Also media.
Ah.
Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the worst people in all of history that also hosts the eternal, unending battle between a man and his producer who wants him to send in the scripts of the episodes that they're reading. As usual, I'm winning this battle, and to celebrate the script, not the latest script, to celebrate my triumph, Matt.
Leeb Northrop Grumman got me Northrop come in.
That's right in my faith? What's up?
That's right? That's right. We are advertising for drone delivered sex toys. Yeah, the same technology that takes out school buses and Yemen can make you say, yeah, man, what do.
You have your soundboard? Matt?
Do I have my soundboard? I think you know the answer to that. Yeah, I do.
This week my soundboard is all just different weird noises that Snoop makes on the wire.
Perfect.
I feel so much joy.
Speaking of joy, we have a special Oregon themed Behind the Bastards for you. As you're probably aware, my adopted home state is one of the USA's great cultural hubs for cult activity, and we are talking about an Oregon a classic Oregon cult today and part of what we're doing here is we are raising money for the Portland Children's Museum. Yeah yeah, there used to be like a Portland children's museum with like in a building and stuff. That had to close down in twenty twenty one. I
think it was a pandemic casualty. But a group of parents in the metropolitan area have created a traveling children's museum, the FLIP Museum, which stands for Fun, Learning, Inspiration Play. It's a nonprofit. It goes around to different communities in the Portland area and provides kids there with like a you know, head visits them sort of children's museum experience.
So we are helping them fund that this week. If you want to donate, they've set it up so that you can just text bastards to five oh one five five. So if you text bastards to five oh one five five, you'll get the information you need to donate to help the FLIP Portland's children Museum. So that's pretty cool.
I also love that in order to donate, you have to write the word bastards to the Children's museum.
It is it would be it is funny. It is funny. Although no one no one still uses the term bastard today bastards.
I love children.
You want to help some literal bastards.
These little bastards get.
Extras to five oh one five five.
Living in sin.
Yeah fuck wedlock.
That's right now, Matt.
How do you feel about sex cults?
Oh? Love them pro I've always wanted to be in one.
I got really close to being in that one in San Francisco. Ohe the one Taste thing. It was like the Gasmik meditation one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I love yeah man.
I was so close.
I had a meeting with the like one of the ladies who like was recruiting, and I just spent the whole meeting being like, I don't have any money, but can I just go and watch yeah? Yeah, And they said no. She started asking me to have She's like it was like one hundred dollars too. It really was not that much money, but I was very poor at the time, and I was like, I don't have one hundred dollars. They're like, can you? She like emailed me later, how about this, ask your friends and family for one
hundred dollars. I was like, Lady, I used to do a lot of heroin. If I start asking for one hundred dollars. They're gonna think I'm back on this stuff.
Now I can't.
It's for a sex cult, all right, would you consider getting back on the heroin then yeah.
But yeah, I've always wanted to be in a sex cult. I just said I never you know, it was too much of a coward, Matt.
I have. I believe in you. I just want to state that here, and I believe that all of us can benefit from the story of Oregon's first great sex cult leader, Edmund Creffield. Now I'm gonna guess you haven't heard of Edmund Kraff.
No, but I love that. That's a great name. That's a guy who fucks.
Name that, that is a guy who focks names. And that's also a guy who declares himself the second Coming of Christ.
Name. Well yeah, I mean, oh yeah.
This is one of those stories making yourself Jesus fucking a lot of people.
Oh so great. What a what a grift.
It's the most relatable grift too, Like I get it, like you do what you gotta do to get that piece.
Mm hmmm, especially if it means declaring yourself the son of God. Which there's that great documentary series on Netflix about the Twin Flame Cult, which is like this mix of like kind of young millennial older gen z, like fucking pseudoscience about relationships mixed with also I this guy who is the only person who can determine if you've met your soulmate and Jesus, it's beautiful of it. It's very much descended because that guy spent some time in Oregon.
From the cult we're talking about today, which is have you ever heard the phrase holy Roller?
I have, but I don't know how this cult was.
The Holy Rollers. This is where the term comes from, and it is a surprisingly literal term.
There's a really popular song called Holy Roller that's probably you've heard it.
It may may in fact based on this, yeh, that's my assumption. So if you live elsewhere in the United States, Portland probably has primarily come to you in the form of a mix of like riot footage in portlandyas sketches right. It had this reputation from like the end of the nineties to the early two thousands is like this kind of hip place where young artist types and intellectuals would congregate.
And that's mainly because for a long time it was like this cheapest city on the West coast now again it's like riots and urban decay and drug use and
shit that like Fox News focuses on. And one of the things that's weird when I got into studying this guy who was like an early nineteen hundreds, nineteen to three to nineteen oh six Oregon cult figure is you get all these like news stories about what happens with him, and they all portray Oregon the same way that like Fox does today, Like this is one hundred and something years.
It's like this is the center of anarchy and violence and like these people are savage, feral monsters, which I guess is something to be proud.
I love it.
I love that Portland has never changed. Yeah, shaped the national media.
It's always been the same place, like nineteen fucking thirteen and someone that everyone thinks you're so fucking cool with their beards topping down trees.
Yeah, it is funny. So we'll be talking about that today. So, yeah, we are chatting about a sex cult leader who declared himself Jesus Christ Edmund Creffield. His actual name probably was Franz Edmund Crefield. He is, yet again Matt a German.
Hey, hey, I love it. I come on for the German episodes. Oh yeah, you love a German?
No, we picked I picked a cult episode for you because I was like, we've done a lot of a lot of real horrible genocide guys in a war. I want something lighter, right, a little bit more fun. And then bam, he turns out to be a German. You just can't you can't miss him, You can't miss him.
Finally, a German who doesn't kill people. He just likes to do sucky fucking yeah he is.
This guy's really going to rehabilitate their image.
Yeah. Yeah.
This is one of those cases where we have basically nothing about this guy's early life. He was probably born in Germany. I think it's possible he was born like Austria, like somewhere around Germany, but like kind of unclear. We really don't know exactly when he was born. He was in probably in his thirties by the time the story starts, which would put his date of birth somewhere around the creation of Germany as a state eighteen seventy seventy one,
But we don't really know. All we can tell for sure is that he immigrated to the United States, likely at some point in the eighteen eighties, probably as a teenager or a young adult. Some of his biographers postulate that he may have moved to the US to avoid serving in the Kaiser's army, because, like everyone had to write, like you had to do your compulsory service in the Kaiser's army. He may have like bounced to here because he didn't want to do that.
I'm a lover, not a fighter.
I guess he really was. It's also possible that, like his family was rich. Some biographers will suggest that given that he seems to have had a degree of education that would have been unlikely for him to have attained if he had grown up sort of like poor. But all of that sort of speculation. What we know for sure is that by eighteen ninety nine, he has made his way from wherever he landed in the US, probably somewhere on the East coast, to Portland, Oregon.
Yeah.
Yeah, this is the mecca of every German immigrant who wants to meet a nice hippie girl.
Yeah, every weirdo. Yeah. From him to eventually Stalin's granddaughter, Yeah, to Portland calls.
Yeah.
I just found that out recently, and I followed her on Instagram. I'm like dash, she's cool.
