There was a cult called 法の華三法行 Hō No Hana Sanpōgyō led by Hogen Fukunaga who claimed he could give a diagnosis based on reading people's feet.
He would then sell scrolls and ornaments for thousands of dollars to relieve people of curses and other ailments.
I also share my own experiences about how close I was to joining cults 😧
Get in touch: ParanormalClub.com
Find me on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok as @edwincov
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That translation means isn't it the best Fukunagaogan?
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What have I gotten myself into? OK, so last week I made a
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calling for cult stories. Stories that have to do with
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cults and cult like things, or we're calling it that so that we
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don't get sued because we just started the show and that would
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just get rid of us forever. But I did find some very
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interesting stories of these organizations that are cult
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like. We're going to watch out with
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their word in here. There was one that really got my
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attention. Again, there's a bunch, right?
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Like there's some that are with the, you know, Heaven's Gate and
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you have some other famous ones like that one New Age mother.
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So that's on Netflix and all over the place.
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But there was one that was called the foot reading cult.
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That's the one that I'm going to go with today.
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So we're going to be talking all about cult, starting off with
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this very interesting story, then some other kind of personal
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stories here because we didn't get any submissions on cult
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stories. Because again, if you if you do
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have any cult stories, you're probably either not in a cult
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anymore or you know, you're just not familiar with it.
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Because I feel like a cult member wouldn't know they're in
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a cult or would probably defend like defend themselves and say
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that they're not. I don't know, just a thought
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here, but I'm going to tell you about that.
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And then we're going to close up with some of the comments and
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some of our community type of things.
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So with that, our weekly paranormal club meeting is in
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session. Here we go.
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So this is a very interesting story from Japan.
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And it's, it's bizarre to think of it this way, but this cult
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was started literally with the objective to generate money.
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Why? Because the guy who founded it
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was in like a huge amount of debt.
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How do you get into this amount of debt?
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I don't know, but ¥500, which I mean, if I look, I don't
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know if I look this upright, but it's like $3.
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Is that right? It's just a lot, a lot, a lot of
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money that he was in debt. And this was in the 1980s.
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So here's how the story goes, right?
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If you really want to dive into like the original, like the from
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the very, very, very beginning, I'll tell you about this guy and
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then we'll move into, you know, onto some of the other parts of
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the story. So starting in 1945, Hogan of
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Fukunaga is born, and he's born in Japan.
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Yamaguchi Perfect Tour in the 1980s, he claims to have this
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ability, a divine revelation that he is now the world's final
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savior Jesus, and he's also the Buddha.
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Like the reincarnation, he's like the Buddha.
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Then in 1987, he officially establishes what he calls the
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Hononana Sanpogio Sanpogio Religious Corporation.
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Basically, he's a church. Now, I don't know how Japan
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works with taxes, but I know in the US, if your church you don't
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get taxed on profit because really you're not really
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generating profit even though you are.
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So you can just get paid a lot and there's little loopholes and
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stuff. But we're not going to go in
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against the church or anything. Again, we're not going to get
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sued today. Then in 1996, he goes to this
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fundraiser that generates a bunch of controversy.
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I'm going to bring some of these names because this guy, the US
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president, was involved in some other interesting controversies
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and then his downfall. So we're going to take it piece
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by piece here, right? So the Hono Hana Zampogyo, this
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organization was this Japanese religious movement and it was
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founded by this guy Hogan Fukunaga, who started this in
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order to generate money, started reading feet.
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You know how there's palm readers?
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Well, this guy was a foot reader and he would charge $900.00 for
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a reading. Sounds weird.
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But again, to me palm reading is, is does sound weird to me.
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So hey, you know, he claimed to diagnose health, any type of
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curses. He was like, you have these
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issues. Hey, I'm going to tell you from
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here, I'm going to reach your fortune based on your feet.
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And that's how I started started.
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It turned out to be a very like, lucrative thing.
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And you know, obviously $900 a pop is a lot.
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So started making bank. It worked out.
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The members were told to attend expensive seminars.
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Now, these things were expensive ¥2.25 million to attend one of
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these and donate huge sums up to ¥14.3 million.
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You know, he would basically sell them like scrolls,
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ornaments, little trinkets that you would put on your door, like
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around your house to try to peel or to try to protect you from
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these things. And it was pretty sad because
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people did fall for it and they did pay a lot of this.
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And, you know, when you have trouble, like a troubled person
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going into stuff like this, it's kind of like, you know, taking
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baby from a candy kind of situation from a candy, the
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candy from a baby situation, because you know, they're,
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they're looking for solutions. So it's sad in that, that
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aspect. And, you know, in that way, I do
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have some like, you know, sympathy, like I, I, I can, I
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can understand that, you know, you have this strong issue.
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It's kind of like when you were sick, you have this illness and
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you go to the doctor and just kind of hoping they tell you
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something because nobody else can find out what you have.
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That's what I'm imagining. And here you have this person
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who's charismatic, energetic, full of confidence, telling you,
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hey, you know what? This is what you have and this
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is how you cure it. So people fall for it.
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You know, they had cult members that were ascending in ranks,
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basically becoming leaders of, you know, of, of the group.
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And they were told, Hey, you know what, it's OK to lie like
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in the name of this, like it's OK to lie because we're going to
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save them. So do what you have to do.
