For Curse-O-Meter testing today we present the Leader of Alberta’s Staring Cult.

But before that we discuss a women’s near death visions of the world that lays beyond ours, the panic caused by a teddy bear made of human skin, and human bones found underneath a tree.

THE NEWS:

-Human Skin Teddy Bear

-Our True Home That Lies Beyond Death

-Human Bones Found Underneath Tree

TRANSCRIPT:

Sheryl: Hello, probably cursed listeners. Welcome to episode 23. I’m your probably cursed host, Sheryl.

Chris: I’m your probably cursed host, Chris.

Sheryl: So for today’s episode, we will be testing the Curse-O-Meter with a cult leader from Alberta’s Staring Cult. Our own local boy. Yep. But before that, we discuss a woman’s near-death experience of the world that lays beyond ours. The panic caused by a teddy bear made of human skin and human bones found beneath a tree.

Chris: A lot of human remains this episode.

Sheryl: Let’s find out what happens.

Chris: As we do at the start of every episode, we calibrate our Curse-O-Meter for the main topic by feeding it news stories from recent-ish news. We record these episodes about a month ahead, so these news stories are more recent to the month before they get released.

Sheryl: For those of you who may have heard an anomaly while Chris was talking, our dog has his nails quite long and he was tip-tapping through the kitchen just in FYI. Our dog is an anomaly. Yes.

He may have demons, we’re not sure. So for story number one, I’m going to enter the story titled, Woman Who Died for Two Minutes Says She Saw Our True Home. This is from July 30th by Hayed Zayedie for Metro.co .uk. Nicole Muse says that she saw the afterlife when she flatlined for two minutes during an emergency surgery that was being performed due to pregnancy complications. She says she saw the original home from which we all came.

Chris: I guess we’re all part of the same family.

Sheryl: I mean, we could have, science could have told you that too. I guess. Yeah. Nicole explains when her body gave out, she felt herself pulled into a tunnel of light. Good job on Sound of X. Thank you. You’re welcome. Something like a corridor that moved with her. The air had a weight and a temperature and sounded like music made of water.

Chris: Singing in the rain? You know when he’s like tap dance splashing along with the beat? Yeah, that’s right. That’s what it sounded like.

Sheryl: Yeah. I mean, it does say fluid pulsing and familiar.

Chris: Blap, blap, blap, blap, blap, blap, blap, blap.

Sheryl: She then entered a glowing space filled with silver, soft violet and deep radiant blue. Everything around her pulsed gently like a heartbeat. And that’s when she saw two blue-skinned beings with large indigo eyes, like those from the Avatar film. And they were sitting on thrones that shimmered with energy. Oh.

Chris: Um, Awe? Is that the name of their big tree? Maybe.

Sheryl: All he remembers there are the Navi.

Chris: They’re a Navi and they have weird pony tails that connect to everything. That is correct. And it’s very bad if they get cut off.

Sheryl: She said their eyes were filled with kindness and recognition. They looked human, but had gentle gills on their cheeks. I remember seeing their fish-like tails rather than legs covered in scales. They were both male and female intertwined, but didn’t speak in words, but understood everything they had to tell me. They told her telepathically that life is actually an illusion and we only start living when we die.

She said, I felt more known than I have ever felt in my life. I didn’t want to leave. I understood this place, this feeling, and I truly believed it was the original home from which we all came from. I learned that death is not the end. It’s a return to our actual lives. What are we doing? I mean, that’s kind of what Christianity believes, so it’s not too, too far off.

Chris: I guess so. Yeah. What’s the point of leaving though if it’s so great everything’s glowing and we get like fish tails?

Sheryl: I mean, what’s the point of us leaving the true world? Yeah, our true home. Penance, maybe?

Chris: I don’t know what I did, but I’m sorry.

Sheryl: That’s fair. After a few minutes, but what she says feels more like a lifetime. She was zapped back into her physical body. Her husband was with her, but she couldn’t speak. Instead, she could only emit high-pitched sounds like dolphin clicks, describing it as overwhelming and completely beyond her control.

Chris: I should have put some dolphin noises on our soundboard. That’s all right. Next time I’ll be prepared. Yep.

Sheryl: Now she often has visions of the blue beings who greet to her and believes they are from the Ap-Kalu inter-dimension tribe.

Chris: I think you can pronounce that any way you want. Yeah. It is true. Which are non-alien creatures, also known as demigods. They supposedly gave civilization to man. Nicole says they gave her a mission to spread the message that love is stronger than death.

She said, love will always win. It’s where we came from. We’re all one big family, regardless of boundaries, cultures, religion, and politics.

Everything that exists came from the same spark. The more we hold on to fear, hate, and lies, the easier it is to control humanity. To create heaven on earth, we must spend each day spreading love. I am no longer afraid of death because I know what’s waiting for me on the other side. It was beginning, not an end.

Chris: No, wait. Now she’s back. She needs a wait for another end for another beginning.

Sheryl: Yep. I mean, it could just be one of the things where they wanted her back so that they could send her back with the message of, hey. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That’s exactly what she said. I am here to spread the message.

Chris: So they’re like, oh, wait, we called you back. There’s a very important message. I forgot to tell you from the start. You give this message to everybody and then it’s all easy street.

Sheryl: Seems like something a demigod might do. Yep.

