Was I In A Cult? - Online Vampire Cult - Pt2: "404: Vampire Not Found"

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

If Part 1 was the seduction… this is the unraveling.By now, Celeste is fully in - the "true believer" phase we like to call it. The relationships feel real. The stakes feel real. And the consequences for questioning it? Also very real.Because inside this world, there are rules. Rewards for loyalty. Punishments for doubt. And what once felt magical begins to shift. The cracks start to show. And Celeste is forced to confront a terrifying possibility:What if none of this is real?What follows is a slow, psychological tug-of-war between belief and reality - until one discovery changes everything.After all, the most shocking part wasn't that there were vampires on the internet.It was who was pretending to be them. ______FOLLOW CELESTE → Instagram @celestemott | Tiktok @celestemothFOLLOW US  → For more culty content — follow us on Instagram & TikTok → @wasiinacultSUPPORT THE SHOWJoin our Patreon! Get ad-free episodes, bonus content, and behind-the-scenes conversations. (And our forever gratitude)HAVE A CULTY STORY?Email us → [e-mail] Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. The views, information, or opinions expressed by the guest appearing in this episode solely belong to the guest and do not represent or reflect the views or positions of the hosts, the show, podcast one, this network, or any of their respective affiliates. The vampire has come to represent more of this idea of a parasitic relationship with humanity. Like, the vampire can't survive without a human supply. And there's analogies there with narcissism, I would argue.

And that's why I've come to settle on it with the cult, because there were no vampires in the cult, but also there were vampires in the cult, you know. Welcome back to Was I Anacol. I'm Tyler Meese. And I'm Liz Ayacuzzi. Yes, she is. And today is part two of Celeste Motz's tale of getting pulled in

to an online vampire-looking glass, Anne Rice, New Orleans, LaStat chat room, early internet. Vampire cult. Try saying that again. I don't need to. They heard it again. They heard it the first time. They can press the 15-second back button and hear it again. You guys, if you didn't listen to the first part of this story yet, do that now.

Thank you. For the one person who accidentally went to two, go back to one. Why? Because par one, it has grief. It has got got got early internet role play. It's got an emotional manipulation all wrapped in a luring black velvet cape. I think do that one more time because when you say grief, you sound like it's a birthday party. Grief.

Part one's got balloons. You want me to sell grief? I don't need to be grieving to say the word grief. Part one's got grief, man. It's got grief. Well, today, guys, is part two, and that is where that cape, that sexy cape comes off. When did society stop wearing cakes? Cates? I don't know.

Yeah. Maybe we should bring that back. Yeah. That could heal the world. That could heal all of this divisiveness. Capes. You know what? My 7-year-old, he wears a cape. Every once in a while, he just has a cape. He puts a cape on. My son loves, like, the young Jedi's. And I got him the little Nub's costume. And one of it's a cape, and I didn't know what was a cape.

And I put it on like an apron. And he was like, Mama, where's my cape? I have an idea. It can be an apron when you cook, and then you can flip it around. It can be a cape. Guess what it's called? Go on, guess. Go on, listeners, guess.

It's a portmanteau. No, it's a portmanteau. It is a capron. No, that's not blood on my cape, on my vampire cape. It's spaghetti sauce. I was cooking in my capron. It's a caperon. It's a was I in a cult caperon.

It's an apron. It's a great disguise. No, it's an apron. When you're out there, you're out there jumping over buildings and doing all this shit. And then your mother-in-law walks in and you're like, shit, I don't want her to know why I have superpowers. Right. Oh, dinner's almost ready. line cooked by day, superhero by night.

It just flips around. You don't need to go in a phone booth like Superman. You just flip it around. It's a capron. It's a capron. Someone's going to steal that fucking idea. If you do, we're suing you. I'm going to see it in a store.

This is the first time we're going to finally sue people. Yeah, we're suing for the capron. All right, let's bring it back. Where were we? Where were we? We were talking about something dark, because this is the episode where the cap ring

comes off. Okay, pull it together. But guys, what starts to emerge in this episode is something far less romantic and sadly much more familiar to at least us on this show.

She's talking about cult stuff, everyone. She's talking about crazy, crazy cult shit. Last week, Celeste was pulled deeper and deeper and deeper into an Anne Rice-inspired online world that promised her immortality, belonging, escape, and love. And by the end of episode one, guess what? She felt like she had proof.