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We're going to we're going to do good in in quotes here.
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It's it's OK to lie to bring people to training.
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You know, it was like a thing that they did also, by the way,
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like throughout all this time, the followers are, I don't know
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if they're seeing results, but it's growing like people are the
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word is spreading. Followers are coming.
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I think at its biggest point, there was a note here that said
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up to 30 members joined like at its peak, which is, you know,
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insane. But it's, it's what happened.
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And all this time, the guy Fukunaga was living at a as in
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he was buying custom shoes and suits and he was riding
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inexpensive cars. His rent, his, his wife's
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shopping sprees were like $7000 a month just spending living in
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expensive houses. And it's just what he did.
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Supposedly he raised around ¥60 billion for followers.
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And this was over the span of 13 years.
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So you could say he got out of debt pretty safely.
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Like you can that happened anyway.
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He also like brought this is when he was growing, like his
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organization was really growing and expanding really fast.
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He ended up trying to get more of a like a strong reputation by
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rubbing shoulders with important people.
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And these are people that are like, I was surprised here, like
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we have the Pope, John Paul, the second, Bill Clinton, Mother
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Teresa. Like these are not just like,
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you know, these are like Oprah's, like Oprah level,
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higher than Oprah level. It's it's pretty intense.
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Eventually, though, you know, you, you get so much attention.
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You're going to get good attention from your followers,
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but you're also going to get scrutinized.
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Yeah, people that are saying, hey, I don't think this is good.
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Something's going on. And it happened.
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Some of the followers were suing.
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They were saying, hey, you know what, You this is fraud.
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This is a scam. And my goodness, like this is
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¥150 million, which is $1.4 million of, of just theft
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basically. This is what the, the lawsuit
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was all about. Along with him, some of the
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seniors, like senior members of this cult were also like
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charged. And then finally, they were
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arrested in May of the year 2000 on fraud, deceiving followers
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into paying a lot of money for foot readings and training
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sessions for readings. I'm sorry, that's just really
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weird. But I mean, you know, we're
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pretty weird. Like if you look at the history
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of the stuff that we've done, like over the years, like some
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things just don't make sense. And this is one of them civil
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lawsuits, you know, there were criminal charges, obviously for
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this, for the, the, the money, but also 1200 former members
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filed suits like on damage with dam, I mean about damages, $57.6
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million in damages. And the courts were like, Yep,
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granted, Yep, granted. You're right.
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Here we go. Because they had just a bunch of
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proof, right? Like, come on.
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Foot readings for that amount, scrolls that you know, will
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break a family's curse for this huge amount, trainings for, you
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know, 2 days and then trainings for five days.
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There's actually some accounts here that I found, they're
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pretty sad. Like for example, here's one,
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right? Because this is all going after
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vulnerable people like I mentioned.
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And let me see if I find like one specific one.
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This is the middle-aged woman, right?
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So this one, a middle-aged woman, was told by Fukunaga that
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her daughter's insomnia was punishment from heaven due to
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like the mother's failure to listen to the voice of heaven.
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Jeez. Also, it wasn't just the the
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leader, right? He was.
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She was also pressured by cult leaders and she ended up taking
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money out of her savings, borrowing money too, in order to
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pay ¥18 for training sessions and a scroll, believing
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it would cure her daughter's condition.
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Again, this is sad. This is some sad stuff.
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Also old people here, right? We have a 68 year old man, not
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really old, you know, from today's standards like we live
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to like 100 hopefully. But this old man from Funabashi
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Shiva Prefecture sought relief from lingering pain due to an
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automobile accident. So kind of a car crash.
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And he got a foot reading and Fukunaga told him that it was
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his last chance to alleviate the pain and urged him to attend A5
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day training session costing ¥2.25 million.
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Obviously, this man was desperate and he paid it.
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He borrowed money from relatives, paid it.
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But training didn't work. Another one, a man in his 60s,
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fearing he had contracted HIV after noticing rashes, consulted
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this Honohana and Fukunaga warned him that a doctor would
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diagnose him with AIDS. And that is past, present and
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future were bleak. The man paid ¥610 for a 2
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day event. Let's see how much that is
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actually ¥610. Well, again, we're talking from
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like, you know, a long time ago, like from the 80s money and
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like, I guess now is a 2600 and 10 Japanese yen is $4150
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U.S. dollars. Well today's conversion and this
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was for a 2 day event that was later persuaded to buy a 3.3
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million Japanese yen scroll believing it would improve his
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fate. Now there's one more but before
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I I know what you're thinking here, right?
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It's their fault. Like why would you pay this
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much? It's a scam.
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Why were relatives agree to this and give you the money so you
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pay it. People here are in pain, right.
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So let's just try to think about that.
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They're they're like really struggling.
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They can't see the way out and you have people promising a
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solution So they went for it. Again, I'm here on the like the
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victim side because it's like, you know, you're going to
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understand a little bit why I'm like on on this side because I
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have a different type of understanding about it more
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direct one. No, I was not part of a cult.
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Well, actually stick around, so you get to find out.
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But I understand it. I, I really do.
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And I feel bad for them. I feel really bad.
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But in the end, like, yeah, they, they believe something.
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They gave money for it. And sadly, this what happens,
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right? The next one.
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In 1990, the wife of a doctor in Fukuoka distressed over not
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having children to inherit the hospital.
