Stranger Things

Jan. 1, 1981: Review of "Ticket To Heaven" (Roger Ebert)

QuoteAlthough "Ticket To Heaven" does not mention any existing cult by name, it is based on a series of newspaper articles about a former Moonie. The techniques in the film could, I suppose, be used by anybody. What makes the film so interesting is that it's not just a docudrama, not just a sensationalist expose, but a fully realized drama that involves us on the human level as well as with its documentary material. There are scenes that are absolutely harrowing: an overhead shot of David trying to take a walk by himself and being "joined" by jolly friends; a scene where he guiltily bolts down a forbidden hamburger; a scene where another cult member whispers one sentence that sounds to us, as much as to David, like shocking heresy. By that point in the film, we actually understand why David has become so zombie-like and unquestioning. We have shared his experience.

Nov. 13, 1981: "Ticket To Heaven" A Sleeper About Cults (The New York Times)
Note to Self: Move the above Ticket to Heaven links to a different thread.

1991: A fascinating panel discussion from 1991:

• James Whelan was the founding editor of the Washington Times as well as the editorial page editor.
• Michael Warder was a Director of the Unification Church of America in 1977.

Transcript of Michael Warder's Speech (How Well Do You Know Your Moon)

QuoteOver a period of time I began to reach the conclusion that Moon had a literal, biologic, belief in the superiority of Koreans, and that they, among the orientals were superior, but that orientals were superior to all the rest anyway. So there was a real racial, nationalistic hierarchy involved in the concept. ...

We had a little girl. Shortly after her birth Moon established a nursery in Tarrytown, and all the couples were called together by Moon at a meeting in the New Yorker [Hotel] and basically ordered to put the children in the nursery in Tarrytown. We were living on 34th and 8th Avenue in Manhattan. Now this was very difficult, but we did it. We would see our daughter on the weekend, on Sundays.

Then about two weeks later, we had a meeting at the Belvedere Estate. This was phase two, and he must have known phase two before he started phase one. He basically ordered all of the wives to go on a three-year evangelical mission for C.A.R.P. on the West Coast. My wife at the time was three months pregnant, and she went off to California on this trip, led by Tiger Park.

Meantime, in the nursery, our daughter, she would literally, there would be one person assigned to take care of five infants and when one person wasn't there, they would have these tape recordings of Korean language so these kids would learn to speak Korean. The lady who ran the nursery could not speak English. The idea was that Korean was the heavenly language so they were going to get a leg up on the rest of us. It is pretty grisly, grim stuff.

June 17, 2009: Q&A with Diane Benscoter: Joining, leaving & Ultimately Defeating the Cult (TED Blog)

QuoteI had just turned 17. I was very idealistic. The Vietnam War really bothered me. I had a good friend with a brother in Vietnam. I was determined to find a community that would stop the madness. I went off in search of something like that. I went off on this Walk for World Peace. It was a five day walk, and during the entire walk there would be two people walking with me at all times, talking about this new world they were going to build, saying that I was special and chosen by God to be a part of this, otherwise I wouldn't be there. There were lectures every night. And slowly I came to believe that they were right, and that Sun Myung Moon was the second coming of the Messiah.

Any critical question — the kind that a scientist would welcome — was not acceptable. In circular logic, anything that questions belief means something evil, bad or Satan. It's wrong to listen, it's wrong to even play with ideas that are different. This is how unthinkable things can happen.

June 18, 2009: How Cults Rewire the Brain (TedTalk by Diane Benscoter)


Diane's Book (2013): Shoes of a Servant

Nov. 2010: Escape from the Unification Church (Paul Morantz)

Sept. 3, 2012: I Was a Moonie Cult Leader (The Guardian - Steven Hassan)

QuoteI was 19, and it was the beginning of the spring semester at college when three women, dressed like students, asked if they could sit at my table in the cafeteria. They were kind of flirting with me. I thought I was going to get a date.