She had proof that the vampires were real. And proof that she mattered to them and that one of them loved her. But today we find out exactly what is underneath all the mystique. Or underneath the... It didn't take it. us for 30 seconds to bring back the capron. You know what we should do is, you know what we should do, Liz, it would be funny, is let's write an ad for the capron and put it in the fucking ads.

We're totally doing that. We're going to write a capron ad. So I've been wearing my capron. You know what? It's terrible. I got to cook and I get stuff on my shirt. Well, you know, no. It's a capron.

You know what? It's terrible. I go to school and everybody knows I'm a superhero. And then I come in a way, you know what? I have the solution for you. It's the capron. It feels good. Nobody's going to question.

We're writing a capron ad. That's, of course, if Rob leaves us in, which he's going to, of course. All right, we'll write a capron ad. You guys, when you get to the end of this episode and you figure out what is going on here, it is not what I expected. I'm just going to say that. That's all I'm going to say. I'm going to leave you with that. Yeah.

You're just really teasing it out, Liz. No, I'm actually not. I'm just leaving it at that. And with that, welcome back to the show, Celeste. And we're very grateful that you are now shutting us up. That's something that we all asked over the years. You know, well, how does Anne Rice factor into this? What's her role?

Was she making it up? Did she meet you guys? Where does she fit into this? And initially the story was, you know, yes, of course, she wrote the books. She met us. She's kind of our scribe almost. And then over the years, it became more like, well, she was inspired by us.

She met us. She doesn't remember because we wiped her memory, obviously. There it is. She doesn't know that she was divinely inspired, but she was and it was us. And this is where the story starts to shift. Because like all cults, their story has to shift. Well, because cults are famous for revisionist history.

Because eventually the lies always surface. The questioning starts, but by this point, by this point you've already been conditioned to think a certain way. You've been indoctrinated. So when the reality starts to crack, it's not just confusing. It is psychologically destabilizing. And that, folks, is why cults are so effective. Because once you've built your understanding of the world around something, you know, your relationships, your identity, your sense of meaning, well, your brain, it doesn't want to lose that. No, so instead of going, wait, this isn't real, this is bullshit.

Yeah, it goes, how do I still make this make sense? Because the alternative isn't just being wrong. It's, I've been lied to, I've been duped. I've wasted how many years of my life? I don't know what's real anymore. And that is a much harder thing to face. So instead of facing it, you hold both truths. You hold what you're being told, and you hold what you're starting to see, which is the truth.

And instead of rejecting the lie, well, you try to reconcile it. And once you're part of that dogma, or in this case the mythology, it becomes a whole lot harder to walk away. The vampire is representative of immortality, of course, right? This idea of something that can be young and beautiful forever that can endure, that can witness the rise and fall of empires and the passage of time and human history. And there's something very compelling about that. I think when you're a teenager, you do have that real ingrained anxiety of I don't want to get old. I don't want to be trapped in a dead end job. I don't want to be my parents.

And so I think the vampire representing eternal youth and eternal beauty and being able to do all the things that you want to do with your life because there are no limitations is very intoxicating. And the vampire is also very seductive. There's a sensuality. There's a danger. I think 2009 was probably the peak. and that was the closest I came to like truly abandoning rationality and accepting that this was all real. And that was when I was very sick. You know, I was physically very unwell.

I was very mentally unwell also. So yeah, yeah. So we developed this friendship, Armand and I concurrently. I'm also developing a friendship with Daniel. I develop a kind of strange-ish friendship with Maxwell who was, you know, Armand's lover slash fledgling, he didn't like me very much for a good portion of time that I was on the forum. But then at some point, when I had really truly become inner circle, he changed his tune. And then there was a lot of, like a lot of flirting and a lot of treating me like I was a really

close friend. So when Maxwell was turned, he became a moderator. So there was a kind of suggestion that you might be able to become a moderator if you were turned into a vampire. Because when you become a moderator, not only do you have the power to like ban somebody and kick somebody from the forum, but also you can see everything. Moderators could see everybody's private messages. Moderators had access to the like moderator only forum where they were talking about all of us and they had little folders on all of us. It's crazy. There would be these times in the chat room where someone would be like, I'm sorry, this is fucked, what are you doing?

