Online Vampire Cult - Pt2: "404: Vampire Not Found"

0:00The views, information, or opinions expressed by the guest appearing in this episode solely belong to the guest and do not represent or reflect the views or positions of the hosts, the show, podcast one, this network, or any of their respective affiliates. The vampire has come to represent more of this idea of a parasitic relationship with humanity. Like the vampire can't survive without a human supply, and there's analogies there with narcissism, I would argue, and that's why I've come to settle on it with the cult because there were no vampires in the cult, but also there were vampires in the cult. You're not. Welcome back to what's in a cult time, Tyler Meeson.

1:01And I'm Liz Ayakuzi. Yes she is, and today is part two of Celeste Mott's tale of getting pulled in to an online vampire-looking glass an arise New Orleans listat chat room or early internet vampire cult. Try saying that again. I don't need to. They heard it again, they heard it the first time. They can press the 15 second back button in here again. You guys, if you didn't listen to the first part of this story yet, do that now. Thank you. For the one person who accidentally went to two, go back to one. Why? Because part one, it has grief. It has gothic fantasy. It's got early internet roleplay. It's got an emotional manipulation all wrapped in a luring black velvet I think do that one more time because when you say grief, you sound like it's a birthday party. Grief. Part one's got balloons. You want me to sell grief? I don't need to be grieving to say the word

2:04grief. Part one's got grief, man. It's got grief. Well today, guys, is part two, and that is where that cape, that sexy cape, comes off. When did society stop wearing capes? I don't know. Yeah, maybe we should bring that back. Yeah. That could heal the world. That could heal all of this divisiveness. Capes, you know what, my seven-year-old, he wears a cape every once in a while. He just has a cape. He puts a cape on. My son loves like the young Jedi's and I got him the little nubs costume and one of it's a cape and I didn't grab him as a cape and I put it on like an apron and he was like, Mama, where's my cape? I have an idea. It can be an apron when you cook and then you can flip around. It can be a cape. Guess what it's called. Go on, guess. Go on, listeners, guess. It's a it's a portmanteau. No, it's a portmanteau. It is a it's a capron. No, that's not blood on my

3:04cape on my vampire cape. It's spaghetti sauce. I was cooking. It's a it's a caperon. It's a was I in a cult caperon. It's an apron. It's a great disguise when you're out there, you're out there jumping over buildings and doing all this shit and then your mother-in-law walks in and you're like, shit, I don't want to do no life. Super power. Right. Oh, dinner's almost ready. Line cooked by day, superhero by night. It just flips around. You don't need to go on a phone booth like Superman. You just flip it. It's a capron. It's a capron. That someone's going to steal that fucking idea. If you do, we're suing you. I'm going to see it. This is the first time we're going to find a zoo people. Yeah, we're suing for the cape. All right, let's bring it back. Where were we? Where were we? We were talking about something dark

4:05because this is the episode where the capron comes on. Okay, pull it together. But guys, what starts to emerge in this episode is something far less romantic and sadly, much more familiar to at least us on this show. She's talking about cult stuff. Everyone, she's talking about crazy, crazy cult shit. Last week Celeste was pulled deeper and deeper and deeper into an an rice inspired online world that promised her immortality, belonging, escape and love. And by the end of episode one, guess what? She felt like she had proof that the vampires were real and proof that she mattered to them and that one of them loved her. But today we find out exactly what is underneath all the mystique are underneath. I didn't take us for 30 seconds to bring back

5:15the capron. You know, we should, you know, we should do Liz. It would be funny. Is us write an ad for the capron and put it in the fucking ads? We're totally doing that. We're going to write a capron ad. So I've been wearing my capron. You know what's terrible? I got a cook and I get stuff on my shirt. Well, you know, no, you know, it's the capron. You know, it's terrible. I go to school and everybody knows I'm a superhero. And then I go, I'm going to go higher. I have the solution for you. It's the capron. It feels good. Nobody's going to question. We're writing a capron ad. That's, of course, Rob leaves us then, which he's going to. All right, we'll write a capron ad. You guys, when you when you get to the end of this episode and you figure out what is going on here, it is not what I expected. I'm just going to say that. That's all I'm going to say. I'm leaving with that. Yeah, you're just really teasing it out, Liz. No, I'm really dragging it on. I'm actually not. I'm just leaving you with that. And with that,

