[SPEAKER_00]: Just to note, before we get into this week's episode of American Nightmares, I wanted to let you know this is a little longer episode than usual, and I did this on purpose.

[SPEAKER_00]: For a couple of reasons.

[SPEAKER_00]: One of which is that I'm dealing with some of my favorite stories from the season in this episode, but also because we'll be taking next week off while I'm packing up and getting ready to move the American Audities Museum.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I will be back with [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to start with the bad news.

[SPEAKER_00]: As you may know, belief in witches in the devil was not confined to Salem village or even the Massachusetts Bay colony in the 1600s.

[SPEAKER_00]: A passion for hanging and persecuting those believed to be in league with the devil swept through the colonies in those days, leading to many tragedies and deaths.

[SPEAKER_00]: The madness the Puritans introduced in that period drained America of its lust for religious mania and fanaticism for quite a few years to come.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was a somber period that followed guiding people into quiet, church denominations that refused to make waves, question authority, or introduce anything too daring into the daily lives of those who worked hard to adapt and survive in a difficult land.

[SPEAKER_00]: As time marched into the years of the 18th century, Americans were preoccupied with more bloody conflicts between European nations that had repercussions in the colonies, with the warfare independence from England, with building a new nation and then going to war again with England in 1812.

[SPEAKER_00]: The hardship, brutality, and war that followed over the next century and a half, sent the broken and the disillusioned in search of enlightenment.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the 1820s and 30s, religious excitement began to sweep the country, and soon, new churches, sex, and cults began to emerge.

[SPEAKER_00]: This new age would be dubbed the Great Awakening, and while none of these new groups can compare with the strictness of the Puritans, a devout belief in the [SPEAKER_00]: As did an unhinged belief in doomsday, they anti-Christ and the end of the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to American Nightmares, the podcast dedicated to America's history of horror.

[SPEAKER_00]: Through sinister tales of murder, madness, mayhem, spirits, scandals, and sins, I'll be presenting the origins of American terror, with true accounts of diabolical which is murderous madmen, haunted houses, death, and dying, and stories of revenge and despair that have been torn from the pages of our haunted past.

[SPEAKER_00]: as I'm sure you're aware from previous episodes where beginning our journey back in time with the mysterious figure that serves the source of so much of America's fear, the devil himself.

[SPEAKER_00]: American Nightmares is written performed and produced by Troy Taylor.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And thanks for joining me for episode five, fire, and brimstone.

[SPEAKER_00]: American society saw many changes in the first half of the 19th century and many of those changes affected the churches that had been established of the last 100 years or so.

[SPEAKER_00]: These churches were now facing a threat from emerging religious sex and from utopian movements that offered new ways for Americans to express their spiritual beliefs.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was also a steady stream of immigrants arriving on America's shore, who brought with them their own religious and cultural beliefs.

[SPEAKER_00]: And at the same time, people were starting to move west from the cities and towns that crowded the Atlantic coastline.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were seeking open spaces and unprecedented freedoms and opportunities that were offered in places like Ohio, Western Pennsylvania and Western New York.

[SPEAKER_00]: As America changed religion changed with it, the people had always been taught the way to a better life was through God, but new and emerging movements were offering spiritual revivals and the opportunity to be born again.

[SPEAKER_00]: They maintained that people could find their own deliverance from sin and damnation.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now this is a common religious teaching today, but at the time it was ground-breaking, [SPEAKER_00]: It differed completely from the Puritan and Calvinist beliefs of an earlier era, which said that all things were pre-ordained.

[SPEAKER_00]: But its focus was narrow, and anything that strayed from this fundamentalist belief system was considered, of course.

[SPEAKER_00]: the work of the devil.

[SPEAKER_00]: The eerie canal which opened in 1825 was instrumental in America's Westward movement.

[SPEAKER_00]: It provided the first direct east-west water route across New York from Albany to Buffalo.

[SPEAKER_00]: This new method of transportation meant improved services, more commerce, and an explosion of growth for the [SPEAKER_00]: Region cities and towns.

[SPEAKER_00]: More growth met more people in the region and it soon saw the birth of numerous social movements which included abolitionism, American abolitionism.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, fuck me.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right, we're going to do this over again.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to get it right this time starting with more growth.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: more growth met more people in the region, and it soon saw the birth of numerous social movements which included the fight for abolition and for women's rights, spiritualism which believed in communication with the dead and scores of religious groups, societies and cults.

[SPEAKER_00]: As the population of Western New York exploded, traveling ministers flock to the area, and founded a fertile place in which to plant their seeds of alternative beliefs.

[SPEAKER_00]: They actively sought to convert as many people as possible to evangelical Christianity in the new and growing communities.

[SPEAKER_00]: They preached fire and brimstone, hell and damn nation, and the end of days.

[SPEAKER_00]: Travelling circuit riders criss-crossed the hills and valleys with news of the Holy Spirit.

[SPEAKER_00]: I tender at ministers crossed and recross the region, traveling along hills and valleys spreading the word of God in the Holy Spirit itself.

[SPEAKER_00]: Tent revival meetings inspired a fanatical following from among the simple farmers and tradesmen.

[SPEAKER_00]: For days after the revivalists left town men and women would speak in tongues or fall to the ground in religious ecstasy.

[SPEAKER_00]: many reported visits from angels and spirits.

[SPEAKER_00]: Camp meetings could be wild and complicated affairs.

[SPEAKER_00]: They usually took place in a large open area, like a forest blade or a clearing.

[SPEAKER_00]: They tended to last for about a week and were always held in late summer when farmers were able to take away time from their fields.

[SPEAKER_00]: During the meetings the grounds were transformed to do kind of a tent city, with large canvas coverings that served as makeshift hotels, taverns and hospitals, open air kitchens were everywhere.

[SPEAKER_00]: Around the central meeting grounds was a circle of smaller tents where family slept and were peddlers put their wares on display.

[SPEAKER_00]: people who couldn't get a place among the tents and an area that was always overcrowded, they usually just slept in the forest, which wasn't a hardship during the summer months.

[SPEAKER_00]: Almost every meeting attracted hundreds and sometimes thousands of worshippers.

[SPEAKER_00]: A typical revival meeting always started in a low-key way.

[SPEAKER_00]: A preacher would offer a sermon of welcome and lead a prayer for peace and community.