Chris: But we’re all from like one big family and, you know, not every family gets along. True. It’s kind of like a nice metaphor, but the reality of which is there’s a lot of bickering in families. Oh, fair. No, I instigate a lot of it.

Sheryl: On purpose. On purpose. Hello, Sydney.

Chris: All right, Charles. Loaded in the first news story. I will give our Curse-O-Meter the second news story for calibration titled human skin teddy bear at California bus stop leads to arrest.

This is from July 14th by David K. Wee and Lindsay Good for NBC News. A doll that was possibly made of human skin was found at a bus stop near a gas station in the Mojave Desert City of Victorville. The creepy teddy bear was reported by two authorities by both a customer and employee of the gas station. Fortunately, a deputy coroner investigator determined this doll was made of a fabricated material and was not of human origin.

Sheryl: Are we disappointed or okay with that?

Chris: Leave your feelings in the comments, listeners. Yes. This was later backed up by a forensic pathologist confirming that the object was not human and contained no human tissue. Charles’s deputies arrested Hector Corona Villanueva, accusing him of planting the creepy teddy bear. He was booked on suspicion of initiating a necessary emergency response and planting phony evidence.

Sheryl: I want to know phony evidence of what?

Chris: I guess it’s kind of like desecration of a body or recreation of a body.

Sheryl: Like I guess in Canada the charge he would be charged or at least one of the charges he would get would be causing public mischief. But maybe that’s not something the state has.

Chris: None in the Mojave. As for where the bear originally came from, a South Carolina artist has been identified as the original creator. Robert Kelly of Dark Seed Creations made the bear and sold it on Etsy to Villanueva. Kelly, a longtime horror fan, says his products are made of latex and he is tinkered with various dyes to replicate the appearance of human skin. We’ve put skin on everything from guitars and teddy bears to couches, he says.

Sheryl: Also lamps and I’ll have to go back and double check his Etsy page. But lamps.

Chris: That’s right, Charles checked out his Etsy page. And you should too. Support your local creepy creator. That’s right. Kelly has made dozens of these teddy bears. And when pictures of the Victorville teddy bears started circulating he knew instantly that it was one of his creations. I made the order, put it in a box, sent it out and according to tracking it was delivered on the 12th and then on the 13th I started getting all kinds of messages. So the guy got it and just couldn’t wait. He just put the teddy bear out and just laid in wait.

Or he forgot it on the bus stop. We checked out the Dark Seed Creations Etsy shop. Well, Charles checked it out. She gave me some heads up and it happens that Kelly’s Etsy page has become fairly popular. He’s recently sold out of his skin teddy bears after selling two of them last week.

Sheryl: He’s got some pretty fun stuff on there. I’m not going to lie. If we had lots of money it would be kind of fun to add some of it to our house decor. Agreed.

Chris: We’ll have Sheryl put in the third and final story to complete calibration of the chrysometer.

Sheryl: So this article is titled, A Fallen Tree Exposes Seven Ancient Earns with Human Bones Inside. This is from June 24th by Tim Newcomb for Popular Mechanics. Popular Mechanics has been doing a bunch of our episode news stories last a little while. I wonder why or when they went from technology to weird news. Good question. Yeah.

Chris: Not complaining. Should be popular spook mechanics.

Sheryl: When a tree fell in Medio Solomis region of the Amazon, locals discovered buried underneath a collection of mysterious urns. A team of archaeologists came to investigate and upon cracking open the urns they discovered the remains of human and animals. The human remains were intermingled with that of fish and turtles, likely part of a ritual burial practice.

Chris: My first thought when I read this was that it was turtles and human and they might have had a ninja turtle fossil in a jug.

Sheryl: My first thought when I read it was like Atlantis.

Chris: Oh yeah, the sea people. The sea people. It could be both. The ninja turtles went on crazy adventures.

Sheryl: Coupled with the unusual ceramic techniques, archaeologists, Georgia Leila Olanda said that the pots and remains could be from an unknown multicultural society, told you Atlantis, that can reveal new clues about the way of life in the Medio Solomis region. Larger urns were without lids, suggesting that they were once sealed with organic material that has since decomposed. Located only 16 inches underground, Olanda said they were likely buried beneath old houses.

Chris: Keep your family close. Or your enemies close. Under your feet.

Sheryl: The ceramics were covered in green clay, which was a rare practice seen at only a few other locations in the heavily forested area of Medio Solomis region, along with the green clay the team found red stripes added to the pots. Still, according to the release, there is no direct link between these pots and known ceramic traditions. Villagers from Sao Lazaro, Do Aruma, Du Viná, and other communities worked with the archaeologists to excavate the urns. They had to construct wooden structures just to get to the site in the river heavy location. Once excavated, it took the urns up to 12 hours to travel via river canoe, and sometimes through tight streams flooded areas to the laboratory where researchers were hoping to gain a deeper understanding of their origins. The community showed a care and skill that often surpassed urban shippers, Olanda said.

Thanks to this meticulous work, the urns arrived intact. The burial site questions the traditional view that the flood plains were only places of passage or sporadic occupation, and instead indicates a continuous presence of people highly adapted to the environment.

Chris: A lot of science going on in that region. It makes me think because we have a couple trees on our property that will have to come down at some point. I hope there’s no human remains under our trees.

Sheryl: Highly unlikely. But yes, I’m with you. I hope there are no human remains. We may find somebody’s dead cat though.

