The Deadliest Cults To Ever Exist

Cults are a wellspring of never-ending fascination. How could it be, many wonder, that people so easily fall prey to the sway of nonsensical rhetoric babbled by charismatic leaders? How could it be that cult victims don't see directly through the oh-so obvious veneer of psychological manipulation and self-deception? The thing is — shared beliefs, learned behavioral norms, leaders whom people follow, group identifiers like clothing and hair: In an everyday context we call these things "culture." Maybe that's why cults are so terrifying.

However, as the Cult Education Institute explains, cults go much further than simple peer pressure and are vastly more harmful. Slavish devotion to dogma, an absolute authoritarian leader, abuse of members who threaten to step out of line, and more: Cults have specific hallmarks that differentiate them from millennia-old religious traditions or the harmless interests of fans of music, sports, certain IPs, etc.

And while cults have no doubt existed as long as humanity in some form or another, the modern conception of a "cult" only cohered in the 20th century – a very minor slice of human history. The word "cult" popped up in English in the 1600s and its definition evolved since then. Modern cults dot the entire world, like the New Apostolic Church in France with over 7 million members, Zhushenjiao (the Lord God cult) in China active since the late '90s, and Scientology in Germany — as it's classified there. Some cults are just a nuisance to authorities. Some, though, are legitimately deadly.

The events at Jonestown, Guyana in 1978 mark the People's Temple cult as one of the deadliest — if not the deadliest — in modern history. Back then, 900-plus people died in a mass murder-suicide in a jungle compound headed by preacher suit-clad, sunglasses-wearing preacher Jim Jones. To this day it's still the largest, single "non-natural" cause of mass American deaths. 

On the surface, Jones established the Peoples Temple under noble pretenses in Indianapolis in the 1950s as a progressive-minded congregation based on non-racial segregation. Jones moved to California in 1965 out of fear of nuclear war and gained a greater following that funded the establishment of his utopian, agrarian commune in Jonestown in 1974. There he preached a mixture of evangelicalism fused with direct social commentary.

Jones had some profound sexual hang-ups, and as Rolling Stone cites, called himself "the only heterosexual on the planet" — women included — amidst compensating pretenders. Jones also claimed to be the father of follower Grace Stoen's son and took the child with him to Jonestown, where he refused to give him back for fear of losing power in the eyes of his flock. With this as the apparent impetus, Jones ordered his commune to drink Flavor-aid mixed with cyanide, an act that killed almost everyone at Jonestown and gave us the phrase, "Drink the Kool-aid." Jones himself was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head, either from suicide or murder by his nurse, Annie Moore.

Colonia Dignidad — "Colony of Dignity" in Spanish — ranks high on the list of historical, lethal cults. Formed in 1961 by former Nazi soldier and evangelical preacher Paul Schäfer south of Santiago, Chile, Colonia Dignidad was imagined as a self-sufficient, utopian commune built to resemble an idyllic Bavarian village. The American Scholar says that it was large and wealthy enough to have its own hydroelectric plant, two airstrips and an airplane, bakeries, stables, mills, and more. But within its walls things quickly turned to domination, torture, and child abuse.

According to the BBC, about 300 Chileans and Germans lived in Colonia Dignidad at its height. They were not allowed to leave, were surveilled by guards in watchtowers, and per Deutsche Welle, endured regular beatings and forced labor. Family members were kept separate from each other and children were subjected to sexual abuse at the hands of Schäfer and his henchmen Hartmut Hopp, as the European Center for Constitutional Human Rights explains. By the 1970s when Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet came into power, Colonia Dignidad became one of his concentration camps and about 100 people were murdered there.

After Pinochet fell out of power, Schäfer was arrested in Argentina in 2005, convicted of serial pedophilia, and died in prison in 2010, per the BBC. Colonia Dignidad lives on today as the tourist site "Village Bavaria." Some of its original inhabitants still live there because "it is the only home they have ever known." In 2019 Germany decided to pay reparations to the cult's victims.

Aum Shinrikyo came to fame in recent decades in no small part thanks to its hefty, long-bearded, microphone-wielding leader Chizuo Matsumoto. As the United States Department of Justice says, Matsumoto — who went by the name Shoko Asahara — formed Aum Shinrikyo ("Supreme Truth") in 1986 as a blend of Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Taoism. The Japanese government very unwisely recognized it as an official religion in 1989, which paved the way for its prominence and legitimacy. The cult gained tens of thousands of followers worldwide, particularly through talks at universities, tried its hand at gaining political power and failed, and along the way mutated into a doomsday cult, per the BBC. 

By 1993 Aum Shinrikyo had received about $30 million from supporters, which funded its development of chemical weapons. After a failed gas attack on the Japanese parliament, the cult turned to Tokyo's subways. In what was categorically a domestic bioterrorism attack, cultists left bags of Sarin gas — a nerve agent developed by Nazi Germany — on subway cars at five different stations along three lines at the same time in 1995, per the BBC. Thirteen people died and a staggering 5,800 were injured. 

Thirteen members of Aum Shinrikyo were executed, including Matsumoto in 2018. But the cult lives on under a different moniker, Aleph, which it adopted in 2000, and also spawned a splinter group, Hikari no Wa. Both groups have been designated "dangerous religions," as the BBC explains, and have about 1,500 members combined.