She's like, yeah, she's like a LARPer. It's kind of neat. Yeah, she seems fun.
Yeah.
So I don't mean LARPer in the sense we usually use it on the show. I mean, like literally, I think she does like live action role playing stuff.
Yeah.
So we know that Crefield was a deeply religious man. He felt called to witness for the Lord, and like many similar young men in his position, he found himself drawn on to the Salvation Army. Now do you know a whole lot, Matt, about the actual history of the Salvation Army.
I don't.
I've only ever been to a brick and mortar place called the Salvation Army. And I bought some wooden golf clubs.
Oh good, I didn't call you for a golf guy.
Yeah, well no I wasn't. I just was like there and I was like, oh, look at all this cheap stuff. It's like Goodwill but worse. And then there were some golf clubs and I bought them, and I was like, why did I do this? But yeah, I don't know anything about the Salvation Army. I've always just assumed that they were like a charitable organization of.
Some sort of Yes, they are. They are Probably most people's primary contact with them is that during the holiday season they'll be out in front of shops and stuff with these like red buckets, you know.
Yeah, last they'll have a Santa there, sometimes.
Off on a Santa yeah, and people will point out it, like if you're on social media, usually about this time of year, people will be like, don't donate to the Salvation Army. They're problematic. There's a bunch of reasons for that. I'm not advocating for the Salvation Army, but we are talking about their early history, which is not entirely the same as the organization as it exists today.
Are you about to tell me that they are an actual army and they got guns and stuff.
They don't have guns. They are organized exactly like an army. Like that part they took very literally, so a lot of soap beatings.
Yeah, But.
The Salvation Army was founded not long before Creffield's probable birth. It was formed in eighteen sixty five, right as the US Civil War is ending, by a pawnbroker who became a minister named William booth Over and over in England. Now, pawnbroker does not seem like a good person job to me, right.
Yeah, I don't actually know what a pawnbroker is. A guy who owns a pawn shop.
Yeah, it's a guy who takes your stuff if you're poor, and gives you some money for it and maybe you get it back later.
But like, yeah, yeah, I don't know.
You're not inherently bad, I guess, but it definitely like usually shady people wind up pawnbrokers.
Yeah, it doesn't seem like a nice thing to do, but I could see its usefulness.
Yeah, I've known like a nice pond guy, but I don't know. Maybe maybe we should be just shit talking pawnbrokers. But now I think nowadays because of how much like paid a loan, shit, it's gotten sketchy, right, So maybe it wasn't back then. Anyway, Booth actually does not seem to have been wildly sketchy. He was, however, super Christian, and his life ambition he wanted to like turn the poor of London, particularly like prostitutes and alcoholics and criminals
into good Christians. Now, there's a lot of predatory religious figures in the last century and today you have a similar ambition. And what made Booth notable was his under he had this like thing he would say where he was like, no one ever became a Christian when they were starving, Right, So his attitude is, if you're going to try to convert people, the best way to do that is like doing nice things for them, right yeah, which is like not the worst way to be an evangelist, right.
No, yeah, yeah, that works. I'm down for that, you know, yeah, like at least on the surface.
Yeah, yeah, I didn't to a deep dive on Booth, but I haven't found any evidence that he was like within sort of the charitable figures of his day anything, but like a pretty reasonable example. So his focus was he wanted to spread the gospel by improving the lives of poor and suffering people. Now, at first he limited this to giving food and clothing and other kind of help to converts. But in eighteen seventy eight, like this
is at least the organization's sort of story. Who knows if this is literally true, but the story goes that in eighteen seventy eight, he's sitting down and he's talking with his secretary and he uses the phrase as he's like dictating a piece of you know, propaganda. Basically, the Christian mission is a volunteer army. This was like what he wanted to use as their slogan. And his son heard him, and he's like, I'm not a volunteer. I'm a regular or nothing. Right, Like, I'm not a volunteer soldier,
I'm like a career soldier in this Christian Army. And that convinces Booth to change the name of his nascent charitable organization to the Salvation Army and to adopt a military style structure with like military style uniforms and shit, and ranks. Like officers in the Salvation Army are called like lieutenant captain. Booth is the general, right, Like that's how they discuss talk about themselves. Now, that's like, I
don't know whatever, that's not particularly problematic. What is problematic is that new converts are called captives, which I do consider a little concerning.
That's captive is a weird thing.
That's odd.
I mean, it's I guess it's like maybe it's a critique of militarism where it's like, yeah, privates.
Well, yeah, it's it's odd. There is definitely a degree of like colonizer brain that is present within the Salvation but this is a this is England in the late eighteens, where the coolest people you could be the Salvation Army. Again, there's a lot of ugly things about the organization today that this is not. This episode is not about that at the time it's founding, though again it seems to have mostly been about like, yeah, making providing meals to
like people in London slums and shit. In a history of the organization, Pam Mila Walker wrote, quote The Mission, however, differed from other home missions. The authority it granted women, its emphasis on holiness, theology and revivalist methods, it's growing independence, and its strict hierarchical structure were all features that sharply
distinguished it from its contemporaries. The Christian Mission was created in the midst of the working class communities it aimed to transform, so there are some ways in which it's kind of less problematic with some of its peers. It gives a lot more sort of like power to women that are in the organization. It's generally comes out of communities as opposed to being imposed on them. That said, it is again colored by some problematic aspects of the time,
including colonialism. In eighteen ninety booth In some of his colleagues wrote a manifesto, a book titled in Darkest England and the Way Out, And as you may have guessed from that title, they're basically just comparing living conditions of the urban poor and like Western cities like London to Africa. Quote, as there is a darkest Africa, is that not also a darkest England? Civilization which can breed its own Barbara,
does it not also breed its own pigmies? May we not find a parallel on our own doors and discover within a stone's throw of our cathedrals and palaces similar horrors to those which Stanley has found existing in the Great Equatorial Forest.
Hello, Chimney sweeps, She's all.
That is basically this guy's belief system. And when he references Stanley, he's talking about Bastard's pod alumni, Henry Morton Stanley, who again machine gun natives in Africa repeatedly not a cool guy, but also very like popular. He writes a lot of books about his exploration and shit that are viral in this time. So you know, aspects of Boots
writing do kind of flirt with class politics. There's he's he's got a lot of focus on inequality, but he doesn't see the root of inequality as like the structural factors inherent to the system that governs the British Empire. She seeds the root of inequality as like the fact that the poor don't have enough religion and discipline.
Right, Yeah, they need they they need Jesus and they need Jesus. Yeah, that's all they needed.
Yeah. The primary thing that like elevates him because that's not an uncommon view among Christian charitable types.
In this period today.
Yeah, even today. What does kind of elevate him is that there is this consistent focus on like and the way that you make them disciplined is by making sure they're not starving, first of all, which is like, no matter what else you're doing, not a bad thing that works.
People do, in.
