Apocalypticism, the belief that the world will end soon, is found in practically every religion on the planet. The Romans were periodically gripped by panics involving the prophesied downfall of Rome throughout their history, and early Christians believed they were living in the End Times with as much zeal as modern American evangelists. The following are 10 doomsday cults that still exist.

1. The Panacea Society

In 1792, part-time fortune teller Joanna Southcott started collecting “divine revelations” and had them sealed in a box with strict instructions to open it only for Jesus. Her followers called themselves Southcottians and were mostly early-19th century Spiritualists. Southcott dramatically announced that she was pregnant with the messiah, Shiloh, whose birth would kill all but her followers. However, Southcott was a 64-year-old virgin who showed no signs of pregnancy. To Southcott’s credit, she began doubting her beliefs when she failed to give birth but died before she was able to do anything about it. The sudden power vacuum among the Southcottians brought out all sorts of leadership, all of whom claimed they could psychically communicate with Southcott’s box, and transformed the Southcottians into a bizarre cult that refused to bury Southcott’s corpse, believing that she would be resurrected. They renamed themselves the Panacea Society under the belief that they had healing powers, and still believe that Shiloh will descend from heaven to reboot the world at a later date. The Panacea Society spends most of its time issuing press releases in British newspapers demanding that the bishops of the Church of England assemble to open Southcott’s box, presumably because Jesus is too busy.

2. The Church Universal and Triumphant

In 1957, traveling salesman Mark Prophet founded The Summit Lighthouse to teach the way of the Ascended Masters. According to him, Ascended Masters are individuals who have acquired enough worldly knowledge to attain immortal souls. Most of his original followers were nice old ladies who liked the idea of immortality, but membership exploded through the New Age self-help seminar circuit. Things became a bit bizarre after Prophet died in 1973. His wife, Elizabeth, co-opted a large portion of the followers and founded the Church Universal and Triumphant. She started referring to herself as Guru Ma, claimed that the world’s elite were malevolent aliens, and moved the organization to a remote Montana ranch patrolled by armed guards. There, members are forced into celibacy and aren’t allowed to eat chocolate (it was created by aliens). In the ’90s, Elizabeth made headlines by announcing that the alien elite would wage an nuclear war that would kill all but her followers. Cult members constructed the world’s largest fallout shelter and began stockpiling arms in preparation. When nothing happened, Elizabeth denied ever setting a date and claimed that she was merely warning the world. The Church continues to collect weaponry and upholds that the alien elite will wage their war on a future date.

3. The Jehovah’s Witnesses

In 1875, Charles Taze Russell, the son of a wealthy haberdasher, used his wealth to inform as many people as possible that the Armageddon would take place in 1878. 1878 passed without a blip but Russell was unphased: he simply created an organization which transformed into the Jehovah’s Witnesses and issued another date. Russell taught that Jesus had secretly been enthroned in heaven in 1914 and will return after the Armageddon, which only Jehovah’s Witnesses will survive. After ruling for 1,000 years, Jesus will return to heaven with the most righteous 144,000 souls. The remaining Jehovah’s Witnesses need not worry as they’ll get to enjoy paradise on Earth. Russell developed complicated algorithms to issue alerts about when Armageddon would occur and continued to do so even after the dates kept passing without anything happening. His death in 1916 didn’t seem to deter the organization from arbitrarily announcing a new date either. Jehovah’s Witnesses kept issuing dates until a mass walkout of members in 1976. Since then they’ve been reluctant to say when the Armageddon will occur, but still uphold that it can happen at any moment.

4. Takfir wal-Hijra

In 1971, agricultural engineer Shukri Mustafa joined a splinter of the Muslim Brotherhood called Takfir wal-Hijra (“Excommunication and Exodus”). His loose interpretation of Qur’anic verses involving the Apocalypse transformed the group into a cult that believes it is their right to conquer the Muslim world by any means because it has become too decadent. Takfir wal-Hijra believes that the end of the world will occur after the appearance of the Mahdi, an agent of God who will purify Islam. An epic battle between good and evil will kill all but the followers of Takfir wal-Hijra. Mustafa originally hinted that he was the Mahdi and declared that the end of the world was right around the corner. After Egypt hinted at peace with Israel, he took his followers to prepare in Egyptian caves. When nothing happened, he stated that cataclysmic destruction was required to bring the true Mahdi out of hiding and unleashed a program of terror in Egypt. Most of the group was killed by the Egyptian government fairly quickly. Mustafa was dead by 1978, and Takfir wal-Hijra has been operating in secret since. They were a massive influence on a young Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda’s second in command, who took the concept of using violence to bring about Armageddon to heart.