Chris: That’s true. Yeah. But if it’s human remains, that means archaeologists, and then the archaeologists are going to have to fight Freddie over the bones because he’s going to chew on them. Let’s be honest. He just let out a sigh. He’s thinking about chewing on human bones this very moment. Please stand by.

Speaker 3: And the results for the first news story about the woman who died and saw our true home, not this fake imaginary home we’re all in. The Curse-O-Meter says, Probably blessed. It didn’t seem terrible. I don’t know what I would think about being a fish person. I do kind of like being a mammal.

Sheryl: I mean, if I ended up being a fish person, I would hope that it would fix the problem with my ears so I could actually go swimming in the ocean. So I’ll take it.

Chris: That’s true. Yeah. I bet you would have like very specific muscles that can close and open your ears that you can control by will. And the Curse-O-Meter results for the second news story about the human skin teddy bear at a California bus stop. The Curse-O-Meter says, The curse is people.

Sheryl: The curse is people.

Chris: Now there hasn’t been a court date yet because this is fairly recent. But so like either he spent a bunch of money on this and laid it out in public for, I don’t know, what could be a YouTube prank or something. Yep. Or he just forgot it and caused the whole commotion.

Sheryl: I mean, for our listeners who haven’t seen an image of this thing, I don’t know how you could forget it somewhere in public. You would have to be pretty out of it to not realize that the creepy looking teddy bear was not in your hands anymore. Yep.

Chris: That’s true. You’d have to be very distracted. Correct. The results for the final news story about the tree exposing human bones underneath it. The Curse-O-Meter says, Probably the nine.

Sheryl: Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with that. People bury their dad in all sorts of weird ways. Who knows what future generations will bury their dad like.

Chris: It’s true. And all the sign posts and things that you put up to let people know there’s a body there over time. Those things just sort of decay and fall away. That’s what happened to all the dinosaurs. All their tombstones are gone. All we got are their bones.

Sheryl: I mean, you’re close, but maybe not close enough.

Chris: Well, before we head over to the main topic, we are going to take a trip to the probably cursed museum and gift shop to talk about today’s artifact dropping on our Etsy store.

Sheryl: So today we have for you artifact number 22. We’ve fondly referred to this item as the demonic rocking horse. Demonic rocking horse.

Chris: It’s well, right in front of me right now. Yeah, it’s about 4.5 inches tall. The rocking horse is ceramic and it’s hand painted and kind of metallic colors. It has a silver mane and tail, gold hooves and bridal and a bronze saddle. The horse is a black color, but its eyes are bright green, like unnaturally green.

Chris: Could be a brethren to that Denver airport that has the big red eyes. Oh yeah, Bluecifer. This is Greencifer.

Sheryl: Goldcifer. Goldcifer? Not too sure. Comment below. You might be asking, how do you know it’s hand painted? That’s because in gold on the bottom of the rocker is the words too dead.

Chris: And then we found it.

Sheryl: Yeah. So Chris and I found it on a thrifting adventure. And when we saw it, we were like, hmm, this needs to be in our collection.

Chris: Sorry dad, it’s ours now.

Sheryl: Yeah, there’s just something very unsettling about the way the rocking horse looks. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it just looks off.

Chris: It’s a dark horse. That’s right. Which one was the dark horse, the one for war? Death was a pale horse.

Sheryl: Oh, I didn’t know. I don’t know the horsemen of the apocalypse.

Chris: I can only sort of remember them. The black horse? Famine. Okay. That’s famine’s horse.

Sheryl: Are you looking for the model horse? Maybe you also have a sister-in-law who doesn’t like horses. You can add this horse to your own creepy collection.

Chris: Or your sister-in-law’s collection.

Sheryl: That’s right. You can leave it on her doorstep on Christmas morning with no note. You can go down to our Etsy shop and check it out at probablycurse.etsy .com. Yep.

Chris: Every purchase you make on our shop helps fund this podcast and gets us a little bit closer to our dream of having our very own haunted museum.

Sheryl: And keep your ears open for our next Friday the 13th sale. I don’t know exactly what date that will be, but every Friday the 13th, just go check out our Etsy store because it’s a fun time. Yep.

Chris: I think next year is the next one.

Sheryl: So I also have our haunted house update. This one’s a bit…

Chris: Oh wait. We need to play the spooky music.

Sheryl: This is a bit of a different haunted house update. So some of our listeners know us personally. We have friends who listen to the podcast and a few of them have asked me about the haunted house updates specifically because I’m probably one of the most skeptical people when it comes to ghosts and spooky things and whatnot. You’re a woman of science. I am. For the record, although I don’t personally believe, I do want to believe. I need that like poster that Mulder had in his office.

Chris: I want to believe with the picture of the flying saucer.

Sheryl: Yeah. It needs to, or I could have a ghost or a bigfoot or maybe just a whole campfire surrounded by monsters and ghosts and whatever. Yeah.

Chris: You know those like corporate posters or like initiative and leadership? Yes. They should have that but for paranormal things. Yeah.

Sheryl: And it should say it. I want to believe.

Chris: Maybe I’ll get on that. For our Etsy shop.

Sheryl: That’s right. I am open to the possibility that the paranormal is real and I mean paranormal literally means beyond normal, which to be honest a bunch of stuff in our house at this point would be definitely considered beyond normal. So even though you’ll hear the updates and I may not necessarily believe it’s ghosts, it’s definitely still paranormal. Yeah.