At some point they said they were part of a student movement, trying to make the world a better place. I said, "Are you part of some sort of religious group?" They said no. They also didn't say they were celibate and that Reverend Moon was going to match people and tell them when they could have sex. If they had, I would have said: "You're crazy, leave me alone." I say this to highlight the point about deception: people don't knowingly join cults.

Little did I know, within a few weeks I would be told to drop out of school, donate my bank account, look at Moon as my true parent, and believe my parents were Satan. I didn't even believe in Satan until I met the group.

March 17, 2014: Moonie Cult Experience with Judy Koerner (Rebecca Kimbel/YouTube)


July 22, 2015: I Survived a Korean Cult – Part 1 (Julie Cleaver for Global Hobo/Internet Archive)

QuoteOne example of this was the practice of Ansu. Ansu is a ritual where thousands of people line up in rows and hit themselves repeatedly in an attempt to rid bad spirits from their bodies. The practice takes two hours, and a four-verse Korean song is sung for the entirety of the ritual. The repetition and violence are vaguely reminiscent of a metal gig, except that a dress code of white shirts is enforced because they attract good spirits. Everyone who stays in Cheongpyeong is made to perform Ansu twice a day without exception. That means I've spent a total of 84 hours (three and a half days) singing that one stupid song and beating myself.

I hated Ansu for fairly obvious reasons. I found it mind numbingly boring and completely pointless. But that's not the worst part about it. Near the end of each session, the leaders would announce that everyone must take turns hitting the evil spirits out of the people around them. I always avoided sitting around the ajumas (crazy old Korean ladies) as they hit the hardest.

Unfortunately, some people took the practice to the extreme and I saw mothers beating the "evil spirits" out of their children until they bled. It was heartbreaking to see cheeky little Korean kids I had made friends with being abused, and moreover, that everyone around me was okay with it. I cried and begged them to stop, but I was helpless to the collective approval of the masses. I think that's when I first started to notice that everyone there around me was absolutely insane.

Aug. 2, 2015: I Survived a Korean Cult – Part 2 (Julie Cleaver for Global Hobo/Internet Archive)

QuoteOne guy started claiming that he was the second Jesus, others felt insanely guilty for their previous life choices and repented in tears for drinking alcohol, and sadly for me, an Australian family started to believe that I was the root of all their problems. The daughter, who particularly thought I was the devil, screamed at me in the dining hall in front of everyone, swearing more than Chopper Reid. I had no idea what was going on and just stood there, completely stunned. Later that night, her brother found me walking back from the prayer hall and yelled at me, inches away from my face, so close I could feel his cold spit hit my cheeks. I stood in the snow, crying. My sensitive soul was completely crushed by those strangers, unleashing a whole realm of misery I didn't even know I was capable of feeling.

Sadly, I was never able to sit out of the schedule and recuperate myself, as there were hidden cameras all over Cheongpyeong, Big Brother style. I tried to hide a few times but the Korean Mafia, as I called them, were always watching. They would find me curled up in a storage room, desperately hiding underneath a sleeping bag, and force me to attend, sometimes with physical violence.

The all-seeing eyes of the Korean Mafia along with the mass pressure from everyone around me meant that I had to follow the schedule completely. This wasn't easy, as every day we woke at 5am, prayed for an hour, ate a quick bowl of rice for breakfast, performed Ansu for two hours, walked up a spiritual mountain to pray, ate more rice, Ansu again, a couple hours of lectures, rice for dinner, group prayer in a hall, and then finally at 10pm, sleep. There were a few exceptions to the schedule, where we were given an hour or two of free time, but most days were a gruelling seventeen hours of prayer, rice and Ansu.

June 3, 2016: Experience: I Escaped From The Moonies (The Guardian)

QuoteOne day, a man knocked on my van and invited me to join his community for a weekend. They were the Moonies, named after their Korean founder Sun Myung Moon, and they were operating from a farmhouse just outside Reading. The community of 15 was led by a local man and his wife; it was clean, drug-free and essentially Christian, all of which appealed to me. By the end of the weekend, I had agreed to stay for six months. ...

