These are the most dangerous cult leaders!
Cults are a point of morbid fascination for us humans, and this intense curiosity mostly stems from the dramatic and often tragic impacts of these organizations on individuals and societies.
But cults are not something that just appeared overnight. All of them have a charismatic person behind them. Those who created the radicalized religious beliefs most cults are based on are known today as cult leaders.
This leader is one of the core components of a cult, and the immense power these self-proclaimed deity-like figures had over people is something that still makes us wonder about our very own human nature.
What made them so powerful? Why were people blindly following them? Why did most of them carry out strange or even heinous acts that are hard to describe in words?
These questions are the main subject of many documentaries and true crime series even today, and this is why we are going to talk about some of the most terrifying cult leaders in history.
1. Jim Jones
Can you remember the Peoples Temple? If this doesn’t ring a bell, what about the Jonestown Massacre? This is one of the most infamous mass murder-suicides in history, and all of it was led by no other than Jim Jones, one of the cult leaders who orchestrated one of the strangest and, at the same time, darkest events in American history.
The Peoples Temple started as a religious cult formed of people who were mesmerized by the “powers” of the Crete, Indiana, native Jim Jones. He was well known in this circle as a prophet who had mind-reading abilities and was also able to perform successful faith healings.
The mission of this cult was to create an egalitarian society that had no problems of class or race. This discourse became incredibly popular before the early 1970s in the left-liberal circles of California, and as you would expect, the number of the People’s Temple’s followers rose.
But more followers meant less crowd control, and the strategies of Jim Jones to keep its flowers in line became more and more concerning. From blackmailing and signing over their possessions to members getting beaten, he tried everything to keep them tied to the cult.
When his cult sparked the curiosity of the media, Jones decided that it was time to leave the States and find a more successful place. Guyana was his place of choice, and after a few altercations with California congressman Leo Ryan, who tried to uncover the truth about the Peoples Temple, the November 18, 1978 massacre took place.
Over 900 people drank a cocktail made from sedatives and cyanide and were killed. Some of them refused to do so, but they were forced. Jones, himself, was a casualty of the massacre after he took a gunshot to his head.
2. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
Maybe he was born in India, but this is the man who took over the United States in the 1980s. He is one of the cult leaders who experienced a religious awakening and decided that they should share this with the world.
In the beginning, he preached his beliefs in India, where he became a guru. His ideologies became more and more popular among the woke tourists from the West who visited India, and this is how he decided that taking money from them could be a good start for his business.
Rajneesh based his whole cult on the idea that people can get liberation and enlightenment through various sexual practices. Since many people were finding peace in these ideas, Bhagwan built an entire community where his followers had designated roles and everything was working as a business.
When Indian authorities became concerned about the growing cult, Rajneesh decided that it was time to find a better place for his community, and the whole cult moved to Oregon, where they built a whole town for themselves.
While many of his followers worked for months on end without compensation, Rajneesh enjoyed the money that he accumulated from donations and presents from cult members.
After a conflict with the local community in an attempt to decrease the local voter turnout so they could win the election, the cult poisoned the salads from more restaurants that were nearby their commune with salmonella.
3. Marshall Applewhite
Applewhite is the founder of Heaven’s Gate, a cult that believed a spaceship that was following the Hale-Bopp comet would pick them up, and as a result, they would become part of a higher plane of this existence.
The date this comet was the closest to the Earth was March 22, 1997. As you would expect, since we are talking about cult leaders, things turned dark very quickly. On March 26, 1997, Applewhite and other 38 members of Haven’s Gate were found dead in a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe.
All 39 of them were dressed in brand-new identical black shirts and sweat pants and were also wearing new black-and-white Nike Decades. In the pockets of each individual were found a five-dollar bill and three-quarters.
Police ruled out that this was a mass suicide, and all of the members drank a mix of drugs and applesauce. It all happened after the group gathered at a restaurant and had the last meal together. All ordered the same dish.
Applewhite was born in Texas in 1931, and before becoming the founder of this cult, he used to be a music teacher. Heaven’s Gate was a secluded group of people who believed in various UFO concepts and combined them with ideas from the Bible.
Recruits believed that the next step in their life would be to be biologically and chemically transformed into extraterrestrial beings, and then they would be transported into a spaceship.
4. Shoko Asahara
The event that made this man notorious and also one of the most dangerous cult leaders happened on March 20, 1995, when the members of Aum Shinrikyo, translated as “Supreme Truth,” released poisonous gas in five Tokyo subway trains. It all happened during the morning at rush hour, and 13 people were killed.
The targeted metro stations were in an area of Tokyo where many Japanese government officials and Asahara believed that this would trigger a battle with the government. This never really happened, but innocent people were harmed, and some of them even passed away.
Asahara, or Chizuo Matsumoto, since this is his real name, was born into a poor family, and while he was still young, he lost part of his vision as a result of illness. Did this make him one of the scary cult leaders? Maybe, but there is no excuse to commit such crimes.
During the 1980s, he established his cult, a religious organization that combined ideas from the Bible, Buddhist and Hindu philosophies, and even prophecies of Nostradamus. Not long after, he began to claim that he could levitate and read minds. This made his followers admit him more and also attracted more members.
At the moment of the Tokyo subway attack, the cult had around 40.000 followers. 10.000 of them were in Japan, and surprisingly, the rest of the 30.000 were in Russia. After the attack, Asahara was caught by police somewhere near Mount Fuji, and he was arrested.
In 2004, he was sentenced to death, and in 2018, he was executed on July 6. His cult still exists today and is called Aleph. The number of followers is smaller, but the fact that these people still follow his teachings is a piece of evidence that this person was one of the most influential cult leaders that ever existed.
If you want to learn more about some of the most notorious cults, this book can be a good read: Cults: Inside the World’s Most Notorious Groups and Understanding the People Who Joined Them
You should also read: Jonestown: 7 Secrets of Jim Jones’ Shocking Cult