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Wow. They own the hospital.
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Was told by Fukunaga that her family's troubles were due to
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ancestral issues. She was pressured into paying
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¥154 for a 2 day event and then ¥1.1 million for a five day
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practice. The members were questioning her
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commitment by asking are you going to go against the will of
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heaven? I don't even know what that
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means. But the pressure is real.
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The pressure is real. Eventually, yeah.
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Like I said, like this, the the people here were arrested.
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There was also another thing with a fundraising scandal that
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went worldwide, turns out, and presidents do this, by the way,
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including your favorite presidents.
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Everybody does this and I don't like it.
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But 1996, Fukunaga was linked to a fundraising scandal involving
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the Democratic National Committee.
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He and Yogesh Gandhi, who was not, not part of the, you know,
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not the Gandhi that we know contributed $325 at a
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fundraiser. But because the party was like,
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I don't know where this money came from.
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I don't trust this. They actually refunded it.
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I think this was part of the whole, this is my PO cult type
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of thing. But also like he had meetings
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with Mother Teresa, like I said, Pope John Paul, there were
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attempts to like make it more credible, like, hey, I have this
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thing, you know, we're a legit organization, keep giving us
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money. And they would obviously use
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that in their tactics to get people to give them more money
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and recruit more members to this cult.
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Pretty, pretty intense. You know, it's, they also had
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right here it says like members were pressured into paying for
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these foot readings. So it wasn't like they went for
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foot readings. They were like pressured into
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it. They were purchasing all these
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scrolls, ornaments and all these, all these objects that
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said basically here's how you get rid of a curse or your curse
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and here's how you get rid of it.
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So that's mainly how they made a lot of their their money.
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But yeah, finally there was. He was convicted in 2005 a fraud
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and sentenced to 12 years in prison for defrauding followers
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of approximately 150 million Japanese yen under the guise of
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religious training. Again, you're probably thinking,
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I'm thinking a lot of this too, but it's like very politically,
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I don't know, bringing up religion here, I'm not too too
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for it. But you can think of some
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figures now of religious groups or groups that claim to be
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religious that are taking a lot of money and you see their
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leaders buying mansions and jets and cars, you know, still goes
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on. So sticking with this cult
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thing, right, here are some questions that we have about
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cults. I don't have answers to these,
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but I can kind of give some thoughts and some opinions on
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these. Right, so here we go.
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What's the difference between a religion and a cult?
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That's a tough one. I don't know why I asked myself
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this question. I could have just skipped that.
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I don't know. I don't know what the difference
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could be. I mean, I feel like a cult has
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more of a more obvious way for like financial gain for a
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person. Like I feel like cults are
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almost always surrounding one person or one very small group
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of people that are getting rich off of this or getting power in
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some way. And whether that's money or
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power politically or something, that's that's how it happens.
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I think religion is a version of that, except it's more
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established. Again, I'm not helping my case
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here that they're too different, but there are some differences
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here, right? Like some of these can be
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considered organizations that do good on on a lot of levels and
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help a lot of people. And the other could be just they
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charge you money to be a part of this and become more influential
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within the group which in turns gets the organization more
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money. Let's see, how do cults keep
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people from contacting the outside world?
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But The thing is here not all cults do that right?
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But they do have to make you think that you are like, the
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whole world is against you, kind of like it's you.
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It's just you who know, you who are part of this exclusive
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group, know the truth or whatever.
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And the rest don't or the rest are trying.
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They're going to try all these tactics to convince you that
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this is wrong or whatever. So they prepare you for that.
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It's a lot of brainwashing. It's a lot of like telling you,
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Hey, here's what you should do in case you do this.
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They practice and practice and practice.
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You know, it's, it's just a thing that they do.
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But you can't contact the outside world unless you're like
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an extreme cult, which we have heard of.
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In that case, it it's harder, right?
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But let's see, what role does fear play in keeping people in
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the cult? Fear.
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I mean, it's different for everybody, right?
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But I feel like fear of not. Solving your problems or of
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things getting worse if you leave it or you'll be alone if
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you're not part of the cult, everybody's against you is
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another fear. I can think of a lot.
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I can think of a lot, but I can. It's like that herd mentality,
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right? Where you you're safest with a
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group of people, like like minded people.
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It's just natural to us as humans.
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But let me know what you think of this.
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This is actually an interesting question.
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What role does fear play in keeping people in a cult?
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Let me see, how do cults recruit so effectively even in modern
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time? That's a good question.
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Whenever there's problems, there's somebody going to be
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offering a solution. Even those get rich quick
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schemes like, you know, they, they have a way, you have a
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problem. Hey, you're, you, you need
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money. Here's how you get rich.
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You know, there's always a, a solution, somebody offering a
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solution. And then let's see here, can
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cult leaders be charged with crimes or do they hide behind
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religion? And that's where they try to
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confuse you here, because obviously here in this case,
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they, they, they can be charged with crimes.
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They were, at least in this case with Japan.
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And do they hide? They probably try to hide behind
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their whole religion thing. He was able to register the
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organization as a religion. Imagine that.
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So I don't know. Let me know what you think about
00:22:02
this. Let me know if if I'm very
00:22:04
interested by the way here in knowing if you have any
00:22:08
experiences with cults or somebody that you know being a
00:22:13
part of one or something that you think might be a cult.