6:17welcome back to the show Celeste. And we're very grateful that you are now shutting us up. You're right for me. Don't spit my life. That's something that we all asked over the years, you know, well, how does Anne Rice factor into this? What's her role? Was she making it up? Did she meet you guys? Where does she fit into this? And initially, the story was, yes, of course, she wrote the books. She met us. She's kind of our scribe almost. And then over the years, it became more like, well, she was inspired by us. She met us. She doesn't remember because we wiped her memory, obviously. There it is. She doesn't know that she was divinely inspired, but she was. And it was us. And this is where the story starts to

7:23shift. Because like all cults, their story has to shift. Well, because cults are famous for revisionist history. Because eventually, the lies always surface. The questioning starts, but by this point, by this point, you've already been conditioned to think a certain way. You've been indoctrinated. So when the reality starts to crack, it's not just confusing. It is psychologically destabilizing. And that, folks, is why cults are so effective. Because once you've built your understanding of the world around something, you know, your relationships, your identity, your sense of meaning, well, your brain, it doesn't want to lose that. No. So instead of going, wait, this isn't real. This is bullshit. Yeah, it goes, how do I still make this make sense? Because the alternative isn't just being wrong. It's, I've been lied to. I've been duped. I've wasted how many years of my life. I don't know what's real anymore. And that is a much harder thing to face. So instead of facing it, you hold both

8:23truths, you hold what you're being told, and you hold what you're starting to see, which is the truth. And instead of rejecting the lie, well, you try to reconcile it. And once you're part of that dogma, or in this case, the mythology, it becomes a whole lot harder to walk away. The vampire is representative of immortality, of course, right? This idea of something that can be young and beautiful forever that can endure, that can witness the rise in fall of empires and the passage of time and human history. And there's something very compelling about that. I think when you're a teenager, you do have that real ingrained anxiety of I don't want to get old. I don't want to be trapped in a dead end job. I don't want to be my parents. And so I think the vampire representing eternal youth and eternal beauty and being able to do all the things that you want to do with your life because there are no limitations. It's very intoxicating. And the vampire is also very seductive. There's a sensuality. There's a danger.

9:24I think 2009 was probably the peak. And that was the closest I came to like truly abandoning rationality and accepting that this was all real. And that was when I was very sick. I was physically very unwell. I was very mentally unwell also. So yeah, yeah. So we developed this friendship, Armand. And I concurrently, I'm also developing a friendship with Daniel. I develop a kind of strange-ish friendship with Maxwell who was, you know, Armand's lover slash fledgling. He didn't like me very much for a good portion of time that I was on the forum. But then at some point, when I had really truly become inner circle, he changed his tune. And then there was a lot of like a lot of flirting and a lot of treating me like I was a really close friend. So when Maxwell was turned, he became a moderator. So there was a kind of suggestion that you might be able to

10:24become a moderator if you were turned into a vampire because when you become a moderator, not only do you have the power to like ban somebody and kick somebody from the forum. But also you can see everything. Moderators could see everybody's private messages. Moderators had access to the like moderator-only forum where they were talking about all of us. And they had little folders on all of us. It's crazy. There would be these times in the chat room where someone would be like, I'm sorry, this is fucked. What are you doing? And everything would just get deathly silent. And you could tell that all the other people behind their screens in their like darkened computer rooms were like, you know, and we would watch people get castigated and raked across the coals in the chat room, belittled mocked, text-based verbal abuse. And everybody would just be holding their tongues. No one would stand up for the person getting raked across the coals. I wasn't a particularly

11:25impressive person at age 19, 2021. I was in college and struggling with my life. And I had terrible self-esteem. So having this thing that made me special was really precious. Unfortunately, I did absolutely abuse that tiny fraction of power that I felt like I had. And I really regret those decisions. But again, I was indoctrinated and I was a child. And you know, if anyone's listening from the cult, I am sorry that I didn't stand up and say anything when you were getting dragged across the coals because it happened to a lot of us and everyone else held their tongues because they were too scared to push back. That's awful. So now you've got the system. You reward if you play along punishment if you don't. And importantly, everyone can see both of them. So you don't even have to be the one getting attacked. You just have to watch it happen. And usually that's enough. Well, because your brain starts doing the math. Staying equals connection, identity, belonging,