Fact need food. The organization the Salvation Army spreads to the US in the late eighteen hundreds and they hold their first kettle fundraising drives. That's the start of them, like ringing bells outside of shops and shit. That all begins in San Francisco, and by eighteen ninety seven the Salvation Army is providing Christmas meals to more than one hundred thousand people in the United States. So that's about
when Crefield joins. He's kind of important by eighteen ninety nine, we know is what the army then, So like right as it's sort of coming into prominence in the United States is when he gets involved, when it's sort of really snowballing as an organization. Now, whatever existed in Crefield's background,
he was charismatic and self confident as an adult. He's really good at speaking, he's good at preaching, and his superiors in the Salvation Army decide this is a guy who might you know, be able to hold some rank here, and they send him to their officer candidate school. Once he's there and he's like under some scrutiny from leaders, they are like, oh my god, this man is out of his fucking mind.
Right.
He cannot work with other people. He is incapable of listening to anyone else. He has his own ideas about the Bible, and if yours clashed with them, all he'll do is talk over you. He cannot have a conversation like yeah.
Just like the worst type of guy to be in a school with.
Yeah, yeah, sounds fucking awful, truly terrible.
God wants you to fuck He fruitful, he says.
And when he gets out, you know, on the street working for the army. One of the things they are also find is that like anywhere he's stationed, donations will drop because he loves ranting about his ideas, but he
hates money. He doesn't like asking for it. And he started to believe that like the Salvation Army has been corrupted by this focus on donations, Like it's too money focused as opposed to being focused on spreading the gospel, specifically his very idiosyncratic ideas about the gospel, which, like he's not wrong. One of the valid, very valid criticisms of the Salvation Army is that, like it is really much about the money, you know, about getting in those donations.
So he's not alone in finding that frustrating. But he's like, it's frustrating because what they should be doing is telling everyone what I believe about the bibe.
Yeah, yeah, and have we found have we found out what he believes that's different from what they believe.
Now, not yet we are about he's kind of forming those ideas right now, right definitely, one of his beliefs at this time is that like Christianity has been corrupted by modernity. Right, He's not a doesn't like electric lights, doesn't like all the fancy new clothes people are wearing, doesn't like you.
Know, the bicycles with the big wheel in the bicycle at the bottom.
Really not a bicycle fella. That is going to be a factor in the story, Matt, you've you've predicted it so well.
It's a story about Portland, Oregon.
Of course, the bicycles. So Creffield gets moved from Portland to the Dows, which is Oregon's second city with a name that sounds kind of like Dallas.
Uh.
And then he gets the other one being Dallas, Oregon.
Uh.
And then he has moved to McMinnville to Hepner and everywhere he goes donations just plummet. He is a horrible person to have on your team if you're a Salvation Army guy. Some sources I've read suggests he also has like a moral issue with taking money, but a big part of it seems to be that he knows the money is going not just he's it's going to feeding people. And when the Salvation Army like does these big like
feeding people drives or whatever. When they have these big events, they're kind of secular, right, We wouldn't consider them secular. But Craffield considers them secular, right, right, And he says this in an interview with a reporter sometime after leaving the Salvation Army. Quote. While in the Salvation Army, I had the light, but I did not have the power. I was teaching his works, but was still in the darkness. I did not experience the fullness of His power until
I had tarried long before God in prayer. Then the light came. The Holy Ghost told me that I should live a life of pure faith. I was to do everything by faith. I could no longer work for the Army because it's people are not entirely of God. I couldn't I take part in soliciting for funds. I was directed by the Holy ghosts not to solicit for money. It is not right to hold ice cream socials and other social gatherings where money is taken.
Just knocking ice cream out of homeless people's hands. I need Yeah, No, God doesn't want it. He sounds fun, man, he sounds like it's gonna work out good for him.
You know what God does want though, Matt Leeb, what does he want? He wants you to buy the products and services that support this podcast.
Oh that's what I thought God wanted. Good thing. I'm gonna buy them.
Yeah, check it out. Give God, you know, like thirty bucks. He needs it. God is hard up Now is it possible that God just wants to buy some molly and needs some cash?
Sure? You know, I would say, but who are we to judge?
Got he works hard? Why should he take molly this weekend?
I have always said, God, you work hard, you gotta play hard. Yeah, get some Mollie, massage your friends, Suck on one of those pacifiers.
Yeah yeah, go see V and V nation. God loves V being a being ancient and born before time itself. He's a big v V nation man. Here's ads. Ah, we're back. This is behind the Bastards and again we are this episode raising money for the Portland Children's Museum to donate text Bastards to five oh one five five and we're back to the store. Back to the tale.
So let's get back into it talking about.
God, talking about the g Man, not Gordon Liddy, but God. So Creffield gets tired of working for the Salvation Army and the Savation. Salvation Army. By the way, very tired of Edmund Craffield.
Yeah, I've had about enough of his shit.
Anyways, He's not even good at the job, which is like literally just being guy with bell getting out the money.
Can't do it, can't shut up long enough to do it. So he bounces and he joins the Pentecostal Mission and Training School in Salem, Oregon. This is the project of a guy named Martin Ryan, and it's it's basically it's a fundamentalist Christian like school, right like that, that's a way to look at it. In their book Holy Rollers, Teama Cracken and Robert Blodgett described the school this way. Ryan's group was part of a holiness movement that taught the Bible in its entirety from the first word of
Genesis to the last word of Revelation. And if any man shall take away from the words of the Book of this Prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the Book of Life, which is Revelations twenty two nineteen. Basically, if you edit the Bible at all, or don't take it all literally, that's how they interpret it. If you don't take every word of the Bible literally, God will light you on fire, and shit, God, damn, it's so boring though it is, it's super boring. It's such it's.
A long, boring book with too many fucking words.
Oh my god, so many words more than there needed to be.
And I don't care who begat who Just get to the fucking.
Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna be gat my fist in your fucking face. If you don't get along with the good parts of this shit.
I'm going to take out my big gat and just wow, nice, nice, I'm as good.
So during his time with Ryan, Crefield becomes aware of a new doctrine, which is like a new sort of like set of religious teachings, and as a part of that, he becomes aware of the fact that God has chosen him specifically, he is the Lord's elect, his new prophet on earth. Now that's a great thing to learn about yourself.
That's a real quick, real quick turnaround on this guy.
I mean, I knew he was, like, you know, a little bit pedantic and maybe uh, confrontational, but now he's immediately like, you.
Know what I am God prophet?
Yeah? Okay, yeah, So you know, speaking of being God, the prophet I am. I don't know, Sophie. Are we allowed to keep doing the Jesus Christ of podcasting bits or did we get weird messages over those? No?
But I hate it?
Okay, well then we'll keep doing it.
I don't know what it is, let's do it. You are the Jesus Christ of I.
Am the Lord and Savior of podcasting. That's that's obviously.
Well, I'm your dad, bitch, And that's where.
I know, Sophie. I feel like you are the Holy Spirit because you're mysterious. Uh. And if there, if there is a father God, the father of podcasting, unfortunately it's Joe Rogan.
Yeah, of course. You know what's.
Gnostic about this. Joe Rogan is like the evil fake God. And yeah, that's that's right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're the You're the real demmy urge god. And again, I'm Mary Magdalen. I'm prostitute and I just want to rub oil on your feet. I'm more of a feat guy in the Bible. Yeah, so I'm just gonna if I could just do that.