00:22:18
You can keep yourself anonymous here, by the way, obviously.
00:22:21
But I want to know. I'm interested because I do have
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some. You're going to find out like I
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have some stories on friends of mine that have been involved
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with this kind of thing. Not necessarily like a dangerous
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type of cult like organization, but like levels that make you
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wonder that something's going on here.
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Start off with my first bullet point here, my friend Felipe.
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I'm sure he won't mind you know me talking about this because
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it's not too much detail, but he also shared a story in one of my
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podcasts called True Scary Story.
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He was a very first one, the very first story on there.
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Him and my friend Natalia shared a story there.
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And yeah, it is the very first one.
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So a long time ago I confronted him about this.
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Not too long ago I was like, hey, do you remember the time
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when you tried to get me to join the cult?
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Turns out him and his ex, they were, they were going to
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attending this church basically. But I didn't know much about it.
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And one time he started telling me about how him, him and, and
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his ex wanted to like they wanted to be friends with people
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who were also part of or could, could share the vision that what
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their religion did or their church did.
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So they wanted to talk to me about it.
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And they did. They actually, they quartered me
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in a Taco Bell where we were eating.
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Was it a Taco Bell? Might have been a McDonald's or
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a Taco Bell. And they were telling me about
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it. And at the time I was kind of
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freaking out. So I was like, this is weird.
00:24:02
I don't want to talk about this, but later on there we had this
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meeting, like not a meeting. It's not official, right?
00:24:10
But it was like a, a little get together at his house and his
00:24:13
brother, his older brother was there.
00:24:15
His older brother's a pastor at A at a Christian Church.
00:24:19
And he just mentioned like, Hey, like, why are you still part of
00:24:24
this thing? It was basically a Korean church
00:24:29
type of thing. And I remember talking about him
00:24:32
like talking about the whole, I guess the tasks he was assigned
00:24:38
to do at the church where they wanted him to quit.
00:24:41
If I if I have that wrong, please correct me.
00:24:43
But I think they wanted him to quit his job so they could spend
00:24:47
more time at church. And he was like, it is weird.
00:24:50
I think that's where he started realizing like this is this is
00:24:53
not right. And also later on, much later,
00:24:58
as in this last time I confronted him about it, he told
00:25:02
me that the leader of this of this organization or one of them
00:25:07
thought that he was the, I guess a reincarnated version, non
00:25:13
reincarnation. It's not because it doesn't
00:25:14
follow along with Christianity. The the new Jesus.
00:25:18
I don't know what you would call this, but like he oh, no, no,
00:25:21
sorry. No, not Jesus.
00:25:22
He was a prophet that was mentioned in the Bible, if I
00:25:26
remember correctly. Yeah, that's what it was.
00:25:29
That's when I thought, OK, yeah, this was definitely like cult
00:25:34
like behavior here. I'm not going to call this
00:25:36
church. I haven't even named because I
00:25:37
don't really know the, the name of the I'm trying to think,
00:25:41
yeah, I don't know the name of the of the of the church, but
00:25:46
that was intense. Now the whole idea of a Korean
00:25:49
church really stuck out to me because I had an experience with
00:25:56
making friends or what I thought were friends or a friend that
00:26:00
turned out to be try try to recruit me into this group of
00:26:06
people. Now this might be frustrating to
00:26:09
some because I didn't look into it too much.
00:26:11
This is just actually literally what happened with me.
00:26:14
It was back in 2011 and I had just dropped out of college and
00:26:19
I had just gotten out of my internship and I, I was trying
00:26:22
to figure out what the heck I'm going to do with my life.
00:26:25
And I ended up going to this college, Santa Monica College in
00:26:30
Santa Monica, CA. And while I was there, I
00:26:34
remember trying to make friends and talking to everybody.
00:26:36
And there was this one guy who he just came up to me was this
00:26:39
Korean guy. And he was like, hey, like I
00:26:43
had, I was like, we were by a coffee shop, say, can I buy you
00:26:45
coffee? Like we let's talk about this or
00:26:47
whatever. And I'm like, OK, and we're
00:26:50
talking about just how's it going with school, blah, blah,
00:26:53
blah. And then he brings up what he's
00:26:56
there for, which is this he, he gets a Bible, like an actual
00:27:02
Bible that everybody knows, flips to some page about it and
00:27:06
points to this thing that says that there is a mother God like
00:27:10
other, there must be a version of a God that it's, you know,
00:27:14
the mother God, like the father God, but like a mother God.
00:27:18
And all he explored were these things like there's more to the
00:27:25
Bible than what we know. I was like, interesting,
00:27:28
interesting. And he kept telling all these
00:27:30
stories. I'm always into stories, right?
00:27:31
Even back then when I hadn't even thought about like scary
00:27:33
stories or anything, but he was telling me all these things
00:27:37
about it. And I'm like, very cool, very
00:27:40
cool. And, and that was that, right?
00:27:43
The next day we exchanged 4 numbers and everything.
00:27:45
The next day or the next time I was there at, at school, I, he,
00:27:49
he spots me and he's like, hey, what's up, Talk again.
00:27:53
And now there's two people there and I'm like, this is getting
00:27:58
weird. And he's telling me that they
00:28:01
have meetings to talk about this stuff.
00:28:04
Also asked me about how everything had been.
