Discordianism emerged from the U.S. counterculture of the 1960s as a parody religion, but later academic study has suggested that it functions as a “virtual religion” or a genuine spiritual movement for some adherents. It is centered on Eris, the Greek goddess of strife and discord and has been described as a religion, a new… Continue reading

Anthony Levandowski was born in Belgium in 1980 and moved to California in the mid-1990s. As a teenager, he developed websites for local businesses and engaged in small-scale commerce. In 1998, he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley to study industrial engineering and operations research. During his freshman year, he founded an IT services… Continue reading

The DayLife Army was a high-control group that emerged in the early 2010s and used social media platforms to recruit young artists and musicians. Its development offers an example of how online subcultures, including the “Weird Facebook” scene, were used to build tightly controlled social organizations. The group was founded by Eben “Wiz-EL” Carlson and… Continue reading

The case of Camdan Jerrard Davis first gained public attention in late 2023, when it began circulating widely within online investigative communities. The narrative was introduced primarily through a series of videos published by YouTuber MamaMax. In these videos, MamaMax alleged that Davis was the leader of an organized cult that targeted children and young… Continue reading

The Cult of the Unknown Tongues was a local religious movement in eastern Kentucky that drew national attention in 1933 after the ritual killing of its founder’s mother. John Mills, born in 1899, was one of 14 children and left school after eighth grade. He worked as a farmer and later as a gas line… Continue reading

Cthulhu is a fictional cosmic entity first introduced by American author H. P. Lovecraft in the short story “The Call of Cthulhu,” published in1928. The character is classified as a Great Old One and is central to the Lovecraftian cosmic horror tradition known as the Cthulhu Mythos. Lovecraft described Cthulhu as a massive, green entity… Continue reading

The origins of CrossFit date to 1996, when former gymnast Greg Glassman began developing a high-intensity fitness approach that combined elements of gymnastics, Olympic weightlifting, and calisthenics. Glassman had created his first signature workout at age 16. In 2000, he formally incorporated CrossFit, Inc. with Lauren Jenai. In 2001, the pair opened a physical gym… Continue reading

The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSA) was a survivalist organization active during the 1970s and early 1980s. Its origins date to 1971, when James Ellison founded a Baptist congregation called the Zarephath-Horeb Community Church in Pontiac, Missouri. In 1976, Ellison purchased a 224-acre property along Bull Shoals Lake in Marion… Continue reading

The Commandment Keepers Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation of the Living God Pillar & Ground of Truth, Inc. is a Black Hebrew religious organization founded in Harlem in 1919. The congregation teaches that people of Ethiopian descent are among the lost tribes of Israel and identifies King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba as ancestral figures. It… Continue reading

Nathan Lee Chasing His Horse, also known as Nathan Chasing Horse, is a Sicangu Lakota actor and a subject of legal proceedings concerning multiple sexual offenses. He is also alleged to be the leader of a small sect called The Circle. Chasing Horse was born on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota and is… Continue reading

The Church of the SubGenius originated in the late 1970s as a parody religion critiquing belief systems including Christianity, New Age spirituality, and commercialism. The organization officially formed as the SubGenius Foundation and was co-founded by Ivan Stang (Douglas St. Clair Smith) and Philo Drummond (Steve Wilcox). Stang serves as a leader and publicist and… Continue reading

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM), also known as Pastafarianism (a portmanteau of “pasta” and “Rastafarianism”) is a satirical faith commenting on religion and public policy. Its adherents describe it as “a real, legitimate religion, as much as any other.” The movement began in the United States in 2005 as a public response… Continue reading

Bernhardt “Ben” Klassen founded the Church of the Creator in 1973, later changing its name to the World Church of the Creator following litigation by another unrelated sect with the same name. It is also known as part of the Creativity Alliance, a grouping of atheistic white supremacist sects that promotes white separatism, anti-Christianity, antisemitism,… Continue reading

The Church of Sacrifice was a short-lived death cult that may not have actually existed. Clementine Barnabet, an African American woman who became lined to a series of unsolved axe murders in Louisiana and southeastern Texas, claimed in a confession to have been acting on the orders of such a sect, but its existence and… Continue reading

The Church of Euthanasia was launched in Boston in 1992 by Chris Korda, an artist and musician. Though Korda insisted that the church was a serious new religion, most aspects of its publicity and activities had overtones of performance art and it is unclear how sincere Korda was in this assertion. Korda was born in… Continue reading

The idea of a “Church of AI” has emerged as a cultural development in which people attribute religious or spiritual meaning to advanced artificial intelligence models, particularly Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT. The phenomenon reflects how these systems’ conversational fluency and emotional responsiveness can shape users’ beliefs, sometimes reinforcing existing psychological or spiritual… Continue reading

John C. Kim, known to followers as “Grandmaster ‘Iron’ Kim,” founded the martial arts organization Chung Moo Quan after emigrating from South Korea to the United States in the early 1970s. He opened his first school in Westmont, Illinois, in 1973. Over time, the organization expanded under several names, including Chung Moo Doe and Oom… Continue reading

Eleven members of the Chundawat family of the Burari neighborhood of Delhi died in a group suicide on July 1, 2018. The incident was later formally ruled by police to be motivated by a shared psychotic disorder (folie à deux), but the investigation uncovered a complex, cultlike belief system rooted in a spiritual delusion that… Continue reading

Egon Cholakian has presented himself as a distinguished professional with a wide-ranging career spanning international tax law, particle physics, and national security. His resume, as described by him, includes service to multiple U.S. presidential administrations and prominent roles in both government and scientific research. At the same time, closer scrutiny of his claims reveals a… Continue reading

Norman “Snake” Brooks was the founder and leader of a communal group known as the Children of the Valley of Life. He first appeared in Eugene, Oregon, in the 1970s with several of his wives and followers. Brooks, originally from Austin, Texas, had a troubled past, claiming to have been a car thief before becoming… Continue reading

Elior Chen was a self-proclaimed rabbi and spiritual leader who became the central figure in one of Israel’s most notorious child abuse cases. He gathered a circle of followers in Jerusalem, within which he orchestrated the systematic abuse of eight minors. The brutality of the crimes, combined with Chen’s manipulation of religious authority, drew nationwide… Continue reading

Jorge Beltrão Negromonte da Silveira was a Brazilian serial killer and the founder of a sect he called “The Cartel.” Born in Portugal on December 14, 1961, he later moved with them to Pernambuco, Brazil. His early life was marked by instability and violence. As a young man, he was charged with murdering a 17-year-old… Continue reading

Christopher Cantelmo was an American biochemist and founder of Cantelmoism, a spiritual cult that gained most of its following through Reddit. A Yale University graduate, he worked for more than three decades in the pharmaceutical industry. He became known for claiming that he had cured his brain cancer with the psychedelic drug Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a… Continue reading

Call of the Shofar was a spiritual development organization founded by Steven (Simcha) Frischling. The group operated for several years with little public attention before receiving extensive media coverage starting in late 2013. The ensuing debate centered on the group’s methods and whether they were compatible with Orthodox Jewish law. Frischling, who had a background… Continue reading

Bokononism is a fictional religion created by author Kurt Vonnegut in his 1963 novel Cat’s Cradle. The religion, which posits the ultimate futility of life and the need for religion to provide comfort in a universe without meaning, freely admits that it offers “harmless untruths,” with its writer proclaiming, “All of the true things that… Continue reading