5. Association for Research and Enlightenment

In 1902, insurance salesman Edgar Cayce began undergoing hypnosis to cure a bad case of laryngitis. He claimed to have discovered his underlying clairvoyant powers during these treatments and became one of history’s most influential psychics. Most of his early followers were Theosophists, but he became popular with the New Age movement in the ’60s and more recently with the History Channel whenever they’ve run out of Nostradamus shows. After a brief stint as a psychic healer, Cayce set up a nonprofit organization to shield himself from fortune telling laws and had a stenographer record 14,000 prophecies. His most dramatic prophecies involved “Earth Changes“, cataclysms brought on by the United States discovering a crystal powered Atlantean death ray in 1958. The Earth’s axis would shift, California would fall into the Pacific Ocean forever, and New York would be wiped out. Cayce died in 1945 and when nothing happened 1958, his followers associated atomic weapons with his Earth Changes prophecies. The Association for Research and Enlightenment, a modern incarnation of Cayce’s original organization, still studies his prophecies, hosts discussions over them, and occasionally releases cryptic warnings about the coming Earth Changes.

6. Aum Shinrikyo

In 1987, blind acupuncturist Shoko Asahara started a yoga class after visiting India. It attracted Japan’s educated elite at first, but quickly transformed into a rigid cult that called itself Aum Shinrikyo (“Supreme Truth”) as Asahara incorporated more occult teachings. Advertising campaigns announced that Asahara had attained enlightenment, was Jesus, and could cure everything from venereal diseases to brain cancer. Members were required to live on sparse compounds where children were forced into solitary confinement, had their eyebrows dyed green, and were forced to wear headgear that was designed to produce the same frequency as Asahara’s brainwaves. After a failed attempt to win 1990′s Japanese elections, Asahara began preaching that the Japanese government would wage a cataclysmic war with Aum Shinrikyo in 1997. Ever the altruist, he decided that it was Aum Shinrikyo’s duty to kill as many people as possible before the war since it relieved victims of bad karma. To make this happen the group manufactured Sarin and released it in crowded subways in 1995. Asahara was sentenced to be executed for the deaths of 11 people. Aum Shinrikyo has since reformed itself as Aleph and is under constant scrutiny from the Japanese government.

7. Raëlism

In 1974, sports journalist Claude Vorilhon renamed himself Raël and held a press conference to announce that he had been visited by benevolent aliens called Elohim. Vorilhon claimed that he had been tasked to save humanity from an impending nuclear holocaust. This “Age of Apocalypse” (not the X-Men arc) can only be averted if an interplanetary embassy is built in Israel. The Elohim will reveal themselves at this point and humanity will enter a new era of peace. Unfortunately, Israel won’t allow the embassy to be built because the swastika is prominently displayed in the Raëlism symbol. Raël claims he is from a long line of alien prophets which includes Muhammad, Jesus, and Buddha. He knows this for a fact because he visited them on another planet and they told him so. Although they’ve been cautious enough not to give an exact day for when the nuclear apocalypse will occur, Raëlians have hinted that not building the embassy by 2030 will yield massive destruction. When he isn’t saving humanity from the nuclear holocaust, Raël spends his time playing video games because racing exotic cars that wealthy members donated was too exhausting.

8. Falun Gong

In 1992, cereal factory guard Li Hongzhi started claiming he had godlike powers that allowed him to turn invisible, levitate, immobilize people, control the weather, and see into the future. This last power is especially important, because Li has seen that Fa-rectification, a cosmic process that reduces humanity to a pure state, will cause a “Great Havoc” soon. Li has developed a series of meditation techniques rooted in Taoism and Buddhism called Falun Gong to help mankind attain salvation in its time of need. It is spreading very quickly, there are an estimated 70 million Falun Gong practitioners in China alone. The Chinese government responded by banning the immensely popular religion under the argument that it has all the auspices of a dangerous cult. In 2003, Li announced that the SARS epidemic was the first wave of Fa-rectification. Falun Gong practitioners generally brush criticism aside, claiming that it is slander planted by the Chinese government.

