. So glad your dad is not a killer or a rapist. Sorry for the long email. Three out of five stars. Wouldn't anything, Ariel. Ariel, I actually do feel a little bad that you thought you got some answers to something like crazy for over a year for your resolution to be so unsatisfying. It's just a terrible payoff.

I also am glad, though, that my dad is not a monster. I don't think he is. He truly is pretty mysterious. My sister and I do joke a lot about how quite a few people. of his old stories don't make any sense. And we wonder what's really going on. Tell your daughter to stay safe and thank her for her service

and know that many of us respect the hell out of her sacrifice. I hope your fitness journey has gone well and that you're having fun with your little one. Hail Nimrod and hail Lucifina to you all.

I'm suckers. I needed that. We all did. Well, thank you for listening to another Bad Magic Productions podcast. Be sure in rate and reviewed Time Suck if you haven't already.

Don't start telling people you can heal them. Thanks to spirit guides and bullshit supplements this week. Just don't be that slimy. It's gross, right? Fucking knock it off. Just keep on sucking. Did you talk to the authorities yet? About your weird uncle?

Huh? No? Oh, he's going to keep ignoring it? Come on. Fucking, come on. Pay attention. He went to a dance recital last week alone. To watch kids he's not even related to.

Wake up, Nancy! Wake up!