Yeah, absolutely, Robert speaking of feet, Nope, not speaking of feet, guys. So we're talking about Edmund Creffield, sorry, who has just had it revealed to him that he is God's elect And I found an interesting article by Sophie co submitted to the Young Historians twenty seventeen conference hosted by Portland State University that describes his next movements in this period.
After separating from the Salvation Army, Crefield moved around to different cities preaching his radical take on Christianity, most of which were places he had previously worked as a soldier and had connections to people from cities like the Dows in McMinnville dismissed Craffield for being too extreme, leading to his eventual arrival in Corvallis in nineteen oh three. Although the population was fairly poor, the community was close knit
and dominantly religious. These characteristics, as well as any connections he gained in the Salvation Army, likely prompted Creffield's faith in the people of Corvallis. Now, do you know anything about Corvallis.
Matt Leeb Literally nothing, nobody.
Does, Nobody fucking does. It is like one of the most boring towns in this whole state. This is the only thing that ever happened there. Very pretty it's in the western part of Oregon. It's kind of right in between Portland and Eugene. Yeah, and in this period. Today, I think Corvallis is like, you know, like many sort of less dense chunks of Oregon. But back then it is dirt poor. Right, everyone who lives there, almost everyone who lives there are these like subsistence farmers who lead
very lean lives, full of hard work. Right, is a tight knit community. There are two newspapers, and since they are, it really lets you know, like the how much how similar newspapers were to like tweeting and TikTok in the era before those things. Because the newspapers in Corvallis they report absolutely everything that happens there. And I am talking about the most pedestrian shit imagine. Oh yeah, Blodgett McCracken ride quote. Everything was reported. Everything go out of town.
It was reported a swift journey on a bicycle was made Saturday by Frank Hurt. He went from Corvallis to Oregon City in six hours. It is not likely that the trip was ever made by wheel in so short a time. That's from the Times. In nineteen oh one, a man rode a bicycle.
I just love the journalism in a small town is just the most nosy neighbor.
Yeah, and he has a printing press.
I do want to do like a like a modern day like with like the same like Woodward and Bernstein level, like a skullduggery and like drama that you get from like Watergate era journalism movies, but about stuff like this, Like a guy gets a call in the night from like a shadowy figure. Man rode his bicycle from Corvallis to Oregon City today, pull the other thread. He gets car bombed trying to report on it.
To meet with someone in an underground garage. He gives them a file and the file is just someone like.
A grainy picture of a man on the giant bicycle.
I think he's visiting family.
Oh, I love so the problem you know, Crayfield picks Corvallis because it's the small town. Everyone's very religious. He's like, it's kind of isolated. You obviously want that as a cult leader, and like these people will believe anything, so like these are these are my ideal sort of provincial rubes to join the cult that I'm going to get. They'll buy what I'm saying about being the new prophet
of Jesus Christ. The downside of this place for him, which he doesn't seem to realize at the time, is that, like, because it's such a titan at town, Corvalis is the kind of place where people are open to burying bodies for their neighbors, right, which presents a danger for coultreats. Right, Like, that's not necessarily the best place to start fucking around. You get kind of lost in a city, like you can't in Corvallis.
Yeah.
Yeah, the idea that like this small town, literally everyone knows where the bodies are buried except for you.
Yeah, not necessarily your safest bet.
Yeah, that's kind of bad.
So, like a lot of the other cult leaders we've studied, the Twelve Tribes, which we did earlier this year, comes to mind. Crefield starts out when he first moves to Corvallis, he's not giving the whole span of like what his beliefs have become. He starts preaching relatively popular Christian doctrine, and he's still he's identifying himself as a prophet, but he's basically saying, like I'm a messenger who's and God talked directly to me. But he's still he's like giving,
he's respectful of like the local churches. He's not trying to get in their way. He's not trying to like out himself as somebody who's like running against all of the existing kind of religious infrastructure in the town.
Right.
More of what he's saying is that, like, hey, I have this close connection to God, and if you listen to what I'm saying, I can help guide you to
spiritual perfection. That's the term he uses a lot, And this is kind of his key innovation, right, which is that he's not just saying I am speaking with God, but I can teach you how to receive direct messages from God, right, Oh, which God, Yeah, it gives people a little bit more to aspire to rather than just listening to you, Like they get to get messages from God.
And what it's also going to mean is that, like if Crefield's not around to talk to them, like if he's in prison and stuff, the cult can perpetuate because these people are also talking to God themselves.
Right.
So it's a smart it's a smart way to set this shit up. He begins to claim, you know, once he's got people following him, showing up every week to listen to him preach that once everyone's ready, like, once people have been following his guidance enough, they'll be added to a holy roll in heaven where God lists all of his best friends.
Right, and this is oh, that's what the role is.
One theory as to where that came from.
Right.
The other theory is that it has something to do with the specific nature of how they are worshiping when he's holding these big preaching sessions. And I'm going to quit from Blodget McCracken again. For hours, Craffield kept his flock in a state of frenzied excitement. He had them rolling, praying, rolling, wailing, rolling, groaning, rolling, singing, rolling, clapping, rolling, stomping, rolling, tumbling,
rolling and rolling and rolling for hours on end. He had them rolling twelve hours if it was a short service, twenty four hours if it was a typical service. All heads were spinning because they were glorying in heaven and.
So what the fuck?
Yeah, He's literally got them rolling around on the ground for twenty four hours at a stretch.
And part of what's power? I get that, Yeah, I kind of want that.
Who wouldn't want that?
I would love to just make a bunch of piggies roll in front of me, Is that right?
Yeah? Oh for god, I have to feel Yeah, that's probably what was going on in like Andy Kaufman's head when he made that audience like walk with him to get ice cream, where he's like, I could take this much further.
Yeah, it's unlimited power, just takes it.
Yeah, they occupy a police data.
Yeah, I think also what's going on here? You know, like little little little kids when they find out if they can like spin around, they get kind of dizzy. They yeah, a lot. It's like getting high at the first way.
Totally is exactly what I was thinking, is like, is he getting these high rolling.
Because like, yeah, they're They're like especially if you're not eating, you're starving yourself and rolling around a bunch, Yeah, you're gonna feel weird.
You know, you're gonna become susceptible.
Yeah. Yeah, and this kind of like some of this is classic cold shit, right, the whole starving people for periods of time. A lot of colts do this because it makes you worse a decision making. I haven't heard of anyone having people like roll around on the ground hours to get them all buzz. That's kind of.
Cool, that's mk roltra.
Yeah, yeah, that's how we're gonna get you to fucking give us the goods.
That's kind of a credible theory as to where the name Holy rollers comes from, too, is like, oh, yeah, I get why you would call about that. They're literally worshiping by rolling around on the ground.
Yeah makes sense.
Yeah, Now, this kind of all consuming worship is consistent with what Crefield was starting to claim about his God inspired take on Christianity. He believed, and he would argue, God had told him that true Christians should not have time for anything else in their lives but worship. Right, anything else you're doing farming, raising your kids, literally, anything
but worship is a waste of time and of the devil. Right, So if you're you know, the upside of that is that it keeps everyone focused on him the whole time. The downside is that spending a full day or more rolling on the ground is not conducive to like growing the food you need to survive.