9. Rastafarians

In the early-’30s, stories were published in Jamaican newspapers claiming that Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia was the leader of an East African possession cult known as the Nyahbinghi. These stories were fabrications written by Italian Fascists wanting to smear Selassie, but Jamaicans found them inspirational, and cults which venerated Selassie started appearing. The Rastafari movement developed out of this but didn’t have a central theology until 1933, when Leonard Howell returned after visiting the United States. Howell, a close friend of Marcus Garvey, distributed Afrocentric pamphlets that claimed Selassie was the messiah and was leading a war against western civilization, called Babylon. This struck a chord with Jamaicans who were weary of British rule. Howell never gave a date for the impending race war, but other Rastafari prophets were not as tight-lipped. Some preached that Jamaica would be torn apart in 1977 and that only Rastafarians would survive. Nothing happened and the Rastafarians fractured into various “mansions” who only share a belief in the evils of white society and the divinity of Selassie. Its modern form was brought to a worldwide audience through reggae music.

10. Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University

In 1932, retired diamond dealer Lekhraj Khubchand Kripalani began claiming he was an avatar of Shiva and was receiving apocalyptic visions. He taught that a nuclear holocaust would destroy every continent except for the Indian subcontinent and quickly attracted a core group of 300 followers. Only they would be equipped to lead after the genocide, and they would usher in a perfect paradise. Most of his early converts were wealthy wives who made celibacy oaths and pledged their fortunes to him. Pissed off families starting lobbying the Indian government to ban the group, forcing Kripalani to create the organization that eventually became the Brahma Kumaris. They operated in secret, lobbying foreign governments to recognize them and putting out meditation pamphlets, until they found a lucrative niche teaching meditation techniques to the New Age movement. The Brahma Kumaris exploded across the planet until Kripalani died in 1969, leaving behind strict instructions that he would send messages through the Kumari leadership. The Brahma Kumaris still teach that a great destruction is right around the corner. Their most famous adherent is Pratibha Patil, the current president of India, who in 2007 announced that she had received a message from Kripalani stating that a “great responsibility” was headed her way.

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Vanity is a billion dollar industry. Together, cosmetic surgery, beauty conglomerates, and fashion houses create the fourth largest economy on the planet. Catering to human vanity isn’t a recent phenomenon though; Mesopotamian men spent hours with curling irons to create elaborate rings in their beards. The following 7 historic figures took the search for attractiveness to extremes that few have been able to match.

1. Dioscorides’ Mouthwash

Pedanius Dioscorides, an early Greek pharmacist, wrote that gargling with human urine whitened teeth, reversed leprosy, and cured the plague. The promise of white teeth was extremely popular with Roman aristocracy. Portuguese urine was rumored to whiten the best, and commanded exorbitant prices. Dioscorides’ mouthwash was popularized again under the Tudor dynasty, who expanded it to all forms of urine: Dog urine was thought to be a fountain of youth, horse urine was supposed to treat hair loss, and human urine was touted as the Viagra of the time.

2. Edward VI of England Popularizes the Codpiece

Under Edward VI of England‘s reign in medieval England, fashion dictated that nobles’ rank be matched by the size of their endowment. Aristocrats wore tunics that were designed to expose the genitals, and there was even a cottage industry devoted to making freakishly large flesh colored falsies for gentlemen who felt that they didn’t quite measure up. This became such a big issue that the young Edward passed a law banning any man below the rank of lord from displaying his “privy member and buttokkes“. As a result, the codpiece became popular among low ranking nobility.

3. Francis Galton’s Beauty Map

Sir Francis Galton was an eccentric inventor who pioneered work in various areas including polling, meteorology, and finger printing. Galton created a “beauty map” of the 18th-century British Isles to track where unattractive and attractive women resided. For record keeping, he used a machine that pricked a piece of paper. Women marked on the right hand side were attractive, while women on the left hand side were unattractive. After years of work, Galton announced that the least attractive women could be found in Aberdeen. He then devoted years to measuring the asses of African women to test a measurement device.

4. Elizabeth Báthory’s Beauty Secrets

17th-century Hungarian countess Elizabeth Báthory is one of history’s most notorious woman serial killers. She earned this dubious honor by acting like a Disney movie villain. Báthory was a vain woman who spent a large portion of her day staring at herself in the mirror and trying to turn back the ravages of time. When nothing worked, she turned to black magic. Specifically, she tortured and sacrificed young virgin girls. When authorities went to arrest her, the first thing they found was a starving young girl who had been drained of her blood. Many historians peg Báthory’s body count as high as 650.

5. Elizabeth I of England’s Wig

Elizabeth I of England had the Anglican Church ban cosmetics and other vanities so women would not be subjected to questions ” of her majesty in marriage”. However, the threat of being burned at the stake as a witch didn’t curb her own vanity. Elizabeth’s ladies in waiting spent every morning tracing her veins with blue dye, powdering her until she was a pale white, and smothering her with a lead based skin whitening cream called Venetian Ceruse. Her extensive use of it, coupled with smallpox, caused her hair to fall out, forcing her to wear her now iconic wig. Elizabeth also favored dresses that exposed her breasts, the fashion of her youth, well into her 70s.

