You are now listening to Cryptid Cocktail Party. Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Cryptic Cocktail Party, a show where we have a few drinks, share a few laughs, take a dive into the unknown. I'm your host, Dave, joining you once again, and joined as always with me, if I fucked that up. But anyways, hey Sarge, what's up, man? What's going on? No longer Brother Sarge. We're not going to be talking about Jesus
on this episode. We're going to be talking about Jesus on this episode, so buckle up and grab your communion wafers. It's going to be a hoot. We're not going to be talking about Jesus, but fuck, dude, I fucked that intro. You know, I was gone last, I'm rusty. You're rusty. I think that's what it is. And that's okay. Yeah. You're a rusty trombone, but we can keep going. Just want to say, before we start, I want to say thank you to Sarge and Maynard and Laura for holding
it down while I was gone. I was, I was, I was looking at dinosaurs. You weren't looking at dinosaurs. You were in a pilgrimage to disprove Genesis and the Bible. Yeah, I got real autistic with it, too. I was so fucking hyped when I went there. It was bananas. You can't help it. Everybody has their thing. My son has trains. He's very into trains. I have Lego. And if this camera were to pan around the room. you would see that I've wasted much of my life, but I enjoy it.
And that's the important thing. We went to, it was Edelman's Fossil Park and Museum. Oh, cool. It's in New Jersey, and it's behind Home Depot, which is fucking wild. So you're mostly just finding the fossils of mob victims. No, it's like, apparently where we were, they discovered a fucking new species of dinosaur, and there's a quarry you can go in and... Not a new species. It was new at the time that they discovered it. Right, right, right. I know what you mean. Yeah.
There's like a core you can go in and you can like dig for fossils. Unfortunately, we didn't realize that when we went, because we went opening day, but apparently that doesn't start until May. It's like May through October. You can actually go in. But luckily we got a membership. So we're, we can go whenever we want. Yeah. Um, but it was really cool. I learned a lot about, uh, apparently the Moses, there's like Moses or that they found in there. Like the big, do you get to keep the
fossils that you find? Do you have to like turn them in at the end? I think you, I think you can, as long as it's not like groundbreaking, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, which is fine. Yeah. If you, it's like the Indiana Jones, like if you find like a little something you can, but if it belongs in a museum, they're probably going to be like, you can't. I'm like, all right, look, if this is groundbreaking, I just want
you to name it after me. yeah dude it was so they have like obviously they have like some like full skeletons and stuff like that they got bones all throughout but it's mostly just like a museum as in like they do like um it's like statues not statues i don't know what you call them paleontology art where it's like just dinosaurs and shit uh exhibits yeah it's an exhibit of a dinosaur and the first thing you see when you walk into like the exhibit Is like a big
sauropod, whatever they're called, brontosaurus. Oh, very cool. And it's like there's like a T -Rex or something on the ground. Like, oh, cool. And then you look closer. The fucking sauropod is fucking crushing the T -Rex's neck with its foot. That's even better. That's so awesome. What is happening here? And then there was. I got to see T -Rex poop, fossilized T -Rex poop. That was pretty cool. Nice. Was there corn in it? No, but I found out about meat buoys. I think
I sent you that. Yes. Basically, a dinosaur dies on the beach. It gets washed out into the ocean where it just sits there, bloats, and then it sinks to the bottom of the ocean. And they showed that they showed like a decomposing T -Rex that's supposed to be like underwater with a bunch of like sharks eating it. And then at the base of it, there was like it's it's severed leg was on the ground with a bunch of crabs all over it. It was a wild exhibit, dude. It was pretty
cool. This is the eight year old me's dream visit. Like there's no better museum for the eight year old version of me or honestly, frankly, the slightly older decrepit version of me that I currently inhabit. Oh, yeah. Almost 40 year old Dave was like a child there. It was. I would have been in the gift shop immediately. The gift shop, not going to lie, this is the best part of the museum. This one sucked, dude. There was nothing good there. I did get a book, though. Give it
time. Give it time. Maybe that gift shop will get better when you go back in May to dig up more fossils. I learned that hiccups are an evolutionary thing from when we had gills and lungs, and that they would close off their lungs so they could breathe underwater when they went, you know what I mean? Yeah. And it's still in us, and it just randomly triggers. So it's from when we used to have gills, like when we came out of the... Holy shit! I hated that fact. I was not a fan
of that. I don't know how to feel about that. Yeah, it made me feel a lot of things all at once. It was not great. Yeah, I don't like that. Yeah, no. If anyone's ever in Jersey, definitely go check out Edelman's Fossil Park. It's really
cool. it's nice not a sponsor but could be yeah it's behind the home depot it's right off the jersey turnpike too like it's where it is i was like there's no way i thought like my gps was fucking with me i was like there's no way i'm going past this this shopping plaza with a home depot and a target and then as soon as you're done you just go into home depot pick up a couple of hinges and some one by eights you made a day of it dude I definitely made a day of it. It
was fucking really cool. I was pissed though. Cause the next day I have, cause I follow him on Instagram. The next day they had the Jurassic park Jeeps there. And I was like, fuck dude, you couldn't have done that opening day. That's insane. Yeah. That's insane. It was awful. Anyways, how you doing Sarge? Sorry to just go off on that. No, no, that's okay. I'm good. I'm, I'm a, I'm a busy beaver at work. My job is crazy.
