True Crime Campfire - Cabbage Shakes and Energy Snakes: Three Bizarre New Cults

Episode Date: April 30, 2021

Humans have always been seekers of truth. We’re not always great at finding it, but we’re always lookin’. And however noble that quest might be, our desire to understand the hows and whys of human existence can sometimes leave us open to scams, cons, and cults. Give us a confident, charismatic personality with the right buzzwords and promises of enlightenment, and we’re much too eager to hand over our judgment…and our wallets. Today, our special guest Noah Lugeons—cohost of God-Awful Movies—will help us pull the lid off three especially noxious cults. Well, two cults and one cult-lite. Sources:https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nidhisubbaraman/facebook-jilly-juice-cabbage-epperlyDr. Phil show, Episode “Jilly Juice: Claims to Cure Cancer, Regrow Limbs” https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/candida-and-fake-illnesses/https://mylespower.co.uk/2018/09/30/the-science-behind-the-jilly-juice-protocol-2/https://au.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/australian-cults-universal-medicine-14682/Australian show "Sunday Night," Episode "The Cult"https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/universal-medicine-cult-founder-exposed-as-charlatan/news-story/626fe650621ee65ba16b1a7af2f62aa7https://www.universalmedicine.com.au/questions/why-it-quite-clear-unimed-not-culthttps://www.docdroid.net/nkbk7PV/an-introduction-to-mother-of-all-creation-with-the-first-contact-ground-crew-pdf#page=3https://gurumag.com/crestone-cult-love-has-won-leaves-man-to-die-in-desert/Dr Phil show, Episode "Love Has Won Exposed"https://www.denverpost.com/2020/09/11/love-has-won-cult-protests-hawaii/Lovehaswon.orgFollow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]: https://shop.spreadshirt.com/true-crime-campfire/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Humans have always been seekers of truth. We're not always great at finding it, but we're always looking. And however noble that quest might be, our desire to understand the hows and wise of human existence can sometimes leave us open to scams, cons, and cults. Give us a confident, charismatic personality with the right buzzwords and promises of enlightenment, and we're much too eager to hand over our judgment. And our wallets. Today, our special guest, No Illusions, co-host of God-awful movies, will help us pull the lid off three especially noxious cults.

Well, two Colts in one Colt Light. Join us now for Cabbage Shakes and Energy Snakes, three bizarre new cults. So, campers, first of all, we'd like to welcome our guest, Noah Lusions. Noah's one of the hosts of the hilarious podcast, God-awful movies, where this will shock you, they talk about god-awful movies. Not awful like showgirls or battlefield earth, more like the room, but worse.

Awful, like, straight to video, shot in somebody's mom's basement halfway through, you're kind of wondering if maybe you accidentally took too much NyQuil or something, because it's just not possible that this movie could be this awful. That kind of awful. They especially like to

dogg on movies with sanctimonious, heavy handed messages. So, think Hallmark movies without the production values or after-school specials for adults who think coffee is a gateway drug. There you go. So, Noah, welcome to True Crime Campfire. Say hi to the campers, won't you please? Yeah, yeah, no, happy to be here.

I feel like we both focus on things that people should be punished for, so we've got a lot of crossover. Definitely. So, you know, we're a true crime podcast, right? Are you into True Crime? Or is this a new thing for you? My lawyer tells me that he has to be present for me to answer questions like that. Okay, fair enough.

Do you have like a murder case in particular that you remember ever getting interested in or a big one from where you live or anything like that that caught your eye? No, I'm going to be honest. I'm a little too queasy for a lot of the true crime stuff. My wife is really obsessed with it. So basically every time I walk into the living room, you know, somebody's getting murdered or a bloody rag is being found or something. But not as much my cup of tea.

Yeah, my husband can sympathize with you there. Well, it's a good thing then that if you're queasy that we chose the particular groups we chose. You guys will see what we're talking about in a minute. Sorry about that in advance. So, you know, generally we focus on criminals. Today, we're zeroing in on some folks that kind of just managed to skirt the line between criminal and just, well, real ill-advised. And like you wouldn't be surprised if they turned criminal. I mean, it's not technically illegal to run a cult, but it's also not going to surprise anybody when your followers end up on the 6 o'clock news because they drank a little bit too much of the great leader's enlightenment juice and ran off a cliff. And speaking of juice, our first subject

today is Jillian Mighty Epperle, former life insurance saleswoman and creator of jilly juice. Buckle up y'all, because this is going to get messy. Almost as messy as the underpants of the people who consume jelly juice. So, what is this stuff? Well, according to Jillian, it's a miracle cure, a panacea for whatever ails you, an elixir that can do everything from cure cancer to regrow severed limbs. Yeah, you heard me. I swear we're not making this up.

Lose your arm in a wheat thresher, just knock back some jelly juice, you silly goose, and it'll just pop right back. Because apparently, Gillian thinks humans and earthworms are made of more or less the same stuff. See, I, for one, love this. Right? Because if you're going to be full of shit, go the whole way. Don't pussyfoot around with this is going to boost your immune system. Go straight to Deadpool powers, right?

It's going to turn you to woo the fucking rain. Absolutely. An interesting choice of words, they're full of shit. Because if there's one thing you're not going to be at the end of the Jilly Juice protocol, it's full of shit. So she's created this miracle juice. So that must mean Jillian's a rock star doctor. research scientists, right? Yeah, not so much.

And why would you want her to be? Because according to Jillian, medical science is just a giant lie. Doctors, you see, they want to keep people sick so they can get those sweet, sweet kickbacks from Big Pharma. And, of course, the dangerous thing about this point of view is that at its center is a fairly sizable grain of truth. I mean, there is an unhealthy relationship between doctors

in the pharmaceutical industry. That's hard to argue with. This is not an industry that has clean hands. It's got major problems, but most people can see that this is a nuanced issue, and that, you know, despite the problems with the pharmaceutical industry, prescription drugs also save millions of lives and provide even more millions with relief from medical conditions that would otherwise rob them of their quality of life. It's not a black and white issue. But to Jillian, it definitely is. If you ask her about her qualifications for inventing a tonic that can allegedly cure cancer, she'll tell you she has none. And she seems to be really proud of that. Like, med school.