Chris: We’ve cultivated the perfect atmosphere for ghosts to appear. Yes. At least in my mind. We’re rolling out the ghostly red carpet. Yeah.

Sheryl: There’s a whole bunch of ways they can try and get in touch with us and so if there’s ghosts listening, feel free to reach out.

Chris: Yep. We have the Ouija board. We have the ghost radio. We’ve got your app on your phone. We’re ready to talk.

Sheryl: We’ve got cameras set up. We’ve got the whole nine yards. There’s so many ways you could reach out. One day they will.

Chris: And one day we’ll set up a third mic and then they’ll, I can crank up their mic and they’ll whisper their past life story to us.

Sheryl: Anyway, now that our haunted house update is done, time for Chris’s story about our local Alberto cult leader.

Chris: So today I’m taking us away from the strange seas of recent episodes and towards something much closer to home. There are individuals with a talent to sway the minds and hearts of those around them. Some use it to rally their community to a better life, but others have pursued a much different vision. A vision where that individual is exalted above all others and believed they possess divine powers and abilities.

One such man with that vision is cult leader, John De Ruiter. You can press the bump bump bump button. That works.

John De Ruiter was born in 1959 and grew up close to where we are in the Alberta town of Stetler with his Dutch immigrant parents and three siblings. Okay, yeah. I can picture that. Have you been to Stettler?

Sheryl: Yes, we’ve been to Stettler. Have we? We have the ghost train. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Chris: I wonder if we’ve seen John’s family. Maybe. His father worked as a shoemaker. A job John would later take on in his life. His family was religious, regularly attending a Pentecostal church and that religious upbringing provided what might have been the event that set John on his life’s path. As a youth, John was attending a Christian youth rally when the self-styled prophet on the stage pointed to Johnny and said, you. He was brought to the stage and the man told him, you will be a mighty man of God. Hmm.

Sheryl: It doesn’t sound like the right thing to say to a young kid at the time. Yeah.

Chris: There’s no. I wasn’t able to derive the age.

Sheryl: Hmm. Yeah, that sounds like a dangerous thing to tell a young child.

Chris: After that day, he started envisioning himself of being an important person in the Christian circle. John De Ruiter himself points to an event when he was 17, and this is from his book, Unveiling Reality. Mm-hmm. As a young man of 17, I was unexpectedly gifted with a knowing and an experience of oneness with the source.

Sheryl: The source, the replacement for the radio check? I guess so. Okay.

Chris: Oh, maybe this explains the whole thing. Yeah. All right. Just checking. He explains it as an intimate universe on the inside and at the same time, an equally intimate universe on the outside. I was conscious and clear between the two, yet I was being in the oneness of both at the same time. My awareness of reality expanded in ways that I could never have imagined. I experienced joy, love, and deep. Inarrest, and I became dearly reconnected to a true way of being that at the time I could not comprehend with my mind.

Sheryl: I mean, I can’t comprehend some of the stuff he just said there with my own mind, so I feel his pain.

Chris: That’s kind of a theme in his teachings. Okay, excellent. I’ve thrown in a few more examples. I tried reading more of the book and my eyes just crossed and I was like, my brain’s protecting me from reading this. This event had a profound effect on him. He describes it as connecting to the source of absolute truth. And truth is like capital T truth.

It’s one of his big things. But for how strong the connection was, over time it faded, and after a year, the connection was fully gone. Afterwards, he spent years desperately trying to recreate the experience. He would listen to audio tapes of the Bible at high speeds.

Sheryl: I think there’s no way that would make me feel any sort of religious experience. It would be like the chipmunks giving the creation story.

Chris: That’s true. I would probably giggle.

Sheryl: Yeah. I’d have a good time. Yeah, it would be very entertaining. I think I would have paid more attention in church.

Chris: I’ve never tried listening to the Bible at high speeds, but I think you have the correct take on it. Yeah, okay. Just checking. He imposed on himself a lifestyle of poverty, sleeping in church parking lots and eating from dumpsters. Wow.

Sheryl: Poor guy. Kind.

Chris: Well, yeah, poor. He’s making himself poor. Yes. But this is all by choice. As opposed. And over time, he was able to reconnect. He doesn’t state how long this took, but he describes attaining it by just letting go. He surrendered to being at the bottom of the well and stopped trying to get out. And at that very moment, he was re-immersed in the benevolent reality of pure being. He had an ongoing series of reawakenings after that and came to the realization that he was to serve truth, truth, capital T again.

Okay. Live and surrender to what he knows. He is no longer his own and belongs to the truth.

Okay. So later on, he moves to Edmonton and he gets a job as a shoemaker. And at the same time, he’s still trying to move forward with his spiritual life mission. He frequents a Christian bookstore daily, ordering rare and out-of-print books by obscure Christian writers, and this bookstore is where he meets his future wife Joyce.

Sheryl: So when did he move to Edmonton again?

Chris: This would be towards the late 80s. Mid to late 80s. Okay.

Sheryl: So luckily then I would have never encountered him at any Christian bookstores. That’s true. Okay, good. Just checking.

Chris: Wait, this is 81, but this happens.

Sheryl: Okay. I’ve been to many a Christian bookstore in my childhood.