12:31acceptance, and leaving equals isolation, humiliation, and losing everything. And those are high stakes once those stakes are in place. Well, it doesn't really feel like a choice. At this point, I had invested years and years of my life in these people. It was my friends. People that I had met in real life, you know, we had grown up together. And so the fear was, you know, if I leave or if I'm banned, I'm going to lose all of that. Yeah. I think for me, the fear of leaving was the fear of losing this reality more than anything else. But it was also, it was also losing the fantasy. Obviously was challenging. And that was the fear too. Like who am I even separate from this? And yeah, other people would be bullied into not talking to you. You would, you know, smear campaigns would take place. And that was the fear was that this would happen. People that I had been friendly with, you know, they of course had been telling me for years after they were banned. None of this is real. Stop letting them do this to

13:36you. They were trying to bring me evidence and proof of what was really going on. And I was listening. But at the same time, it was still that Sophie's choice of do I really want to talk to these people, believe these people and shatter this illusion that's been keeping me going for the past decade. Or do I want to just drink the Kool-Aid, you know, the flavor aid. Nice recovery, Celeste. While the common phrasing of the term is to drink the Kool-Aid, the actual drink that was used in Jonestown was in fact, flavor aid. Yes, it was. And that's bonus points. First of last, she moves on to the elimination round right after this word from our sponsor. You should have been a game show host. I should have Oh, it's that time. It's our weekly worship of the Holy Goodness that is quince.com. We sing thy praises quince.com. May your cashmere forever be soft and cuddly because it is, because it's always fantastic. Okay, if you're new here, quince is basically

14:36Liz's holy deity of shopping. It's where you get this ridiculously high quality stuff. You get cashmere, you get linen, you get battings, you get all the things for way less than you think it should cost. You would think one had run out of nice things to say about quince, but yet we have not, because it keeps surprising us and delivering the goods. Okay. Would you get what's the last thing you got right now? I, uh, it's really hot here in LA. So I got some summer dresses, some linen. I wish I could wear summer dresses. They just look so comfortable. I could, I could easily walk around in a summer dress. Me, I got some running shorts. They're great. Honestly, I wouldn't lie about running shorts. But you would lie about running. But I ran a lot this morning. He buys running shorts to sit there and record ads, but at least he looks good doing it guys. They support, they hold, they're great. I did actually get a tennis skirt from them

15:39recently, speaking of athletic wear, all the stuff. So join us in this cult of quince. You will not be let down. We promise this cult delivers on its promises. Yeah, not like those other cults you joined. Carol, I'm looking your direction right now. Go to quince.com slash cult right now. Stop everything you're doing free shipping, 365 day returns. That's a full year for those who don't know to wear it and love it and run in it. I will run in it. I promise. Quince is now available in Canada to a. Oh, is that, is there a theme? Oh, I don't want to give away the episode. Shh. There's some one Canadian, a little through line with this episode. Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last. Go to QU, INCE dot com slash cult again free shipping 365 day returns. Quince dot com slash cult. A to the man. We are BACK. Although since we read most of the ads,

16:47we really never leave you alone. We never leave you. We haunt your dreams. We lurk in your shadows. We sell quince and bite next. So basically this cult that Celeste was in started as fandom for Anne Rice. Now Anne unlikely was browsing the interwebs in 2010 to find this little chatroom. But she was told about it. So Anne Rice was made aware on multiple occasions by different people of the existence of this forum in particular, the cult that I was in. Many people wrote to her about it and she would always respond and say, this is awful. I'm so sorry that this is happening, you know, in my name or in the name of my characters that there is no Westat on the internet. I will do everything I can to stop this from happening, but there might be a limited amount that I can do. But there was a time period where the forum went offline for a little bit.