But don't worry, she's done plenty of research, though. You know, like on the Internet. Her main credential seems to be that her dad used to work in the biotech industry. What? It's like, well, my dad used to work for Toyota, but that doesn't mean I know shit about building a car, right? Like, literally that's what she... Well, my dad worked in the biotech industry. So, and this is hilarious.

her start when she used to ride with her truck driver husband on his runs, and they would listen to coast-to-coast AM and InfoWars, which of course both are radio shows that feed listeners a steady diet of conspiracy series. That was her gateway drug to the anti-vax community and a whole new world of online communities, all hawking different supplements, detox programs, and bogus medical advice, and promising spectacular results. Jesus. Like, people, how hard is it to properly demonize an industry that septupled the price of insulin because what the fuck a diabetic's going to do? Right? Like, just not take their insulin? What are they going to do? Die? Yeah. Right, right. How hard is it to get this rate? Yeah, when you basically, like, we'll die. The conspiracy is right in front of them, but greedy dickheads isn't as sexy as microchip tracking devices. Right. Of course not. By this time, Gillian had developed pre-menel. menstrual dysphoric disorder, like PMS, but a lot worse. And it was so severe that she had to quit working. She hadn't had much luck treating it, so she was up for trying anything the blogosphere had to suggest. In 2015, she landed on the idea of fermentation as a possible cure, making kombucha,

fermenting pickles, stuff like that. Now, why this would cure PMDD, I have no idea, but it was in the process of making pickles when Gillian made her great discovery. $1,000 says it involves quantum vibrational energies. I'm not taking that bad. Jinks, I was not not taking that bad. She started using cabbage instead of cucumbers, and she upped the salt content considerably. Meanwhile, her internet research led her to the belief that candida, or an overgrowth of yeast, basically, is responsible for most of what can go wrong in the body. Let me remind you, this woman has zero medical training.

Zero anatomy training. Zero pharmacological training. She's not a scientist. She didn't graduate college. And like no shade on her for that specifically, but I mean, she's claiming that she can regrow limbs and cure cancer. Yeah, which to be fair, college graduates also can't do. Absolutely, you're right. We are a fair and balanced podcast, just to hear her out.

Now, according to Jillian, Candida can, quote, attract parasites. ew, right? But don't worry, she's got the 4-1-1 on how to fix it. The only way to kill Candida, she says, is to follow her jelly juice protocol, a fermented juice made of cabbage, water, and a fuck ton of Himalayan pink salt, and a very restricted diet.

So what does she mean by restricted? Oh, no big deal. You just have to cut out sugar, legumes, grains, processed food, and all meat except chicken. Right? I'm not sure what that leaves you. veggies look you can pry this caramel brownie out of my candida infested hands jillian you absolute unpopped kernel it's unpopped kernel because it's worthless it's at the bottom of the bag and it hurts me if i chew on it too hard there you go the recipe for jilly juice is one tablespoon pink salt two cups water two cups

cabbage or kale put it all in a blender jar it and leave it at room temp for three days oh my god yeah you start by drinking two cups every night eventually working up to a gallon a day so disgusting it amazes me the amount of useless shit these idiots will suffer through in the name of like magical health but then you tell them hey we're going to need you to wear a mask spread out a little and like that's a bridge too far right it is so true listen noah listen it's like i said before sex cells. Masks aren't sexy. You can't see their face. No. Drinking salty cabbage juice, though, very sexy.

That's sexy. That's sexy. Okay. All I don't know why pink salt is the key, but according to her, it is. All pink salt is is regular old sodium chloride with slightly higher levels of calcium, potassium, magnesium, and iron. It's very much nutritionally negligible. You would get those things naturally from other sources and your blood pressure, would thank you. What Jilly Juice does pretty much is give you explosive diarrhea, along with other symptoms, nausea, headaches, dizziness. According to her, this is a sign of healing because nothing says healing like shitting yourself. No pain, no gain, am I right? So the idea is that the bad food feeds the parasites in your gut and causes constipation. So we got to get that poop out of

there fam and y'all brace yourselves because this is disgusting she calls the diarrhea waterfalls yeah i know just take a second breathe through your nose because it's about to get worse and she says you can see the parasites in the toilet just who which obviously is nonsense what you're seeing is undigested food that hasn't had a chance to get properly processed by your body because you're shooting poop out of your butt like Niagara Falls and your system can't keep up. Which, okay, which means

and I'm sorry for how graphic literally any follow-up I could have to this would be, but that means that she's in the habit of like taking a pretty lengthy gander before she flushes. Oh my God. Right, like her poor husband has probably

had to suffer through at least a few of those. Does this look like a parasite to you moments? Oh, you know. You know, you know. For better and for worse. And I wonder. Was that in the wedding boughs, do you say? And sickness and it healthy.

Yeah, I think that grounds for the worse. The health I can't handle us. Oh, my God. Blu-la. So at first, Jillian just posted instructional videos and vlogs. But then in 2017, she started a Facebook group because, of course, she did. And it was called, get ready for this, exposing the lies candida, weaponized fungus mainstreaming mutancy.

And it exploded, a pun, very much intended. At first, her weird yeast manifesto was free, but then she started charging $17 a pop, and this is one of the reasons why we say this community is like a cult.

Jillian's little poop minions post pictures of their quote-unquote parasite-laden poo on her website. Now, listen, I'm not your mom, okay? But if you've reached a point in your life where it's 3-8, am and you're like excitedly, probably sweatily, leaning over your overworked toilet to snap a

picture of your own poo so you can share it with your friends on the internet. Maybe it's time to reevaluate some things. Yeah. I'm not going to kinkshame anybody, but at least you shouldn't be paying for that privilege, right? Noah, we literally have a recurring segment called Katie's kinkshaming corner. And we're there now. this is a this is a safe space i'm going to king shame i will take that bullet for us all this is gross full stop yeah if you're ever going to do it this is the time to do it

well that's what dan savage always says too you know he draws the line of poop and if you think we're being harsh calling jillian and her followers a cult well she herself once said we're in a poop cult so there you go according to her this cabbage slash salt juice has unlimited potential. In addition to curing cancer and regrowing severed limbs, it'll stop you from aging. It can even turn you straight.

What? Yep. Yep. Oh yeah. According to Jillian, homosexuality is a disease and rancid cabbage steeped in salt is the cure.

I wish we were making this shit up, but we're not. In one of her videos, she said, quote, is our society ready to accept that gay, lesbian, and transgender is a mutation of the human body? I don't know, Jillian,

are you ready to accept that you're a dip shit? Gross. Trans too. It's just like they're waiting every day for that rainbow turd to fall out. There it is, finally.

Oh my God. I shit out my gay at last. You're not praying it away, but, you know, it's going to be gone. So gross. Her followers are fanatic. They post videos of themselves drinking this noxious stuff, which I can only imagine

can be smelled from space. And I already mentioned the pictures that they post of the poo. and they pull parasites out of the toilet to take pictures of, which just takes it to a whole other level. Like, you're fishing around in there with your bare hands to pull stuff out of there. And this is the worst part. They give the juice to their children, too.

Like, even infants. One member of an anti-Jilly Juice Facebook group saw the mother of a very sick child putting the stuff in her kids feeding tube, which is just unbelievable. And, of course, they, you know, she teaches them not to have any respect for doctors. So, you know, if your doctor is telling you, oh, my God, stop, you're going to kill your child, they're not going to listen to that, which is just horrendous. Now, in case you're not familiar with the health risks have taken in too much salt, there are lots. It ups your blood pressure. It makes you retain fluid, which makes your heart work harder, and it increases your risk of heart failure, strokes, certain kinds of cancer, kidney disease, all kinds of nasty stuff.