And everything would just get deathly silent. And you could tell that all the other people behind their screens in their like darkened computer rooms were like, you know? And we would watch people get castigated and raked across the coals in the chat room, belittled, mocked, text-based verbal abuse. And everybody would just be holding their tongues. no one would stand up for the person getting raked across the coals. I wasn't a particularly impressive person at age 19, 20, 21.

I was in college and struggling with my life. And I had terrible self-esteem. So having this thing that made me special was really precious. Unfortunately, I did absolutely abuse that tiny fraction of power that I felt like I had. And I really regret those decisions. But again, I was indoctrinated and I was a child. And, you know, if anyone's listening from the cult, I am sorry that I didn't stand up and say anything

when you were getting dragged across the coals because it happened to a lot of us and everyone else held their tongues because they were too scared to push back. That's awful. So now you've got the system. Reward if you play along. Punishment if you don't.

And importantly, everyone can see both of them. So you don't even have to be the one getting attacked. You just have to watch it happen. And usually that's enough. Well, but because your brain starts doing the math. Staying equals connection, identity, belonging, acceptance. And leaving equals isolation, humiliation, and losing everything. And those are high stakes.

Once those stakes are in place. Well, it doesn't really feel like a choice. At this point, I had invested years and years of my life in these people. It was my friends. people that I had met in real life, you know, we had grown up together. And so the fear was, you know, if I leave or if I'm banned, I'm going to lose all of that. Yeah, I think for me, the fear of leaving was the fear of losing this reality more than anything else. But it was also, it was also losing the fantasy, obviously, was challenging. And that was the fear, too. Like,

who am I even separate from this? And yeah, other people would be bullied into not talking to you. You would, you know, smear campaigns would take place. And that was the fear was that this would happen. People that I had been friendly with, you know, they, of course, had been telling me for years after they were banned, none of this is real. Stop letting them do this to you. They were trying to bring me evidence and proof of what was really going on.

And I was listening. But at the same time, it was. still that Sophie's choice of do I really want to talk to these people, believe these people, and shatter this illusion that's been keeping me going for the past decade, or do I want to just drink the Kool-Aid, you know, the flavor aid? Nice recovery, Celeste. While the common phrasing of the term is to drink the Kool-Aid, the actual drink that was used in Jonestown was, in fact, flavorade.

Yes, it was, and that's bonus points for Celeste. She moves on to the elimination round. right after this word from our sponsors. You should have been a game show host. I should have. Oh, it's that time. It's our weekly worship of the holy goodness. That is quince.com.

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We lurk in your shadows. We sell quince and bite necks. So basically this cult that Celeste was in started as fandom for Anne Rice. Now Anne unlikely was browsing the interwebs in 2000. to find this odd little chat room, but she was told about it. So Anne Rice was made aware on multiple occasions by different people of the existence of this forum in particular, the cult that I was in. Many people wrote to her about it, and she would always respond and say, this is awful.

I'm so sorry that this is happening in my name or in the name of my characters. There is no Lestat on the internet. I will do everything I can to stop this from happening, but there might be a limited amount that I can do. But there was a time period where the forum went offline for a little bit. And when it came back, all the moderators had different usernames. So Armand, instead of being Armand, was Angelus. Maxwell was demon.

And Lestat was Prometheus. because they were being very careful to not use those names, right, at all. I think they were genuinely pretty worried that they were going to get slapped with a lawsuit. So I'm 99.999% sure that Anne Rice's lawyers did reach out and said, you can't do this. Whatever it is you're doing over there, you better get right with copyright law because that's not happening. So 2010 roll around. I've been super sick.

I'm being told that I have vampire blood and I'm dying. Armand tells me he's in love with me. He affirms that all of this is happening. I've got Julie in my DMs telling me that I have Armand's blood and she also has Armand's blood and we're blood sisters and it's getting crazy. She and a couple of other inner circle people forming this kind of support group for women who have vampire blood and trying to nurture me through it almost like it's an initiatory process. Like, oh, here's how you can work with it to make your life better. And even though, that should have been, I guess, affirming, and in a way it was and validating. Weirdly, it also causes a kind of mental snap for me, because suddenly this has crossed a threshold into being something that I am being told is going to impact my real life forever. I'm being told that I will never be able to connect with other human beings, that I am like marked by this for the rest of my I'm very seriously physically unwell. And I think where the snap came in is that after being really sick for a couple of months,

I went back to the doctor against the advice of my vampire siblings. And the doctor ransom tests again and said, oh, we missed it the first time, but you have mononucleosis, a.k.a. vampire blood, I guess. So that information was just enough of a reality check for me to be like, hmm, okay. But the funny part was that I did start going back into real life. Ironically, when things had really reached fever pitch there, it was getting to be too much. So I started going out more and seeing my friends more. I was really involved in the goth scenes.