Right right, Yeah, Subsistence farmers like they can only roll for a little bit and then they're Gonta get back to the farming.
They don't have a lot of rolling time. But it's also the other thing we just noted, how starving yourself and rolling around a bunch gets you kind of in this altered state that makes you more suggestible. That's not the only thing going on. It's also fun, right his worship. They're not just rolling around. They're like rolling and dancing and like flinging their bodies around and like shrieking screaming. They are expressing themselves and their feelings both through like
vocalization and through physical movements. And these are people not only are these all subsistence farmers, which is a difficult and often brutal way to exist, especially in nineteen oh three. This is a super strict Victorian prudish society that is anti women expressing themselves. That's anti many different facets of self expression we consider like normal today, and he's giving
them an outlet like that's it's fun. People like being in Crefield's cult a lot better than they likely dying on a farm in rural lord Agon.
You know, like yeah, this is like uh, you know, peloton classes or typo or something.
There's a definite element of peloton type like that, that kind of ship here. And most of the people joining his cult are women, right, Yeah, some of them are poor, but all of them feel like they're missing something like in part what you get from all these people like they seem bored with their lives because their life fucking sucky.
Seventeen Yeah, guy shows up, hot fucking German guy shows up, is like, hey, we're rolling this week.
Yeah, and they're going to be like sure, yeah, I don't want.
To go back. Yeah. This is a time when like a game was like having a wheel and a stick.
Yeah, you know, closing your eyes and pretending your brother didn't die of consumption, you know, like that's a fun parlor game for us.
Yeah, or reading one of two newspapers that are keeping tabs on your neighbors.
You hear about this bi called shit.
So uh.
Prefield preached a sense of separation from the profane world, but he also utilized the tactics that he'd learned out in it, and chief among them was hypnotism. Right, we don't have as much to tail about this as I'd like, but it is theorized that he took classes in hypnotism. He's basically certain that he did because he's using a lot of like at the time, hypnotism is like a
viral meme spreading through society. It's super hip, and a lot of what he's doing in his speeches is like kind of borders on hypnotism, right, Like, he seems to be very familiar with that and utilizing that as well, which helps is part of why he's got this popularity early on.
Yeah, so them roll around, I mean that shit is fucking you know that. Yeah, feels kind of hypnotic. Instead of a watch swinging back and forth, it's your head.
Yeah, and so you know this, Dozens and dozens flock to his banner, but you know, dozens hundreds more of people in Corvallis are angry.
Right.
He's described in newspaper editorials as a hypnotist. They write that his followers are quote dead to all human sympathies.
Now, yeah, I mean they're doing what I would if I saw this in the wild, I a modern person would say they're witches. Yeah, yes, so I could see like the rest.
Of the town or the neighboring towns being like, what the fuck is happening here?
Yeah? Yeah, this disturbs a lot of people. Sure, and it's also like the idea.
You know.
Part of why I'm not sure exactly how solid the hypnotism claims are is that the journalists at the time use this a lot, and a large reason why they describe him as a hypnotist is because they have to explain how all of these young women are drawn to him while in their opinion, he's ugly, right.
He's not even that hot, and they all are all out.
I'm going to quote from Sophie Coe's right up here quote. Edmund Craffield was described as being physically unattractive and homely, but very persuasive and attractive for other reasons. His personality was said to be magnetic. Many claimed that he had power overwhere others, especially women, that put them under a spell. Now those other reasons we will get into a little
bit later, but not quite yet for now. The final piece of the Craffield puzzle, and the real bit of genius in his cult, was that he doesn't just promise conversations with God. He added a ticking clock. Right, you can connect directly with God. He can talk to you personally. But there's only so many names that we have space for on the holy role. Right, God's like one of those cell phone plans in the ninety NINETI where you got to like pick your five friends to text with
for free. Like that's that's how speaking with God works.
Yeah, God doesn't do roaming data like God. You have to be in the plan.
God's plan is a very very cheap cell phone plays.
Yeah, I love.
And you know who else offers cheap cell phone plans all the products and services at one of them? Yeah, definitely, at least one of them does in fact.
Uh oh good.
Yeah, so at least one, at least one, sometimes two, sometimes multiple.
Cell phone services fighting in the cell phone Yeah.
Anyway, ah, we're back.
Hey, we're talking about Eddie C. So many of the first members of Crefield's cult are Salvation Army volunteers who saw his personal and astatic relationship with God as much preferable to acting as foot soldiers for donations. Now, initially, he would allow you to kind of be in his flock and also stay a member of the Salvation Army or stay a member of one of the other churches
that are in town in Corvallis. But soon he starts to warn his growing flock that other Christians are not trustworthy, right, and they have to start isolating themselves. He preached, quote, when you get him the Holy Ghost, you'll bring consternation wherever you go. Peace ceases when you make your appearance. The so called Christians of the modern churches of today rise up in arms against you and call you a disturber of the peace, charging you with the grime of
breaking up their churches. And he absolutely went deliberately about breaking up churches.
Right.
First, he uses his familiarity with the organization to pull in Salvation Army volunteers, and then he would like preach to people outside of churches when they were in the mood to receive God, and once they start getting interested in his idea of this direct converse connection with God. He introduced a question, right, if your old church, or if the Salvation Army was really holy, wouldn't you already
be talking with God? Right, you've already accepted that this is the goal, and you're not, which means these must be false churches.
Right. Yeah, he makes a great point.
He makes a solid point.
Yeah, people got to go to church every sum They don't talk to God once, or God at least doesn't talk Now BacT.
No, but you take mushrooms. Boom, you're right there, baby.
Take mushrooms. Talk to the trees, dog bill, give you some life advice.
Yeah yeah, So perhaps it says more about how boring Corvalis is than anything. But this pitch worked on quite a few people. The Gazette, a local paper, wrote this in December of nineteen oh two. The Salvation Armies people were not entirely of God, or so Crefield, God's elect had told them. So all of God's annointed deserted the army. The big drum of the Salvation Army is no longer in evidence about eight o'clock each evening, and tambourines are
very cheap. The army has gone to its religious waterloo. It had met a body of divine healers, the Army of Holiness or something, and went over to the enemy. True religion of a respectable character, a religion that is reasonable, that commands at least the respect of the greatest thinkers and a better class of people, is the last thing on earth that should be treated in a contemptuous manner.
But a holy show that is a burlesque on religion is a bad thing for any community, as it has not taken seria and consequently lays the foundation for the youth of the land to scoff at religion of any form. There should be reason and moderation in all things. There may be efficacy in prayer. Who can say there is not, But it must be the prayer of a sane mind and a reasonable being. The prayer of a religious fanatic cannot avail much. Sho you suck? Just that is by way.
This story is not a story of like the good people of Corvallis and this evil cult leader. Everyone sucks in this story, right, Everyone is like, they're all pieces of shit. So is this reporter right being like our Victorian churches that teach you to hate your penis, you know, like that.
They don't even punch their balls in that church.
Yeah, yeah, they're not locking themselves inside a chastity belt. Listen to this not telling them that you can have fun?