And I forget what the calculation was that I saw for how much more than your daily recommended amount of salt you'd be taking in on this protocol. But it's like a lot more than you're supposed to be taking in. So extremely dangerous. And Jillian herself has said that you can and should give doses of the stuff to infants in addition to breast milk, which is just terrifying. And it gets worse, of course. In 2017, 55-year-old Bruce Wilmot had just found out that the pancreatic cancer that had previously been in remission was back. And like a lot of cancer patients who've been through hellish treatments, Bruce didn't want to go through chemo again. He had, you know, maybe months to live, so he felt like the chemo wouldn't really help anyway.

A few days after his diagnosis, a hospice bed was sent to his house. Wow, yeah, these stories are always fun and poop jokes until the pancreatic cancer patient shows up, right? Yeah, exactly. It's actually really freaking scary. So his daughter, Taylor, said, you know, my dad was desperate. He was really sad and he didn't want to die. So Bruce went looking for an alternative cure and unfortunately he found jilly juice. Hope Campers is a powerful drug. And when you have a confident, articulate person telling you, trust me, this will fix you. You can be real tempted to believe it. On June 13th, Bruce posted, I've been juicing like crazy. cancer bad, juice good. I'm brewing up some of Jillian Mity's protocol and plan on switching completely over to her diet, ferment, et cetera, as soon as that is ready. Gillian replied, you are amazing. You will pull through. Bruce's friends helped him make a massive batch of jelly juice. He bought another fridge just to store it all. He posted a video to Jillian's

page of him drinking this stuff. A few weeks later, Taylor visited. She said, he was totally amaze He was drinking so much of it. He was basically starving himself. It was all coming out as diarrhea. By the middle of July, visiting friends found him passed out on the floor. On June 20th, a little over a month after his initial diagnosis, he was dead. In response to his death, Gillian gave a measured and empathetic eulogy to the man who had believed in her. Just kidding.

She said, he stopped. I told him, cut back a little if the symptoms get too much, but he really shouldn't have. he really should have kept going. Wow. She later told BuzzFeed that Bruce just wasn't aggressive enough. He took medications, she said. He drank pineapple juice. Yeah, Jilly.

It was the prescribed meds and pineapple juice that killed him. Not your protocol. Right. Oh, my God. Wow. Yeah. Well, and that's one of the most upsetting things about these bullshit cureles because, like, yeah, one way or the other, this guy was going to die. But of all the ways he could have spent his last weeks of life,

perpetually explosive diarrhea definitely isn't on anybody's wishes. No, and there's a good chance he would have lived longer if he hadn't been chronically dehydrated and nauseated, and it might not seem like a big deal to live for two months instead of one, but for his family, that would have been worth the world to have an extra month with their dad. No kidding. Especially an extra month where he's not deluding himself into thinking that it's all going to end and actually like settling his affairs and saying his goodbyes.

Yeah, that's just unconscious. And the disgusting thing about a lot of these, like as you, as you call it, bullshit cure-alls, is that, you know, it would be one thing if these people were just telling you, like, do this in addition to following your doctor's advice because it can't hurt it. Well, this stuff could because it's horrendous amount of salt. But, like, a lot of times you'll hear, you know, people say, well, you know, add this in. We're not saying it's a replacement. But people like Gillian, they sow all this suspicion of Western medicine and of actual medical protocols. So they're encouraging you to stop your, you know, legitimate evidence-based medical treatment and do this instead. And they're encouraging you to not listen to your doctors.

And it's just, it's dangerous stuff, man. Yeah, my blood pressure is through the roof. I'm fucking furious. Yeah, it's awful stuff. Outrage about Bruce Wilmott's death didn't stop Jillian from hawking her bullshit protocol, but it did push her to make her Facebook group private priorities, right? She also launched a website. And for $30 a year or $5 a month, you can join her community.

And see all those poop pictures. Lucky us, right? Can't wait. Of course, people weren't happy that the previously free group was getting monetized. So once again, Jilly responded with poise intact. She said, I'm not going to put up with somebody sniveling about how they can't afford to pay for my site, which is only $30 a year, which is pennies on the dollar. And believe me, if people want to know this. they will find a way to move heaven and earth and those who snivel and talk about how poor they are

they just need to do the recipe and drink and drink what does it also cure poverty now apparently and i don't know what the hell she's talking about pennies on the dollar what do you mean yeah right what dollars it's what dollar are you talking about it's a hundred pennies on the dollar A few years ago, she went on the Dr. Phil show to tout her protocol and respond to her critics. And in the middle of the episode, a dude from the audience rushed the stage yelling, I want to try it. Security took him out before he could get to her, of course. Rumor has it, the dude was a plant, put there by Jillian herself.

I wouldn't be a bit surprised. There was a woman on the show who had a stroke while she was doing Jillian's protocol. and another who'd gotten deathly sick from it. Gillian's response was to accuse them of not following the protocol correctly. She just sat up there and repeated all her bullshit about curing cancer and growing back arms. At one point, she said, cancer's a fungus without a trace of irony. Jesus.

And can we at least focus for a second on the fact that Dr. Phil platformed this along with all his mainstream sponsors? Like, as a nation, I feel like we're not even trying. I think he was trying to debunk it. but it was really frustrating to watch. Like, he did not do a good enough job. I was just sitting in my chair just squirming, like, let me at her, you know, I'd have that bitch in tears, but it was really ineffectual.

Well, that's just the thing, is you got to know if you're going to, if that's your goal, you've got to know you're going to be able to slam dunk it. Otherwise, yeah, you're just platforming this kind of dangerous shit. Yeah, he does this a lot. He loves giving people like a fair chance to explain themselves, but not all people deserve to have a fair chance to explain. themselves. No, I think he ended the episode by saying something like, proceed with caution.

No. Yeah, proceed with caution. Do not drink the sludge, period, full stop. Doctor. That's your caution. Oy. Wow. Unfortunately, Jillian's still out there and people are still trying her juice.

It's only a matter of time before there's another Bruce Wollett. But as long as she's getting attention and money, it doesn't seem to matter to her. Okay, Camvers. now we're moving on to a bona fide cult that of course swears it's not one Australia's universal medicine group led by megalomaniac and quote unquote ascended master Serge Benhayan okay based on nothing but the term ascended master the last story and the fact that Australia is like America but upside down I'm going to guess that surge discovered reverse explosive diarrhea you know funny you should say that

and you'll understand what I mean in a minute Serge was working as a tennis coach in Australia. I love that, like, Jilly was a life insurance salesman. This dude was a tennis coach. It's just always some weird shit like that. Like, the next one I think used to work at McDonald's as a manager. It's just always some weird jits. So funny.

So he was working as a tennis coach when, while going through bankruptcy, interestingly enough, he came up with the idea for universal medicine. And he says he was sitting on the toilet. Oh, God. So we're sorry, y'all are going to have poop nightmares for weeks after this episode. episode. And suddenly, like Isaac Newton under the apple tree, it just hit him, like a bolt from the blue. Y'all thought I was going to make a poop joke there, but I'm classier than that. Starting right now.