So I was going a goth night. I was partying a lot. I was going out a lot just to dance. And I remember, I have screenshots of the shit these people were saying to me. And I think they were pissed off that I was, they were losing their control because they were saying things like, we can't believe what you're turning into. Oh, you're being a slut. You're like being so crazy on drugs, like all these accusations. That was not happening.

It was pretty normal like early 20s behavior. I think that was really the death knell. It was the beginning of the end. So they started to get more hostile toward me. I was starting to get much more like, no, this is insane. Come on, guys, you're not vampires. Meanwhile, other people involved in the group were also starting to ask questions, look into things. It was now the internet of 2009 rather than the internet of 2003.

So it was easier to do some sleuthing. And so multiple people were seeking to bring the whole. whole thing down. And so as I'm starting to come back to my real life, see my friends go out simultaneously, all this information is coming to light about who these people potentially really are. And I think it became kind of a perfect storm. So I start listening a little bit more to the people who had already left and the people who were at this point, you know, running websites and like they had live journal accounts to try and bring the cult down and they were posting evidence every day in proof. And they really thought that whoever was behind the mask,

behind the Armand mask, the Lestat mask, was one of the other members of the group, that it was not a stranger that none of us had ever heard off before. It was somebody else in the group. So at this point, I had my own suspicions about whom may or may not be. pulling the strings behind the scenes, really just based on common sense, to be honest, as much as it sounds like my common sense

had abandoned ship at that point. It was still there a little bit. So I set a trap using an IP tracer. And so I installed this tracker on a live journal entry. And I made sure the only people who could see it

were people that I suspected might be one of the moderators. And then I waited. and went and looked at the analytics. And it was Lestad, Armand, and Julie. And they all had the exact same IP address, which was deeply suspicious. There's something fishy going on here.

There are people hiding in the proverbial shadows. To be honest with you, I think I had suspected that this could be the case for quite some time. So there was a kind of hollow, pit of my gut, ugh, feeling. But there was also this sense of, okay, this seems correct. Here's something that can't be, it can't be explained away. And yet, I wanted it to be explained away. So I went to Julie about it to give her one final chance to be real with me. I mean,

she and I also had a very real friendship, I thought. And we had this conversation and I said to her, here's what I found either Lestat and Armand live in your basement or you are they. So can you just tell me what the hell is going on? And I think a part of me really wanted her to have an answer, like a plausible excuse. So I could hold on to the lie. And instead, she just said, I don't have to explain myself to you. I have nothing to say to you. and then I was banned from the forum

and she blocked me and we haven't had a conversation since. Like at that point, the illusion of the literal, actual Anne Rice vampire had been broken, but because there was such a question mark over who Julie was,

there was part of me that was like, maybe something was going on. Like, it fucks you up in the head because you can't really lay it to rest. I was trying to figure out in my head, hang on, did something magical happen? What accounts for my crazy dreams? What accounts from my paranormal experiences?

How am I going to reconcile all of that? Julie? It's fucking Julie. It's Julie. Come on, Julie. Come on. Come on. Just wait, you guys.

Just wait till you find out who exactly, Julie. It's Liz. Julie. It's Liz. Liz is Julie. It's like 50 times more insane than Liz. We'll be right back. Fucking shooly.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance and hey, everyone, you chose to hit play on this podcast today. That's a smart choice. Rare, but we love to see it, Alice. Yeah, Alice, way to hustle out there. Also, Frank, good job. Isn't Frank? No, that's Fred.

