Followers of Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh purchased the 64,000-acre Big Muddy Ranch in Oregon in 1981, incorporating it the…
Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles founded what became Heaven’s Gate in the early 1970s, teaching that Earth was about to…
The Branch Davidians descended from a 1950s split within the Seventh-day Adventist Church. David Koresh took over leadership in the…
Peoples Temple was founded by Jim Jones in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1955, initially presenting itself as a progressive Christian congregation…
Charles Manson assembled a group of mostly young followers in California in the late 1960s, drawing on a mix of…
John Humphrey Noyes founded the Oneida Community in upstate New York in 1848, built on his religious belief in “Perfectionism”…
Worship of Dionysus (Bacchus to the Romans) centered on ecstatic ritual — wine, music, dance, and altered states of consciousness…