Chris: Yeah, this would have been on 118th of, I think. I didn’t see if it’s still around. Okay. So Joyce is smitten with John DeRuiter immediately. He’s buying books by authors she admires. She finds him good-looking, and he tells her that he wants to become a pastor, and she takes their meeting as fate. She had always wanted to become a pastor’s wife.

Sheryl: That’s a weird goal in life, but sure, to each their own.

Chris: It’s true. I don’t know. I’ve never romanticized the thought.

Sheryl: I dated a pastor’s son for a short time, but… No.

Chris: So you kind of know a little bit like how Joyce felt in those early days?

Sheryl: I mean, kind of. It wasn’t a goal necessarily, but I’ve been there.

Chris: Well, you’ll have to tell me how your experience tracks with the rest of the story of her and him. It won’t. So they get along very well, and they marry the next year in 1982 and have the first of their three children.

Sheryl: Ah, so their first kid is the same age as my brother. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Chris: Oh, I wonder if I went to school with Cam. It’s possible. A year after that, they move to Toronto, so John can attend a Baptist seminary. But he finds it too rigid and returns to Alberta to attend the Prairie Bible Institute in the town of Three Hills. Okay, yep. But after a year of that, he decides he didn’t need any more training. He felt that he’d learn more on the job and lands himself a pastor’s internship at the Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Edmonton.

Sheryl: Wait, you can do that? You can just be like, you know what? I have enough schooling. I’m just going to apply someplace before you graduate. I guess so.

Chris: Maybe you can, what do they call it when you take the exam to prove that you already know everything? Oh, you challenged the exam? Yeah, he challenged the pastor exam.

Sheryl: Maybe. I hope so, because that feels a little weird.

Chris: So he gets that internship, and the pastor in charge occasionally lets John preach. But John’s sermons are unusual to say the least. He was often at a loss for words. On one occasion, he stood at the pulpit, weeping and repeating the phrase, God wants to set you free over and over. The night before another sermon, he stayed up all night waiting for God to tell him what the sermon would be. When nothing came, he told the congregation at his sermon, there’s no word, God has no word for you.

Sheryl: This sounds like going to those Christian concerts when I was a kid.

Chris: But John wasn’t discouraged by his own odd sermons. In fact, the opposite. He decided to take the right of passage of reciting his spiritual history to the church elders, which is something members typically wait years to do, but not John. Yeah, he’s special. He is special. Because boy, did he give them a history. He talked to them for an unprecedented nine hours reciting his journey.

Sheryl: I hope they’re with washroom breaks. Yeah, that’s a good question. Yeah, I hope like, I hope they brought in dinner. I hope people weren’t just passing out.

Chris: Hope there was an intermission where they like called their spouses and they’re like, I’m going to be late tonight.

Sheryl: Yeah, yeah, at least at least some sort of break in time so that you’re not there for a full eight hours. Yep.

Chris: And although his testimony didn’t seem to sway all of the members, he did have an effect on Joyce’s brother-in-law, Bob, who was incredibly moved.

Sheryl: So what you’re saying is Joyce’s family just really likes the guy?

Chris: I think so. Okay. Bob became John’s first devotee. They meet together for hours at the time, multiple times a week, staying up sometimes till four to five in the morning. Joyce and Bob’s wife were excluded from these meetings. Their husbands refused to say what they discussed, only saying they were doing kingdom of God stuff.

Sheryl: That sounds very suspicious.

Chris: Suspicious indeed. Over time, Bob starts to suggest that John De Ruiter might be the Messiah, prophesies in the book of Isaiah, to which John agrees. Yeah, of course he’s going to agree. John would later claim that Jesus appeared to him thousands of times and, quote, transferred who he is over to me. By 1987, John has become too weird for the Bethlehem Lutheran Church, and they kick him out. But John manages to convince five couples from the church to start attending Friday sermons at Bob’s house. They all pay tithes so John can devote more time to his ministry, and at the gatherings he would read from the Bible, but he would make strange interpretations of the text.

Sheryl: I mean, that’s not much different than the Christian faith has done too, so.

Chris: That’s fair. Yeah. Whatever goals you got at the moment, the Bible can provide you with something for it.

Sheryl: That’s correct. You can interpret it however you want.

Chris: He would discuss the topic of death, how one had to lose their ego, emotions, and desires in order to reach a pure state, saying it was what Jesus really taught. Sometimes John would just writhe on the floor, making weird orgasmic noises, saying he was exercising the demons of other people.

That’s what Freddie’s doing. Maybe he is Jesus. He might be Jesus. So as the meetings go on, John becomes more and more critical of Christianity. Not quite sure what turns him off of the whole thing, maybe getting kicked out of the Lutheran church or hating seminary school, but at one point he puts a sign outside of his shoe store job that says Jesus Christ says Christianity is Satan’s masterpiece. And I assume when he says Jesus Christ, he means himself.

Sheryl: That or he actually spoke to Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ was like, you know what?

Chris: He’s like, write this down. Yeah. I’m also not sure how he’s able to put a big sign up in front of the shoe store without his boss putting a stop to it. Because it doesn’t say you own the shoe store. He just worked there as a shoemaker.

Sheryl: Oh, interesting. I mean, maybe his boss just doesn’t pay attention to signs. Maybe.

Chris: Yeah. Maybe he’s just like a very absent boss. So he comes by like an hour a week just to make sure everything’s running smoothly. Yep. And then he just leaves. And at the meetings, at one stage, John stopped delivering any teachings, calling it a sifting time. Joyce became concerned. The group was still giving John their money, but he was spending most of his time sleeping and puttering around. Joyce stopped attending for a few meetings as they were just either sitting in silence or socializing.