Much of my time was spent travelling between Moonie centres along the east coast, preaching on the street corners of nearby towns and helping to establish new communities. Five years after I joined, Moon declared that I should marry. He paired couples at random; no one questioned his judgment. My bride was to be a young Austrian girl called Heidi.

We had no contact until the wedding day. Moon performed the ceremony in a hall in Washington with 700 couples and, after the vows, I was made to cane my wife as hard as possible. It wasn't in my nature to do that and I didn't enjoy it, but you didn't question Moon, and his men were watching us closely.

Soon afterwards, my superiors told me I was being posted to Korea for seven months. I realised then that I would be cut off from the world, and that I had been controlled for years. I also couldn't see myself being happy with Heidi. I was desperate to escape. I acted quickly. I was trusted to run errands alone in the van, so I knew I could leave the site without arousing suspicion. It was my only means of getting away. ...

Aug. 15, 2019: Growing Up Moonie Details Life Inside the Unification Church (Podcast review/Hideo Higashibaba)

Link to Internet Archive of Hideo's podcast page. Transcripts are available.
Note to Self: Explore those when I have time.

QuoteMoonies, like other cult members, can't easily leave because their lives, identities, and families are so deeply entwined in the Unification Church. The sense that every member is part of one enormous "true family" is a great source of comfort and inspiration for many involved, but it's also a manipulative tactic to scare people into staying.

Although Higashibaba started questioning his beliefs in high school, he didn't leave the Unification Church until years later, because it would also entail cutting himself off from his family. When he finally left in college, he relied on support from non-Moonie friends to help him through his depression and self-reckoning.

That same year, Higashibaba also came out as gay, something he found empowering, but that he never could have celebrated within the Unification Church. Moonies do not accept homosexuality, period. The founder Moon, who died in 2012, was once quoted calling gay people "shit-eating dogs."

Aug. 8, 2018: My life as a Moonie (Daily Mail/Losa Kohn)

QuoteThey played and became close friends with Moon's children – the 'True Children,' offspring of the Messiah, who were revered by the entire Church. 'It was wildness for kids, because they could get away with anything ... jumping off the loft in the barn and running through the hallways screaming and playing tag and basketball and riding motorcycles,' Lisa says. 'It was just playing, albeit with all those other layers to it.'

She adds: 'There were times when stones would be thrown at members and they would be grateful for that ... It was insane to think about, but they're the Messiah's children.' ...

Some developments within the Church, however, seemed arbitrary and unfair. Lisa writes that, at one point, she and Robbie were banned from seeing their mother; at another, Lisa says, they were barred from hanging out with the True Children, as members of the Church hierarchy believed they were bad influences.

'It was all about protecting the lineage,' Lisa says, adding that 'hierarchies exceptionally mattered' within the Church.

This was a link I bookmarked years ago. I was just browsing some of those older links, and I noticed Lisa's name:
Aug. 11, 2018: How Cult Leaders Use Music For Mind Control (Refinery29/Lisa Kohn)

QuoteLisa Kohn, author of the memoir To the Moon and Back: A Childhood Under the Influence, remembers her time in the Unification Church, which her mother brought her into at the age of 10, as one full of music. For Moonies, as they are colloquially known, singing religious music, both American and Korean, was a part of regular services that fostered a sense of community.

The rock music introduced to her by her hippie parents, from the Hairspray soundtrack to the Beatles, was banned, but the Moonies did sing some folk songs — with a twist. " [We would sing] folk music that was reworded, like 'Blowin' in the Wind' became 'the answers my friend were in the hearts of men.' They also took a Jimmy Buffet song and changed the words. They would do this with pop music to make it more spiritual, godlike, or more messianic," Kohn says. ..