00:28:08
And I remember I had this strange dream about these
00:28:12
conversations. And I told him about the dream.
00:28:15
I was like, you know what? That's this weird dream that we
00:28:17
were at this like shopping center kind of thing, like an
00:28:21
open market. And there was this light like
00:28:24
this meteorite or something that was just crossing across the
00:28:28
sky. And he like, look at the other
00:28:31
guy. And he was like, they kind of
00:28:34
like, you know, when people do that, when you're like
00:28:36
telepathically talk, you're like, well, that's what they
00:28:41
did. And they got more intense.
00:28:45
They were like, oh, yeah, well, you have to come to our meeting.
00:28:48
Let's. And and that's what I kind of
00:28:50
like said, no, you know what? I'm not interested.
00:28:51
I'm just said then the guy kept calling.
00:28:55
He kept calling, texting. Oh, my goodness.
00:28:58
I left that meeting. Actually, when I left the first
00:29:01
meeting with him, I spotted some other, a group of, of other
00:29:04
guys. And these, these guys seem
00:29:05
chill, like they seem cool. They were Christians and they
00:29:09
were like, hey, I saw you talking to this guy.
00:29:12
We got to be careful. And I was like, yeah, yeah,
00:29:15
that's interesting. Hey, you want to like hang out
00:29:17
sometime? Like here's my number, here's
00:29:18
our numbers that we should talk. Whatever, turns out that we're
00:29:21
just going to talk about the church stuff.
00:29:23
And they actually turned out to be pretty cool, like actually
00:29:26
normal. But and by the way, then I had
00:29:31
that second meeting with them with with the two started
00:29:34
talking to each other telepathically.
00:29:36
And then I remember calling the other guys.
00:29:40
I was like, Hey, can we talk about stuff like this?
00:29:43
These guys like they straight up like trying to pressure me into
00:29:49
doing this thing. And it's like, no, I don't do
00:29:51
that. Let's come, come to our church.
00:29:53
Like let's just hang out or whatever.
00:29:56
It was all cool. It was all chill.
00:29:58
But when I this was like we were talking in person like one of
00:30:03
the courtyards at Santa Monica College when my phone starts
00:30:08
vibrating and I'm talking to these guys at the moment, right?
00:30:10
I pull out my phone. I look at it, it's a text
00:30:12
message from that guy and he says like those guys are not
00:30:18
good. And then he starts calling and
00:30:20
calling and calling and calling while I'm talking with him,
00:30:24
right? I pick up and I'm like, hey,
00:30:27
he's like, those are the guys are not good.
00:30:29
They're not good. And I'm like what?
00:30:31
And I'm like, he's saying they're not good.
00:30:32
He's like, dude, just hang up. And like it was weird because
00:30:36
he's obviously looking at me right from the distance or
00:30:38
somewhere. He's looking at me, talking to
00:30:40
these guys and, and he sees me, literally probably sees me.
00:30:45
I don't know, hang up the phone and put it in my pocket and walk
00:30:48
away. But that was weird.
00:30:50
It was my first experience thinking of anything like this.
00:30:52
Now consider this right? Why am I talking to people about
00:30:56
church and, or why am I talking learning about church and
00:31:00
religion and stuff at this time? Turns out I was kind of
00:31:03
troubled, as in I'm trying to sort out my life here.
00:31:06
I don't know where I'm going. I just dropped out of college.
00:31:08
I'm kind of depressed. Honestly, I don't really know
00:31:10
what I'm going to do and I'm looking for anything, right, Any
00:31:15
type of answer, including religious text books, like self
00:31:19
help books and stuff, psychology books, anyone that would listen.
00:31:23
I actually did go to therapy too, trying to sort all this
00:31:27
stuff out. So how do I feel like had I been
00:31:31
a little more vulnerable on some level I would have gotten into
00:31:37
any of it. Like some of this stuff, I don't
00:31:40
know, you know, the what ifs, the what ifs.
00:31:43
But there was one situation. This is my other point here.
00:31:47
These guys are known to sue people.
00:31:48
So I'm going to be careful. I'm going to name them, but as
00:31:51
in, I'm not going to call them a cult because they're not.
00:31:54
It's debatable. It's debatable, it's debatable.
00:31:56
But still it was, it's pretty, pretty, pretty creepy.
00:32:02
I have a very good friend, a friend Eunice, we don't really
00:32:06
like, you know, kind of people drift in after after call after
00:32:10
high school and college and stuff.
00:32:12
But she told me about this group of I guess like this, these
00:32:21
training, like these courses that they teach you how to
00:32:25
become a better person basically.
00:32:27
And she knew that I was struggling with stuff.
00:32:29
This is around the same time. So you should come just come to
00:32:32
the meeting or whatever. And I go and this thing was
00:32:35
called Landmark Forum. And I go and it turns out they
00:32:42
are this like workshop that helps their trainings courses
00:32:46
basically that teach you how to become a better person.
00:32:52
Basically one of the more more like effective things that I
00:32:56
know would probably work is that something was troubling you.
00:32:59
Like something was bothering you with somebody that you know,
00:33:02
they will put you on the spot. And I could really pressure you
00:33:06
to pick up the phone, confront them about it by telling them,
00:33:09
hey, they have like different, different lines to begin with.
00:33:13
But you have to like, say, start off the call, tell them
00:33:15
everything that you wanted to say and end the call with I love
00:33:19
you. It doesn't sound too bad, right?