Sheryl: I’ve done the same thing, not with his meetings, but other meetings.

Chris: But things would change in 1993 when John meets a woman named Boots Bowdry.

Sheryl: That sounds like a fake name.

Chris: It does sound fake. Her backstory kind of sounds fake too. Excellent. She’s an ex-army medic who turned into a new ageer later on in life. And reflexologist, according to some sources. She starts teaching him about like all this new age stuff. And she gave him what would become his most powerful tool for his cult.

Sheryl: Third eye.

Chris: Kind of. Okay. She was able to teach him his most powerful tool, prolonged hypnotic staring. Interesting. And this is how it is done. Stare into someone’s eyes for several minutes and soon you will start to see lights and hallucinations. And this is backed up by science. A study in 2015 discovered that 90% of their subjects were susceptible to this phenomena. For fun, you can do this to yourself at home. I tried it in a mirror and it actually works. I saw my own face warp and melt.

Sheryl: Interesting. I’ve never had that, but I guess that’s how Bloody Mary works too.

Chris: Yep. Yeah. That’s actually one of the reasons they say Bloody Mary just stays around as a, I guess it’s a ritual. Yep. Children’s ritual.

Sheryl: We’ve almost said her name three times. Bloody Mary. That’s it.

Chris: One of John’s first test subjects was his eight-year-old son. He said, hey, look at me. See what happens. And his son was amazed to start seeing different faces. Employing this new tool, John was able to start growing his cult. Meetings are moved to larger and larger venues.

He was eventually up to four meetings a week and with the admission he charged, he was able to quit his shoemaker’s job. His cult begins to go under the name of the College of Integrated Philosophy. Sounds very new agey. Yes. Very, very.

Yep. To describe how these meetings go, and we could have found out if it wasn’t for the pandemic, because we were going to make Sidney and our other podcast go to one of these cult meetings.

Sheryl: Still not sure if it would have been a good idea, but I am slightly disappointed. We didn’t get to her side of things.

Chris: I’ll read the descriptions that I was able to find from other peoples here. Okay. And just imagine Sidney reciting her version of this.

Sheryl: Let’s be honest, she would walk out after five minutes because she doesn’t have the patience to sit there and stare at somebody for…

Chris: That’s true. Yeah. You and I would have to like sit there with her and just hold her like arm. Correct. So you can find all sorts of first hand accounts online of the meeting, but basically John will sit on the stage and he’ll deliver a random message. A common one was when you encounter what I am, that’s a parched thirsty heart encountering an ocean. He then scans the crowd holding gaze with everyone for extended periods of time. Sometimes he cries, sometimes he’ll discuss nothingness and death.

To let go of everything, allow the self its layers of death. There’s a chair or microphone opposite from him where members ask questions. And as they gaze into his eyes, sometimes John will take five, 10, 20 minutes of silence before responding. And his responses usually leave his followers as just as confused.

Sheryl: It sounds like trying to talk to me in the morning sometimes. Oh, all of us.

Chris: A typical exchange I read went like this. So a woman asked a question about hysterically sobbing on the drive home after a meeting to which John responds, your deeper womanist is more than yourself. He then stared for a long period of time before adding, it has no past, it flows without a path.

Yep. So the woman asked him to clarify that and after a long pause, he’s full of long pauses. He replies, use the pathways into yourself, but it still has not path. As your deeper womanist moves through the pathways of yourself. Do we all have womenists?

Sheryl: Maybe. Or is it only women that have womenists? She’s got questions too. Okay, good.

Chris: A long pause before he continues as it moves through yourself, it will change yourself. And another long pause, your deeper womanist. At this point, the woman asks, is my deeper womanist an aspect of my being? After several minutes, John responds with without a self, it has no purpose.

Sheryl: Sounds like he is a terrible fortune cookie writer.

Chris: A little bit. Yeah. Like it sounds heavy, but it’s not really saying anything, especially anything actionable. Critics of John say this is by design. By not really telling anyone to do anything, you can’t really be held responsible for what his followers do.

Sheryl: I mean, 100%, that’s what corporate companies do by adding all of those stupid like synergy words and other things to their writing.

Chris: That’s true. That’s what synergy really means. So John’s cult keeps growing. Eventually he catches the attention of a wealthy family who after attending a meeting offers their Calgary resort to run spiritual retreats. John accepts and starts making regular trips to Calgary where he would stay in their home during his visits. He meets their 30 year old daughter, Benita, and she instantly became a devotee. In no time, they start spending more and more time together, and John started staying at her place during his Calgary trips. Benita later moves to Edmonton where John spends many late nights at her home.

Sheryl: Doing king things from the Bible.

Chris: Okay. Just checking. Kingdom of God things. Okay. Of course, this makes John’s wife Joyce feel threatened. And she tries to convince herself this is a test from God. And later she’s even more tested when Benita’s sister, Katrina, is back in Canada from playing pro volleyball in Europe and needs a place to stay. So she moves into the De Ruiters basement. So their basement.

Sheryl: How old are it? No, never mind. Not important questions.

Chris: The one sister’s 30 and the other one’s in her mid 20s.

Sheryl: Yeah, but I was going to say how old are his kids?

