There are probably worse ones out there, but the only one I have firsthand knowledge of is Scientology. Their entry-level stuff doesn't sound all that insane until you realize 'suppressive person' really means 'anyone who thinks Scientology is nonsense.' Then they encourage you to cut those disbelievers out of your life (disconnection policy) even if they're family members. Your reward for doing all of this is the privilege of spending roughly $250k to reach OT3 and finding out South Park was telling the truth about Xenu. Don't get me started on the child labour and human trafficking within the Sea Org. Suffice it to say Scientology is one helluva rabbit hole.

Can't believe nobody here is talking about Aum Shinrikyo. Literally a doomsday cult, who took matters into their own hands. Aum Shinrikyo committed multiple terrorist attacks in Japan including the 1995 Tokyo Sarin gas attack. While only 13 people died in that incident, over 1000 were injured, and had the attack gone according to their original plan, both those numbers could have been significantly higher. The scariest part to me? The goal was to trigger an international conflict, involving nuclear war, again, to trigger the very doomsday they preached. It's one thing to convince your followers the world is ending. It's an entirely 'nother thing to convince them to bring it about.

People’s Temple (Jonestown) and Heavens Gate The eerie darkness and influence over the followers loss of lives of these 2 had always stuck out to me.

The Ant Hill Kids

IBLP. It’s extraordinarily restrictive. Look up the Duggars.

Blue Oyster Cult. They apparently don’t even fear the reaper.

Peoples Temple - FLDS - Scientology

Children of God / The Family International. so much CSA.

The Troubled Teen Industry. Any parent that gets pissed off at their teenage son or daughter can have them locked up without trial. They are run on child, slave labor, and maintain order by humiliation and coercion. Letters and phone calls are watched closely. but eventually just comply because these places are designed to break your spirit so they can extract as much money by keeping kids there as long as possible. Its a huge industry with close ties to political figures like Mitt Romney and you rarely ever hear about it. Most people leave with a lot more trauma than they came in with. I went to a wilderness program called OnTrack that was shut down after they suffocated a child while restraining him, and the next school I went to got shutdown, when a kids parents found out the school took him to the local jail, placed him in a cell where he was stripped down and according to the Houston Chronicle, ' the prisoners rubbed vaseline on his backside'. Basically punishing the kid by scaring him into believing that he was going to be gang raped by a bunch of actual inmates of the Montgomery County Jail.

Scientology. Their power and reach is terrifying.

I recently learned about the Killing Hour cult... I think its official name is different. Not a lot of information out there and it was relatively small. But the story about the 'messiah' killing his mom, then his sisters lining up to wait for their turn to be killed... that's wild.

The Peoples Temple by far is the freakiest to me. Their leader was suffering dementia or strokes and became more and more irrational to the point he convinced everyone to kill themselves. *No Strokes - Drug abuse. My mistake! I got him mixed up with a totally different true crime case.

Cults that prefer followers die in pain rather than getting simple treatment. Jehovah's witness with blood transfusion, Scientology with psychiatry or Christian Science with nearly all medical treatment. No matter how you think about Islam or Judaism, they at least let followers break rules to save their live.

Omg, I had never heard of the Ant Hill cult and am feeling sick now.

I have a lot of friends who are IBLP survivors. Really bad abuse, coverups, no accountability.

Those school-based ones like Élan where the child’s PARENTS pay someone to abduct the kid from their beds in the middle of the night. What actually happens in the “schools” is extremely disturbing

Perhaps there are worse cults than Jim Jones' People's Temple, but the mass suicide happened when I was 10 and we had cable and newspaper subscriptions for the first time. It really had an impact on me; for the first time I understood that there was something nuts about the world and adults didn't really have their ball of wax together after all.

I mean, Scientology and Falun Gong seem to have a pretty persistent presence in my local area. However, the one that bothers me the most is the weird culty behavior surrounding MAGA.

Texas A&M

MAGA

I haven’t seen my mom in nearly two years thanks to the Jehovah’s Witness organization. They had her shun everyone right after dad died. Still grieving them both.

Scientology, those fuckers broke INTO THE FBI to replace document they had on them with “Scientology approved” documents

The FLDS