00:33:21
It sounds like, hey, something's bothering you.
00:33:23
Finally get pressured into calling them and telling them,
00:33:25
Hey, you did this to me this one time and this is how I'm
00:33:29
feeling. This is how I'm feeling.
00:33:32
I love you. And you end whatever the phone
00:33:33
call, things get better, right? Because you're confronting a
00:33:38
thing that's been bothering you forever.
00:33:40
In theory makes sense and and you know, it probably would
00:33:43
work. Thing was while we were there,
00:33:48
like it was like this seminar hall type of thing.
00:33:52
You walk in, there's a lot of people there.
00:33:54
They're talking about how we are disgusting beings, basically,
00:34:00
like we have all this filth and baggage and we're just the worst
00:34:05
things ever. And then do you get the, you
00:34:10
know, the pressure like that here?
00:34:11
You have to join. This course is how it works.
00:34:15
You have the famous, I need to join.
00:34:19
You know what? I'm going to pay your whatever
00:34:22
$500 to join. I'm going to pay it for you.
00:34:24
And then this person cries and they're like, Oh my goodness,
00:34:27
thank you so much. Oh my God, Like, how can you pay
00:34:31
a stranger's fee? And it's like, I'm going to
00:34:34
like, I need to pay it forward, like I'm going to pay yours.
00:34:37
And then like somebody's like, Oh my goodness, like thank you
00:34:40
so much. They start crying and then
00:34:43
they're like, OK, like, you know, notice of this doesn't
00:34:45
turn into like just something like this or whatever.
00:34:48
Like who else wants to join? Like you should join your new
00:34:51
partners or whatever. And this is the strong sales
00:34:55
tactic here. As I'm listening, as I'm as I'm
00:34:58
watching this, it gave like a little intermission while
00:35:01
they're doing their thing or whatever and you have like
00:35:04
trainers walking around, basically salesman or just
00:35:07
people that are really into this and they believe it and they're
00:35:10
like, Hey, how can I help you? They come up to me and my
00:35:14
friend. They're like, hey, So what are
00:35:16
you thinking? Like you want to join, you want
00:35:17
to become a bit person, You want to do this.
00:35:21
At that moment I start having straight up an anxiety attack
00:35:28
and I didn't know what these were, right?
00:35:31
My face starts turning red, I start sweating like crazy, I
00:35:35
start having trouble breathing a little bit.
00:35:39
I don't know what to say. My friend is there.
00:35:41
I'm in the middle of a bunch of people who I don't know trying
00:35:45
to make me pay for something. My friend offered to pay it for
00:35:49
me because it would help me. I just remember that now.
00:35:55
I, like, went to the bathroom and washed my face.
00:35:57
I was like, I don't know what I'm going to do here.
00:35:59
I was, like, trying to control my breathing, drinking water.
00:36:02
I was like, oh, this is so weird.
00:36:04
Yeah. My heart was just racing.
00:36:06
I did not have a good time there.
00:36:08
And finally I said, you know, I need to leave.
00:36:10
And I forgot what happened. I don't know if we talked about
00:36:14
it after that, but I texted her not long ago.
00:36:18
I was like, remember when you tried to get me to join that
00:36:19
cult? Yeah, that's like the second
00:36:24
time that happened. There was another time when I
00:36:27
had a close encounter of the third kind here.
00:36:35
This one was it's it's a very I actually talked about in some of
00:36:39
the other podcasts. Very interesting story.
00:36:42
I thought the moment I remember thinking that this could be a
00:36:45
book on its own. It's strange.
00:36:49
It's a strange story and I want you to keep it open mind here.
00:36:53
Right. Like just to kind of understand
00:36:56
here what's going on now. I had this friend, she was into
00:37:01
poetry, photography, music, you know, things that people enjoy
00:37:07
doing, very typical. And she was like, you know what,
00:37:12
like we were talking or whatever.
00:37:14
She ended up going to walk the Camino de Santiago in Spain,
00:37:18
basically a long spiritual walk across the country to reflect,
00:37:24
to think about stuff. Some people do it to lose
00:37:26
weight. Some people do it for religious
00:37:29
reasons of pilgrimage. Basically she goes and along the
00:37:35
way she's by the way, she, she started having some trouble also
00:37:38
finding out where she was going in life and everything.
00:37:41
And along the way she meets or she finds people who give her
00:37:44
this pamphlet. And one day she text me and
00:37:47
she's like, Hey, you know what? I received this thing, but I
00:37:52
don't want you to laugh at me. I was like, OK.
00:37:56
She tells me that in this pamphlet, basically a guy is
00:38:03
communicating with an alien force person, an alien basically
00:38:10
living 300 years in the future. There's names for all this
00:38:15
stuff, by the way, like the constellation or the star where
00:38:18
he's around or something like that.
00:38:21
And at this guy can communicate, can manifest, can like become
00:38:28
like kind of like an antenna. And like he hears the voices and
00:38:31
like he acts it out and says it in front of a group of people
00:38:34
and gives answers to very difficult questions.
00:38:38
That's it. This is called Bashar, by the
00:38:41
way, in case, in case this isn't a cult, this is a real legit
00:38:43
thing. OK, But like, this is like this
00:38:45
alien thing. I'm like, OK, this is
00:38:49
interesting. She's like, well, I really want
00:38:51
you to like look into it just to see if you're also interested,
00:38:55
like if you can identify with it.