Yeah no, this is like it reminds me of what was that wild wild country where you like learn about the Rajniche and then they do interviews with the townsfolk and.
I was like, I don't know if I like them either.
Yes, I would have poisoned them too.
Fuck.
Yeah, yeah, I would have did some ground beavers in their water supply as well.
Yeah, why not? Why not? I do that anyway just for fun.
Yeah, it's hilarious to those people don't get a life beavers in their water A beaver.
Yeah, scientists recommend at least you drink three beavers per year.
So right, yeah, that's a good science. Move on.
So one of Craffield's first converts was a young woman named Maud Hurt, which is kind of a kind of a cool name, like if you were doing like a fucking Warren Ellis comic about like a badass female preacher who was like killing I don't know, gangsters in nineteen oh four, probably want to Hurt. Yeah, cool name, good stuff. Yeah.
So one of her friends told a journalist later that from an early age, Maud's chief aim had been quote to become nearly as perfect as a Christian could be, And for a time she practiced this by like she was always the person if like you were sick, she'd go over to your house, she'd watch you, she'd take care of your kids, if you had like a harvest and stuff. She's just a very nice, giving person.
Now that's beginner level. Shit, yeah, let's get to the real Christian ship.
Well, when she's fourteen, she decides to do that. She joins the Salvation Army, where she meets Creffield, and very soon thereafter is like, I'm out. You know, the Salvation Army is too focused on money. I want to meet this guy who is is kind of yeah, yeah, I like it. I'm getting in there.
I'm picturing Willem Dafoe, but based on the way they're writing about him.
Is just like for another reason too, Yes, he would be the thing. He'd be the right guy to play this, or at least Willem Dafoe like circa Boondock Saints, we have a great guy to play this. So you do get similar stories from other converts, as this passage from the Holy Rulers makes clear. One of Creffield's most ardent followers was Samson Levins. Samson, thirty five, the second youngest of nine children, had been a private in the Spanish
American War and was now a logger. He had a deep interest in the Methodist Church, he said, but when it failed to meet his heart's desire, he joined Crefield's church. Some people think ours is a strange doctrine. But John Wesley was attacked by mobs when he founded the Methodist Church, Samson said, adding, of course the church now is not as he John Wesley left it, So he's like, I was already a part of this kind of fringe movement
that was founded by a nut. And you know the fact that Crefield's is weird is just makes him seem more legitimate to me. Right, Yeah, well, the Methodist Church has gotten too normal. Now it's time to get weird again.
Yeah.
Now we see this same pattern over and over again. A man or a woman of belief joins the church, but they don't feel spiritually sated. Right, Maud doesn't feel sated by the Salvation Army. This fucking dude Levins doesn't feel sated from the Methodist Church, and so they leave to find something more radical. And it's not just radical, but it's interesting. I cannot overemphasize how much the appeal of being in Crefield's cult is based on the fact that life is boring as shit outside of it.
Right, you have to reckon with the fact with how much this place fucking fucked.
Yes, that is a big sh So in mid nineteen o three, the city of Corvallis, officially forbade Criffield and the Holy Rollers from hosting meetings in Corvallis. Exiled, Edmund found an island a few miles outside of town. Oh yeah, man, we're doing it. We're doing it. We're getting doing island as.
We get on the water. That's what gets weird.
Yeah, that's how you That's when colts get good.
That's when colts really find themselves.
Folks.
There is an island in a place where to leave means to drown.
There is an island right in the middle of Portland, Oregon. You know, it's right in the Willamette. If we buy that island, folks, if we raise money together and buy me that island, I promise I'll make this guy look like a fucking chump. Like, first off, going to get a lot of you killed, Like let's just be oh yeah, but it'll be a good Netflix documentary into.
Well it's blood and blood out.
But also you know where you're gonna learn about how to do like knive throwing, You're gonna learn how to time not You're gonna learn, you know, how to wash feet.
Once they kill us. Taylor Lautner is gonna play me. It's gonna be great. Oh, it's gonna be so oh my god, thank you, thank you. You guys have a similar why why why because that, Sophie, Because.
You didn't know I know, no, you did not get that the Taylor Lottner hat I wore like two months ago. You didn't get the reference, and that hurt my face.
I have hat blindness, Sophie.
Thank you for I read it out.
I read it out loud to you, and then I.
May see your blindness too.
Yeah.
Yeah, well listeners, Robert nor any member of the schools on media team. Not a single one of them knew my where the hell have you been? Loka hat? Not a single one of them. And then I made them all watch the clip twice on a team.
Meeting, because is that Twilight?
That's what? Thank you, Matt, Thank you Matt.
Yeah, why yes, it is. Well, it's because it's Taylor Ltner is either that or Spy Kids.
Spike Kids is my.
He wasn't in Spy Kids, he wasn't Shark Boy.
Yeah. Oh gosh, same have.
Shark Boy slash Spy Kids blindness too, so you know, yeah, it happens. You can't make fun of me. For it anyway. In mid nineteen oh that's who's gonna play you. In mid nineteen oh three, the city of Corvallis officially forbade Creffield and the Holy Rollers from hosting meetings in town. So he decides we're going to move to this island, Robinson's Island, and he described to his followers, He's like, this is literally the Garden of Eden. So biblical scholars
out there if you're curious. The Garden of Eden, it turns out, was based right on the outskirts of Corvallis.
Yeah, you could take a ferry to it.
Yeah, you could take a ferry there. So again, and it's you know, if you've been to a lot of these islands in Western Oregon, they are very pretty places. Like it's not a big stretch to be like this is paradise. Especially this is kind of like midsummer or so late summer, which is like, it's incredible and it's easy to see how you would enjoy living out in one of these islands. And like midsummer in Western Oregon.
Yeah, there's none of those snitch journalists out there, and now you can roll around on the ground rate time.
No one's going to yell.
At you are popping out because he's letting people know. At this point, you know, what's what is godly is not wearing these fancy, new fangled clothes.
You know, that's the whole point of the Garden of Eden.
Dog absolutely eve ate that.
Apple like an idiot. Everyone just had their titties and it is pretty fun.
Yeah, they're doing a lot of rolling around. They're shrieking for hours or days at a time. They're not wearing much in the way of clothing. They don't have a lot of food, but there's a peach orchard nearby, so every day they just gorge themselves on stolen peaches and then they return to worshiping, which is not the worst life you can live in this period of time.
Everything.
Yes, you're describing what my sex cult fancy is. It's just like fucking gorging myself on peaches, roll around screaming too.
What's what's not to like?
I'm married and have a baby, but I could still.
Jam That all does sound fun, But if you're keeping track on your cult bingo card Craffield has at this point convinced his followers to sever themselves from their friends and their community and work them into a state of constant exhaustion and starvation. And if you if you know your cults, you know what comes next. It's time to start fucking them right like that is that is what
follows naturally, seeing nacturally the next step. So one fine day, Edmund Crefield gets up in front of his flock and he tells them that he and God have just gotten off the phone. And God, you just got off the horn with God. He's doing good.
Yeah, and he says, Mike, com is holy.