For Kohn, it was paradoxically music – secular rock music – that helped her escape the Moonies. "He doesn't know it, but Bruce Springsteen got me out of the Unification Church,"

Comment: I have a very vivid memory of noticing this. I was in a supermarket with a friend I later learned was in Moonie-splinter group. Music was, as usual, playing over the supermarket's speakers. Suddenly, she stopped mid-step, and said with a glazed look in her eyes as if in a mini-trance: "This song reminds me of my church". It was quite eerie.

That group would change songs lyrics so they could be used to praise the leader. Something like The Police's "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic" simply change the "she" to "he" and sing it in church while the leader's photo is projected on the wall. Presto: An instant musical memory between an often heard popular song and some obscure cult leader.

It is really quite fascinating and disturbing because a member who experienced that could almost never again hear that song without thinking of the leader, no matter how long has passed since that member broke free.

It is one simple way to keep the leader at the forefront of the member's mind when not at a cult event, simply going about their daily lives. And it doesn't take much to change the lryics of almost any popular song to associate it with a cult. Some off-the-top-of-my-head examples a male cult leader could use: "I Wanna Hold His Hand", "His Heart Will Go On", "Everything He Does, He Does it For Me", "He is the Wind Beneath My Wings", "Don't Stop Us/Him Now".... I could go on forever, which brings to mind another lyric: "now and forever, he will be my man".

Sept. 20, 2018: Unification Church Member Details Getting Out, Finding Happiness (Today Show Video/Lisa Kohn)

Nov. 2, 2018: What It's Like to Grow Up in a Cult (Marie Claire/Lisa Kohn)

QuoteIn her new memoir, To the Moon and Back: A Childhood Under the Influence, she tells the tale of joining, living in, and eventually breaking free from what many believe was a cult.

I looked up Lisa's memoir on Amazon, and I was surprised to see that I had bought it in 2018. That was around the time I was feeling a little burned out on the topic. I think I'm ready to read it.

This next article is another one that I had bookmarked years ago. I just skimmed it looking for any Moonie reference, and I was surpised to see Teddy mentioned as I had already posted the links below this one:

Nov. 27, 2018: 'Extreme & Dangerous' Brainwashing, Abuse & Forced Child Labour – Inside America's Most Terrifying Cults Active Today (Teddy Hose via The Sun)

QuoteAnother former extreme group member Teddy Hose, who was born into the Unification or "Moonie" church, told how his brother shot and paralysed his mother in an accident he blamed on the group and the Moon family they followed. Teddy told how he grew up with Sean Moon, who (now) runs a gun-obsessed splinter group of the church called the Sanctuary Church, which encourages members to arm themselves with AR-15 rifles and devote themselves to the Moon family ahead of their own.

"The Moons were always into guns," he said. "Sean's older brother, Steve Moon, he loved guns and would often go hunting in the woods around our house, so I think my brother saw that. "I remember I was just doing my homework at my desk and my brother came in and said I got to tell you something: 'Mom was shot'.

"My mom was pruning some trees in the woods and my brother must have thought it was deer or something and he just took two shots in the dark.

"I didn't believe him and then I saw my younger brother behind him and he had tears in his eyes. I was like 'Oh my God'. She had two bullets in the stomach that reached her spine. She's paralysed from the waist down. "Just one shot changed everything, all because the local church boys thought guns were cool."

Teddy left the church with his family aged 22, after they realised how wealthy the Moon family were and how poor its members were.

"The Sanctuary Church (Splinter group led by Sean Moon) - it speaks the language of Christian values - but people need to know that this is not a Christian organisation," Teddy explained.

"They have someone who has guns who believes the world is trying to attack them. You're putting guns into kids' hands and giving them a religious reason to use them."

