40 Shocking Cults From Around the World

In the 1800s, leader of the Celestia cult named Peter Armstrong gave 600 acres of land to God but the State of Pennsylvania took possession and sold it because the Almighty didn’t pay his taxes.

The Petropavlovka settlement in Russia is home to a cult named ‘Church of the Last Testament’, whose leader Sergei Torop believes he is Jesus. He has over 5,000 followers, who believe in aliens, suicide as acceptable and that the end of the world is imminent.

Adolfo Constanzo was a Mexican drug dealer and serial killer. He eventually he became the leader of his own cult ‘Narcosatanists.’ His followers believed he was a “dark wizard” and gave him the nickname ‘The Godfather’ (El Padrino). His cult was also said to be associated with the notable Gulf Cartel. He often performed ritual sacrifices on humans that involved boiling brains and bones in cauldrons full of blood.

Alexander of Abonoteichus was a roman era cult leader who made people believe a sock-puppet was a snake god. He was so influential that even the emperor joined his cult. A few skeptics who opposed him were Christians, epicureans, and writer Lucian of Samosata, who tried to expose him as a fraud.

The inverted cross only became associated with Satan in the 19th Century when a French cult leader was accused of holding erotic Black Masses. He believed the inverted crucifix symbolised the 'Reign of Love' as opposed to the 'Reign of Suffering’ of the traditional cross.

Adnan Oktar is a popular Islamic creationist cult leader. He has a very popular tv show (Building Bridges) in Turkey on which he is surrounded by Versace-wrapped blondes called kittens that call him master and talk about Kim Kardashian.

Roch Thériault was a self-proclaimed prophet of a 70s Canadian doomsday cult named Ant Hill Kids. He maintained multiple wives and concubines, impregnating all female members as a religious requirement, and fathering 26 children. He once tried to cure a woman’s stomach ache by jamming a plastic tube up her rectum to perform a crude enema with molasses and olive oil. He then cut her open and ripped part of her intestines off with his bare hands. She died from the inflicted damage. Claiming to have the power of resurrection, Thériault bored a hole into her skull with a drill and then had other male members ejaculate into the cavity. She did not return to life.

Hulda Golemgeske Hoefs Ziebell was a cult leader during the Great Depression forced her adherents to only drink orange juice, milk, and honey, believing solid foods were of the devil.

Maximilien Robespierre who was one of the leaders of the French Revolution, was also the founder of a form of Deism “The Cult of the Supreme Being.” He intended for it to become the state religion of France.

The Oneida silverware company was started by a religious cult that practiced promiscuous sex. They practiced free love and would have menopausal women train the young males how to not ejaculate during sex as a method of abstinence. Their leader, John Humphrey Noyes, reserved the virgin girls for himself and his cronies. They also made silverware. Eventually the cult dissolved and became a silverware company that is still in business today.