I now have a work cell phone. Oh shit. Yeah, I've really moved up, but only because people keep getting promoted and then there's no one else to do their job. So I'm like doing that too. Yeah, moving up because everyone else is moving up and I'm staying right where I am. Right here. Well, maybe, you know, maybe it's just a matter of time, you know? Yeah, I know it's a matter of time. Like my boss has made that very clear, but time is moving and I'm not. Time
is money. Money is pizza. I can't complain too much. I work from home most of the week, so I go to the office once a week. I really can't complain. Yeah, you're fine. Sarge, this episode got away from me. Just like last episode got away from me. I get it. Do you want to just go into it? I feel like we've caught up enough. Yeah, let's just dip our toes in it. All right.
So for this week's episode, I figured we would try something a little different and cover something that I've wanted to cover for a long time now. But I never really found the right like stepping stone to add it into our rotation of cryptids, aliens and conspiracies. But I think I may have found the perfect story to bring the topic into our fold of like weird shit that we would normally discuss. Again, it got away from me and I might have bitten off more than I can chew. But anyways,
today we are going to be covering a 1950s. doomsday cult led by a 54 year old housewife called the seekers. Are you? Yes. I love the seekers. I mean, I don't love them cause they're horrible and problematic, but I love the story. So the seekers were a 1950s UFO doomsday cult. Um, and so you, so you are familiar with the seekers. Very loosely familiar. I couldn't give you like a ton of facts, but I'm, uh, I was very fascinated when I read about them. Okay. Now, There's a
lot. It's fucking weird. But before we can really dive into the Seekers, their beliefs, the prophecy that they had, and their massive influence, not only on the culture at large, but also in psychology, which we'll talk about that when we get to it. I think we need to talk a little bit about the UFO craze of the 1950s to really understand how they went from what they were to what they became eventually. Technically, the UFO phenomenon really kicked off in 1947 with the Roswell crash. We're
all familiar with that. I'm not going to go into detail with it. But in that same year, a pilot named Kenneth Arnold claimed that he saw nine shiny objects flying near Mount Rainier. He described them to a reporter as moving like, quote unquote, a saucer skipping across water. And the journalist he was telling that to completely misunderstood what he was trying to say and quoted him as saying that they were that they were saucers. And that's where the term flying saucers came from, which
I thought was a little cool fact. I didn't know that. And then Uncle Sam got in on the whole UFO thing with the Air Force launching Project Sign in 1948, which later became Project Grudge, which then became Project Blue Book in 1952. So it's safe to say that by the 1950s, by the time that came around, UFOs and aliens were very much part of the mainstream, very zeitgeist, I guess. I don't really know what that word means, but I think I used it right there. No, I think
you did. I'm pretty confident. Zeitgeist, it's a word. Yeah. German. And I think it means stuff. So I think you got it. All right. Zeitgeist kind of sounds. kind of racist i feel like i feel like it doesn't it sounds like a it sounds like a slur for jewish thought or something like that well given its proximity to poltergeist i i feel like it was more like you know like a derogatory term term for like an ethnic ghost a zionist ghost zeitgeist All right. That's probably problematic
to say, but you know what? I'm keeping it in, keeping it in Sarge. But yeah, but the public was eating this shit up around this time. So sightings spiked across the country and the world. Like people were seeing saucers, triangles, orbs, cigars, fucking parallelograms, whatever, whatever shape UFO there is, they were seeing it left and right. And the media ran wild with it. Newspapers ran stories about mystery discs and Hollywood
at the time was pumping out movies like. The Day the Earth Stood Still, Earth vs. the Flying Saucer, and Invasion of the Saucerman, which is an awesome Lillington song. If you don't listen to them, you really should. Actually, no, you shouldn't. Their singer said Nightmare. Okay. So take all that, and then you underline all of that with the fear of communism, nuclear devastation, the uprising of the tinfoil hat conspiracy community, and that basically brings us to where our stories
begin. So are you ready to learn about the secrets? And also present day, actually. It kind of is. it's wild how time cyclical man just comes right back time is a flat circle so like most cults it didn't start out that way obviously they never do in 1953 darls charles darls dr charles a laugh head i think that's how you pronounce his name i did not look at this how l -a -u -g -h -e -a -d How would you pronounce it? I mean, I wouldn't. I never heard anyone say it out loud. I'd be
like, Charles, Dr. Charles. Yeah. Not saying that name. So anyways, Dr. Chuck and his wife, Lillian, helped to organize a small group of like -minded UFO believers that would meet in a non -denominational church in East Lansing, Michigan. There, the group would share and discuss contactee messages, theories, abduction stories.