Chris: Um, I guess it would be like around 10 by this time. Yeah. Like the oldest would be 10.

Sheryl: Yeah, like that would be something very awkward to be like the strange women’s living in our basement. Hope you’re okay with that.

Chris: I couldn’t find much about his kids.

Sheryl: That’s for the best really. I’m sure they want nothing to do with him at this point.

Chris: Yeah, that might be by design. Yes. So now when John isn’t with Benita, he’s spending time with Katrina. And it gets to the point where Joyce is begging John to spend nights with her. But John blows her off. He says the two girls are merely disciples and his time with them wasn’t personal or emotional. Do you believe John?

Sheryl: No, but I also don’t think he’s that attractive. I’ve seen photos of him. I don’t know. Those those two women could do better, especially the volleyball champion. She could find way better. Yep.

Chris: Yeah. I think like he has a very unique face. You know, like some people who are like celebrities, but their facial features almost puts them on the uncanny valley. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Like Benedict Cumberbatch when he was younger. Yeah. Like he’s attractive, but he kind of also looks like a space alien.

Yeah, that’s fair. But yeah, you don’t believe him and Joyce isn’t believing him either. She begins to hear rumors about John and the sisters. John always denies anything was happening until something happened one night while Joyce and John were talking. John starts talking about a spiritual concept called weaning.

He explains it as discarding physical, emotional and sexual needs and desires, destroying one’s artificial sense of self and leaving only enough space for truth, truth of capital T. Right. He points out that Joyce has surrendered her old vision of their life together. How the way they are currently living wasn’t the simple Christian existence she’d originally dreamt about and wouldn’t it be the ultimate act of weaning if she were allow him to take on two more wives?

Sheryl: I mean, the Bible does let people have multiple wives.

Chris: So that is true. It’s very Christian. Yep. Joyce immediately demands John explain what he means by this. But he wouldn’t speak any more on the topic.

Sheryl: Just stared at her for seven minutes.

Chris: Probably. I would just poke him in the eyes. Yeah. I’m like, cut that out. Eventually she confronts him in front of the whole congregation and she reads off of a paper and the paper says, My sweetie, you are not God. You, more than anyone, have been sucked into a powerful deception. Sex with Benita and Katrina is not truth. Can you just for a tiny moment look at what is happening to you?

Sheryl: Wow. I wouldn’t be surprised if he just packs up all his stuff and leaves at that point. You’re halfway there.

Chris: Okay. So, John didn’t reply to this until the next meeting.

Sheryl: Well, of course, that’s how the meetings go.

Chris: That’s true. Yeah. Long pause. Uh-huh. He says he is doing what he knows to be true regardless of the toll. It didn’t have to do with their looks, their heart, or their age. It only had to do with what arose from his innermost.

Sheryl: So… Erections? I guess so. Okay, I’m just joking. There are things here that he is describing that it feels like he could use more simple words for.

Chris: Can you guess what Joyce does at this point?

Sheryl: Oh, I mean, she leaves. Yep. Yeah, she’s done.

Chris: Divorces him. She takes anticult counseling, and eventually she ends up moving to the Netherlands with the kids.

Sheryl: Yeah, good for her. She’ll never see him again. Yep.

Chris: You know, I don’t know. We don’t hear from her ever again.

Sheryl: There’s no way she’s coming back, and he’s never going to be able to leave the country, so…

Chris: That’s true. Yeah. And along with Joyce leaving, some of the followers leave too. They’re upset that John is straying so far from his Christian roots. At meetings, members start asking, if you say people have to be happy with less and less, why are you taking more and more women? To which he responds, if I explained it to you, you wouldn’t understand.

Sheryl: I mean, no one understands anything he says. It’s true. Yeah.

Chris: That’s very true.

Sheryl: Yeah. He’s being very honest. He’s very honest with his followers.

Chris: So even with all that drama, John manages to grow the cult even more. He starts touring internationally. He’s public with his relationship with the two sisters, and by the 2000s, he’s earning over $200,000 a year. He’s bought a fancy house, cars, and according to some court documents, I read a monster truck.

Sheryl: Nice. Oh, is he the guy down the street who keeps parking his monster truck on the… Oh, maybe. Yeah, in the front yard every winter. I don’t know where he lives. Okay. I mean, probably not here anymore.

Chris: That’s true. Yeah. He also builds the Oasis Center, his new base of operations featuring marble floors and an enormous Koi aquarium. For extra income, they rent the space out as an event hall. And I know many people who got married there and just never knew about the cult.

Sheryl: I kind of wish we had gotten married there, because that would be a story. It was expensive. Yeah, oh, I know.

Chris: I did look it up at one point, and I’m like, ehh.

Sheryl: I should suggest it to one of my teammates whose daughter is looking to get married because they need a huge venue. I didn’t even think of it.

Chris: Mm-hmm. Right now, I think it got converted into a mosque.

Sheryl: Okay, so you could still get married there, but you might have to be Muslim.

Chris: It’s true. Yeah. Unless they just do what the cult did and just sort of rent it out for anyone.

Sheryl: That’s fair. So, even though he’s on top of the world now, John’s womanizing habits catch up to him again. In 2009, he goes on a trip to Egypt, and both sisters assume that he’s traveling with the other sister. But it turns out he’s traveling with a whole other woman. Ah, they ran into each other at like a parent’s house for breakfast one morning and they’re like, wait, why are you here?