6. Cleopatra’s Stinky Beauty Secret

While Cleopatra VII Philopator would be considered homely by modern standards, she was considered an exotic beauty by Roman aristocrats. She famously smuggled herself into Caesar’s bedroom, where he was immediately enraptured with her. Cleopatra made history by deftly using her looks and her way with words to ensure that debt-strapped Egypt enjoyed a cordial relationship with Rome. The secret to her beauty? Crocodile dung (also used as a contraceptive at the time) and donkey milk face masks. The price of live crocodiles, to produce the dung, skyrocketed when Roman women learned about her technique.

7. Liberace’s Eyelids

Liberace was the highest paid entertainer in the world even while Elvis and the Beatles were at the peak of their popularity. His wealth allowed Liberace the vanity to indulge in plastic surgery, which was just starting to come into vogue with aging Hollywood celebrities. Liberace was so vain that he forced a lover to get plastic surgery so that his face looked the singer’s. Liberace reputedly had so much work done on himself that he was unable to close his eyes after his final face lift. He was reduced to spending his final years using eye-drops throughout the night to keep his eyeballs from drying out.

Edit: Used the wrong picture for Elizabeth Báthory! Whoops!

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From France’s Sanch Procession to the Yoruba’s Egungun, practically every culture of the world has a type of masquerade ceremony where people were intricate masks for religious purposes. Some argue that Halloween is a type of masquerade.

Phyllis Galembo is a photographer based out of SUNY who has spent 20 years photographing masquerade ceremonies in Brazil, Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, and Nigeria. One of the most complete sets of her work that I’ve been able to find is her West African Masquerade series.

Enjoy them here.

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Everyone enjoys a good hoax regardless of their personal beliefs about the paranormal. The following are examples of famous hoaxes that captivated the personal interest and imagination in their time, only to let everyone down once the truth emerged. Some still believe that these are true.

1. Amityville

Ronald DeFeo, Jr. shocked the sleepy New York town of Amityville in 1974 by brutally murdering his entire family in their sleep. But the next residents, the Lutz family, made the town infamous by fleeing ten days, 28-days, or a month later (depending on who you ask), claiming that evil spirits had driven them out. A bestselling book, string of movies, and interviews followed, turning Amityville into an international sensation. However, it turned out that the Lutz family made up the entire story to get out of an expensive mortgage. Practically all of their claims, including the notion that the iconic house was built on an Indian burial ground, have been easily debunked and later residents have adamantly stated they’ve never experienced anything supernatural. But that doesn’t stop people from clinging to the idea of a haunted house in Amityville.

2. Cottingley Fairies

To the modern eye, it is difficult to believe that this series of five photos, taken by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, could be taken seriously by anyone. The fairies look like cut out pictures, very likely drawn by Elsie herself, and sport popular hair styles of the time and trendy clothes. However, the pictures stirred up a lot of drama in 1916, and even attracted the support and attention of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle, a Spiritualist, used his celebrity to spread the story as truth and used a series of questionable “tests” to prove their accuracy. Both girls insisted that the fairies were real until 1981, when they admitted that all but one of the photos had been faked, and both held onto the almost comical claim that despite the fakes, they really had been playing with fairies.

3. The Bermuda Triangle

Easily the most infamous patch of water, the Bermuda Triangle is made by connecting Miami (or Ft. Lauderdale), Bermuda, and Puerto Rico, and has been known for making airplanes, ships, and small boats vanish. It has long been the subject of movies, books, and serious documentaries but there isn’t a shred of evidence to support the notion that anything disappears there. The majority of disappearances have logical explanations that are far from mysterious. According to Larry Kusche, a writer that focused on the Triangle, most of disappearances were sensationalized by writers. A little digging shows that either a storm was in progress, remains were found, or nothing really happened. But don’t tell this to the History Channel, as it might interrupt their programming schedule.

4. Crop Circles

Even today many believe that crop circles, areas where crops are stamped down into geometric shapes, are created by space aliens. But the truth is that they are easily debunked and have always appeared in areas where bored, drunk people have access to lazily guarded crops since the 17th century. The most famous cases started popping up in England in the ’70s, and people quickly panicked about the ensuing alien invasion. (It didn’t happen.) In 1991, two men came forward and admitted that they started the rash of circles in their area after coming up with the idea at their local pub. (I want a pint of whatever they’re drinking!) Doug Bower and David Chorley might have never revealed their secret had Mrs. Bower not grown suspicious of her husband sneaking away at night.