It was basically like a UFO. study group slash book club like they would just read a bunch of shit and it wasn't just about like ufos it was about like the what's the word i'm looking for meta meta the metaphysical that's the one like shit like that behind yeah yeah um now around late spring early summer of 1954 dr chuck read a piece in a ufo newsletter about a woman by the name of dorothy martin Dorothy was a 54 year old housewife in Oak Park, Illinois, who was
gaining some underground attention for her claims that through the act of automatic writing, which if you don't know what that is, yeah, it basically means like you kind of just turn off your brain for a minute and another entity will write for you. We call that chat GPT. Through the act of automatic writing, she was receiving messages from an advanced and benevolent race of extraterrestrials that she referred to as the Guardians. And they hailed from a distant planet called Clarion.
You good so far? I mean, I'm as good as I'm going to get on this. Pretty much. Now, intrigued by this claim, Dr. Chuck reached out to Dorothy. And it's unclear how or exactly when they like actually like linked up. It was either through letters or like a UFO event. I don't know. But the first face to face encounter with Dorothy likely happened later, like that year when they made the drive from Michigan to Illinois and
they immediately hit it off. They kept in contact, visited regularly, and eventually what followed was a merging of circles like. So his group. Out in Michigan, linked up with her and her weird... They was like peas and carrots. Yeah, so basically this loose network of believers converged into a single group that they dubbed the Brotherhood of the Seven Rays, but they were more commonly referred to as the Seekers. They don't really say... It's like Truth Seekers, I assume, is
what that name came from. Or it could have been
the Who song of the same name. they call me the seeker i wasn't i didn't leave you hanging there i was taking a sip of beer no you were taking a sip no i there was you sounded so upset that you brought that up no you sit in your shame sarge all right they're fine sorry it could be i mean honestly dude is i wait for the 50s where's the who wasn't around oh the who were the 60s so no yeah i don't know now at first like a good cult should they kept a low profile but not too
long after the groups merged into one dorothy's messages from the guardians started to escalate so through her automatic writing she got a call from an entity that i guess like this is an entity that she was like in frequent communication with i guess and uh that that entity's name was sananda got it Sananda. Sananda, who was essentially alien Jesus, or at least that's how Dorothy kind
of equated them. I don't know. Anyway, so alien Jesus warned her that on December 21st, 1954, the United States would be ravaged by a great cataclysm. The prophecy described a massive earthquake and a colossal tidal wave that would annihilate most of North America and all life in the infected area, starting in the Midwest, which I don't know how. Yeah, how do you, the tidal wave would have to be very big. Well, the Great Lakes are huge, man. Maybe. Maybe. I don't know. Maybe.