17:53And when it came back, all the moderators had different usernames. So Armand instead of being Armand was Angelus. Maxwell was demon. And Lestat was Prometheus. Because they were being very careful to not use those names, right? At all. I think they were genuinely pretty worried that they were going to get slapped with a lawsuit. So I'm 99.999 percent sure that Anne Rice's lawyers did reach out and said, you can't do this. Whatever it is you're doing over there, you better get right with copyright law because that's not happening. So 2010 rolled around. I've been super sick. I'm being told that I have vampire blood and I'm dying. Armand tells me he's in love with me. He affirms that all of this is happening. I've got Julie in my DMs telling me that I have Armand's blood and she also has Armand's blood and we're blood sisters and it's getting crazy. She and a couple of other inner circle people forming this kind of support group for women

18:57who have vampire blood and trying to nurture me through it almost like it's an initiatory process. Like, oh, here's how you can work with it to make your life better. And even though that should have been, I guess, affirming and in a way it was and validating weirdly, it also causes a kind of mental snap for me because suddenly this has crossed a threshold into being something that I am being told is going to impact my real life forever. I'm being told that I will never be able to connect with other human beings that I am like marked by this for the rest of my life. I'm very seriously physically unwell and I think where the snap came in is that after being really sick for a couple of months, I went back to the doctor against the advice of my vampire siblings and the doctor ran some tests again and said, oh, we missed it the first time but you have mononucleosis, aka vampire blood, I guess. So that information was just enough of a reality check

20:04for me to be like, hmm, okay, but the funny part was that I did start going back into real life ironically when things had really reached fever pitch there, it was getting to be too much. So I started going out more and seeing my friends more, I was really involved in the goth scene so I was going a goth night, I was partying a lot, I was going out a lot just to dance and I remember, I have screenshots of the shit these people were saying to me and I think they were pissed off that I was, they were losing their control because they were saying things like, we can't believe what you're turning into, oh, you're being a slut, you're like being so crazy on drugs like all these accusations that was not happening, it was pretty normal like early 20s behavior, I think that was really the death knell, it was the beginning of the end. So they started to get more hostile toward me, I was starting to get much more like, no, this is insane, come on guys, you're not vampires,

21:07meanwhile other people involved in the group were also starting to ask questions, look into things, it was now the internet of 2009 rather than the internet of 2003 so it was easier to do some sleuthing and so multiple people were seeking to bring the whole thing down and so as I'm starting to come back to my real life, see my friends go out simultaneously, all this information is coming to light about who these people potentially really are and I think it became kind of a perfect storm. So I start listening a little bit more to the people who had already left and the people who were at this point in a running websites and like they had live journal accounts to try and bring the cult down and they were posting evidence every day in proof and they really thought that whoever was behind the mosque, behind the Armand mosque,

22:08the Lostat mosque was one of the other members of the group that it was not a stranger that none of us had ever heard of before it was somebody else in the group. So at this point I had my own suspicions about who may or may not be pulling the strings behind the scenes, really just based on common sense to be honest as much as it sounds like my common sense had abandoned ship at that point, it was still there a little bit. So I set a trap using an IP tracer and so I installed this tracker on a live journal entry and I made sure the only people who could see it were people that I suspected might be one of the moderators and then I waited and when I looked at the analytics and it was Lostat, Armand and Julie. They all had the exact same IP address which was deeply suspicious. There's something fishy going on here. There are people hiding in the proverbial shadows.

23:13To be honest with you, I think I had suspected that this could be the case for quite some time. So there was a kind of hollow pit of my gut feeling but there was also this sense of okay, this seems correct. Here's something that can't be explained away and yet I wanted it to be explained away. So I went to Julie about it to give her one final chance to be real with me. I mean she and I also had a very real friendship I thought and we had this conversation and I said to her here's what I found either Lostat and Armand live in your basement or you are they so can you just tell me what the hell is going on and I think a part of me really wanted her to have an answer like a plausible excuse so I could hold on to the lie and instead she just said I don't