[SPEAKER_00]: This was followed by the singing of hymns.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then there were more sermons, as the hours went by and the atmosphere gradually began to change.

[SPEAKER_00]: The preachers became lifelier and the audience got more excited.

[SPEAKER_00]: The most sensational preacher was always safe for last.

[SPEAKER_00]: He would clap his hands, yell, froth it the mouth, and encourage his audience to do the same.

[SPEAKER_00]: The sermons went on past sunset, and when they ended everyone broke off with the sense of a day well spent in the worship of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: As more days pass, the sermons grew increasingly sensational and impassioned.

[SPEAKER_00]: The excited response to the crowd was louder and went on longer with each passing day.

[SPEAKER_00]: By the third day, people were crying out during the sermons, shouting prayers, grabbing their neighbors and desperately pleading with them to repent.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sobing uncontrollably and running through the crowd, shoving everyone out of their path.

[SPEAKER_00]: Eventually, the crowds got so big and noisy the preacher couldn't be heard across the whole field.

[SPEAKER_00]: So multiple preachers began sermonizing at the same time at different points on the meeting ground.

[SPEAKER_00]: As the preachers ranted without letting up, the crowd was driven into a kind of collective ecstasy.

[SPEAKER_00]: People behaved as though possessed by something unknown and unfathomable.

[SPEAKER_00]: As the grew more frenzy, they had the irresistible urge to fall to the ground.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was a kind of violent fainting spell that came over people at the height of religious mania.

[SPEAKER_00]: It often started with a scream after which they collapsed to the earth.

[SPEAKER_00]: They might remain that way for minutes or even hours.

[SPEAKER_00]: At some meetings, assistance were tasked with dragging the fallen out of the way so they wouldn't be stepped on by the crowd.

[SPEAKER_00]: Others jerk their bodies back and forth, experiencing convulsions.

[SPEAKER_00]: Others roll on the ground or would compulsively dance back and forth to the beat of the music with smiles plastered on their face, keeping up the movement until they collapse from exhaustion.

[SPEAKER_00]: They involuntarily laughed, barked, howled, screamed and sang.

[SPEAKER_00]: Others ran around wildly, shoving people aside, trampoline on the fallen and sprinting and circles until they too, eventually fell down.

[SPEAKER_00]: all of this was allegedly caused by the worshipers being so overwhelmed by the power of the Holy Spirit.

[SPEAKER_00]: But occasionally, things got out of control.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some members of the crowd, those will assume well, not influenced by God, gave into the general chaos and began fighting and attacking others.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then there was what made the camp meetings truly infamous, the orgies.

[SPEAKER_00]: The meetings were always described as intensely sexual experiences.

[SPEAKER_00]: In this atmosphere of excitement, some simply didn't make the distinction between religious ecstasy and sexual need.

[SPEAKER_00]: The campgrounds were notoriously good places for prostitutes to do business.

[SPEAKER_00]: At the height of religious mania, many camp attendees would simply go off into the woods together, day or night.

[SPEAKER_00]: It became a standard joke that a local population always spiked nine months after any revival.

[SPEAKER_00]: These children became known as camp meeting babies.

[SPEAKER_00]: Such stories led to the taming of the camp meetings within a few years.

[SPEAKER_00]: vigilance committees began to police the local meetings and gradually they became calmer and more tedious.

[SPEAKER_00]: Prejures were still expected to be wildly dramatic, though.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was said that a preacher who didn't end a sermon by falling to the ground and rolling around, well, he was just lazy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Soon however, many of the more scandalous traditions of the meetings disappeared.

[SPEAKER_00]: The religious awakening of the region eventually brought so many fiery preachers to Western New York that it seemed there was no one left to convert, which led to its nickname of the burned over district.

[SPEAKER_00]: But those camp meetings in the fanaticism they awakened opened the door for things far stranger and more disconcerting than the itinerary preachers could ever dreamed of.

[SPEAKER_00]: For reasons that are less about moving our story along and more for satisfying our morbid curiosity about the cults and groups that formed in the Bernouvert District, I wanted to present a few stories of them here, so do with this information what you will.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just keep in mind one of the most common threads among the dreamers and cultists who flourished here was the need to separate themselves from already existing faiths and religions and remake them with more mystery wonder and newly concocted beliefs that sprang from the often strange and eccentric minds of their founders.

[SPEAKER_00]: Among them was the United Believers in Christ's Second Appearing.

[SPEAKER_00]: Commonly called the shakers.

[SPEAKER_00]: They became famous for their meetings when they spoke in tongues rolled around on the floor and would shake before God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hence the nickname.

[SPEAKER_00]: They peaked in the 1840s, following the teachings of a woman referred to as Mother Anne Lee, and reported spiritual visits from prophets, American Indians, and historical figures, such as Napoleon and George Washington.

[SPEAKER_00]: These visitations inspired unusual songs, dances, art, and the simple style of furniture they would become known for.

[SPEAKER_00]: The shakers believe that men and women were equal, but should always live separate lives.

[SPEAKER_00]: There were only about 19 shaker communities in the United States, but eventually they died out.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you wonder why it's because they believed in total celibacy, that turned out to be a tough cell for potential recruits, plus it prevents you from creating any new members.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was also the following that formed around the public universal friend, a non-binary minister who started life as a woman named Jimima Wilkinson.

[SPEAKER_00]: Their group was an offshoot of the Quakers, famous for their oatmeal, of course, okay not really, and thrived for a short time.

[SPEAKER_00]: After suffering a severe illness in 1776, the friend claimed to have died and been reanimated as the genderless evangelist who shunned both birth names and gendered pronouns.

[SPEAKER_00]: in a drogenous close the friend preached throughout the Northeastern United States, attracting many followers who became the society of universal friends.

[SPEAKER_00]: The friends theology stressed free will, opposed slavery, and once again supported total sexual abstinence.

[SPEAKER_00]: The most committed members of the Society of Universal Friends were a group of women who formed a town they called Jerusalem.

[SPEAKER_00]: Most of the women were less interested in religious revelations than they were shunning the men who beat and abused them at a time when women were considered the property of their husbands.

[SPEAKER_00]: The cult faded away thanks to the friends claims of being the reincarnation [SPEAKER_00]: when they died in 1819, that kind of blew up those claims.

[SPEAKER_00]: Even though the friends followers tried to keep the death of secret, it eventually leaked in the society fell apart.