Suddenly, I'm classier than that. So, Ben Hayen said that while he was having his morning, quiet time on the loo, he started hearing voices. He said, I just gave myself a time to sit and feel that moment, and I could feel something really, really beautiful. Now, I think we've all been there, campers, you know, but most of us don't start a cult because of it. One of the things the voices told him apparently is that he's the reincarnation of Leonardo da Vinci and Pythagoras, both of them. Keep it alive that old tradition of any time people talk about reincarnation, they always claim they were somebody spectacular. You know, you never hear anybody say like, I was a surf for Lord Wickhamsley until I was 30 years of age, and then I died of dysentery, you know? Or, yeah, in my past life, my name was Josh.

I was pretty good at Beer Pong. I died falling off the roof of the Delt House during Pledge Week 64. Woo, you know. It's always like, I was Cleopatra or some shit. Like, y'all can't all be Cleopatra, okay? Some of y'all had to be Josh. But in case you were worried that our boy serves as some kind of narcissist or something, don't, don't be. Because he says he's not a God.

He just thinks he's the closest a human being can get to being a God. So, few, right? bullet dodged. Okay, I just, I don't want to give notes on his technique or anything, but according to Jillian, if it's quiet time, you're doing it wrong, I guess. Oh, God, gross. You know, I bet if you pay an extra $10 a year or whatever, you get a copy of Jillian's CD of waterfall noises.

God. Oh, Jesus Christ. Restful to help you sleep or whatnot. I'm leaving the call. I'm done. I quit. Katie's blocking me now. She doesn't like poop jokes.

Like so many cult leaders before him. Serge believes in having multiple wives. He has two, his first wife and his new one, a girl he met when she was 13 and one of his tennis students. Ech. But he's built quite a following since he had his toilet epiphany in 1999. Universal Medicine boasts 2,000 members all over the world. So what does Serge Benheyen teach these folks?

Oh, all kinds of interesting stuff. For example, each of his followers has allegedly experienced a minimum of 2,300 past lives. Now, if you add up all his members, that makes a cumulative 4,600,000 lifetimes. Dang, right? Where'd they find the time? Sirs also believes his daughter Simone is the reincarnation of Winston Churchill, which I just find fucking hilarious. Like, imagine your dad telling you, darling, you're the reincarnation of one of the greatest figures in history. Oh, Helen of Troy? Uh, no, honey. Queen Elizabeth's the first? No, you're going to love this, honey. You used to be, Winston Churchill.

Oh, great. Well, you know, hey, she helped take down the Nazis, right? So who cares if she liked a little tipple now and then, right? I was wondering why I hated people from India, but now I'm not. God. And, I mean, Cleopatra's been, frankly, overdone. You know, you can't swing a dead cat at a woo-woo convention without hitting 23x Cleopatra's. Yeah, in my past life, my name was A.

and I died of lead poisoning because of all of the lead in everything. Noah, do you have a past life experience? I, believe it or not, I was the surfer, Laura Richardson. Oh, I'll be am. It's so good to meet you.

And I was Josh in Pledge Week. Was it dysentery? Again? Both times, actually. Both of them. Dissentery and dysentery. Interesting. His other daughter,

Natalie is also a big mucky muck in the group, and she teaches classes for women on how to be sex bombs. So all this sounds pretty harmless so far, right? Yeah, buckle up. Benhian teaches that women shouldn't play sports. Why not? Because, duh, it thickens our vaginal walls and makes us infertile, obviously. Was I playing sports wrong? I'm pretty sure my vagina was rarely, if ever, involved.

Well, then how did you serve the poolhole mall? I said rarely. Oh, okay, all right. That's one of those, but I hope I know you as well as I think I know. No, you got it. You nailed it. So on the Australian show Sunday night, there's a clip of Benhean saying women shouldn't be involved in sports, quote, because they're competitive, which means their right ovary gets more powerful than their left,

And then they're ready to have a child, but their ovaries are totally out of whack. Vaginal walls are thick as. And they're not a woman energetically, even though they have breast, vagina, uterus, and so forth. What? That's hands down the funniest thing I've ever fucking heard. Is my right ovary just in there hitting the weight room, smashing protein shakes, skipping leg day? Like, what the fuck is going on in his head? And as thick as what, Serge, finish that sentence.

Yeah. I know. I really wish he had. I'm very curious to know. Also, like, what is the significance of this dominant ovary theory? Like, is it, are you going to have a lopsided baby? Half of your baby's just ripped? Yeah. Like a little six pack of abs. That would be creepy on a baby. Well, three pack, yeah.

A three pack, right. It gets worse. He also teaches his followers that children with disabilities are being punished for something evil they did in a previous life. He said, quote, all autistic people are incarnate of former authority abuse over others, as our Down syndrome, as our spastic, or any other disabled child. Excuse me? What? Fucking gross.

It's a horrifying thought that any parents of autistic or disabled kids might actually swallow this horseshit and traumatize their kid with it. Yeah. And why specifically child? Wouldn't that be true of autistic adults as well? Yeah, it is weird, actually. Well, scared and guilty parents of young kids will pay a lot of money to charlatans that say they have the cure. So I think that's probably why.

Or a reason why they don't have to be stressed out about it or a reason why they can blame the kid themselves. Your kid was little Hitler, so that's why. Oh, my God. It's so awful. And it actually reminds me a lot of Scientology because in Scientology, you know, anything bad that happens to you, you did something to, quote, pull it in is what they call it. So it's very similar. It's inherent in this idea of reincarnation, especially punitive reincarnation, right?

That always winds up there. But this is like particularly egregious because it seems like that's where he started, right? It's not like an unfortunate byproduct of the reincarnation theory he was doing. But that seems like the point of what he's saying. Absolutely. Yeah. And like a lot of cult leaders, he did draw, I think, from a lot of different ideas. He was like, that'll work.

We can victim blame. We can blame people for their problems. So I think that's probably why he did it. Other pearls of wisdom from surge. If you drink alcohol and then have contact with a baby, quote, supernatural entities can then sexually assault the child. Oh, Jesus. There's something kind of interesting to me about that. Like, I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I had OCD at one point.

And, like, I mean, I guess I still do, but it's very well managed now. But that's the kind of intrusive thought that you might have if you were in the throes of pretty severe OCD. Like a lot of times people worry that they can hurt other people by their own thoughts or, you know, just by not doing little rituals or something. And those intrusive thoughts are pretty common. So it's kind of interesting to see that pop up here. I wonder if he's had experience with that or something. I just reminded me of that. If you've experienced sexual trauma or just have gynecological issues in general, he can help.

is a little pubic bone manipulation, or what he calls, esoteric breast massage. Former followers have talked about being groped creepily by Serge during these pubic manipulation sessions. And like all cult leaders, Serge likes to maintain tight control over his followers' lives. They have to be in bed by nine up at three. Look that.