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Frank, you're still doing the Marley Spoon? boxes every week. Love the Marley Spoon. I've now been into the To-Go because I got a little lazy. I was like, I don't really want to. You got a little lazy. Just give me the To-Go pre-made meals,

and they're good. Yeah. And my kid eats them, which is a double whammy of goodness. How about you, dad? Still making Marley Spoon meals? Last time I talked to him, yes, he was.

And he's getting less intimidated. That's the best. Maybe he'll transfer to an actual recipe, but right now... Let's not push it. Let's not push it. Marley's doing it for him. Yeah.

All right. So we're going to back it up a little bit. Marley Spoon is a meal delivery service, right? It's got a wide range of ready to cook, ready to heat, ready to eat options as well as market items. You can stock up on snacks. If you know anything about snacks, we all love snacks. Colts love snacks. Everybody listening to the show loves a snack.

Yes. The meals are great. They're healthy and they're uniquely flavored. I find them to be, you know, actually full of spicy. and flavor spice. Yes. Oh, okay. You know, they're not just like bland pre-made meals.

They're like, oh, wow, I made this. There's tons of options to choose from. It appeals to any of your palettes, your diets, your picky eaters, all of it. Yeah, like children. Children. Kids love it. So they make it easy to prepare the meals. Honestly, I've tried a few.

Marley Spoon is by far the best meal service we've had. It saves time and money and Marley Spoon keeps delivering literally and figuratively, so try it out. Yeah, and then why don't you try it out, Suzanne? Have us over for dinner, would you? Yeah. Return the favor, Suzanne. Head to marlyspoon.com slash offer slash cult for up to 25 free meals.

Wait, that's a typo. 25. That's dinner. Up to 25 free meals. Put a marly spoon.com slash offer slash cult. Don't forget there's a slash offer in there. Cult, right. Great.

And we'll see you on Friday, Suzanne, right? What, seven, seven 30? As I referred to earlier, like you didn't get banned from the forum in a nice way ever. So I was dragged across the internet. Horrible things were said about me. All my friends were turned against me. And that was the fear was that this would happen. But I lost my support system.

And that sucked. It was horrible. And this was concurrent with. me applying to grad school in the U.S. and knowing that my life was about to change forever because I was about to sort of move to the U.S. hopefully. I applied to graduate school to get my MFA in poetry, and I applied to the University of New Orleans, and they accepted me with a full ride scholarship, so I didn't have to pay. Go privateers. Yes, the University of New Orleans, home of the privateers. Like private parts? No, it's a privately owned ship or crew that's

commissioned by the government to attack and seize enemy merchant ships during wartime. A privateer is often known as legalized piracy. New Orleans was like the spiritual heart of the cult. And so, yeah, I absolutely was trying to move here for that reason to be like a bigger part of it. Part of me didn't want to go anymore. I was like, fuck. You know, my entire life plan has just exploded in my face. I'm dealing with being horribly bullied by idiots on the internet who've been destroying my life for 10 years.

Do I even want to do this? But then there was part of me that was like, no, there's something there for you. Even if it's not vampires, you should go. I'm still here 13 years later. So in your face, Julie, nah. It sucks to be you, Julie. So I moved to the States and moving, here in the wake of trying to deprogram from this whole thing that had taken over my life for a

decade. I'm not going to say I didn't have wonderful times here in that first couple of years, but it was hard and a big part of me, especially being here. I was still looking over my shoulder at night. I was still expecting something supernatural to happen. Part of me was like, God, what if I was wrong? What if it wasn't Julie? And what if everything she told me was true? And now I fucked myself. Plus, living in a foreign country by myself for the first time with no support system, really. I didn't know anybody. I look back and I think to myself, I made some amazing friends through that group. And I went to college in part because of that group. A big part of who I am is because I was part of the looking glass. And I can't, you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater, you know. I wanted to try again.

I wanted to belong again and I wanted to see if I could be part of it. And I thought maybe I can do it this time with the awareness that it's all fake, but maybe I can still enjoy the discussions and enjoy the companionship and have some kind of friendship with Julie again. You know, it's just kind of like going back to your abuser, really. But I tried and they basically wrote me. back and said under no circumstances, will you ever be allowed back in here? And so I think that the healing came in phases, and I think I handled it poorly. I very quickly slipped into aggressive alcoholism, which was not a problem that I had prior. And I was a heavy alcoholic for about nine years, struggling to deprogram from cult stuff during the course of that. But I don't think I

realized, to be honest with you, the true deprogramming didn't really begin until last year. What was last year? 2025? So 13 years after I got out-ish, I was actually had a head cold and I was just a little addled from NyQuil and I was like, let me make a video on TikTok about this crazy thing that happened to me. And it exploded, you know? The first video has a million views on Instagram. And people who were in the cult saw it. And so I was getting messages from people I hadn't talked to in a decade who were talking to me, oh, I was there too. And I remember this. But in the process of all of this going on, I learned from a former member that Julie, is 68 years old.