[SPEAKER_00]: From the same region of Western New York also came the Mormons with their tablets of gold that were given to Joseph Smith, the church's prophet.

[SPEAKER_00]: He turned the words written on those mysterious tablets into a church that became very controversial in the years to come.

[SPEAKER_00]: Mostly because of a command from God that Joseph Smith take as many wives as he wanted.

[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't long, though, before controversy became the least of his problems.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like many calls, the whole thing started out as a get-rich quick scheme.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the 1820, Smith was known in Western New York as a clairvoyant who could track down hidden treasure using a sear stone, a smooth rock that had a magic symbol on it.

[SPEAKER_00]: He placed the stone and his hat and he looked into it so that he could gain the power of second sight.

[SPEAKER_00]: He inherited this line of work from his father, a would-be farmer who spent most of his time treasure hunting instead.

[SPEAKER_00]: Since he never actually found any treasure, he heaked out a living, hiring out his services to find lost objects with divine enrods.

[SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately for Joseph, he wasn't even as good at finding treasure as his father was.

[SPEAKER_00]: He often bragged about his gift of second sight, but once he failed so many times to find buried treasure on the land of a wealthy farmer, in 1826 he was brought before a judge for fraud.

[SPEAKER_00]: Worse, after falling in love with a young woman he wanted to marry, named Emma Hale, her father scoffed at the idea, never believing Smith could support her.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the couple, alone, ten Emma, became his first wife.

[SPEAKER_00]: Realizing that his lack of skill at treasure hunting wouldn't feed his family, Smith came up with another idea.

[SPEAKER_00]: As a boy, his father had believed in magic, but his mother went from one religious fad to the next.

[SPEAKER_00]: So Smith decided to combine the two things and make up his own religion.

[SPEAKER_00]: A big announcement was made.

[SPEAKER_00]: Smith claimed that during a visit to a nearby hill, an angel named Marona, appeared to him and gave him some golden tablets.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now he was, conveniently, not allowed to show those tablets to anyone else.

[SPEAKER_00]: Smith was only supposed to translate them and then publish what they said.

[SPEAKER_00]: Smith started reading the magic tablets allowed to his friend, Martin Harris, by sticking his face in a hat.

[SPEAKER_00]: There were also moonbeams spectacles and a talking salamander involved, but man, we can really get into the weeds here.

[SPEAKER_00]: So let's just say that after Harris took a sample of the writing to an author he knew and was whole the whole thing was a fraud.

[SPEAKER_00]: He started to have a few doubts about the project.

[SPEAKER_00]: but he really wanted to believe.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we begged Smith to let him take a bunch of the pages home to show his wife so that she would be convinced.

[SPEAKER_00]: But somehow Martin lost the pages and of course there was only that one copy.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, Moroni, the Angel, shows up and he's really ticked off.

[SPEAKER_00]: To punish Smith, he takes away the golden tablets and takes away Smith's ability to translate them, but only for a couple of months.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Angel came back to give him another shot at it and SUNY was back to work again.

[SPEAKER_00]: The dictation from the tablets was finally finished on July 1, 1829.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, keep in mind that this point, no one had seen the magic tablets but Smith, [SPEAKER_00]: I guess the angel decided it would be okay for three of his friends to see them, too.

[SPEAKER_00]: But just once, after they got a peak each sign to statement saying they'd seen them and that they'd heard the voice of God tell them that Smith's translation was absolutely true.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, if you're skeptical about all this, it's okay because I am too.

[SPEAKER_00]: But all three men swore the tablets were genuine and contained a text of the book of Mormon and alternate testament of Jesus Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks to those golden plates, we know today that Mormonism is the one true religion.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just look at those golden tablets.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, well, small problem.

[SPEAKER_00]: Apparently, Maronee took the tablets away after Smith finished with them, and no one has seen them since.

[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, the book of Mormon was published in 1830, and it caught on, especially around the burned-over district where people were always looking for the next crazy thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: Soon Smith and his followers started new churches, and of course were selling a lot of books, but not everyone was buying what Joseph Smith was selling.

[SPEAKER_00]: The story in the book is a wildly racist one, it's about a lost tribe of Israel that comes to America and builds an advanced civilization.

[SPEAKER_00]: But one group, the Laminites, killed their righteous relatives, the Nephites, and for this, God cursed the Laminites with dark skin and made them ugly.

[SPEAKER_00]: their descendants were the native Americans who now lived in a primitive state.

[SPEAKER_00]: According to the Mormons, the Lamanites and any other dark-skinned races could not have white skin and assimilize life until they accepted Christ's teachings.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the golden tablet, which had been turned into the book of Mormon, not only instructed Joseph Smith on how to restore the real Christian church, it also explained how to make people with dark skin turned white.

[SPEAKER_00]: And no, I'm not kidding here.

[SPEAKER_00]: But even weirder, [SPEAKER_00]: If these people were living in the Americas, how did they know about Christ?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, apparently, after Jesus was crucified and resurrected in Jerusalem, he dropped by North America, where he did a replay of the sermon on the Mount, blessed children and appointed 12 more disciples.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you can maybe understand why this story didn't catch on with everyone.

[SPEAKER_00]: Even in a region known for bizarre religious movements, a church based on angels, golden tablets and magic spectacles turn some people off.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the followers that Smith did have were often in trouble for their unconventional beliefs.

[SPEAKER_00]: Smith had other strikes against him too.

[SPEAKER_00]: His biggest problem was that the people of Western New York already knew him.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was a con man.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was now passing himself off as a prophet.

[SPEAKER_00]: So after a sign from God, he decided to move his church to Curtland, Ohio.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, in Ohio, Smith planned to build a paradise on earth for Mormons.

[SPEAKER_00]: He also sent a group of his followers to Independence, Missouri, to establish a city that would be the center of Zion, a piece of land that stretch from Ohio to the far side of Missouri, as a separate country for Mormons only.

[SPEAKER_00]: Smith even began creating an army that would be used to defend Mormon interests across the Midwest.

[SPEAKER_00]: Away from everyone who knew him, Smith started to attract new converts.

[SPEAKER_00]: By the summer of 1831, there were about 1,500 Mormons in Ohio.

[SPEAKER_00]: They built homes built the first Mormon temple, started businesses, and started getting involved in local politics.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was that which started to make the natives a little nervous.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, an angry mob gathered one night, beat Smith unconscious, starred and feathered him, and left him for dead.