No, I'm only aware of 3 a.m. Because sometimes the game was really, really good. 3 a.m. is a still up kind of time. Oh, yeah. That's early. No. No. Worse than that, they have to follow draconian dietary restrictions.

No alcohol, no dairy, no gluten, no carrots, no potatoes, et cetera, et cetera, right? Good God. What's he got against carrots? Pass. Yeah, right? If I can't slam a white claw while chowing down on some cheesy tater tots, I don't want to live on this planet anyway. Amen. Because as they say, with a claw, there is no law.

Sorry. That's something my frat boy brother says all the time. It makes me laugh. This diet, by the way, isn't just for grownups. Parents have to impose it on their kids, too. Of course. One 10-month-old baby ended up in the hospital with severe malnourishment after his parents put him on Serge's diet plan, poor kid. Oh, and this is bananas.

Surge only drives outies because they're the only, quote, energetically balanced cars in the world. What? Good to know, I think. All righty. Just a fun fact. That's an endorsement I'm sure Audi is very proud of. They must be paying him for that. And you better keep on the straight and arrow with all this stuff, because according to

Surge, we're being monitored. Yep. All of humanity is being closely watched by alien life forms that manipulate the direction of our world and who like outies, apparently, and hate carrots. Okay, I'm thinking Marvin the Martian. Yeah, yeah, I think so. Yeah, that makes sense. That seems accurate.

The aliens are nine feet tall, thin and gray with long fingers. No feet and a snout? Okay, not Marbleau. I guess not. The hell. It's an artist's interpretation. And like I was with him up until like no feet in a snout. Like, Serge, you lost me.

How do you ambulate with no feet? And a snout? Gross. It's like the bad guys and angry birds, right? But tall, but tall. Yeah. Tall and skinny. These aliens are for some reason a threat to us.

He doesn't really. explain why, I don't think. And they can smell us, apparently. That's what those snouts are for. Yeah. From a long way off, I'm dying to know what I smell like, by the way. So these aliens are going to attack us for some reason. And Serge says, you're more at risk for possession by them if you drink. And if they possess you, they can make you do terrible things. Surge seems especially preoccupied with sexual assault. Which, again, for the rest of the rest of, record, he treats with more sexual assault. Yeah, exactly.

He's, like, I think he's definitely got a serious sexual motivation for this whole thing. And on that Sunday night episode about the cult, there's a clip of him saying, for example, if I had an entity that was sexual while I sleep at night and it leaves me at night, it could go rape my daughters while they sleep. Yikes. This is especially creepy, given the fact that according to the Sunday night story, Serge has had to have been. had a series of young women living with him over the years. Ugh. Like many cults, universal medicine has broken up more than its fair share of families. Matt Sutherland was initially open-minded when his partner Sarah joined UM, but it didn't

take long for him to see the flaming red flags. For one thing, he was really uncomfortable with the creepy healing sessions. He heard Serge say stuff like, if a man orgasms inside a woman, that woman is taking on his bad energy. So, unsurprisingly, this didn't do his and Sarah's sex life any favors. Matt said that at one meeting, he was paired up for massage with another guy, and while he was on the table, he could feel this dude sort of lightly touching his butt, which was weird, and afterwards he asked the guy what he was doing, and I swear to God we're not making this up, the dude said, I was pulling an energetic snake out of your ass. And then he said, have you been looking at pornography? Pulling an energetic snake out of his ass.

Have you tried jilly juice? I hear that knocks him right out. He doesn't even need a missus. I just kept shooting out like those springy snakes that come out of those trick jars of peanut riddle. You know, like, swing! These are grown-ass adults joining up for this shit. I just cannot understand it.

I will never understand it. So, anywho, shock. Secondly, Matt and Sarah's relationship didn't last long after that, and now Sarah's married to one of Serge's right-hand lackeys. And if you ask her, she's just so happy, always happy. She told the show Sunday night, I don't drink alcohol, and I don't smoke cigarettes, and I don't even drink coffee. I'm just smiling all the time.

Always feel great. Yeah, okay, but here's the thing. Being smiling and happy all the time isn't healthy. You're allowed to have negative thoughts and feeling, Sarah. If you don't get a promotion or you have a fight with your friend or your dog gets sick, it's okay to not be happy about that. You know, emotions are human. And if you pretend you don't have them, at some point you're going to pop.

And you shouldn't trust anybody that's telling you otherwise. Toxic positivity is a real thing, and I'm guessing this is it. Now, obviously, Ascended Master Serge ain't doing all this good work for free. UN takes in a startling amount of money from its members. A woman named Judith McIntyre found her way to Serge after she was diagnosed with cancer and Serge quickly said about making sure that when she died he'd get his grubby myths on her $1.4 million estate.

He alienated her from her adult children saying they were trying to destabilize her and evoke her sympathy. He told her it was, quote, an attack on all the funds that will help the hierarchies work on Earth. And sadly, it worked. Judas did as she was told. She filmed a video from hospice where she talked about how stoked she was to finally die and ascend, all thanks to Serge.

This is something Serge is built right into the doctrine. He says if you will your estate to your kids, it'll hurt you and the kids, not just in this life, but into the next. But if you leave it all to Serge, well, just brace yourself for spectacular rewards in the afterlife. It's like the indulgences thing in the Middle Ages, where you could pay like a fine and the church would be like, all righty, you're good to go. Toot's going to spend less time in purgatory now. Thanks, K. Bye.

Yep. Like Scientology, universal medicine doesn't like to be challenged. A woman named Esther Rocket found that out in 2005 when she went to Serge for an energy healing session. Esther Rocket sounds like a name of a character in a pulp comic book from the 50s, you know. It totally does. Esther had been feeling run down and Surge offered to give her an ovarian reading. Whatever the shit that is, she agreed but immediately regretted it. Yeah, I got to feel like there's a very close to like a one-to-one correlation of getting an ovarian reading and immediately regretting an ovarian reading.

Absolutely. Serge put his hands on her lower abdomen and kept saying creepy stuff like, when you were five years old, a man in your life let you down. And a man in your life tortured. you in your teenage years. It made her skin crawl, and she said she left feeling like this guy was a predator. She started speaking out against Serge and Universal Medicine, and they hit back. They've harassed her, called her a psychopath, and sued her for defamation. The case went all the way to the Aussie Supreme Court, which took a keen interest in

universal medicine and what all it was getting up to while raking in all that cash from its members. At one point, while Serge was on the stand, the court asked, asked him if he could point out anybody possessed by one of those footless, mind-reading aliens in the courtroom. Serge said he could if he wanted to, but he didn't feel like it right then. You can't go when you're watching. No, exactly. And delightfully, he lost the case.

In Australia, if they decide you're running a, quote, socially harmful cult, they can whoop your ass, and that's exactly what happened here. The government confiscated hundreds of thousands of dollars of donations and revoked UM's tax-free status. Go Australia. Are you listening, U.S. government? You want to give that a try with Scientology, maybe? Please and thank you.