Feb. 8, 2022: Why I Left the Moonies (Teddy Hose on Facebook)

The above Facebook video is very heart-felt and touching. Teddy knew Young-jin Moon, the son who committed suicide at the age of 21, and it was Moon's reaction to his son's death that resulted in him leaving. I wasn't familiar with Teddy before I came across the above video, but he's been very active and vocal about sharing his experiences and educating about cults. Here are some more, the second video has a rather misleading title, there's very little talk of guns in the video. Instead, some very interesting accounts of growing up as a second generation member of the Moonies; plus, a little dig at the Moonie-owned Washington Times:

July 13, 2022: We Were Wrong to Forget About the Moonies (The Telegraph/Internet Archive)

QuoteElgen Strait, who was born into the Moonies in the US in the early Eighties, but now hosts a podcast in which he rails against the church's sinister and bullying behaviour, is sceptical.

"There's a concept that runs throughout the entire organisation that says your spiritual standing is directly impacted by the amount of money you give," he says. "In the US you're meant to give 10 per cent of your pre-tax income every month. In Japan, it's 30 per cent. But that's just to start with."

On top of this, further donations are expected, he says, in order to "liberate your ancestors" and for a multitude of other "spiritual reasons". Ancestor liberation ceremonies are held to "promote ancestors in the spiritual world" (Dr Chryssides' words); or, as the late Rev Moon put it, to "completely change the lineage of all human beings back into God's lineage, as completely ideal sons and daughters" because "most of your ancestors have actually gone to hell". Liberating them can cost up to hundreds of dollars.

Dec. 18: Elgen Strait - Escaping The Moonies (Sweeney Talks Podcast)

Falling Out With The Moonies (Elgen Strait's Podcast Spotify Channel)

March 9, 2023: Born Into & Married in the Moon cult with Elgen Strait (Steven Hassan/Elgen Strait)

...
Oct. 7, 2022: Unification Church Tries to Derail Ex-Believer's Press Conference (Kyodo News)

QuoteThe controversial Unification Church on Friday attempted to stop a former believer's press conference by sending a message purportedly signed by her parents, but she pressed ahead and spoke out on alleged abuses that she and other believers endured at its hands.

In a summarized version of the faxed message read out during the event, Sayuri Ogawa's parents called for the press conference to be halted immediately, saying their daughter has a "tendency to lie," and the psychiatric issues she said she suffers had worsened since a gunman killed former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

At the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo, which hosted the event, Ogawa, who uses a pseudonym to protect her real identity, relayed her traumatic experiences as a so-called second-generation church believer. ...

Born and raised in the church, founded in South Korea in 1954 by Sun Myung Moon and often labeled by critics as a cult, Ogawa said that after graduating from high school, she was sexually harassed by a public minister during a retreat. The woman said that at the retreat, she was also told she was "possessed by an evil spirit" and subsequently sent to a facility in South Korea for a supposed exorcism.

Ogawa said the contradictory practices of the church and her witnessing other believers suffer mental breakdowns impacted her own stability, leading to her being hospitalized in a psychiatric ward.

An emotional Ogawa also said she grew up in financial difficulty, with her parents making frequent donations to the church. She said her family confiscated 2 million yen ($14,000) that she had saved by working a part-time job, adding the money has not been returned.

Oct. 12, 2022: I Was Recruited Into 'The Moonies' But Managed to Leave Thanks to Jesus & Some Kind Church Leaders (Woman Alive/Beth Axton - Internet Archive)

QuoteI eventually caused my family great distress by leaving my work and home and joining them for what proved to be a life of misery. Within a week I was asked to hand over everything in my bank accounts and to get another job and have my salary paid to them. We slept on floorboards for only two to three hours a night and fasted continually, but nothing seemed to satisfy to make enough restitution. As time went on I was completely drained and exhausted....

There are many of these types of groups masquerading as Christians, they often use an insidious mind control and a psychological coercion and hire reputable premises for their meetings. Be alert and let the words of Jesus speak to us: "Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in My Name saying, 'I am the Christ', and will deceive many." Mathew 24.

Beth's Book: Why I Left The Moonies

March 16, 2023: In the Grip of the Unification Church: The Story of a Former Second-Generation Follower (Nippon)

QuoteThe woman's parents had an arranged marriage and wed in a mass weddings Moon presided over. This made the woman one of what the UC calls the "blessed second generation," who according to UC teachings are born free of original sin and so occupy a special presence within the movement. ...