[SPEAKER_00]: He decided maybe a visit to Missouri would be a good idea.

[SPEAKER_00]: But things weren't really going much better there.

[SPEAKER_00]: No one liked Norman's a Missouri either, and in July 1833, Smith's followers were kicked off their land, and their homes were burned.

[SPEAKER_00]: Meanwhile, Smith had other things on his mind in Ohio.

[SPEAKER_00]: Women.

[SPEAKER_00]: He announced [SPEAKER_00]: very quietly, by the way, that God told him that Mormons were to begin practicing polygamy, although he called it celestial marriage and justified it by pointing it out to the great characters of the Bible, who all had many wives.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, he quickly found a second wife, a teenage servant and his home named Fanny Alger.

[SPEAKER_00]: He insisted it was not adulterous because he had taken Fanny as an additional wife.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now listen, I don't recommend trying this at home.

[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, over the next few years Smith married or was sealed too as the Mormons call it, about 30 additional women.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not all of them live with him or were even actual wives, but it didn't matter to Emma.

[SPEAKER_00]: you know, his first actual wife.

[SPEAKER_00]: She accepted this nonsense at first, but later regretted it and started kicking all the extra wives out of the house.

[SPEAKER_00]: But luckily for Smith he received a new message from God in July 1843, and it was meant for Emma.

[SPEAKER_00]: God told her that she needed to accept polygamy.

[SPEAKER_00]: or else.

[SPEAKER_00]: Even so, it took her a month or two before she finally went along with it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now when those early years there wasn't attempt to keep polygamy secret for most members of the church and certainly from all non-mormons, but word naturally leaked out.

[SPEAKER_00]: However, it wasn't polygamy that finally drove the Mormons out of Ohio.

[SPEAKER_00]: was money.

[SPEAKER_00]: In January 1837, Smith and other church leaders had created a stock company called the Curtlin Safety Society to act as a sort of bank.

[SPEAKER_00]: The company issued bank notes that were backed in part by real estate.

[SPEAKER_00]: Smith encouraged the Mormons to buy the notes and he invested in them heavily himself.

[SPEAKER_00]: When a national bank panic occurred at 1837, the Mormon company failed, leaving useless paper currency spreader all around the area.

[SPEAKER_00]: Building the temple had left the church deeply in debt and smith in the rest of the Saints in Kirtland were hounded by creditors and debt collectors.

[SPEAKER_00]: Smith was blamed for everything, and a lot of Mormons left the church, probably afraid they be blamed too.

[SPEAKER_00]: After a war was issued for Smith's arrest for bank fraud in January 1838, he fled Ohio in the middle of the night for Missouri.

[SPEAKER_00]: But things were still horrible there.

[SPEAKER_00]: When Smith arrived with hundreds of additional Mormons, tempers flared, in response, Smith built up his own military, made up of about 2,000 Mormon troops, which was one fourth the size of the U.S.

Army at the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: but even so, the Missouri State militia managed to kill a lot of Mormons and chase the rest of them out of the state.

[SPEAKER_00]: Smith himself was arrested and accused of treason.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was jailed for months but managed to escape custody in April 1839.

[SPEAKER_00]: His second and command Brigham Young had taken the Mormon refugees back east Illinois and Smith followed.

[SPEAKER_00]: Along the Mississippi River, they started a town called Navu and within a few years, it had 11,000 people living there, most of them, Mormons.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it didn't take long for things to sour in Illinois.

[SPEAKER_00]: Smith really had a way of getting under people's skins.

[SPEAKER_00]: He angered other county residents, voters, newspapers, and even Illinois's governor Ford.

[SPEAKER_00]: When a local newspaper printed stories about the Mormons he didn't like, he had the printing presses seized and destroyed, which pissed off everyone who wasn't mad at him already.

[SPEAKER_00]: Smith was too arrogant to care, though.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it first.

[SPEAKER_00]: He started to care when he was charged with inciting a riot.

[SPEAKER_00]: Smith and his brother Hyrum were taken into custody at the brick jail and nearby Carthage, and a mob form that night, and Smith was killed.

[SPEAKER_00]: Smith's death marked the beginning of the end for the Mormon settlement in Illinois.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the aftermath, Mormon leaders bickered over the issue of secession, causing a deep divide within the church that caused it to splinter into several alternate movements.

[SPEAKER_00]: The main church, though, fell into the leadership of Brigham Young.

[SPEAKER_00]: He led the church out of Illinois in 1847 and alienated in Utah, where they settled in the desert around the Great Salt Lake.

[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't paradise by any means, but with heartwork and irrigation, [SPEAKER_00]: Salt Lake City, as they called their new settlement, began to grow.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Mormons built roads, bridges, forts, irrigation projects, and established a form of public welfare.

[SPEAKER_00]: They also made war then peace with Native Americans in the region and established a male service.

[SPEAKER_00]: With all this success, young thought it would be a good idea to get Utah recognized as a territory of the United States.

[SPEAKER_00]: which turned out to be a bad idea.

[SPEAKER_00]: Young ran Utah the same way that Joseph Smith ran Navu.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were suspicious of the federal agents that were sent from Washington and refused to trust them.

[SPEAKER_00]: Seeker really created in their own government, they believe, was outside the federal government's control.

[SPEAKER_00]: Federal agents and judges returned back east, frustrated and timidated, or both, by the Mormons.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some of them wrote books and articles about their harsh experiences [SPEAKER_00]: anti-mormant sentiment began to spread again, but things got really heated up when reports started to surface about polygamy.

[SPEAKER_00]: By the time the Mormons arrived in Utah, plural marriage was no longer confined to just Joseph Smith's inner circle.

[SPEAKER_00]: All Mormon men were now taking multiple wives, and word of this leaked out, thanks to travelers who passed through Utah on the way to Oregon in California.

[SPEAKER_00]: In order for Utah to ever achieve statehood, polygamy had to be banned in the region, and it would be.

[SPEAKER_00]: But just because it was illegal, didn't mean it was in an unofficial way of life that [SPEAKER_00]: continues to this day.

[SPEAKER_00]: After years of federal laws against polygamy and seizures of Mormon property, the church, which is now known as the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints, officially renounced polygamy in 1890.