She lives in Canada. She's a former Canadian military vet. Come on, Julie. A 68-year-old Canadian vet? Come on. Julie, probably nice as hell. Canadian and nice. Julie.

Grandma. Grandma Julie. I don't know who to trust anymore, guys. I don't know who to trust anymore. Not Julie. the woman who was pretty much behind this whole operation, like the head, the head cult leader, at the time that I was 16 years old, she was 48.

Armand was 48 years old talking to my 16-year-old ass on the internet and telling me that I was dying of vampire blood because that's where this goes ultimately and that he was in love with me, 48 years old in the Canadian military, she's in her upper 60s now. But I can't imagine even having like an ongoing intense friendship with someone who is 15 or 16. It would be so inappropriate.

You know, when you think about it, that first Anne Rice novel was published in 1974. I think she just disappeared into stories. And I think she got very caught up in the fantasy of it all herself. And then I think she's, I don't like to armchair diagnose, but she's probably a narcissist. And the attention and the power became very intoxicating. We now know that Julie is the 68-year-old grandmother in Canada, but who were these other people? Maxwell was a middle-aged woman called Lila.

And now Maxwell? Maxwell is some 50-year-old woman, too? Come on! Is nobody anybody anymore? Lila began Lila. on the forum as somebody who was damaged and harmed like the rest of us. She had really believed that Lestat was real. Julie had been telling Lila, I'm Lestat, go to the opera in New York, where you're like most beautiful ballgown and I'll meet you there. And obviously nothing happened

and no one showed up. And Lila was so upset by this that she faked her own suicide, left the forum and then came back in the guise of Maxwell. And Julie and Lila were catfishing each other. Julie is pretending to be Armand. Lila is pretending to be Maxwell. I suspect that James either also is Julie. I don't know if Julie also played Daniel. I don't know if James at some point was brought into the lie.

and he was Daniel, like I don't, is James Julie? That's still a question mark. I am 99% sure that Julie was the mastermind behind everything and that other people who were involved over the years were really, to be honest, just puppets of Julie. I don't think that means that they're not culpable in their own way. But Julie was definitely the mastermind. And I mean, this is just her MO. This is what she does.

And she's doing it to this day, which is really scary. Like, log off, Julie. Jesus. But the fact that this was all done by women my mother's age is crazy. Crazy. Julie and Lila. They need a new hobby. God damn.

Knitting. Gardening. Bridge Club. Book club. A lot of things you can be doing. Here's the problem, right? You know, sometimes I want to saute, but I also want to make an inference. What you need, Tyler, is a high-quality apron. I do. And a cape. Or an apron that can instantly transform into a cape. And that, my friend, is a capron. A capron, right. So we love this product. It's great. One second, you're cooking chicken. The next second, you're turning to face your enemies.

The Cape Ron has durable fabric. It's very soft. The tie strings are easy to use. There's grease splatter. Boom, apron. Unexpected dinner visit from LaStat. Boom, Cape! Yeah, I'm more mine last weekend, right? I'm waking pancakes. Of course you did. Yeah, and I flipped it around. My son now assumes I have the powers of levitation. So whether you're a superhero, a vampire, or just a dad with a barbecue and a flare for the dramatic, you need caprons.

We love this product. You will too. and right now you can get two Capron's for the price of one. So go to caprons.com slash cult to order yours today. That's caprons.com slash cult. C-A-P-E-R-O-N-S, Kaperons.com slash cult. Cook like a human. Live like a vampire. Hi, I'm Julia Cowley, a retired FBI profiler and host of the True Crime Podcast,

The Consult, Real FBI Profilers. If you're fascinated with true crime and criminal profiling, Then join us as we discuss real cases and examine the behavior exhibited before, during, and after the commission of the crime. You can listen to the consult wherever you get your podcasts. It's as close as it gets to being in the room with the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit. After a full decade in this strange vampire world cult, Celeste had finally put around her neck the proverbial garlic to ward off the vener. vampires. And why garlic, you ask? I did not. In many Eastern European traditions, garlic was used to ward off evil spirits and disease.

