“Something Bad Is Happening There”: 30 Weird And Cult-Like Towns Across The USA

Cairo, IL is creepy af. At one time it was a very important commercial center because of its river location. Now it’s practically deserted and has really creepy energy. You can still see glimpses of how it might have been bustling and charming back in the day.

Crestone, Colorado.

It's easily the most bizarre place I've been to in the US. Lots of shoe-less hippies, "spiritualists", cult members/followers, and the like. Just a weird vibe all over. Some of the people are nice, there are some good artists there, but there's also a main square/park where you'll almost always see these desperate, strung out people with an overloaded Geo Prizm just sitting in the park like "well I'm here, what next?" Realizing they just drove across the country with $2 and a dream of getting high every day and chanting only to find a still expensive Colorado weirdo town of barely a couple hundred people, nowhere for them to live, and no jobs to be found. There's a weird, tents only "neighborhood" there that's really something to see. There's also an alien landing site nearby, or at least that's what it claims to be.

Redding, CA and the Bethel Supernatural Ministry Cult. Redding is situated at the northern most point of the Sacramento Valley in NorCal. For the past 20~ years, the Bethel Mega Church (11,000+ as regular attending members) has slowly taken over the town with their vast amount of money and influence. They control most seats in local government, own the only convention center/entertainment venue in the county, taken control over most large city-wide events through the McConnell Foundation, bought up most of the city's single room/studio housing to house international members, and contribute almost nothing to the city outside their interests of bringing about the eventual resurrection of Jesus and a fully Christian-led country. This mega "church" claims to grow back fingers, have angel feathers and angel dust appear from thin air to rain down on the congregants, focuses on creating musical media for recruitment (huge part of the Christian music apparatus in America), bring babies back to life, and run their Bethel School of *Supernatural Ministry* as if it was a legitimate college. Just some of the weird s**t: **-Grave soaking** ("...the school garnered criticism for a practice among some students termed "grave soaking" or "grave sucking", where they would lie on the graves of deceased revivalists in the belief that they would absorb the deceased's anointing from God.") **-Prayer for resurrection** ("Bethel Church gained national press coverage in December 2019 over a campaign to pray for the resurrection of a worship leader's deceased two-year-old daughter. The mother, Kalley Heiligenthal, a recording artist with Bethel Music and worship leader at the church, posted to Instagram asking for her large social media following to pray that her daughter Olive Alayne would be raised from the dead. This spawned a global hashtag with thousands of posts.") **-CHANGED Movement** ("The CHANGED Movement was started by Bethel pastors Elizabeth Woning and Ken Williams in 2019 for people who "once identified as LGBTQ+ and through encounters with the love of Jesus, have experienced His freedom in their lives" and is led by the Equipped to Love ministry at Bethel. Both Woning and Williams used to identify as homosexual. Woning claims she changed after 18 months when "the Lord was able to displace my sense of belonging as a lesbian with my sense of belonging as a daughter of God". Williams credits his change to undergoing five years of weekly therapy which he claims resolved his same-sex attraction as well as addiction to masturbation and pornography.") -**Lay on hands** (They send out young members (16-20~) to ask strangers if they can lay hands on them in prayer to heal them. This isn't little boo-boos either. My own wife is in a wheel chair, and the amount of times they've offered than been astonished that she didn't leap from the chair is astounding.) Examples: 1. "2008 lawsuit over attempted faith healing: In 2008, a man fell down a 200-foot (61 m) cliff in Redding after drinking with a group at the top. The two others that were with him, including one student at the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry, believed he was dead and tried to find him for six hours in order to raise him back to life, rather than calling 9-1-1. The man survived, but was paralyzed from the fall, and later unsuccessfully sued the student in the group.[44] The incident is often brought up as a criticism of the church's teachings, which includes that believers may raise people from the dead with prayer." 2. "Student activities in Redding As a part of the student's education, they get assignments, such as to find strangers in Redding to heal. News articles report that students seek out people in wheelchairs and crutches to pray for in grocery stores and parking lots. Reportedly, the students are banned from prophesying to tourists around the Sundial Bridge after incidents and they have similarly been kicked out of local stores. Another regular practice is "treasure hunts", where they believe God gives them clues that match people they are to find and attempt to heal or prophesy to." -- There is so much more that goes into all this, including being complete sh**s during COVID, but reading the wiki along with some other articles shows just how far the spread their influence through back-door dealings and inserting themselves into local politics and the police department. The only funny thing about it all is that the Qanon/MAGA people and the Bethel people have been at each other's throats the past couple years in trying to be the main power in the city/county. Between recalls, dubious dimissals of city council members, and naming themselves as mayor or city council, the two extremist groups have done nothing but make Redding an even worse s**t hole than it ever was before by competing for who can be the f*****g worst.