That is where this ends. He first says, God has told me I need to rename myself Joshua. Right, So now Edmond Craffield is Joshua Greffield. And it gets better because God has also told him that all of his female followers are now eligible to become brides of Christ. Right, and one of these brides of Christ is going to be chosen by God to give birth to the second Coming. Right, one of you is going to be the new Mary. But obviously God can't just pick one of you. We
got to test you out. And guess who's testing you out? I got to audition you for God.
Yeah, listen, God has not told me, he says, he needs to feel through my penis which holy vessel your pussy should receive the seed of the Lord or something.
Yeah, but that is basically almost exactly how this goes, Matt. Now, Joshua's male followers had a purpose too, of course, and their purpose was to provide him with the resources he needed to build his flock. Now, this is all he wants them doing, right. Early on, there were number of like couples who joined the Holy Rollers. Mad the Salvation
Army veteran I mentioned earlier. She joined with her fiance, a guy named James Berry, who is like a local businessman and I think kind of the wealthiest guy in town. And so early on he's cool with this in part because he needs Barry's money, right, and Barry gives a couple of loans to the cult, but it's never quite enough. So one day when they're out on the island, James Berry, who's kind of like in and out right, he's not fully committed, but he's giving him money because his fiance
is in it and he loves her. He arrives on the island to like check in on Maud and he finds the Holy Rollers even more excited than usual and He's like, why you guys also fucking amped up, and they're like, we're excited because God's going to build us a tabernacle. Right, He's going to start construction immediately. We're going to get our you know, we're living outside falls, getting closer. We really need a place. He's going to build it for us. And James is like, well, tabernacles
ain't cheap. Where you guys getting the money to build it? And they're like, oh, you you're giving us the money. And it turns out Joshua had started preaching.
Damn it, Joshua, I gotta get a second job. I gotta work for both newspapers.
Now, what's really funny about this to me? So Joshua is like, we need even more money from James Berry to build a temple. Right, we need to get like all of his money as opposed to these loans he's given us. And what's the best way to do this? Should I like reach out to him, talk to him privately, be like, hey man, we need more money than you've been given us. We got to build this temple. He's like no, no, no, that he could say.
No.
The best thing to do is I'm gonna tell everyone that he's already agreed and then trust that that will like shame him into doing it right. Yes, this does not go over well. James like confronts the prophet and he's like, dude, I've already loaned you guys money and it's due, right, the loan is past due. And Crifield is like, I came here to pick it up. No, no, no, easy mistake to make, but it's not due. I just
got off the phone with God. He said he canceled the debts, So actually, would you do me a favor in write a receipt letting me know that we don't have a debt anymore, because because God says it's canceled.
I mean, like, this is pure pimps. This is like, this is such pimps. It's crazy.
This guy is like, no, actually, you owe me money and I'm gonna fuck your fiance.
Yeah.
Oh that is exactly where this is headed. Of course, to talk about what comes next, I'm gonna quote again from Holy Rollers. God was now telling Craffield that James should quit work, sell his valuables, including his new automobile, and give the money to Craffield and devote himself to the church. The automobile, one of the first in Corvallis, was obviously something received from carnal hands. Either God or Creffield made a mistake. James said, telling God's anointed that
he wasn't going to give Creffield another cent. God was mad now, or so said Craffield, who said that God would smite James for this, so he was not done. Craffield's not done with Barry. At the smiting, he decides that if this rich guy is going to stay devoted to his carnal possessions, then he certainly doesn't deserve to be married to a woman as godly as Maud, who, by coincidence, Crefield wants to have sex with.
So he yeah, I mean he's known her since she was fourteen, I get.
It, he tells, He tells, yeah, he tells Maud, the Lord told me that you have to break off your engagement, and she does. She does this immediately. So after this, he kind of gets high off of this, the fact that like this, he says, hey, leave your fiance. This one does it. And so he starts preaching hardcore about personal purity.
Right.
He starts like discussing how he's got this this hatred of like the carnal He tells his followers flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body. But he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. Are you still in bondage to your carnal nature? Is the old man still living in your heart? Have you still this man fearing spirit, this something which hinders you from becoming a visitor at all times? Do not be discouraged.
God wants to use you to cleanse you, to purge you from your inbred sin, baptize you with fire, and enable you to come up to His commandments to live a holy life. Claim the promise, stand firm upon it, and the witness of the Spirit will come and will baptize you with his love and make you a holy man, Make you victorious over the world, the flesh and the devil.
Hey, are you trying to funk my Why? I feel like guys, he's trying to.
Fuck our why?
Okay, yeah, you can do it.
That's what that is. That is how a lot of the men in his cult react at this point. This is when a lot of them start to Of course.
They do, because every any man can see where this is exactly.
Yeah, any man is going, I know what you're doing, dude. You're trying to fuck my wife.
Now, that is happening. At the same time, what a lot of these women are doing is like, well, my husband's terrible at sex and Bet Crayfield fucks.
Yeah.
That is the other half of this story, right, So yeah, the fact that this works so well seems to kind of have surprised Joshua, and so he immediately decides to double down. He tells another couple in his flock, Sophie Hartley and Lee Campbell, Hey, God wants you to end
your engagement declaring, and he and he declares. He gives a speech where he's like, the relation of man to wife is unholy, and as support for this, he cites one Corinthians seven to one quote now concerning the things, whereof you wrote, unto me, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. And again he means the other men in his flock right.
Right right now, different standards for him, bro.
And the actual quote like context of that verse is basically from the point of the Bible where this is said, is like sexual immorality is any sex at all? But since it's inevitable men and women should get married and fulfill their marital duty right, which is not a great message either in my opinion, but it's not exactly how
Graffield is portraying it. But Crayfield's theological argument is that his follower is going to get closer to God and be holy your people by issuing all sex except for the sex that he has to have in order to find the bride of Christ.
Right.
Unfortunately, the new Joshua isn't able to get this commandment out fast enough to stop all of his followers from getting married. Molly Sandal and Frank Hurt wed the night before God gets on the heavenly phone line with Joshua and luckily for them God, you know, because they're really concerned when they get married. And then he has this revelation like, oh my God, are we out of step with what God wants? And Joshua's like, don't worry. God told me a way that you can still receive the
grace of love. Right, we just have to perform a I just have to perform a private ceremony with your wife to endower with the grace of love. So well, yeah, exactly what's happening about here. Yeah, it's not one hundred percent clear, but it's described and holy rollers is like they retire to his intent and engage in a long church service, right, and we know that afterwards he like kisses all of the women that he does this with, right, So you can put to in two together, right as
to like what this service is. There are a few couples and a few people who refuse this new change for the cult, and he denounces them all as cardinal and of the devil. He makes his followers cut off contact with them normal cult leadership.
Right.
So there's also you know, if you kind of fall out of favor of Joshua and do something he calls cardinal, you don't have to leave. There is a way that you can atone and that is by letting him whip you. Right now, he does this to men and women, although I think he does it more to men than women.
There's a local and contemporary news report that describes when one of Joshua's followers ed sharp like sneaks into the prophet's tint when he's like whipping another man, and he like sees the two of them, and they mistake him for the devil. Is what's written in the news article and beat the shit out.