In 2018, Serge moved to the U.K., where they've gotten into more legal trouble. One follower was told by the court that if she didn't distance herself from the cult, she would lose custody of her kid. But, of course, Serge and his followers swear up and down they're not a cult. On their website, they have a handy-dandy article labeled, why it is quite clear that Unimed is not a cult which is exactly the type

of article I'd expect a cult to post Right weird how we don't have to put that on our websites Right exactly Being a cult is like being a racist If you have to tell me you're not one I'm pretty sure you're one Right

Yeah exactly That's not going anywhere good I'm not a racist but I'm not a cultist but you're about to hear something racist as shit Yeah Exactly Without reading the whole thing, basically they use their own definition of cult practices, which is not accurate, and then they try to, badly deny them.

We won't bore you with the details, but feel free to go read it yourself. And then, after reassuring yourself that UM is most definitely not a cold, you can go get your ovaries read, or really treat yourself. Book you an energetic snake removal. All right. Last but certainly not least, campers, we're going to move on to what we suspect is the most urgently dangerous of the three groups we've covered in this episode. Mother God, and love has won.

This one was founded by a woman named Amy Carlson and her partner, Jason Castillo. Amy calls herself Mother God, and like our buddy Surge, she claims to be the incarnation of many lifetimes worth of famous historical figures. Oh, yes. She's been Joan of Arc, Cleopatra, obviously. Who hasn't? Queen Elizabeth, Marilyn Monroe. And she says she has vivid memories of being Jesus, getting crucified, rising from the dead, the whole story. Her followers believe her to be the mother of all creation, and they call her simply mom.

Her partner calls himself Father God, but I don't think they call him Daddy. From what I've seen, he seems to take a very backseat role to hers, and in the words of one of her minions, it's simple. Mom is God. So I guess she outranked Serge, because remember he only claims to be as close to God as a human being can be. So case closed on that. I'd love to see all these people that claim to be God just fight it out. One room. You know, because there's like a hundred of them.

Yeah, right, right. I mean, even in Australia, there's another guy. Yeah, like, that's how you get to monotheism, really. Oh, my God. So good. Y'all can't all be God, you know? Like, I want to see a fight. I want to see a cage match, fight to the death, who's ever less left standing wins.

So Amy slash Mom hosts daily live streams on Facebook where she talks a lot about galactic frequencies and energetics and all her fascinating past lives, often while visibly drunk and or high off her ass. She teaches her followers that our planet is ascending, don't know what that means, don't ask, and that we're going through an evolution of consciousness. Apparently, we're in the process of going from the third dimension to the fifth. So I guess screw the fourth dimension. We don't need any of that space time horseshit. Fifth dimension, though, that's where it's at. Fifth dimension is, quote, pure love vibrations where not. We're not Nothing lower exists.

I'd be real interested to know what her definition of lower is, by the way. Something tells me I wouldn't like the answer, especially since we know that just like Jilly, she's an avid proponent of conspiracy theories. Yeah. In her defense, and that's the last time I'm going to say that, I would submit that it's impossible to talk about any of those things when one is neither visibly drunk or high off their ass. I can't imagine a sober conversation on that topic. Absolutely not.

You're right. and then the next thing she says is man have you ever noticed how like your hands are both like really big and really small it's been 318 for so long does everyone perceive color like in the same way is blue like blue to you my red is your yellow there's no way to know there's no way to know it's so frustrating anyway so whatever the fifth dimension is all about amy slash mom is here to guide us there. Like many of the cult leaders we've looked at in the past, she's basically cobbled together bits and pieces of lots of different faiths and philosophies to make up her own cosmology, a sort of Franken philosophy, if you will. Her teachings have scraps

of Christianity, Native American and Eastern religions, all sorts of stuff. And at the center is Amy, the prime source creator, the maker of every soul on the planet. Apparently, after Mother God created Father God, along with 144,000 chosen souls, the Archangel Jehovah Goveh got greedy. He decided he wanted to be a god, too. So he basically tried a hostile takeover, started taking over planets and covering the universe in darkness. So Archangel Jehovah, the jerk, is the source of all darkness in the universe. That 144,000 chosen souls thing, by the way, is something they stole from the Jehovah's Witnesses. And if I remember correctly, it was also part of the belief system of the doomsday mom, Lori Vallow, y'all remember her? She and her husband, Craig Daybell,

or Chad Daybell, sorry, Chad Daybell had been accused of murdering Lori's two kids because of their culty religious beliefs. It's an awful story if you're not familiar, you should look it up. Anywho, because Mother God couldn't defeat Archangel Jehovah for whatever reason, she and Father God pulled

the trigger on a new plan, 19 billion years in the making. Father God went to the dark planets as his dark avatar Lucifer. His job was to master the darkness, which sounds to me like a pretty rad dungeons and Dragon's campaign idea.

In fact, this whole thing has a sort of graphic novel turned blockbuster movie quality about it. You know, get on it, Hollywood. I'll end up reviewing it over on my podcast, I'm sure. Oh, my God, crossover. You have to invite us on. There you go. Meanwhile, Mother God's job was to stay barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen and just keep on creating. And there's a lot more, like, Katie, bless your heart, I know you read that long-ass sermon of hers and took a ton of notes.

and took a ton of notes and hated every minute of it and I hate to make you think we don't appreciate it but my eyes started glazing over at this point and I have a feeling so will everybody else

is if I keep going so suffice it to say there's a lot more of this Rasmataz but at the end of the story Mother God was all done creating and she quote started working her way down

into this 3D realm while Father God slash Lucifer worked his way back up whatever the hell that means and now they've reunited reunited here on Earth in the form of a couple of tie-eye-clad, hippie-looking humans who seem to be awfully fond of the drinking.

Lucky us, you know, it's like that song, What if God was one of us? They, quote, saved this planet for last because it is the heart of the universe and its mom's heart, and we were also the most heavily manipulated and we were taken over. Okay, so wait, based on this description, she's coming down, he's coming up. I can't tell if they're eyes. they're catching Jehovah in a pincher movement of some sort, or they're giving him a rusty trombone.

I can't tell which I'd prefer or which is any. Either way, this is actually, yeah, good boopy, good concept. It's a, for sure. It's a Trojan horse type thing. They're going to lure him in with the rusty trombone and then. Oh, all right. All right. I get it.

It all makes sense. I can see how it takes 19 billion years to set this out. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I don't think y'all are ready for this. People to the point where they understand what a rusty trombone is takes a few billion, yeah. Before being the mother of all, though, Amy slash mom was the queen of a place called Lemuria, where her father, Donald Trump, also lived. Uh-huh, yeah, that's what I said, Donald Trump, be Donald Trump.