24:17have to explain myself to you. I have nothing to say to you and then I was banned from the forum and she blocked me and we haven't had a conversation since. Like at that point the illusion of the literal actual an arise vampire had been broken but because there was such a question mark over who Julie was there was part of me that was like maybe something was going on like it fucks you up in the head because you can't really lay it to rest I was trying to figure out my head and hang on did something magical happen what accounts for my crazy dreams what accounts for my paranormal experiences how am I going to reconcile all of that. Julie it's fucking Julie it's Julie come on Julie come on just wait you guys just wait till you find out who exactly Julie it's Liz Julie it's like 50 times more in sand than Liz we'll be right back I can

25:22Julie this episode is brought to you by progressive insurance and hey everyone you chose to hit play on this podcast today that's a smart choice rare but we love to see it Alice yeah Alice wait a little out there also Frank good job isn't Frank good on it on that's Fred bread is the unattractive vampire you guys progressive loves to help people make smart choices that's why they offer a tool called auto quote explorer that allows you to compare your progressive carn trance quote with rates from other companies because they're like you're like the A team you know they're like hey yeah come at us we're not scared of your other competitive rates you're taking like the A team like B.A. Baraka no no like like when you're like in the league and you're like the number one person the league you're like you can tell me your plays I can you can look at my plays I'm still going to win that's progressive that's a lot what they are except that those people don't cover your

26:24car insurance like progressive so you can save time on the research you enjoy savings when you choose the best rate for you so keep your smart street going Alice give it a try after this episode progressive dot com progressive casualty insurance companies that affiliates not available in all states or situations prices vary based on how you buy Frank you still doing the Marley Spoon boxes every week love the Marley Spoon I've now been into the to go because I got a little lake series I was like I don't really want to you got a little AC just give me the to go pre-made meals and they're good yeah and my kid eats them which is a double whammy of goodness how about you dad still making Marley Spoon meals last time I talked to him yes he was and he's getting less intimidated that's the best maybe he'll transfer to an actual recipe but right now yeah let's not push it let's not push it yeah all right so we're gonna back it up a little bit Marley Spoon

27:26is a meal delivery service right it's got a wide range of ready to cook ready to heat ready to eat options as well as market items you can stock up on snacks if you know anything about snacks we all love snacks cult love snacks I love snacks you get it from Marley Spoon yes the meals are great they're healthy they're and they're uniquely flavored I find them to be you know actually full of spice and flavorful spice yes oh okay you know they're just like bland pre-made meals they're like oh wow I made this there's tons of options to choose from it appeals to any of your palates your diets your picky eaters all of it yeah like children children kids love it so they make it easy prepare the meals honestly I've tried a few Marley Spoon is by far the best meal service we've had it saves time and money and Marley Spoon keeps delivering literally and figuratively so try it out yeah and then when it's tried out Suzanne have us over for dinner would

28:27you yeah return the favor Suzanne head to Marley Spoon dot com slash offer slash cult from to 25 pre meals wait that's a typo 25 it's not dinner that's a lot of pre-conditors free meals Marley Spoon dot com slash offer slash cult don't forget there's a slash offer in there cult right great and we'll see you on Friday Suzanne right for dinner what seven seven thirty as I referred to earlier like you didn't get banned from the forum in a nice way ever so I was dragged across the internet horrible things were said about me all my friends were turned against me and that was the fear was that this would happen but I lost my support system and that sucked was horrible and this was concurrent with me applying to grad school in the US and knowing that my life was about to change forever because I was about to sort of move to the US hopefully I applied

29:31to graduate school to get my MFA in poetry and I applied to the University of New Orleans and they accepted me with a full-ride scholarship so I didn't have to pay go private years yes the University of New Orleans home of the private years which is private parts no it's a privately own ship or crew that's commissioned by the government to attack and seize enemy merchant ships during war time a privateer it's often known as legalized piracy new Orleans was like the spiritual heart of the cult and so yeah I absolutely was trying to move here for that reason to be like a bigger part of it part of me didn't want to go anymore I was like fuck you know my entire life plan has just exploded in my face I'm dealing with being horribly bullied by idiots on the internet who've been destroying my life for 10 years do I even want to do this but then there was part of me that was like no there's something there for you even if it's not vampires you should go