00:38:59
I was very skeptical. I was immediately alarms are
00:39:02
going like, this is weird. I don't want to do this, but I
00:39:06
learned about it. Turns out this guy, his name is
00:39:09
Daryl Anka. And he I think he used to work
00:39:13
for Hollywood on some level, ended up saying he's channelling
00:39:19
this alien called Bashar or this force this thing entity.
00:39:24
And he charges for people to go and listen to him and ask
00:39:27
questions. The thing is his answers make
00:39:31
sense like to hard questions like as in why do babies die?
00:39:38
Was Jesus an alien? Stuff like that.
00:39:41
Like and he's answering these questions.
00:39:44
He has a YouTube channel and everything.
00:39:45
I think be careful though, if you go into that kind of stuff,
00:39:48
just be careful. After all we've talked about, be
00:39:50
careful. But eventually we just kind of
00:39:54
lost touch because of that. She turned, she went, you know,
00:39:58
full on vegan. She started, last I knew of her,
00:40:02
she went to Hawaii on a for a course on dolphin communication.
00:40:11
It's it's pretty strange again. Not something I want to laugh
00:40:15
about, not something I want to like.
00:40:18
Ha ha, ha. This is what happened.
00:40:19
But it was bizarre. It was bizarre.
00:40:22
And again, thinking here on the side of the persons who are
00:40:26
having trouble and who then are looking for answers, maybe not
00:40:32
having trouble, maybe just looking for answers and they
00:40:34
find their answers there. Oh, that's fine.
00:40:38
But still I worry because as another example, short, short
00:40:44
little example, have a neighbor who she was struggling and she's
00:40:49
she's struggling with money, like she's struggling with cash.
00:40:52
And she started joining this church.
00:40:54
That's like in Spanish, we call it the para de sufrid.
00:40:58
I don't really, I just call it that because that's what they,
00:41:00
their slogan like stops suffering.
00:41:03
And also they talk about these miracle water people go and they
00:41:06
fill up their jugs with this water that's supposedly like
00:41:09
miracle water. They charge for this stuff.
00:41:14
It's like a church service type of thing.
00:41:16
It's anyway, she joins this thing and in order for her life
00:41:23
to really turn around, she has to start from 0 is what she
00:41:28
says, right? And you can see she's starting
00:41:31
to get really happy. Like she was upset.
00:41:33
She was like not having a good time to this joyful, smiling,
00:41:39
life is good type of person. And we, we saw her change,
00:41:42
right? She's talking about how she is
00:41:47
going to get rid of her car, she's going to sell it.
00:41:52
The money is 100% of the money is going to go to the church and
00:41:57
that God's going to find a way to make everything better.
00:42:04
It's it's interesting because my mom and I talked about it and we
00:42:06
were like, is this right? Like, should people do that?
00:42:13
And she's like, you know what? I don't think so.
00:42:15
But I've never seen her happier. Like now she's excited.
00:42:21
Like, you know, yeah, to me, it's sad because now she takes
00:42:25
the bus, you know, takes the bus and she, she ends up, you know,
00:42:31
selling things and, you know, she, she carries all her stuff,
00:42:34
her merch and everything and, and the bus and gets to where
00:42:37
she needs to go in the bus. So she's struggling, but she's
00:42:40
happy. I don't know what you think of
00:42:43
that. I really don't know.
00:42:48
You know, I mean, everybody has their own thing, so.
00:42:51
And we're all kind of a slave to something on some level.
00:42:54
And overall, it's just sad, you know, This is why I see cult.
00:42:59
Hopefully this changed your mind, right, a little bit, or at
00:43:01
least opened it up a little bit. That cults.
00:43:04
Yeah, well, they can be really creepy and eerie to think about.
00:43:09
I think the scariest part for all this stuff is how our minds
00:43:17
are such a slippery slope. Like we learned something, we
00:43:20
think about something, and then we just like, and just lose
00:43:23
ourselves, you know, So, so I don't know, it's just so creepy
00:43:29
to me how how that can happen. And we can start believing these
00:43:32
things that are to, you know, to some can just seem like such a
00:43:38
like, how, how is this possible? Obviously you have these really
00:43:41
dangerous situations where like the, the, the kool-aid thing,
00:43:47
the what is it called Jim Jones, where a group of people were
00:43:52
basically flying out of the US, going to this new place where
00:43:56
they're trying to build this community.
00:43:57
And then everybody ends up off in themselves because in the
00:44:03
name of of their group. It's really weird.
00:44:09
Also like the Heaven's gate, all these things, by the way, we
00:44:12
haven't heard of them. Like, well, I have some episodes
00:44:15
on them that I can link to so you can so you can take a look
00:44:17
or take a listen. But but to me anyway, to me,
00:44:20
that's the creepiest part. How how easy are our brains?
00:44:25
Can our minds can go down this path?
00:44:32
But yeah, I really hope that this this open at least your
00:44:34
mind to be like, hey, you know what, It's going to happen to
00:44:37
people and it can happen to a lot of people.
00:44:40
And your friends yourself, you might not know it, you know, and
00:44:43
you might be a part of 1. And yeah, just think about it.