This is where Atlantis existed, too. Okay, hang on, just, I'm working this out. Carry the two. Yep, that seems legit. Check, done. Those foolish Atlantans tried using 5D tech that they stole from the Lemurians, but they weren't on 5D frequency. So naturally, they blew both Atlantis and Lemuria to smithereanes. The resulting explosion, quote,

knocked all of Earth's inhabitants down to the third dimension. This dimension causes memory loss, which is why none of us can remember. being royal angels and are just sad all the time. I'm not sad all the time. But having a blast this evening. I'm doing great. I guess that means I hated being a royal angel. I'm just thrilled to be here in the 3D where the cats and the Cheetos are.

So score one for me, I guess. They had 5D cats, Whitney. All right. Well, I like these ones. According to Mom, this is also why the Illuminati, the Reptilians, and the Kabbal were able to take over the planet. I'm not sure if they weren't working together or not, but like maybe they divvied us all up among the three groups, but whatever. By now, Mom's on her 534th lifetime, but the last 533 lifetimes were just a warm-up. Now she's fully realized and ready to really take her rightful place as Mother God, or

or whatnot. By the way, if she's on her 534th lifetime, if every one of those lives had lived to be just 30 years old, then she's been at it for over 16,000 years. Dang, she must be exhausted. She's like, look, guys, I know it seems like it's taken forever, but y'all took 483 of my lifetimes to come up with toilet, right? If you had done that early, maybe I would be done by now. We'll never know. 14 years ago, Amy was working as a McDonald's manager when she left her kids with her mom and started gathering followers in Colorado. Mother God obviously didn't feel any obligation to mother her own, actual children.

Okay, but in all seriousness, I think we'd be in a better world if more D.N. E. spent a few years in customer service first. Absolutely. And all CEOs of corporations as well. Everybody needs their turn. Yeah, y'all got to learn how to deal with Karens before. before you can start talking about righteousness. Amen.

Before she became a cult leader, she had a little bit of a checkered past. She'd been arrested for driving under the influence and had a warrant out for some other charge. We're not sure what. Father God's got quite a pass on him, too. He's been convicted of child neglect, criminal mischief, trespassing,

breaking and entering, and driving while intoxicated twice. He's done jail time. Daddy, no. I'm so disappointed. Well, he did just come off a millennia long stint as a dark angel. The dark angel. Yeah, that's true.

That's true. I mean, he's got to shake that off. So after a few years in Colorado, the group called Love Has Won moved to Hawaii, or tried to anyway. Yeah, they ended up getting unceremoniously booted out of Hawaii when the locals heard that Amy was claiming to be the reincarnation of the goddess Pele. They were like, excuse the hell out of us? And surprisingly, you know, the Hawaiians weren't thrilled about this drunk white lady claiming to be the goddess who created their home. So there were protests, and eventually Mother God and her minions ran back to Colorado with their tails between their legs. Right on.

Go Hawaii. So what do the love has one folks do all day besides the stuff we already told you about? What are their beliefs? Well, Amy slash mom claims she can do psychic surgery and speak with the dead. she does a lot of that psychic surgery sometimes via Skype, which I found hilarious. What? And I imagine it ain't cheap. In fact, she claims to have performed hundreds of thousands of these surgeries, healed hundreds of thousands of poor souls.

Yeah, psychic surgery is an old, old con. I've seen people caught with chicken gizzards and stuff up their sleeves, like pretending their disease tissue, the psychic surgeon just removed from their patient's body. It's very gross. Yeah, I'm not sure what to be more offended. by the fact that they're bilking desperate people or the fact that they never bothered to move beyond the what's that behind your ear level of sleight a hand for this stuff?

Yeah. And mom also claims to have spoken with the spirit of Robin Williams. She said he's one of her spirit guides now. Just gross. Get his name out of your mouth, you walnut. Have some respect. They also have an online shop

where you can buy everything from candles and crystals to tinctures for all kinds of stuff. There's even a personalized resin pyramid you can buy with various different objects inside. One of them has an egg in it. Why? Who the hell knows? Just buy it, you unenlightened swine.

I know it's unethical to buy stuff from cults. I know. I know, I know. Which is why I'm refraining. But I would actually love to see what the fuck that personalized crystal would have inside for me. I'm guessing it's just a bunch of dog hair and a search warrant from the feds. So, as we've been.

mentioned before, Mom and her followers do live streams every day. Sometimes hosted by Mom, sometimes by her two most visible followers, Laurence Juarez, and Ashley Paluso. They go by Hope and Aurora now, because that's page two in the cult handbook, changing people's names.

Ashley slash Aurora's mom is said that these streams are the only contact she has now with her daughter, which is just really damn sad. In some of the streams mom will scream and rage, clearly drunk or high or both. She likes to call anybody who agrees with her, a whore, or worse.

But other than that, her and I have very little income. I don't use the gender specific. She acknowledges that she drinks a lot, but she says it's because her physical body has absorbed humanity's abuse of the earth. She's in a tremendous amount of pain, you see, and the drinking just helps take the edge off. This is fascinating because it's the first time I think I've ever seen a cult leader work their substance abuse into their mythology.

and her followers just lap it up. You know, it's our fault that she has to drink. It's our fault. She's high all the time. One former member even said, one of the reasons they believe Amy is God is because she can drink so much alcohol. Because if anybody else drank like that, they'd be dead,

which is just, that's an interesting qualification for being a God, if you ask me. Once she allegedly drank 24 tequila shots and then chased them with a bottle of concentrated THC. Oh, God. Just cheese and freaking cracker. I'd be dead for sure. In fact, Amy claims that she's now paralyzed from the waist down because of all the psychic pain she has to shoulder.

And she has stage five cancer. Five? What the hell is stage five cancer? Well, according to mom, it's when it's to the bones. Huh? What? It's all the way down. Special cancer.

Cancer all the way down. It's a five-dimensional cancer probably is what it is. Cancer of the time. It's meta. It's like quantum meta. Right. She has cancer of the cancer. Cancer of the aura.

And it's interesting how often substance of you seems to come up in these cases. Like obviously not with Serge Ben Hayin, who's all about don't drink, don't drink coffee. But I mean, you know, we see it a fair amount. Jim Jones, I mean, the cocaine was a huge factor in the, you know, the fact that he got more and more paranoid, the more and more coke he did and everything. I think it's kind of interesting. It's one of the reasons why she scares me the most, I think, of all three of these people. Well, and you look at, like, um, Shoko Asahara of the Omshin Riccio cult that did the sarin gas attacks in Tokyo. He was doing acid all day, every day.

And he gave his followers so much that they had to wear diapers because they'd piss and shit themselves. Like, it's a thing. That's right. Yeah. And he's obviously one of the scariest people who's ever drawn breath. So unsurprisingly, mom's followers give her money out the Yin Yang and cater to her every whim. She collects social security checks from some of her members. One member even gave her her daughter's disability check. According to an article in Guru magazine, Tommy Hilfiger's ex-wife once

almost left a blank check for the group. Jesus. A young man named Robbie Foley gifted her his SUV and 10 grand and hasn't been heard from since. He left the group in 2019 and they won't answer any questions about his disappearance. Yeah, that's not terrifying at all, right? Yeah. It would be nice to have all of those details before I agree to make fun of these people publicly with you guys. Yes, sorry about that. We probably should have mentioned that. In return for all this devotion, Mom offers her followers her sacred guidance. This comes in the form of sleep deprivation.