30:38I'm still here 13 years later so in your face Julie yeah it sucks to be your Julie so I moved to the States and moving here in the wake of trying to deprogram from this whole thing that had taken over my life for a decade I'm not going to say I didn't have wonderful times here in that first couple of years but it was hard and a big part of me especially being here I was still looking over my shoulder at night I was still expecting something supernatural to happen part of me was like God what if I was wrong what if it wasn't Julie and what if everything she told me was true and now I fucked myself plus living in a foreign country by myself for the first time with no support system really I didn't know anybody I look back and I think to myself I made some amazing friends through that group and I went to college in part because of that group a big part

31:41of who I am is because I was part of the looking glass and I can't you come through the baby out with the bathwater you know I wanted to try again I wanted to belong again and I wanted to see if I could be part of it and I thought maybe I can do it this time with the awareness that it's all fake but maybe I can still enjoy the discussions and enjoy the companionship and have some kind of friendship with Julie again you know it's just kind of like going back to your abuser really but I tried and they basically worked me back and said under no circumstances will you ever be allowed back in here and so I think that the healing came in phases and I think I handled it poorly I very quickly slipped into aggressive alcoholism which was not a problem that I had prior and I was a heavy alcoholic for about nine years struggling to do program from cult stuff

32:42during the course of that but I don't think I realized to be honest with you the true deprogramming didn't really begin until last year what was last year 2025 so 13 years after I got outish I was actually had a head cold and I was just a little adult from Nyquil and I was like let me make a video and tick talk about this crazy thing that happened to me and it exploded you know the first video has a million views on Instagram and people who were in the cult saw it and so I was getting messages from people I hadn't talked to in a decade who were talking to me oh I was there too and I remember this but in the process of all of this going on I learned from a former member that Julie is 68 years old she lives in Canada she's a former Canadian military vet come on Julie

33:46a 68 year old Canadian vet come on Julie probably nice to have a Canadian and not Julie grandma Julie grandma Julie I don't know how to trust anymore guys I don't know how to trust anymore not Julie the woman who was pretty much behind this whole operation like the head the head cult leader at the time that I was 16 years old she was 48 our mom was 48 years old talking to my 16 year old ass on the internet and telling me that I was dying of vampire blood because that's where this goes ultimately and that he was in love with me 48 years old in the Canadian military she's in her upper 60s now but I can't imagine even like even having like an ongoing intense friendship with someone who's 15 or 16 it would be so inappropriate you know when you think about

34:47that first and rice novel was published in 1974 I think she just disappeared into stories and I think she got very caught up in the fantasy of it all herself and then I think she's I don't like to armchair diagnosed but she's probably a narcissist and the attention and the power became very intoxicating we now know that Julie is the 68 year old grandmother in Canada but who were these other people Maxwell was a middle-aged woman called Lila and now Maxwell Maxwell some 50-year-old woman to come on is nobody anybody anymore Lila began life on the forum as somebody who was damaged and harmed like the rest of us she had really believed that listat was real Julie had been telling Lila I'm listat go to the opera in New York where you're like most beautiful

35:49ball gown and I'll meet you there and obviously nothing happened and no one showed up and Lila was so upset by this that she faked her own suicide left the forum and then came back in the guise of Maxwell and Julie and Lila were catfishing each other Julie's pretending to be arm-on Lila's pretending to be Maxwell I suspect that James either also is Julie I don't know if Julie also played Daniel I don't know if James at some point was brought into the lie and he was Daniel like I is James Julie that's still a question mark I am 99% sure that Julie was the mastermind behind everything and that other people who were involved over the years were really to be honest just puppets of Julie I don't think that means that they're not culpable in their own way but

36:50Julie was definitely the mastermind and I mean this is just her MO this is what she does and she's doing it to this day which is really scary log off Julie Jesus but the fact that this was all done by women my mother's age is crazy crazy Julie and Lila they need a new hobby god damn knitting gardening bridge club book club a lot of things you could be doing here's the problem right you know sometimes I want to saute but I also want to make an inference what you need Tyler is a high quality apron I do and a cape or an apron that can instantly transform into a cape and that my friend is a capron a capron right so we love this product it's great one second