The woman tells how her parents placed the UC before everything else, even family. "From the time I was a small child, my mother would be away from home for six months at a time doing missionary work overseas," she says, adding that while in elementary school she was made to go on some of these trips abroad. Her father, a local leader in the UC, was involved in church activities from morning until night. "We were never able to build a normal parent-child relationship."

As an adolescent, she began to worry that her parents planned for her to "receive a blessing," language used in the UC to mean a marriage between church members, and give birth to children who would be third-generation followers. When her suspicions proved true, she says she finally realized that her life was being controlled by others, filling her with hopelessness. ...

"I waited for a time when my parents were busy doing work for the church," she describes. "Then I grabbed my suitcase and left." She traveled to another prefecture where an aunt and uncle lived, but her parents quickly learned her whereabouts. "They told my aunt and uncle—who were only trying to protect me—that they should commit suicide. They said they would take me back home to re-educate me because I had become a devil." Sensing real danger, she lived on the run for a time, but her parents never relented. "They followed me and even had the police bring me home on one occasion." ...

Today, the woman is severely critical of the UC. "What kind of a church champions the value of family harmony while at the same time leaving me no choice but to cut ties with my own parents? How many other children have they hurt the same way? There is no doubt in my mind that the UC is a criminal organization that disregards the rights of children. Followers need to wise up to this truth."

July 13, 2025: As a Former "Moonie," Trump's Cult Tactics Are Eerily Familiar (Akina Cox for Salon)

Quote...Most concerningly, both Trump and Moon have used scapegoats to distract their followers from their power grabs. Scapegoats are integral for a cult; they promote social cohesion, both by binding the in-group together over a common enemy, and by widening the gulf between members and outsiders. They cleave the world into a binary of us and them. Scapegoats are vilified as a tacit warning to cult members, an example of what could happen to them if they stray too far from the rest of the flock. The cohesion provided by the scapegoat places cult members in a position of further manipulation, when they don't look past the easy answers and see their leaders taking advantage of them.

When I was a child, I remember Moon preaching about an apocalyptic battle taking place between God and Satan, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. I was taught to be suspicious of all outsiders, but there were a few enemies he particularly liked to single out: feminists, homosexuals and communists. They, Moon said, were stymying our efforts at world peace and were the reason why we were all struggling in poverty.

Both the Unification Church and MAGA are masters of the manipulation tactic psychologists refer to as DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender, in which perpetrators of abuse attempt to play the victim to avoid being held accountable. When Japan recently investigated the Unification Church for defrauding its members, leading to bankruptcies and suicides, the church decried the prosecution as an attack on religious freedom. Now, amid reports of attempted kidnappings of first-graders at schools, Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, complained to news outlets that agents have been harassed online, harming their well being.

For years, I tried to keep quiet about my past, in hopes that my parents and their ilk would leave me alone. Not anymore. As a child, more than once I had to walk by people protesting the Unification Church on the way to services. I stared with horror at signs portraying Moon with devil horns. I tried to push the images out of my mind, but they never fully left. They planted a small seed of doubt that maybe something we were doing wasn't right. These encounters put a human face to the opposition, so as that doubt grew, I knew that I wasn't alone. Those protests hurt the church in a way I didn't understand as a child — they made it less popular to join, ultimately stunting its growth. ...

I thought by leaving the Unification Church I would no longer be haunted by the specter of violence in my community, the horror of families being ripped apart, of leaders sowing division and chaos to distract from their greed and hate. But somehow, here I am again.

July 30: Akina Cox Part 1: Unification Church, Mass Weddings, & Unpaid Labor (Trust Me Podcast)

Aug. 6: Akina Cox Part 2: The Moonies, Ice & The Cult Tactics Of Donald Trump (Trust Me Podcast)