Members are only allowed sleep for two to four hours at a time. And starvation, which, by the way, are two classic elements of breaking people psychically, just breaking them down. Per one of her former followers, quote, Amy believes food and sleep are obstacles to her ascension. Resting, you see, takes energy away from mom. So despite this chronic sleep deprivation, members are forced to do brutal amounts of physical labor every day. She also offers them public humiliation,

where they confess their sins against Mother God during the live streams. Yeah, Mom definitely doesn't seem to subscribe to the God is love philosophy. She's got some weird rave. going on. In one video, she picked up her cat by the scruff and manhandled the poor thing while berating it and calling it a whore and a bitch. It's hard to watch.

When people naturally got upset about it, her response was basically that it was the cat's fault. All the animals know she's God. So if the cat decided to disobey God, then what did it expect? Oh, my God.

She's been filmed abusing children, too. In one instance, a follower's Toddler-aged child was having a meltdown. As the kid cried, Mom demanded that the person holding him put him in timeout. The timeout in question was being shut in a dark closet for several minutes. When they finally take the poor kid out and he starts crying again, Amy looks at the camera and says, they don't fucking listen. Yes, Amy, toddlers are best known for being great listeners. Yeah, they're like cats in that way.

Right. I'm noticing a pattern with her issues. She took the kid by the shoulders and said, you need to surrender. Surrender now. And when the kid kept crying, because of course he was crying, this scary bitch was in his face saying, surrender now. They put him back in the closet again. It's really, really hard to watch. It's hard to even hear you describe, to be honest with it. It's awful.

Yeah, I'm sure. Amy's explanation was matter of fact. She said the kid was dysfunctional. And they were just giving him some discipline. In May of 2020, authorities found a dehydrated man wandering buck naked in the desert north of Crestone, Colorado. His name was Alex Witten. He was totally detached from reality and didn't appear to be aware of his surroundings. He said he was speaking to someone psychically. Three days before that, he'd left his wife and children in Ohio to meet up with Mother God. His wife,

Arianne, told Guru Mag that he'd started watching Amy's videos. six weeks prior to his disappearance. Six weeks. Wow. That's all it took to indoctrinate the guy. She said, he'd leave the dinner table to watch the live streams. Twice a day he'd watch. Then he, quote, had a psychic surgery over the phone.

Over the phone. She's like, oh, you should see the size of the chicken gizzards I'm pulling out of you. You know what? Let me text you a pick. I'll text you a pick. Let me hang up real quick. What? Yeah, it's bananas.

In May 21st, he showed up in a live stream. He said, I've dropped everything in order to be here to honor the mother, the physical mother Jesus on earth. We need you all to get here. Come to mom and help mom in all ways possible. That same day, Witton texted his mother and said he would be walking to the airport. Now, the airport was a three-hour drive from where he was, so his family was immediately concerned. They asked Amy and her minions where he was. And they said he was doing fine. He was with family.

But when Alex wasn't in the live stream that night, his family got worried again. The members on the stream were laughing about him, saying that they didn't like his energy. And he was on the wrong side of the mountain. One of Alex's relatives asked about that in the comments, and one of Mom's followers said, we're not Alex's babysitter. We're here for God, not whores who desert God. That was it. his family started desperately trying to find him. They also reached out to a cult expert named

Stephen Hassan so that when they found him, they could make sure not to spook him or push him away. When he was finally picked up, naked and disoriented, he refused treatment, insisting that Mother God would heal him. Finally, his family was able to get him back into a hotel, where he slept for 10 hours and went back home to Ohio the next day. Wow. And you know it's bad when like went back to Ohio as the happy ending. Damn straight. So the police thought he'd been given a hallucinogen, but they're not exactly sure what happened beyond that. Alex's wife believes that for some reason the cult didn't want Alex found. Well, yeah, I mean, it seems like they doped him up and left him way the hell

out in the middle of nowhere. Then they kept lying about where he was. They also posted on social media that they visited him in the hospital, which they did not. His wife said they were pulling cactus needles out of his feet for weeks. Ugh. Right. Like, I mean, why wouldn't you just pull all them out the first day? I'm sure there was, like, a reason, like, they were, like, still working their way to the surface or something.

But that just seems weird. Like, all right, you know what, that's nine or ten of them. Let's leave the rest. They're natural cleats. That's enough for now. That's enough for now. So, like I said, of the three groups we've talked about in this episode, I think Mother God might be the most dangerous.

I mean, Jilly is pretty scary, too. because pseudoscience always has the potential to be pretty perilous stuff but where Jilly seems like a greedy egotist and Serge Van Hayen seems motivated by A, prophet and B, possibly creepy sexual stuff I suspect it wouldn't take much for Amy Carlson to turn into Jim Jones

or Charles Manson she's got to anger, the megalomania and the fondness for disinhibiting drugs so I think she's going to be one to watch and if you get a chance to watch that Dr. Phil episode she's on definitely do it for no other reason than to get load of her outfit she's wearing this hair bow that makes her look like an eighth grade cheerleader and i could not take my eyes off at the entire time so noah i'm curious especially since now i'm hearing your kind of new to true crime

which of these three do you think is the scariest uh well look the the quickest way is to my worst enemies list is to fuck with cats so it's definitely who's your mommy she gets my vote but they're all pretty spooky but yeah if i have to pick just one Yeah, I couldn't agree when I think she's terrifying. And there's this bonkers video clip that they show on that Dr. Phil episode where she's drunk off her ass

and yelling at one of her Adams because that's what she calls the dudes who wait on her hand and foot, the Adams. And she's yelling at this poor Adam for bringing her meatballs for dinner instead of chicken parm. And I swear to God, I'm not making this up. She's like,

my vision was for chicken parmesan. And you bring me meatballs. Which is hilarious, obviously. but like imagine living with that day in and day out like just constant verbal abuse and this woman who is drunk off her ass and like saying she's talking to Robin Williams and I just think she's terrifying and I would not be at all surprised if we see that cult in the news for something really disturbing in the near future right so wow jillie serge and mom a trio to watch so Noah this has been super fun. Thank you so much for joining us. And Campers, Noah's podcast, which is hilarious, is god-awful movies. So look for that wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for the invite. It's been a ton of fun. Thank you. So that was a wild one. Right, campers? You know we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the True Crime Campfire. And we want to send a shout out to a few of our newest patrons. Thank you so much to Maureen, Carrie, Louise, Cheyenne and Jennifer. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not yet a patron, you're missing out. Patrons of our show get every episode, ad free, at least a day early,

sometimes more, plus an extra episode a month. And once you hit the $5 and up categories, you get even more cool stuff. A free sticker at $5, a rad enamel pin while supplies last at 10, virtual events with Katie and me, and we're always looking for new stuff to do for you. So if you can, come join us. I don't know.