Of him with the man also, and they both beat the.
Shit out of him, and then D's like, fuck this, I'm leaving the cult.
Sorry, bro, we thought you were the devil. You snuck up on us while common mistake. I was whipping him and he was enjoying us.
To all of us. So ed is fairly representative of a large number of male followers of Crefield, who increasingly leave the flock as time goes on and it grows clear that the primary goal of the prophet's teaching is to let him have sex with every woman in town. When some of his most stalwart male followers bulk, Crefield declares that all of the men in the camp save his three lieutenants are fake Christians and now have to be shunned by not like all non believers. Families are
split up as a result of this. And if it's hard to believe that people would do this, you have to remember everyone's spending every waking hour it's been months now praying that the entire time they're awake, often for twenty four hours in a row. The only food they have is peaches, and now the only approved dick is Craffield.
So like people are not in the most rational place, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, And this is the point in which the outside world, right, which includes the town of Corvallis, starts to get really concerned. The Salvation Army, concerned by declining donations and all these defections, sends one of their best soldiers out after the problem, Captain.
Oh yeah, this island's about to be invaded by the Salvation.
They send him, Captain Charles Brooks, who has been he's been a Christian soldier for eleven years. He's recently met General Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, to like talk this over, and so he.
Like, this guy's got a tactical bell that he's.
Gonna be like Mason of the Salvation Army, except as soon as he arrives something happens. Right within days of getting there. He like claims in a letter that he was as soon as he gets to the island, the
devil approaches him. Who's and the Devil's covered in snakes, and he like sends a bunch of hideous reptiles that like swarm and cover Brooks and quote as a means of placating his devilish majesty Brooks tears off his Salvation Army uniform and throws it into the fire and then announce that he's also a prophet and joins Creffield's flock.
Oh hell, yeah, this guy saw what was going on and he said like, oh, I'm down for this.
Entirely possible. He's just like, this seems like more fun than the Salvation Army.
Yes, he shows up at Titty Church and he's like, I prefer.
Another theory too. So western Northwest Oregon is where like one of the densest places in the world for like the natural growth of magic mushrooms. You get a ship, I have a bunch of friends. People pick them all over the place here, and it's been known for a while that we have hallucinogenic mushrooms. I wouldn't be surprised if they were like the Salvation Army guys here. Let's let's give him some tea, you know, Yeah, I wouldn't
be shocked if that were a factor in this. Oh yes, he also could have picked some accidentally and just made himself tripped. Not impossible. Who hated a lizard man? Thing makes me wonder, like.
Yeah, this hallucinated a lizard man and now I'm also talking to God that does say.
Sounds a little bit like mushrooms. Yeah, So you know, it's important to note that everything we've been talking about here so far has occurred over the course of the summer of nineteen oh three. And if you haven't been here, Oregon has really mild, pleasant summers famously, right, that's something
that we are infamous for, especially like western Oregon. But in the fall, it gets very wet, very fast, and also quite cold, right, and so living alone outside naked in an island not going to be a great call like come you know, September October, It's going to get markedly less pleasant, very quickly. So Maud this is able to thankfully invite her prophet and eighteen of his most devoted followers into her family home to like wade out
the winter. So at this point, Crefield is now back in corballis and he has taken a significant chunk of the young men in town into his colt. He's broken up a bunch of marriages, and he has moved what resembles a harem into a family house in town. This is not popular, right, This is going to piss off a number of people, and I'm going to quote now from offbeat Oregon history author Finn JD.
John.
Their simple clothing consisted of a plain cloth wrapper, which one source recounts was similar to a bathrobe. The outsiders felt was inadequate to protect female modesty, and in any case, looked entirely too easy to take off. By itself. The communal living arrangement would have been bad enough, but Creffield's followers combine it with a mania for secrecy that all
but invited other community members to fear the worst. Members vanished from their families lives into a locked house with barred windows, supervised only by the cult leader and his cronies. So you know, there's a lot of things small town Oregonians are willing to overlook in neighbors, but not stealing their sisters and wives, and to.
Be entire yeah, and making them dress all slowly, to.
Be entirely fair to Craffield. That's how these guys viewed it. The men in court Vallas, it's not clear to me that he's stealing anybody. Right. Most times when we talk about a sex cult, they're pretty profoundly abusive. But the culture is also very abusive to women in this period, and it's it seems like, based on the information we have, the women who join this cult much prefer it to their lives outside of the cult.
And yeah, I gotta say from my you know, time visiting or like like Portland, not much as.
Not much as yeah, you know, yeah.
The women there, they still like to be free. You know, I've had brunch at multiple.
Strip clubs there and and you know, I do think a lot of like the portrayal of like this cult is like him being this, he stole all these women, he's ruining the women in town is based on the fact that this is a deeply misogynistic society, and like, I think a lot of these women are making, potentially, I think it would be reasonable, to say, a perfectly rational decision to live a much more pleasant life with this guy than with their shitty.
The guy talks good, he's hot, he's got a big hog, and he's like, yeah, do whatever you want.
I mean, he's like, he's like he's manipulating them.
He's absolutely abusive. It's just it's not clear to me that he is more abusive than the men in town.
Right right, Yeah, it's it's the it's an abnormal type of abusive.
But maybe it's just different, maybe not even lesser, But like I think it's not. It's not clear to me that these women are not making the most kind of informed decision they can be making, that this is better than their lives in town. Which doesn't mean he's not also abusive. It's just a bad time, right. So yeah, we're gonna talk about all of that and much more in part two. But before we get into part two, Matt leeb, you exist on the internet in a variety of places.
I am on the Internet. If you like me and you like watching.
Television shows like The Sopranos or The Wire, you can listen to pod your self a Gun, which is a Sopranos and the Wire rewatch podcast, and then once the Wires over, we'll watch another show. So check that out wherever you get your podcasts. And you know, even if you don't watch it or listen to the show, give us five stars in a review. Say hey, Matt Lee, that Matt Leave sure is great. I'm gonna listen to it at some point, but you.
Don't even have but you should, Yeah, but you should absolutely listen to it, you know, move on to an island with Matt Leeb you know, do it recently.
Dude, move to an island, bring your wife whatever.
Yeah, we'll have yeah. And uh, if you are in the donating mood, the Portland Children's Museum could use your help to provide kids all throughout the Portland metropolitan area with educational resources and uh yeah, all sorts of fun stuff. So please text bastards to five oh one to five five if you're in the mood to donate, that's bastards to fine.
And if you I don't know when this episode's going to come out, so I don't know if the tickets.
Oh, next week, no, no, no, no, no no. The next week is Thanksgiving, so we're not We're not.
Fuck next week. The hell with next week?
Next week fire the last week of the last week of November.
Yeah, okay, well the tickets won't necessarily be on sale, but I might as well just say March seventeenth, Sunday Punchline and Sacramento, myself and my wife Quarantine will.
Be I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that at all.
No, I always do it.
We are going to be headlining the Punchline in Sacramento. That Sacramento, California, seven pm, Sunday.
March seventeenth.
If you can't get your tickets, then you know, just keep that date in mind and eventually the tickets will go on.
Say yeah, so go to Hell. I Love you.
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.