[SPEAKER_00]: But renouncing polygamy was not done as a matter of faith.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was a political necessity.

[SPEAKER_00]: Many really didn't believe it was God's will, so Plagamy didn't end, it just went underground.

[SPEAKER_00]: Plagamy is alive and well in Utah.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's in every town and most neighborhoods, it's just kept quiet with most people.

[SPEAKER_00]: The outspoken people are the fundamentalist Mormons who live on compounds and practice their faith through loopholes in the laws.

[SPEAKER_00]: They believe they're the real Mormons, while the mainstream LDS church believes that they are.

[SPEAKER_00]: so it's quite a mess.

[SPEAKER_00]: Today, Fundamentalist Mormons often make the news because of their strange customs and bizarre lifestyle.

[SPEAKER_00]: Their compounds can be found all over Utah on the southwest, summer independent or belong to small organizations.

[SPEAKER_00]: The largest is the FLDS, which has attracted attention from law enforcement and the government thanks to its practice of marrying off [SPEAKER_00]: underage girls.

[SPEAKER_00]: These Mormons live under very strict conditions.

[SPEAKER_00]: All property in the compounds is owned by the church and the followers must remain in good standing to keep their homes.

[SPEAKER_00]: Money collected from any kind of work is given to the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: The women are all on welfare or food stamps to take care of their many, many children.

[SPEAKER_00]: Members are kept isolated with no television radios or the internet.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are strict rules about clothing and members must dress modestly.

[SPEAKER_00]: Girls and women wear long, prairie-style dresses usually in pastel colors, while boys and men wear long-sleeved shirts and pants.

[SPEAKER_00]: No cosmetics, tattoos, or piercings are allowed, and women are not allowed to cut their hair.

[SPEAKER_00]: Each community has a kind of church government called the priesthood, which dictates all these rules.

[SPEAKER_00]: Members of the priesthood, of course, receive revelations [SPEAKER_00]: how repulsive those decisions may be.

[SPEAKER_00]: Leaders of fundamentalist communities claim to be modern-day prophets, the prophet talks to God and God replies with visions and dreams.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I could spend a lot more time on this, but suffice it to say the LDS or Mormon Church has had a powerful effect on American history.

[SPEAKER_00]: dating all the way back to when it was just another cult from the burned over district of western New York.

[SPEAKER_00]: At the same time, these other movements were forming.

[SPEAKER_00]: The region was also attracting dozens of utopian societies, groups of people who attempted to establish small experimental communities where life would be perfect.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, needless to say, they never really worked out, but they tried.

[SPEAKER_00]: There were utopian communities based on being vegetarian, fighting slavery, talking to ghosts, on certain parts of the Bible, living plain, which attracted people like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo, Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau.

[SPEAKER_00]: There were groups for women's rights, faith healing, free love, and even one that became famous for its finely crafted kitchen utensils.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, and that one, it also became known for statutory rape.

[SPEAKER_00]: The O'Nighta community was started by John Hempfrey Knows, a religious professor who got kicked out of Yale for announcing that he believed all religions were flawed.

[SPEAKER_00]: John believed the path the God was through perfection and body and mind and started his own church.

[SPEAKER_00]: His followers became known as perfectionists and they practiced quote complex marriage, meaning that they considered themselves married to the group, not to a single partner.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as you might imagine, this was pretty controversial in the mid-19th century.

[SPEAKER_00]: John established a utopian commune in the burned over district outside the town of O'Nida.

[SPEAKER_00]: Financially, they were very successful, selling silverware and animal traps, but inside the community, [SPEAKER_00]: things were complicated.

[SPEAKER_00]: The group lived at a large dormitory which John called the mansion house where his 50 or so followers practiced free love.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sharing your wife or husband they were taught was a true demonstration of Christian love.

[SPEAKER_00]: The group was encouraged to have sexes often as possible, which, as you can imagine, brought in a lot of new recruits, but not all of them were allowed to get their partners pregnant.

[SPEAKER_00]: John wanted to engineer the perfect human from among his followers, so only the best-looking couples were allowed to have children.

[SPEAKER_00]: John himself, father nine kids, and he was not, I'm sure your surprise to learn, not an attractive man.

[SPEAKER_00]: At some point, word began to spread outside the community about the religious practices at O'Nighta, and a warrant was issued for John's arrest for statutory rape.

[SPEAKER_00]: He fled to Canada and never returned.

[SPEAKER_00]: The utopian settlement fell apart, but in the early 1900s, one of John's sons revived the manufacturing part of the community and became America's largest manufacturer of forks, knives, and spoons.

[SPEAKER_00]: O'Nightah, which all of us, or at least our parents, had in our homes.

[SPEAKER_00]: Who would have thought that a brand that became a household name started as a sex cult?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, only in America.

[SPEAKER_00]: But there was one cult that emerged from this region that had a greater effect on American religion than any other, the millerites.

[SPEAKER_00]: But to understand the millerites, you have to understand how deeply rooted the idea of an approaching doomsday is in American religious beliefs.

[SPEAKER_00]: predictions about the end of the world are at least the end of the world as we know it date back thousands of years.

[SPEAKER_00]: Those who counted the days to the predicted apocalypse on December 21st, 2012 were following one of hundreds, maybe even thousands of belief systems that have made similar claims.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some still expect the end of the world on some other date, while others claim not to know the exact date, but our convinced it's going to happen soon.

[SPEAKER_00]: A great many Americans, for instance, are convinced that at some point in the very near future, every truly devout Protestant Christian will suddenly and mysteriously disappear from the face of the earth and go to meet Jesus in the clouds.

[SPEAKER_00]: The rapture, as this disappearance is called, will usher in a period of seven years called the Tribulation.

[SPEAKER_00]: and which most of humanity will be exterminated by a secession of natural and unnatural disasters carried out by the minions of the world's last tyrant, the Antichrist.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, yep, the son of the devil himself.

[SPEAKER_00]: At the end of the seven years the Antichrist and his followers will be wiped out by Jesus and the Christian faithful will rule with him over the earth for the next one thousand years.

[SPEAKER_00]: Those who believe in this are convinced it's predicted in the Bible and a large number of them are convinced it will happen during their lifetimes.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they're not alone in this belief, Muslims, Orthodox Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and others have similar beliefs.

