50 True Stories Of People Who Fell Victim To Cults

A university friend joined a culty Christian church, married a man she met there, and had two kids. Then he killed her because she was going to leave him.

We are still friends with the kids (one of them just had her second child). The husband served several years in jail in Mexico (which is where he killed our friend) and from what I hear, is now living in Germany and practicing as a chiropractor (he was one before he killed our friend).

In college there was this girl I was really into who started hanging out with a small group of students, and I really really really wanted to sleep with her, so started hanging around that group too. I noticed the group was always happy, but in a robotic sense. Kind of like smiling, but no emotion behind it. It was really strange. We were invited to go to this coffee bar near the downtown area by a university, so we agreed. The whole atmosphere was weird. I don't like to be touched, but these weirdos started hugging us the moment we walked in and kissing us on the cheek as if we were long lost friends. The girl was soaking it all in, and immediately my brain says "This is a cult. What did my p***s do this time..." I didn't want to be rude so I stayed and things just got stranger and stranger. They talked about how they are small in numbers, but one day their numbers will grow and "Josh" will guide them to enlightment. She stayed with the group, and I never spoke to them ever again.

My mom. Left my family for a religious cult called House of Yahweh when I was only 3 or 4. My older siblings felt the abandonment more than me cause they were more aware. For me, it took a long time for it to sink in that mommy wasnt ever coming back. The hardest part was talking to her on the phone as a little kid. I'd ask her why she won't come back and she'd reply, "because I can't. I belong here. You can join me and visit me whenever you want. I 'miss' you." As time went on and I got older, I'd hear from her less and less. When I was around 8 or 9 I recognized that my dad had taken it the hardest out of all of us and I became really resentful of my mother. My older brothers vehemently despised her forgetting us. But then as I got older, became a teen and got my period is just really longed for her. I'd pray for her to return. My dad wouls always tell me to not be mad because it isn't her fault. She was brainwashed. She was kidnapped by other cult members. Was told that remaining with her family was evil and she needed to be cleansed. Absolved of all "sins of the flesh" or some bs like that. In my 20s I was in an a*****e relationship and reached out to her, asking her adv8ce, begging her to be a mother and save me. Instead she told me I had to make things work with my a*****e bf cause he was the one I lost my virginity to. I cut off contact after that. A few years ago, (about 8 years after cutting her off) her father passed away. No one in the family could contact her. I wish I hadn't cut her off. I said a lot of horrible things to her and made her cry. I wonder if she is still alive.

There was a family that went to the same public schools I did consisting of *six* girls and one boy, all quite close in age. They were all pretty attractive and notorious. My best friend ended up dating and then marrying one in college. That's when I found out that their parents birthed them all into some insane cult, but once they were all born they escaped somehow. The older children were never the same though. As my friend sadly found out, the emotional and psychological damage was too much and they ended up divorcing. She subsequently became a complete shut-in and disappeared.

He never told me specifically what went on in the cult, but I guess a central tenet was to produce as many babies as possible. And I'm assuming that the moment any girl was old enough to bear children the cult would make sure that played out. It was pretty sick.

I know a guy who used to fly jets in the Air Force.

He moved into acting in and making movies; still at it: remains popular from what I’ve seen. He’s high up in the cult leadership.

He got divorced a couple times and I don’t think his exes were too deep into the cult.

He’s a bit of a maverick.

A good portion of my family joined Remnant Fellowship, it’s the cult that was led by Gwen Shamblin. There is a doc about it on hbo max called: The Way Down, it’s about the cult as well as Gwens death. They basically starve themselves for god, there are more deranged cults, but I would say this qualifies. I haven’t had a relationship with any of them since they left. All of my cousins were essentially put into arranged marriages as soon as possible, and they all have 3+ kids.

Growing up my mom had a good friend with three kids who was navigating a troubled marriage. At the time she was a non-denominational christian- nothing particularly extreme. Apparently, she was diagnosed with treatable cancer and that caused her marriage to fully fall apart, and the International House of Prayer people caught her at her lowest point. She sold everything she had and moved her two younger children to Kansas City, leaving her eldest with her ex. If you don’t know about IHOP KC, it is an absolutely round the clock indoctrination station that demands people take “pray without ceasing” literally. She “homeschooled” the kids and put them in IHOP’s “youth ministry”, cut off contact to everyone outside the cult including her eldest child, and started working for the church for free. Last I heard, her kids got out, but the whole thing still gives me goosebumps.

All women in my immediate family.

I grew up Catholic but when I was around 12 y.o., my mother and grandmother got into conspiracy theories and spiraled down. From vaccines cause autism and Illuminati, to Hello Kitty being a satanic toy and fluoride in water and toothpaste allowing the government to mind control you.
They became also more fanatical in their beliefs and started going to church every single day, the house became full of Catholic imagery and books.

I started deconstructing in my late teen years and completely left when I heard that during covid, the priests were telling people to not get vaxxed, to not wear masks, to organise secret masses during lockdown and that the sole purpose of covid was to destroy Christianity. When my mother found out I left and no longer lived by Christian rules, she told me it would be better if I was dying of a terminal illness than if I was living in sin 💀.

Fell victim? Hell, I went to high school with a kid who started his own semi successful cult.

His wife and him were "twin flames" and at some point decided they could pull the same grift them selves. At one point they were holding retreats at a Costa Rica resort and eventually they bought the place. After a certain amount of time they pivoted to end of time Christian and wanted to start a society by selling plots on the resort.

Eventually they had to sell the resort. Last tabs I could find on them they had moved to Huntington Beach, where I'm sure they are working on a new grift.

I was hired by a small commercial and residential electrical company in an area with a very well known active cult. Since it was a small and new-ish shop I wasn’t expecting 40 hrs a week.

I show up at the shop one day and am told that I’m working on “the land” one day. I should have mentioned, it was a gated and fenced property that was at least three acres but based on what I found out about these people who knows. Anyways I was tasked with digging out of the ground large chunks of concrete and hauling them out to the middle of the woods. Also, digging in my area might be the hardest digging in the states. We had to use a couple large chunks of wood to build a manual crane to get the blocks out of the holes we dug around them.

The land was pretty much untouched but they had people living all over their property in various types of dwellings and said they ran an animal rescue to explain the 20+ dogs, 4 or 5 cats (that I met), 10 goats, 4 donkeys, and countless birds.

I was bitten by a spider while working for them and simultaneously had my mild sciatica flair up so was kinda limping one day while digging “fence posts” for them and they called their doctor to come treat me. Turns out, their doctor is actually their livestock vet that I once had to let on the property to give some goats a shot that I was told was an antibiotic. They then proceeded to make me get naked and rubbed my legs, butt, and lower back with a weird silver-colored clay/mud and water mixture. Almost like a mask. They also only let us drink “glacial milk”, which according to them is the only water worth drinking. They said you can only harvest true glacial milk a few days every year, when the very first of the glacial runoff starts flowing so that you get all the minerals. It was the same color as the grey Gatorade flavor whatever it’s called but it was grainy and sedimentary so you had to shake it a lot.

They also had underground bunkers and a lot of weird posters paintings and signs.

I’m sorry that I’m not the best story teller but this is a taste of what I just experienced.