Clearwater, Florida

I had known it was the HQ for Scientology, but had never been there.

Last month, I was visiting family in Florida and my best friend lives a few towns over from Clearwater.  He took me to a place that entailed driving through downtown Clearwater. It is impossible not to notice that every building had brand new paint, all the shops looked sparking clean, and there was not a soul to be seen.

All the neighboring towns had hundreds of people milling about, but Clearwater looked like a ghost town.  It looked like the set of a Twilight Zone episode.

I am probably misunderstanding the assignment but Tonopah, Nevada. The Clown Motel, located next to the Tonopah Cemetery, is a popular place to stay because of all the reports of being haunted by "ghost clowns" and miners who were killed in the 1911 Belmont Mine Fire.

MollyKnope:
 
This is exactly what I thought of when I read the question.

We did a roadtrip from Reno to Las Vegas and stayed a night in Tonopah at the Clown Motel. We stopped at a bar to try to eat dinner and as soon as we walked in, the place went quiet and everyone just stared at us. They didn’t serve food, so we left, but we both thought it was a very odd thing. I’ve never felt so uncomfortable walking into a public place in my life.

We did stay in the “It Suite” with no issues, but we won’t ever be doing that again.

I’ve been through a few towns in eastern Ohio and western PA where I’ve seen an uncomfortably large number of lawn signs that’s just block text of a weird bible verse, not the ‘jesus loves you’ kind but the ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’ kind. By the seventh or eighth of them, I’m looking for the welcoming green of an interstate sign.

My husband was finance director for the county that included Colorado City and Hillsdale. He had some amazing stories about the fraud there. I accompanied him on a site visit. It was such a sorrowful, backward area. So many people living in the 1800’s. So many sad women and children. Since Warren Jeffs's incarceration, there has been a new influx of non-FLDS people and the regulations have replaxed. Women now hold positions in city governments.

Severy, Kansas. I grew up there. It was basically a ghost town then. 30 yrs later it looks like something out of a horror film. All of the houses are half falling apart. The school closed down and someone lives in it now. The lot where the hardware store burned down in like 97/98 is still vacant. The only grocery store that was in town closed. Both the small gas station/mechanic place and the truck stop just on the edge of the town all closed. The only thing open besides the government places like the post office, fire station and town hall is the junk yard. The co-op and maybe the bar. Other than that everything is closed. The whole "town" covers just one maybe 2 of were being generous square miles. The rest is all farmland. The entire town reaks of decay.

Mora, NM is pretty damn scary to outsiders. Lots of rural mountain towns that are isolated from tourists can be strange. I've spent alot of time in WV and Arkansas but rural NM is probably the most hostile place to outsiders I have been.

New Town Saint Charles Missouri. It looks like a Truman Show set. It's in the middle of a plane, surrounded by farmland. Imagine A UFO sliced and scooped a piece of a town up and dropped it somewhere. The edges of town just.. stop. The roads and sidewalks just stop at the edge. The "main street" has shops with living space above them. There's only a one lane road in and one lane road out of the town.