[SPEAKER_00]: So obviously the idea of the end of the world is not a new one.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's just not as old in America as it is in the rest of the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: But there's no need to worry.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have our own share of insanity about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: The national belief in the apocalypse sank its roots into American soil after 1720.

[SPEAKER_00]: When a minister named Jonathan Edwards kickstarted the country's great awakening with what I'm sure was a fun and light-hearted sermon called sinners in the hands of an angry god.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, thanks to his announcement of an upcoming doomsday, most of New England was gripped with fear.

[SPEAKER_00]: The earth was going to open beneath them as they sat in church and dropped them straight into hell.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like all subsequent religious panics, this one ran out of steam after a few years.

[SPEAKER_00]: When the people who had run in terror to church, where they'd heard how they'd be sent to one colorful version of hell after another, found other things to do with their time.

[SPEAKER_00]: but the idea of the apocalypse stock.

[SPEAKER_00]: Within a generation new revival sprang up in other places and nearly all of them embraced the same themes of the fundamentalist Christian end of the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: As the country grew, apocalyptic movements and doomsday cults grew with it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Although most churches and sex were somewhat localized in those days, it seemed that sooner or later one of them was going to get the attention of the entire country.

[SPEAKER_00]: and in the 1840s, one of them finally did.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was a movement that had been in the works for years.

[SPEAKER_00]: At some point in the early 1830s, a minister named William Miller began studying the Bible, and I had all mean just reading it.

[SPEAKER_00]: He read it over and over and over again, every line and every word, and came to believe there was a secret code inside of it that pen pointed the date of the return of Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was coming back and taking all of his followers with him into the sky.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Miller was convinced the date would be between March 21, 1843 and October 22, 1844.

[SPEAKER_00]: He printed papers and pamphlets and appealed to newspaper publishers to warn people that the end was coming.

[SPEAKER_00]: Miller himself traveled all over the country and whipped people into a frenzy, especially as time ticked closer.

[SPEAKER_00]: Miller had tried to avoid pinning things down to one date, but with more than 100,000 followers keeping an eye on their predicted dates, fear spread to the general population.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Miller rights were thrilled about the impending doomsday and considered those who scoffed to be damned to hell.

[SPEAKER_00]: They alone, they were convinced, would be saved.

[SPEAKER_00]: As the last year began, Millerite preachers started what they believe would be the final round of tent revivals, lectures, and media campaigns before the world ended.

[SPEAKER_00]: More than 5 million copies of Millerite publications saw print during the movement's history, which was a stunning number for the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Bad news, though.

[SPEAKER_00]: March 1843 came and went and nothing happened.

[SPEAKER_00]: Critics and scoffers had a field day, but Miller and his followers stressed the apocalypse with a curse between those days.

[SPEAKER_00]: The end of the world, they said, was still coming, and boy, it was coming soon.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was at this point that the movement suddenly spun out of the leader's control.

[SPEAKER_00]: Followers became convinced that October 22nd was the date of Christ's return.

[SPEAKER_00]: This caused an explosion of excitement among millerites and by the time that date rolled around, they'd given away all their possessions, dawned white ascension robes, and started waiting on hills and rooftops for Christ to appear.

[SPEAKER_00]: but October 22nd came and went with no doomsday.

[SPEAKER_00]: The fiasco became known as the Great Disappointment.

[SPEAKER_00]: But like any other good cult leader, Miller kept correcting his math and revising the date until his death in 1849.

[SPEAKER_00]: He never again had the kind of following that he did before October 1844, but the methods he used to get people to follow him, you know, scaring them into church by telling them [SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's never gone away.

[SPEAKER_00]: Even though the Bible never listed for the end of the world so-called prophets have been claiming they can nail it down for almost two centuries, always getting the date wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: Miller had a tremendous effect on American religion with his mythology of an impending doomsday.

[SPEAKER_00]: His teachings went on to spawn a number of really out there cults, but it's not just French faiths.

[SPEAKER_00]: His crackpot ideas have managed to become part of what are considered the most mainstream and ordinary churches in the country.

[SPEAKER_00]: He literally cooked up this idea of Christ returning at any moment to scare his followers, just about every church still uses that today.

[SPEAKER_00]: most of their leaders and almost zero members of their congregations don't know where this came from, but now you do.

[SPEAKER_00]: the Bible these churches use specifically states that quote, no man knows the day or hour of Christ's return.

[SPEAKER_00]: But if churchgoers can be convinced it's going to happen at any time, well, they're always going to be in the pews on Sunday.

[SPEAKER_00]: That makes it a win for the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: But here's the thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: The idea of the rapture as William Miller described it.

[SPEAKER_00]: is based on one ambiguous verse in the New Testament.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's first Thessalonians 417 which reads, then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's it.

[SPEAKER_00]: One reference to it in a letter that St.

Paul wrote, it was in an official proclamation by Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: Even so, the rapture is taught in most churches in America and states that when the events of the book of Revelation start to happen, all true Christians will suddenly vanish body and spirit and meet Christ in the air.

[SPEAKER_00]: Anyone left on earth then is screwed.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, have you ever read any of this stuff in the book of Revelation, dragons, monsters, seven-headed goats?

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, this is going to totally suck, but I mean, you know, if you took it all literally, but that's a different podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: the rapture was a brilliant idea.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a ticket to heaven, while everyone else gets stuck here to be eaten by dragons.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's no wonder it was popular then because it's just as popular now, and why not?

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's a great story.

[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously Christ is the good guy in this story, but as we know, every story needs a villain.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, fundamentalists created the Antichrist, the sinister figure [SPEAKER_00]: Like the Rapture, which came from a single verse in the Bible, the Antichrist seems to be more of a legend than anything official.

[SPEAKER_00]: The actual word Antichrist appears in just three passages in the Bible, and the New Testament letters known as 1st John and 2nd John.

[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't appear anywhere in the book of Revelation, even though he should have a starring word there.

[SPEAKER_00]: When fundamentalist churches talk about him, he's always linked to the revelation, because he's supposed to be a major player in the fight between good and evil for the fate of mankind.

[SPEAKER_00]: But he's not in there, which seems to be a problem.

[SPEAKER_00]: It turns out that most of what we know today about the Antichrist is a mixture of Christian mythology and pop culture.

[SPEAKER_00]: it doesn't come from the Bible.

[SPEAKER_00]: It comes from the horror film The Omen.