Unlike the other cults on this list, the Order of the Solar Temple took cues from ritualistic esoteric orders like Rosicrucianism and the Knights Templar. Founded in 1984 when former Rosicrucian Joseph Di Mambro came across mystic Luc Jouret, the Order of the Solar Temple fancied itself a chivalric order based on secret initiations, prescription rituals, and a three-tier hierarchy that started out with loosey-goosey seminars about spirituality and ramped up from there, per New Religious Movements. It also fused Christian imagery with typical cult fare like cosmic journeys and spiritual perfection, and spread through communities in Switzerland, Canada, and France. By 1990 the cult adopted the name "Order of the Solar Temple," as SwissInfo explains.

Much like Aum Shinrikyo, the early '90s saw the Order of the Solar Temple turn apocalyptic. Like the future Heaven's Gate cult in 1997, the Order of the Solar Temple became preoccupied with some impending, critical, celestial "transit." And also like Heaven's Gate, the cult turned to suicide to try and ensure that they'd leave Earth at the right time. But as New Religious Movements says, they did so in the most violent way possible, stabbing, shooting, smothering, drugging, and even burning each other in communities in Switzerland, Canada, and France. Seventy-four people died in this way from October 1994 to March 1997. One group of 16 individuals in the forested French countryside even fulfilled their murder-suicide pact in such a way where their bodies were discovered burned and lying on the ground in a star formation.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh — aka, "Osho" — is widely known and still followed the world over now, 34 years after this death in 1990, especially in India. He was even the topic of a six-episode 2018 Netflix series, "Wild, Wild Country." Financial Express describes him as a "godman, mystic, and philosopher" before hailing his "progressive attitude towards sexuality." Similarly, Fair Observer praises him for being a "a maverick spiritual teacher" who "urged individuals to break free from the shackles of dogma and herd mentality." Also, as Vice explains, his followers poisoned 751 people in The Dalles, Oregon, in 1984 in an act of domestic bioterrorism.

Starting as a traveling guru in India, Britannica explains that Rajneesh preached what many people want to hear: Do what you want. In the 1970s Rajneesh went global and by 1981 he had a commune in Oregon. He amassed so much money that he allegedly owned over 90 Rolls-Royces and funded a $10 million festival in 1984. The same year his followers poisoned salad bars across The Dalles, Oregon with salmonella in a bizarre attempt to influence local elections. Forty-five people were hospitalized, but no one died. Outside Online explains that Rajneesh's followers also sent poisoned chocolate to politicians, flubbed an assassination attempt of a U.S. attorney, and didn't really understand the difference between "free love" and rape. Given the scope and size of Rajneesh's following, their volatile behavior and potential for violence, his cult makes this list.

One cult on this list stands out from the rest for its explosive end: the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas in 1993, headed by David Koresh. As Vox explains, Koresh didn't found the Branch Davidians, but he did come to control the group after joining it in 1981. Considering himself a prophet and renaming himself from his birth name, Vernon Howell, into a name that referenced biblical kings, Koresh inculcated his cult with fire-and-brimstone apocalyptic furor for years. So when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms attempted a "dynamic entry" into the Branch Davidian home on February 28, 1993 on reports of illegal weapons possession, as The Conversation recounts, it seemed completely natural for the Branch Davidians to take up arms and meet their promised apocalypse head-on.

A firefight broke out between the Branch Davidians and members of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms on the day in question. Six of the former and four of the latter died from gunfire. At this point the FBI took over the operation and escalated things by bringing in a tank, military-grade gear, and tear gas. They sieged the compound for 51 days as media outlets looked on. When the FBI finally assaulted the Branch Davidian compound a fire broke out and 76 Branch Davidians died, including 20 children and two in utero. Per the Roanoke Times, the FBI claimed that Koresh's second-in-command, Steve Schneider, shot Koresh in the head during the siege when Koresh tried to flee.

We're going to end this article with 1997's Heaven's Gate, a cult that we mentioned earlier and which reads like a greatest hits of stock cult features: a falsely idyllic commune, apocalyptic fever, a syncretic blend of Christian evangelicalism meets New Age mumbo-jumbo, and finally mass suicide. Like Jim Jones' People Temples, the mass suicide happened via poison, in this case phenobarbital mixed with apple sauce and chased with vodka. Thirty-nine people died, including cult leader Marshall Applewhite.

Heaven's Gate differs from its cousin cults because of its focus on astronomy, particularly the Hale-Bopp comet traveling through our solar system at the time and set to pass Earth in March, 1997. As History.com explains, Applewhite preached that the comet cloaked a spacecraft that would beam up the souls of his cult members if they timed their deaths just right. In so doing, they would "graduate to the Kingdom of Heaven and their exalted alien bodies" and avoid death via Earth's inevitable apocalypse.

Besides a focus on UFOs and vague space spirituality, Applewhite advocated abstinence to the point where several of its male members underwent voluntary castration. Applewhite himself hadn't formed the cult, but was recruited into it back in 1972 by his nurse, Bonnie Lu Nettles, who joined him in resettling 20 other members from Oregon to Colorado. The cult came into prominence in the '90s thanks to a set of farewell videos recorded by its followers.