Chris: Why aren’t you in Egypt?

Sheryl: Yeah. Why aren’t you in Egypt? It’d be an awkward conversation to suddenly have.

Chris: Yep. Since the marriages were common law, the sisters just sued John instead. Yeah, that’s fair. In court documents, the sisters described the three-way marriage as a painful farce. Benita claimed that early on in their relationship, John told her to sexually submit to him, saying that it was God’s will. He claimed to be Christ on earth and defying him was to defy truth, goodness, and God.

He also told her that part of his burden from God was to act against his own message and to violate his own marriage, so as to prepare him inwardly for his upcoming battle with Satan.

Sheryl: By being evil?

Chris: I guess so. Okay. You gotta get into the mind of the enemy.

Sheryl: Right, to understand the enemy. I’m seeing kind of what he’s doing.

Chris: The sisters’ lawsuits were settled out of court, and later John married the woman from the Egypt trip, Lee N. Angerman. John’s operation carried on for years after that, but come 2020, something entirely new threatens John’s cult. COVID. COVID.

Yeah. The in-person meetings were canceled, and without the constant closeness, his followers came to a realization that they had been following a controlling egomaniac. Members started leaving, the OASA center couldn’t bring in money from booking events, and John’s cash flow was drying up. Eventually, he sells the OASA center.

Sheryl: I like how it took COVID for them to finally be like, wait, this guy is crazy. Yep.

Chris: These people are just like sitting in their home with their own thoughts for a long time, with no one else telling them what to think. Yeah, they’re like, huh. Wait a minute. That’s not Jesus at all. Jesus has a beard.

Sheryl: He shouldn’t be white.

Chris: More trouble came in 2023 when eight of the followers come forward with tales of John’s abuses toward them. Soon after, John and Lee N. are charged with sex crimes. They’re arrested and released on bail, and the case is going to trial next year. Pretty soon. Recently, he and his remaining followers have been buying up homes in Fort Assiniboine. They recently established a new center of operations called Midnight Sky at a former campground.

Sheryl: See, when I hear Midnight Sky, I’m thinking like going looking for aliens or something.

Chris: It does sound like aliens. Yeah. Well, you’ll like this next part then. Excellent. So they’re building cabins on the property at this very moment. And at the meetings these days, John has taken to warning about apocalyptic dangers posed by aliens and rogue AI.

Sheryl: Ah, so it is aliens.

Chris: Yeah. So that’s right now. So we all got to see what happens next.

Sheryl: Yeah. Rogue AI. I mean, isn’t it already rogue?

Chris: Uh, I think it’s kind of unleashed, but it also kind of runs in circles tripping over itself. That’s fair. So not too much to worry about. Just yet? Yeah. I mean, being part of John’s cult isn’t all mysterious messages and other stuff. Like I did find out on his website that him and his followers have movie nights where they watch films and they decide how it relates to John’s teachings. And he sternly warns that not everything in the movie is a straight metaphor for his teachings.

Just certain aspects. So they watch things like The Matrix. They’ve watched like the Marvel movies.

They watched Doctor Strange like a few months ago. Nice. Uh, Lord of the Rings. That’s all free to watch. Yep. That is the story of John in his staring cult.

Sheryl: I wonder if he’s going to like hear our podcast episode and then send us a nasty email and be like, hey, that’s not how the story went. You’re lying. I’m not sure.

Chris: There’s been a lot of like news articles that I found about John like written over the years and like none of them have been taken down. Okay. So I don’t think he’s ever really threatened with lawsuits. Oh, that’s good. I think he’s just too involved watching movies and staring at people.

Sheryl: Building cabins in the woods. Yep. Thank you.

Chris: No problem. So now that we have the story into the Curse-O-Meter, we will get it to spit out the results. Please stand by.

Speaker 3: And the Curse-O-Meter says John and his cult is. The real curses people. That’s true. Yeah. I couldn’t find anything that would say that that would betray John believing he is like a prophet for the Christ. It does seem like everybody kind of believes that he believes what he’s doing and everything that he’s saying. Yeah.

Sheryl: The other thing is that like he’s using a whole bunch of religious manipulation tactics and brainwashing and all that other sort of stuff to try convince his followers to continue in his weird cult. Like that’s definitely not associated with any sort of religion, although we were making a lot of jokes about religion. Yeah. It’s just him being weird and manipulative. Not.

Chris: Yeah. Just putting himself at the center of everyone’s world.

Sheryl: Which yeah, that’s bad news.

Chris: I’m a little sad that we can never get Sydney to go through this. It was like $11 admission when we were looking at it and then COVID.

Sheryl: I also am sad we didn’t get to go to Ron Hubbard’s birthday. So that’s true.

Chris: Those are both amazing episodes. There’ll be more cults. There’s always another cult. Well that takes us to the end of today’s episode. Thank you very much for listening. If you would like something to add to your Curio cabinet, head over to the ProbablyCursed Museum and gift shop at probablycursed.etc .com. You can also follow us on our socials at TikTok, Instagram, Blue Sky, Facebook. We got a Tumblr, but nobody talks to us on Tumblr. I think everyone’s left Tumblr. We’re on the bigger socials.

Sheryl: And if you have any cursed or haunted artifacts that you would like to send our way, you can contact us at probablycursedpodcast at gmail.com.

Chris: Until next month, stay spooky. Good luck everyone.