[SPEAKER_00]: And again, I'm not kidding.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's nothing in biblical lore suggesting the Antichrist would be born from a jackal, could be killed by magic daggers or would be the ambassador to England.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's all in the movie.

[SPEAKER_00]: Even though there's no mention of the number 666 appearing on his head anywhere, the number does make an appearance in the book of Revelation.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some scholars have suggested that the Antichrist would gain control of the world economy by forcing each person to have a mark on their right hand or forehead to sell or buy anything.

[SPEAKER_00]: Revelation says this mark will be the name of the beast or the number of its name, which is 666.

[SPEAKER_00]: By the 20th century, most churches were teaching that we were entering the end times, and the Christian boogie man could show up at any moment.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this started finger pointing out a lot of public figures over the years, like the pulp.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, pick one.

[SPEAKER_00]: They've all been accused.

[SPEAKER_00]: John F.

Kennedy, Hitler, Mussolini, Sodom Hussein, Henry Kissinger and believe it or not, Justin Bieber.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Antichrist was supposed to kick off the end of the world with a war so you can imagine every war was supposed to be Armageddon.

[SPEAKER_00]: none of them were.

[SPEAKER_00]: But after World War II, American prophets really got excited, jumped on the atomic bomb bandwagon and started predicting a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union.

[SPEAKER_00]: which no longer exists.

[SPEAKER_00]: The other event that gave a post-World War II bump to the apocalypse was the founding of modern Israel in 1947.

[SPEAKER_00]: According to most wannabe profits, the return of the Jews to the Holy Land was supposed to be one of the important signs that the world was coming to an end.

[SPEAKER_00]: And once this happened, it seemed to be the confirmation of old predictions and a signal that the end times were right around the corner.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, most people don't like to talk about the fact that all through the first half of the 20th century, fundamentalist churches played a huge role in the creation of Israel, even going as far as to lobby the British and American governments to support it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, this might make you think that radical Christians really just love Jews, but it's actually the opposite.

[SPEAKER_00]: their goal even today was to push forward their prophecies and bring about the end of the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now you might think I'm exaggerating, but I'm not.

[SPEAKER_00]: Take a look at what the evangelical agenda is for Israel and you'll see I'm telling the truth.

[SPEAKER_00]: In order to fulfill their prophecies, the fundamentalists need the Jews of Israel to either be slaughtered by the Antichrist or do convert to Christianity when Christ makes a reappearance.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I don't think that either of these things was what the founders of Israel had in mind for their people, but that is exactly what the fundamentalists expect to happen, which in my opinion is pretty darn terrifying.

[SPEAKER_00]: the end of the world remains a popular theme for fundamentalists and doomsday cults today.

[SPEAKER_00]: But most of them don't want to be reminded about what happens when you take it so seriously that you set a date for it, like William Miller did, but of course that doesn't stop everyone.

[SPEAKER_00]: Herbert, W.

Armstrong, the founder of the World Wide Church of God, predicted the second coming would happen in 1936.

[SPEAKER_00]: When this prediction failed, a pastor from California claimed that, quote, sometime between April 16th and 23rd, 1957, Armageddon will sweep the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: Millions of persons will perish in its flames, and the land will be scorched.

[SPEAKER_00]: William Branham, a Baptist minister from Kentucky, told his people he was visited by an angel in 1946, who gave him magic powers and the gift of prophecy.

[SPEAKER_00]: He believed that the year 1977 would bring about the rapture.

[SPEAKER_00]: He died in 1965, more than a decade before his prediction could be proven wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: In May 1980, the always charming Pat Robertson, alarmed his 700 club audience when he told them he knew when the world was going to end.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was going to be in 1982.

[SPEAKER_00]: While he was wrong, and yet those who were willing to believe anything, never called him out on it.

[SPEAKER_00]: He went right on fleecing people into his death, which I'll bet he never saw coming.

[SPEAKER_00]: Arnold Murray of the Shepherd's Chapel Church predicted that the war of Armageddon would start on June 8th, 1985 in a valley of the Alaskan Peninsula.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I must have missed that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Author Hal Lindsey predicted in his book, The Late Great Planet Earth, that the rapture would occur in 1988.

[SPEAKER_00]: when he was wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: But he still published in books about prophecy after all these years.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe still waiting for at least one of his predictions to come true.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's just a few of them.

[SPEAKER_00]: There have been a lot of others.

[SPEAKER_00]: But what's it all mean?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I guess it means that the end of the world is played a role in almost every kind of religious faith in America since William Miller came up with it in the 1840s.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the next time you hear a minister talking about it, just remember all that started with a cult, but at least it was a fairly harmless one.

[SPEAKER_00]: The only suffering the Millerites had to deal with was a little embarrassment when it was all over.

[SPEAKER_00]: other cults formed around the idea of the end of the world doomsday and the anti-Christ and some of those have been much more deadly.

[SPEAKER_00]: After William Miller's following collapse, a woman named Ellen White started a new branch of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Back in the 1840s, when she was a teenager, Ellen had been such a devoted Millerite that she began having her own visions of the apocalypse.

[SPEAKER_00]: I should mention here that her parents were Hatmakers and used large amounts of mercury in their home.

[SPEAKER_00]: a no one knew it then, but Mercury exposure caused insanity hallucination and visions.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's what the term, quote, mad as a hatter, came from.

[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, Ellen kept things going by starting the seventh day Adventist Church, which got its name because they celebrate the Sabbath on Saturday instead of Sunday.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're still sure the end of the world is coming, but they learn from William Miller not to try and pen down the exact date.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it was a belief in doomsday that caused a member of Ellen's church to take part in a human sacrifice to try and prevent it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Charles Freeman was a seventh-day adventist who lived in the Cape Cod Town of Picasso, Massachusetts, with his wife Harriet and his two daughters, Bessie, who was six and Edith, who was four.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was a devout follower of the faith, who believed the end of the world was coming and his family and friends needed to be prepared for it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But Charles wasn't just a believer.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was a man obsessed with God and his God was a cruel and jealous one who demanded much from his followers.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were expected to follow him blindly and without question.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when God demanded a sacrifice, as he did from Charles Freeman in the spring of 1879, his servant was expected to provide it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Charles knew it was the right thing to do because [SPEAKER_00]: In 1879, Charles believed God spoke directly to him and demanded he make a blood sacrifice to prevent the end of the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: On April 30, he told his wife about this sacrifice and told her that God had directed him to kill their daughter Edith.