So people would hang garlic in doorways, they'd wear it, they'd rub it on their skin. Why? Because garlic does have antimicrobial properties. See, back then, if something helped prevent illness, people assumed it had supernatural powers as well. So, Garland, Horlick, Hordes Off Vampires. I'm really happy to say that one of the good things that came out of the insanity of 2025 was that I did reconnect with some people who I had lost touch with, who are, again, beautiful, warm, wonderful people with whom I shared a lot of closeness in my 20s. And so it's really healing to be able to reconnect with them and to have them validate my experience.

And I think just being able to articulate all of this as a 39th. year old as opposed to a traumatized 24-year-old, people from the past are hopefully better able to understand where I'm coming from on what I went through. And that's been really powerful and really awesome. So I'm very grateful for that. So I had already studied cults quite a lot, part of my philosophy undergrad, but it was philosophy and comparative religion. So I had kind of a lot of the intellectual framework, I guess, to start looking at things through that lens. And, you know, like so many of us, I'm a perpetual true crime girlies. So I was also absorbing a lot of like true crime cult documentary content.

And I started to write some stuff about my experiences. And I published an essay about this that was picked up by like a small Australian magazine. And I started to use the term cult to describe it. And it's a difficult term to use. because as we discussed, like a lot of people would disagree and they would say, you know, well, is it really a cult? It was all on the internet. But when you look at it, yeah, the anatomy of occult is there. And I think being able to put that label on it and look at it through that lens, it did help me start to put things psychologically where they belonged. Like I said, it's still a process of deprogramming because a lot of me does feel obliged to, to take responsibility for my own actions. I have to take accountability for the fact that I remained in this space and I invested in it and I pushed for it and I wanted it to be real.

But I think I have a little bit of work to do still to not blame myself for how things went down. And it took me so long to recognize that 15-year-old me was a child. Like, yeah, I was a kid who was groomed and taken a... advantage of, I have to then unpack that and sit with that and that's heavy and it's disempowering, right? Even though it happened 20 years ago, it's disempowering. So I'll be doing that for a while, probably. And, you know, when I pressed post on that video, there was that gut sync moment where I was like, oh my God. I was like, TikTok's going to come from me so hard. And they're going to tell me I was an

idiot and I'm going to get like flamed and it's going to be terrible. And instead, the total opposite it happened and I've been so blessed to connect with so many people, not just people I knew, but people who had similar experiences in different ways who have said to me, thank you for saying something. And that's been like absolutely priceless. And I think that's why I'm still talking about it so many years later, even though obviously I've moved on with my life. I have a very beautiful, rich, wonderful life. But it's so hard to not at least think about what happened to me because it shaped the course of my life. And with that, Celeste had fully driven the stake right through the heart of the vampire cult.

Why the stake through the heart, you ask? Again, I did not. Because in Eastern European vampire legends, people believe that corpses would rise from the grave if they died suddenly, or they were suspected of being cursed, or true story, if people just didn't like them. It's true. So they would quite literally pound a wooden stake through the chest that would physically pin the corpse to the ground or the coffin. So if the corpse did, in fact, come back to life,

it wouldn't go anywhere. It was still pinned to the ground. Another fantastic cult metaphor. Yeah, right? Pins you to the ground when you die. You can't get up, even when you're dead. For the cult, you're still pinned to the ground. That's why you have to be.

deep program in order to get that wooden stake out, everybody. Yep. And that's part of the reason that Celeste still loves the supernatural. So I still love everything spooky and horror and Gothic. I mean, it's definitely still my vibe, but I still enjoy the works of Anne Rice. It can be triggering to engage with, but it's also Anne Rice changed my life. I wouldn't have the life I have right now if it wasn't for Anne Rice. I'm still me.