37:52you're cooking chicken the next second you're turning to face your enemies the capron has durable fabric it's very soft the tie strings are easy to use there's grease splatter boom apron unexpected dinner visit from Lostat boom cape yeah I'm more mine last weekend right I'm making pancakes course you did yeah and I flipped it around my son now assumes I have the powers of levitation so whether you're a superhero a vampire or just a dad with a barbecue and a flare for the dramatic you need caprons we love this product you will do and right now you can get two caprons for the price of one so go to caprons dot com slash cult to order yours today that's caprons dot com slash cult ca p e r o n s caprons dot com slash cult cook like a human live like a vampire hi I'm Julia Cowley a retired FBI profiler and host of the true crime podcast the consult real FBI profilers if you're fascinated with true crime and criminal profiling then join us as we

38:56discuss real cases and examine the behavior exhibited before during and after the commission of the crime you can listen to the consult wherever you get your podcasts it's as close as it gets to being in the room with the FBI's behavioral analysis unit after a full decade in this strange vampire world cult Celeste had finally put around her neck the proverbial garlic to ward off the vampires and why garlic you ask I did not in many Eastern European traditions garlic was used toward off evil spirits and disease so people would hang a garlic in doorways they'd wear it they'd rub it on their skin why because garlic does have antimicrobial properties he back then if something helped prevent illness people assumed it had supernatural powers as well so garlic

39:57wards off vampires I'm really happy to say that one of the good things that came out of the insanity of 2025 was that I did reconnect with some people who I lost touch with who are again beautiful warm wonderful people with whom I shared a lot of closeness in my 20s and so it's really healing to be able to reconnect with them and to have them validate my experience and I think just being able to articulate all of this as a 39 year old as opposed to a traumatized 24 year old people from the past are hopefully better able to understand where I'm coming from on what I went through and that's been really powerful and and really awesome so I'm very grateful for that so I had already studied cults quite a lot part of my philosophy undergrad but it was philosophy and comparative religion so I had kind of a lot of the intellectual framework I guess to start looking at things through that lens and you know like so many of us I'm a perpetual true crime

41:01girly so I was also absorbing a lot of like true crime cult documentary content and I started to write some stuff about my experiences and I published an essay about this that was picked up by like a small Australian magazine and I started to use the term cult to describe it and it's a difficult term to use because as we discuss like a lot of people would disagree and they would say you know well is it really a cult it was all on the internet but when you look at it yeah the anatomy of a cult is there and I think being able to put that label on it and look at it through that lens it did help me start to put things psychologically where they belonged like I said it's still a process of due programming because a lot of me does feel obliged to take responsibility for my own actions I have to take accountability for the fact that I remained in this space and I invested it

42:02and I pushed for it and I wanted it to be real but I think I have a little bit of work to do still to not blame myself for how things went down and it took me so long to recognize that 15-year-old me was a child like yeah I was a kid who was groomed and taken advantage of I have to then unpack that and sit with that and that's heavy and it's disempowering right even though it happened 20 years ago it's disempowering so I'll be doing that for a while probably and you know when I pressed post on that video there was that gut sink moment where I was like oh my god I was like TikTok's gonna come for me so hard and they're gonna tell me I was an idiot and I'm gonna get like flamed and it's gonna be terrible and instead the total opposite happened and I've been so blessed to connect with so many people not just people I knew but people who had similar experiences in different ways who have said to me thank you for saying something and that's been like

43:05absolutely a priceless and I think that's why I'm still talking about it so many years later even though obviously I've moved on with my life I have a very beautiful rich wonderful life but it's so hard to not at least think about what happened to me because it shaped the course of my life and with that Celeste had fully driven the stake right through the heart of the vampire cult oh why the stake through the heart you ask again I did not because in Eastern European vampire legends people believe that corpses would rise from the grave if they died suddenly or they were suspected of being cursed or true story if people just didn't like them it's true so they would quite literally pound a wooden stake through the chest that would physically pin the corpse to the ground or the coffin so if the corpse did in fact come back to life it wouldn't go anywhere it was still pinned to the ground another fantastic cult metaphor yeah right pins you to the ground