[SPEAKER_00]: Harriet protested at first, but she was also a devout believer.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was not her place to disagree with her husband and certainly not with God.

[SPEAKER_00]: If God willed it, then who was she to stand in the way of his wisdom?

[SPEAKER_00]: She told her husband, quote, if it is the Lord's will, I am ready for it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But Charles hadn't needed his wife's blessing, he was doing God's work.

[SPEAKER_00]: He went out to a shed in the backyard and retrieved a long-bladed knife that he kept there.

[SPEAKER_00]: He pulled it from its leather sheath and carried the knife away with him.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was praying, singing, and laughing as a return to the house, and entered the bedroom, shared by his daughters.

[SPEAKER_00]: His older daughter, Bessie, awoke, and when he told her to leave the room, she got into bed with her mother.

[SPEAKER_00]: Alone with a sleeping eateth, he sank to his knees next to the bed.

[SPEAKER_00]: He prayed she would not wake up, and he prayed that God might stop him at the last moment, as Abraham had been stopped when he was told to sacrifice his son Isaac in the Bible.

[SPEAKER_00]: but God didn't stop Charles Freeman.

[SPEAKER_00]: Charles lifted the hand holding the knife high above his head and at that instant, Edith opened her eyes and looked up at her father, but he plunged the knife into her little body anyway.

[SPEAKER_00]: O Papa, she gasped, and then she died.

[SPEAKER_00]: Charles sat with Edith's body and his arms until the next day.

[SPEAKER_00]: A great feeling of peace came over him when the sun rose, he had been tested and found worthy, and now he would be rewarded.

[SPEAKER_00]: In three days, God promised him.

[SPEAKER_00]: His little girl would return from the dead.

[SPEAKER_00]: The following day, Charles summoned the rest of the church members to his home and he explained what he'd done before pulling aside a bloodstained sheet and revealing the body of his murder daughter.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was no need to worry he told them Edith would be resurrected.

[SPEAKER_00]: the Adventists were stunned, but instead of going to the authorities or taking Charles into custody on their own, they praised him for his astounding act of faith.

[SPEAKER_00]: I left his house that day and none of them said a word about the murdered girl to anyone outside the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: When the third day arrived, the Adventists gathered at the Freeman home and waited for eateth to wake up.

[SPEAKER_00]: when she didn't, they were astonished, some even accused God of breaking his promise to Charles.

[SPEAKER_00]: By this time, despite the silence of the church members, word and the murder reached the authorities and Charles and Harriet were both arrested.

[SPEAKER_00]: While they were in jail, Edith was quickly buried in a local cemetery.

[SPEAKER_00]: Adventists attended the service, keeping an eye on Edith's coffin, waiting for it to open, but it didn't.

[SPEAKER_00]: Afterwards, several members of the church spoke out in support of Charles and his sacrifice, and locals were so angry that death threats were made, and the event has had to flee for their lives.

[SPEAKER_00]: Even though she knew it advanced that Charles planned to murder her daughter, Harriet, was released from jail.

[SPEAKER_00]: Charles, though, would be tried.

[SPEAKER_00]: if he turned out to be saying.

[SPEAKER_00]: In 1880, it was ruled he was not, and was sent to the state lunatic asylum in Danvers.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was supposed to remain there for the rest of his life, but was released after four years.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was decided he'd been cured of his delusions, and he was set free.

[SPEAKER_00]: Charles moved west to Chicago, opened a restaurant, and then moved to Lawrence, Michigan, where he became [SPEAKER_00]: We'll never know if he eventually realized that Edith's murder was not a sacrifice to stop the end of the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can only hope that he did.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening to this episode, and if you liked it, I hope you'll keep listening to some of the news and announcements that are coming next.

[SPEAKER_00]: On December 13th, I'll be at the American Audities Museum from 12 to 5 p.m.

[SPEAKER_00]: Signing books and celebrating our final day, open to the public at the Mineral Springs Hotel, which has been the home and the museum and our events for more than 10 years now.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're moving to a new building in Alton and just over a week, but we hope you'll visit our original location one last time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Check out the museum, get some autograph books for holiday gifts, and say goodbye to what's been a cool spot.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then coming up on December 16th, I'll be hosting a zoom event to raise a little extra cash for the big move for the museum.

[SPEAKER_00]: The event will take place at 7 [SPEAKER_00]: You could find the link to sign up at AmericanHontinesBooks.com and use one of the donation amounts on the order form or write in whatever you'd like to pay.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're grateful for any amount.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be a fun event, so mix up a holiday cocktail and discover the airy customs of the past, the Christmas monsters that haunted the dreams of our ancestors, and ghostly tales of holiday season tragedies, murders, and disasters that have left lingering spirits behind.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you're into the dark side of the holidays, I hope you'll join me for this event.

[SPEAKER_00]: And finally, be sure to check out the website for the 2026 haunted America Conference.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's now up and running and features this year's roster of speakers and presenters, after hours events, tours, ghost hunts, workshops, and everything else you need to know.

[SPEAKER_00]: vendor spaces are now on sale for 2026 and they always get snapped up quickly so if you're planning to have a booth this year you don't want to wait too long to get that bucked.

[SPEAKER_00]: General admission tickets for the conference will go on sale starting January 12th.

[SPEAKER_00]: And with that, I'd like to say thanks again for checking out the latest episode of American Nightmares.

[SPEAKER_00]: Part of the American Haunting's podcast network.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you like the show, we hope you'll consider checking out the other shows in the network and recommend them to friends, family, people you work with and anyone you think would love it to.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you do have thoughts or comments about American nightmares, leave us a review or text your comments to the haunt line at 217-791-7859.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as a thank you, we've got a discount code, that's just one word, podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that gives you 10% off any books, tours, or events you purchase from our online store.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because remember, in addition to our podcast network, we also have books, tours, ghost hunts, dinner events, the haunted America Conference, and the American Audities Museum.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you could find everything about us on the website at americanhontains.net.

[SPEAKER_00]: We appreciate your continued support for every aspect of American haunties because we couldn't and wouldn't do this without all of you and your comments and feedback mean a lot to us.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, good night.

[SPEAKER_00]: Good luck and I'll see you next time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just be sure the devil doesn't get you first.