5. Uri Geller’s Bending Spoons

Geller has built a career on claiming that be can bend spoons, hanging out with Michael Jackson, and dragging naysayers through the court system when they’ve dared to call him a fraud. (We aren’t calling you a fraud, Uri.) Over the years, he has been debunked numerous times, including on particularly hilarious time when he was filmed using a magnet to move a compass, but he has always managed to get any video that pops up pulled from YouTube under threat of legal action. His arch-nemesis, James Randi, replaced his prop spoons on The Tonight Show in 1973, and not a single spoon was bent that night. Randi has gone on to demonstrate how the spoon bending trick is nothing more than a parlour trick that anyone can perform, but that doesn’t stop people from still believing that Geller has magical powers.

6. William Mumler

A jeweler turned photographer, Mumler took advantage of the still new and not entirely understood medium to produce the first known photographs of “spirits”. Working out of his New York studio during the Civil War, he made money off bereaved relatives that were convinced that the images superimposed over their own was that of a deceased relative. He even fooled Mary Todd Lincoln with a spirit photograph allegedly depicting assassinated president Abraham Lincoln standing just beside her, a hand placed lovingly on her shoulder. Eventually, people began to notice that some of the spirits in the photographs resembled his studio assistants. Even though he was acquitted of fraud, his reputation was ruined and he died penniless some time in 1884. This doesn’t stop modern spirit photographers from basically doing the same thing and people believing it is real.

7. The Bigfoot Corpse

Matt Whitton and Rick Dyer were behind one of most outrageous hoaxes in very recent history. In June 2008, they claimed that they had the corpse of Bigfoot stuffed into a freezer after having found it in the Georgia woods. The media exploded and Bigfoot enthusiasts quickly claimed victory over skeptics. Searching for Bigfoot, a California based group, purchased the “corpse” for $50,000, only to discover once it thawed out that they had been sold a rubber suit. Whitton, a police officer, lost his job over the incident, and Searching for Bigfoot is suing both men. Goes to show that you should always see what you are buying before you shell out the money for it.

8. The Fox Sisters

People have a tendency to explain stupid things as paranormal. Kate, Leah, and Margaret Fox of Hydesville, New York, were no exception, as they helped kick off the Spiritualist movement when strange noises that startled their parents and drew huge crowds in the 19th century were explained as spirits. For some reason no one pointed out that the sounds followed the sisters and sounded a lot like cracking knuckles and foot tappings. They were huge on the Spiritualist circuit until 1888, when Margaret admitted it was all a hoax, and that not only did they crack knuckles, but they tied apples to their toes and bumped them on the floor for effect. This admission caused a rift between the sisters, two of whom died in poverty within 5 years. The last sister, Leah, distanced herself from the other two and stated that they were alcoholics unfit to care for their children.

9. Alien Autopsy

Everyone seems to love the idea that aliens have, or currently are, visiting us. In 1995, Ray Santilli, a London video entrepreneur, released a video he claimed depicted a 1947 alien autopsy performed after Roswell. Grainy and filmed at angles that conveniently blocked the actual autopsy in some places, this was a hotly disputed piece of film that had skeptics rolling their eyes and Ufologists eager to study it further. Fox fanned the flames even more by releasing Alien Autopsy – Fact or Fiction, a program that showed the autopsy and discussed its authenticity. In 2006, Santilli admitted that large portions of the film were made with dummy aliens, animal innards, and jelly. He still claims that parts of it are authentic, but refuses to reveal which parts are the “real footage”. In 2008, another alien autopsy video became popular in YouTube, continuing the cycle.

10. The Angels of Mons

The Angels of Mons was not a deliberate hoax, rather it is an urban legend that sprang up from a fictional story written by Arthur Machen during World War I. The bloody Battle of Mons was a wake up call for the British, showing that the war would not be “won by Christmas”. Inspired by the bravery of British soldiers, Machen wrote a tale entitled The Bowmen, in which ghostly bowmen assist the British troops. So touching and morale boosting was this short story, that even when Machen wrote a full length book based on the idea and specifically noted that the Angels of Mons had never appeared on a battlefield, people were angry. They did not want to know that this was a fictional tale, and rejected the reality that it was outright. Even though the internet easily debunks it, this unintentional hoax survives to this day.

Please welcome Marby, this is her first article. Going full throttle starting in Jan! – Sami

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