44:12when you die you can't get up even when you're dead for the cult you're still pinned to the ground that's why you have to take program in order to get that wooden stake out everybody yep and that's part of the reason that Celeste still loves the supernatural so I still love everything spooky and horror and gothic I mean it's definitely still my vibe but I still enjoy the works of an arise it can be triggering to engage with but it's also an arise changed my life I wouldn't have the life I have right now if it wasn't for an arise I'm still me they didn't take away the me of it all I just managed to disentangle from there clutches my mom and I have a good relationship she knew before I started making the videos that this had been my experience but I don't think she really knew the extent of it and now she's you know I think she's just really proud of me she said how good that you're

45:12able to have gone through this experience and maybe turn it into something that's valuable not just for you but for other people so that's been really nice so yeah I went to graduate school I graduated with my MFA and poetry in 2014 2015 got sober in 2020 that was really great the other side of sobriety life is phenomenal highly recommend changed my life for the better and I'm in a beautiful relationship with someone I adore and care about deeply and we've been together for two years he's my favorite person in the whole world so we have a beautiful relationship I have wonderful friends who support and love me we go on fantastical adventures I have my dream job I've run my own business everything that I ever ever wanted it to be I'm not a vampire that's the only part that's not exactly what I wanted but everything else you know and that is the

46:13last mods story a story about vampires but not really about vampires at all yeah because you take away the fangs you take away the an arise cause play you take away the caprin's still a great idea I'm gonna I'm gonna see if there are caprin's the caprin's do not find this you can get a cape you can get an apron you can spend 25 dollars on a cape and you can spend 25 dollars on an apron and shipping for each one or you can get a caprin it does both so like Tyler was saying if you take away the caprin your left was something pretty familiar at least to us on this show yes power control manipulation weird sex which is really about power and no this wasn't happening on some compound in Utah or Mexico or Arizona this was happening on

47:18dial-up in chat rooms after school in bedrooms which honestly makes it far creepier because it means that it can happen literally anywhere so Celeste thank you thank you thank you for sharing you are wonderful seriously thank you for sharing your story was great to edit it was one of the it was one of the easier ones I've had to edit honestly it was really your great storyteller thank you for sharing that wild story with us you can find Celeste on social media all of the links to her are in the show notes yeah she's a witch and she's a terror reader and she's a poet she's a wonderful writer she's kind of cool I looked her up she's pretty badass she wears great glasses she's out there living her life she's telling her story not in chat rooms with fake vampires anymore Julie I'm sorry I'm still stuck on Julie I need a full visual on Julie please she's Canadian yeah she's just a kind Canadian saying oh sorry I brought you into a cult now I've offended the Canadians

48:21which just proves kind of anyone could be a cult leader and let this be a tale of caution because today most experts agree that recruitment into cults now starts mostly online cults are increasingly using social media gaming platforms and AI to recruit members often hiding behind wellness or self-help facades etc they're also specifically targeting and recruiting minors just like Celeste they're targeting their coursing and exploiting them through public forums like discord or roblox you have kids this shit's real it's scary predators have much more access today to recruit than the cults of the 70s that had to travel to college campuses or knock door to door so yes question things guys do your research look into it maybe don't immediately trust that random online life coach or the wellness influencer who thinks you're special and maybe know who your

49:23kids are talking to online because it might not be who you think it might be after all it could be a 68 year old Canadian military vet pretending to be a hot vampire fucking Julie we'll be back next week with a very interesting I don't know could we call it a love story even about Jehovah's Witnesses and Michael Jackson what is everybody got what say what and I felt like God was watching and God knew my heart and I was here to mentor Michael Jackson as a Jehovah's Witness and really I had a crush that was much bigger than my desire to convert him and I didn't know what to do with those feelings you

50:26wasn't a cult is written hosted produced by fucking Julie me Julie Liziah Coosie me Liz fucking Julieiah Coosie and me fucking Lila me some comma Tyler sound design and mix and edit and all of that stays up like a vampire to make us sound good it's still Rob the oh I was trying to bear Rob Perth you you swear from line I'm dying

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