They didn't take away the me of it all. I just managed to disentangle from their clutches. My mom and I have a good relationship. She knew before I started making the videos that this had been my experience, but I don't think she really knew the extent of it. And now she's, you know, I think she's just really proud of me. She said, how good that you're able to have gone through this experience and maybe turn it into something that's valuable,

not just for you, but for other people. So that's been really nice. So, yeah, I went to graduate school. I graduated with my MFA and poetry in 2014, 2015, got sober in 2020. That was really great. The other side of sobriety, life is phenomenal. Highly recommend.

Changed my life for the better. And I'm in a beautiful relationship with someone I adore and care about deeply. and we've been together for two years. He's my favorite person in the whole world, so we have a beautiful relationship. I have wonderful friends who support and love me. We go on fantastical adventures.

I have my dream job. I've run my own business. Everything that I ever, ever wanted it to be. I'm not a vampire. That's the only part. That's not exactly what I wanted, but everything else, you know. And that is Celeste Mott's story.

A story. About vampires. But not really about vampires at all. Yeah. Because you take away the fangs, you take away the Anrise cosplay, you take away the caprons. Still a great idea. I'm going to see if there are caprons. The caprons do not fucking exist.

You can get a cape. You can get an apron. You can spend $25 on a cape and you can spend $25 on an apron. and shipping for each one or you can get a capron. It does both. So like Tyler was saying, if you take away the capron,

you're left with something pretty familiar, at least to us on this show. Yes, power, control, manipulation, weird sex, which is really about power. And no, this wasn't happening on some compound in Utah or Mexico or Arizona. This was happening on dial-up in chat rooms, after school, in bedrooms. Which honestly makes it far creepier because it means that it can happen literally anywhere.

So Celeste, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. You are wonderful. Seriously, thank you for sharing. Your story was great to edit. It was one of the easier ones I've had to edit, honestly. It was really your great storyteller. Thank you for sharing that wild story with us. You can find Celeste on social media. All of the links to her are in the show notes. Yeah, she's a witch, and she's a tarot reader, and she's a poet. She's a wonderful writer. She's kind of cool.

I looked her up. She's pretty badass. She wears great glasses. She's out there living her life. She's telling her story. Not in chat rooms with fake vampires anymore. Julie, I'm sorry. I'm still stuck on Julie.

I need a full visual on Julie. Please. She's Canadian. Yeah, she's just a kind Canadian. saying, oh, sorry, I brought you into a cult. Now I've offended the Canadians. Which just proves kind of anyone can be a cult leader. And let this be a tale of caution.

Because today, most experts agree that recruitment into cults now starts mostly online. Cults are increasingly using social media, gaming platforms, and AI to recruit members, often hiding behind wellness or self. Self-help facades, et cetera. They're also specifically targeting and recruiting minors. Just like Celeste, they're targeting, they're coursing, and exploiting them through public forums like Discord or Roblox. You have kids. This shit's real. It's scary.

Predators have much more access today to recruit than the cults of the 70s that had to travel to college campuses or knock door to door. So yes, question things, guys. Do your research. Look into it. Maybe don't immediately trust. that random online life coach. Or the wellness influencer who thinks you're special. And maybe know who your kids are talking to online. Because it might not be who you think it might be. After all, it could be a 68-year-old Canadian military vet.

Pretending to be a hot vampire. Fucking Julie. We'll be back next week with a very interesting, I don't know, could we call it a love story even? About Jehovah's Witnesses and Michael Jackson. What is somebody? I want to say what? And I felt like God was watching and God knew my heart.

And I was here to mentor Michael Jackson as a Jehovah's Witness. And really, I had a crush that was much bigger than my desire to convert him. And I didn't know what to do with those feelings. Wasan a cult is written, hosted, produced by fucking Julie. Me, Julie, Liz, Iyacuzi. Me, Liz, fucking Julie Ayacuzzi. And me, fucking Laila. Me some.

Kamah Tyler. Sound design and mix and edit and all of that. Stays up like a vampire to make us sound good. It's still Rob, the Ohio-Australia Para. Rob Perth. Rob Perth. Thousands of free movies and TV shows. You swear.

If I'm lying, I'm dying. This is the mindset. Free. This is the mantra. Free. This is the... Titanic, Dream Girls and Gladiator. And TV shows like Survivor,

SpongeBob SquarePants, The Fairly Odd Parents and Ghosts. Pluto TV is always free. Hazzo! Pluto TV. Stream now. Pay never.