00:44:47
But if you do, if you do know of somebody who's been a part of a
00:44:52
cult or who has that tendency or try to get you to join, let me
00:44:56
know. Let me know because I want to
00:44:58
know like what it was just in case we find some patterns here.
00:45:01
I think that's really important. But anyway, that is the cults
00:45:06
session here. As far as listener stories, we
00:45:10
don't actually have a listener story this week.
00:45:13
I'm going to wait for us to get like a group of like a, you
00:45:16
know, good bunch of stories so we can make it like a solid
00:45:18
story time. I think that'd be really cool.
00:45:20
But if we do have something you want to tell me about a true
00:45:23
story, true encounter, ghosts, cryptids right now I'm looking
00:45:27
for like people who work the late, you know, night shifts and
00:45:32
they have stories from work. Send them in, send them in so we
00:45:35
can put a show together about that and then I'll read them
00:45:38
here. As far as comments, we have our
00:45:42
comments for paranormal club. Cool.
00:45:45
We had a solid handful here. We have comments from Yoda.
00:45:48
Yoda is always supporting us here from on all of our shows
00:45:52
and ours on social media. So super, super grateful for
00:45:55
Yoda says love this and a video. Yes, we're doing video.
00:45:59
By the way, if you're listening on Apple Podcasts and you can
00:46:03
only hear me, video is also going to be available on YouTube
00:46:06
and Spotify. So you can actually see me
00:46:09
talking into the camera. And then in case there's also
00:46:15
any like visuals, anything that we absolutely must have, you're
00:46:17
going to see them right here. Blue popping up somewhere around
00:46:20
here, which we don't right now. Let me see.
00:46:23
Gene Lewis says awesome spooky stories is from last last week's
00:46:30
episode of Paranormal Club. It says not so sure about actual
00:46:34
moving creatures in the woods. Oh, this is because I asked for
00:46:37
if you have stories in the woods of creatures in the woods, it
00:46:40
says. But our old house in the
00:46:42
Philippines used to be surrounded by so many trees.
00:46:45
One of them was a huge Valetta tree.
00:46:49
I was at Siki Hor Island last year, something two years ago
00:46:53
last year I think. And I was visiting one of these,
00:46:56
supposedly one of the the oldest Valetta trees, and I learned
00:47:01
some ghost stories about it. But it turns out that the whole
00:47:05
situation of Siki Horror Island was flipped upside down.
00:47:09
Like I went in with like the thought of, oh, I'm going to
00:47:11
learn about ghosts and witches and witchcraft and everything.
00:47:15
And then you get there and it turns out to be like they
00:47:18
rebranded into this idea of healing.
00:47:21
Here's where people get healed. So that's how it worked.
00:47:26
It just changed rebrand but I want to tell that story at some
00:47:30
point. I think I have some footage too
00:47:32
so I can share. Let me see next comments from
00:47:38
Blanca M Corona. Nice, I love the video.
00:47:42
Thank you. Let me see.
00:47:44
Big text says yes. Excited for this podcast.
00:47:47
Something else for me to listen to on my route.
00:47:51
Awesome. Yeah.
00:47:51
I hope you enjoy it. Actually, if you have ideas,
00:47:54
ideas for me talk about we're still taking shape by the way,
00:47:57
like you're here like the very beginning where we're we don't
00:48:00
know what we're doing yet. I don't know how to use a camera
00:48:03
Sometime I run out of battery a little while ago, but we're
00:48:06
going to be sorting it out. Sienna.
00:48:09
Sienna's been commenting on our on our shows.
00:48:11
Super happy, super happy. You're here too on Paranormal
00:48:13
club. It says hey, Edwin found it
00:48:15
anymore podcast. Ha, the hell or a podcast, it
00:48:21
says, is this the 1 like your most recent episode on your
00:48:24
scary story podcast? And I think Sienna's asking
00:48:26
about the story that I talked about in the previous episode,
00:48:30
which was about the haunted or the most like one of the the
00:48:35
most chilling radio calls in history.
00:48:40
And yes, actually that that story is on Horror Story, the
00:48:44
podcast and on our last episode. They do have different things,
00:48:49
like different context in different formats.
00:48:52
But yeah, it's essentially the same thing.
00:48:53
It was just so creepy that I felt like we got some questions
00:48:56
about it. And I'm like, which this is a
00:48:58
perfect spot to, to, to to answer a lot of those things and
00:49:02
to really, like offer some thoughts as to, you know, what I
00:49:06
think about these stories. Because obviously there's a lot
00:49:10
of commonalities between that radio show taking calls from
00:49:14
people who share their most like, terrifying true stories,
00:49:18
and what I do with my podcast, True Scary Story, which is
00:49:21
literally taking calls about people who have experienced
00:49:24
really creepy things. So it's weird.
00:49:29
And it creeped me out thinking like, what if this could happen
00:49:32
to me? I don't know.
00:49:33
I don't know. That's it for our weekly meeting
00:49:38
of Para Roma Club. Thank you so much for being here
00:49:41
and thanks so much for watching. If you have any comments,
00:49:44
questions, or you want to get in touch, head on over to
00:49:46
paranormalclub.com. I'll be right there and you can
00:49:51
also shoot me an e-mail DM. All my information is going to
00:49:54
be in the description of this episode.
00:49:57
Thank you very much for watching.
00:49:58
Keep it scary everyone. See you soon.