But anyway, so following that initial destruction, further worldwide calamities would occur all the way into 1955. So you got earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and eventually just a mass extinction of everything on Earth bringing about the end times. Well, that's sad. Well, don't be sad for too long because luckily the Guardians didn't just bring a message of doom. They also offered salvation. They told Dorothy that there was a rescue plan, but only for those who truly
believed. Gotcha. They told her that in the final hours before the disaster, flying saucers would descend to safely evacuate the faithful and transport them back to their planet of Clarion. Basically, it's an alien rapture. Gotcha. It's that alien Jesus, all that stuff. That's a little picky. Don't you think? What do you mean? You know, isn't that true? Like, well, you got to believe in us or we're going to, you can go fuck yourself. Like that's petty. Is that not how religion works
though? Has that, that's the, isn't that the whole point of the rapture? Yeah. It's all petty. It's bullshit. Well, yeah. If we know anything about God, he's, he's pretty petty. Yeah. He's kind of a douche. Yeah. No. Also, I just realized this and I don't know. It's not mentioned, but wasn't December 21st also the 2012? I think so. Yeah. Wasn't that? I think so. Yeah, it was the winter solstice. But isn't 2012 like the whole Mayan calendar thing? Yeah, it was supposed to
happen, I think, on the winter solstice. That was the plan. Yeah. So is that just like a thing? Like, is that just like a doomsday thing? I'm asking you, like, I don't know. I think it added legitimacy if you were just like, oh, it's March 12th. Like the minds didn't have March, but everybody had a solstice. True. But also I feel like a random day to me would probably be better than like a solstice. Yeah. Yeah. People like people look forward to the solstice. Solstices. Yeah.
I want a cataclysm when I least expect. Surprise me. Surprise me. Is it really a cataclysm if you're expecting it, though? Yeah, if you're waiting for it, then it's really just, you know. Bad news. All right. Now, by December, which is only a few months, if that, from when the warning was given, like this is all happening within the same year, within months of them joining up like. Which is kind of wild. But anyways, by December, the group was fully committed at
this point. Followers quit their jobs, dropped out of schools. They gave away belongings. They distanced themselves from friends and family. And they started gathering daily at Dorothy's house awaiting new messages from Clarion. And after like a little back and forth, they finally got it. The Seekers received word that on December 17th, a flying saucer would land in Dorothy's backyard at 4 p .m. sharp to start evacuations.
You all right? I was just thinking, like, this is just an alternate version of Wizard of Oz. How so? Oh, Dorothy. God. All right. It's not a UFO. It's a tornado, you asshole. I mean. If this wasn't the Midwest, I could, yeah. This is like Kansas, Nebraska. Everyone hurry up. The tornado's coming to take us away. June, get over here. She's immediately impaled by a fence post. A weather vane just fucking smashes through.
So December 17th, flying saucers. They're going to land in Dorothy's backyard in the middle of suburban Chicago, which is hilarious to me. But there's one catch. The followers couldn't be wearing any metal. So watches, jewelry, belt buckles, zippers, bras all had to be removed because they could interfere with the energy fields of the rescue ships. So on the 17th, everyone assembled metal free faces to the sky and they waited. And they waited, and they waited some
more. And then by 5 .30, everyone realized it just wasn't happening. So dejected and bummed out, they eventually just went back inside the house. Then, just as all hope was lost, another message came through. Sarge, Sarge, Sarge. It was all a test. All right. This was just a drill to make sure that they would be ready when the real evacuation would happen. Classic. Yeah. And it was totally still happening. In fact, it's going to happen in a few hours, pretty much.
All right. 1 .30 a .m. of the 18th. Be outside. Be ready. Like you're waiting for an Uber. So on the morning of the 18th, the Seekers once again gathered in the yard, metal free, and they waited. And they waited. And they waited some more. And then by 3 .30 a .m., nothing. But, hey, Sarge, Sarge, Sarge. Hey, chin up. I'm losing faith here. Chin up, bud. All right. The Guardians again sent another message that this time they repeatedly emphasized that they never air or
arrive late. They're basically Gandalf. They arrive precisely when they need to. So the implication of this being that the schedule may be beyond human understanding, but the plan was still on track and the believers must stay vigilant. Now, by December 20th, the eve of the apocalypse, the group was still fully committed, but a little emotionally exhausted from all this. I've been there. I've been there. I've waited for flights before. I get it. Yeah. The final instructions.
were that a visitor from outer space would come at midnight and escort them to the awaiting craft before the cataclysm struck. So once again, they cleansed themselves of metal and they waited and they waited and they waited some more. And at 12 .05 on December 21st, the living room clock showed that the magical hour had passed and there was no visitor. But hey, Sarge. Sarge. Yeah. Wait, hold on. Hold on. Someone noticed that another clock in the house showed the time as
being 1155. So clinging to hope, the group agreed that it wasn't truly midnight. And so they waited. Gotcha. And they waited. They waited some more. And then the second clock struck midnight. All right, this is bullshit. And nothing. Now, when it became. Pretty much undeniable that no saucer was coming from for like for them at all. The group was pretty much devastated in the early morning hours of December 21st. The Seekers sat together in stunned, agonized silence by 4 a
.m. with Don and the foretold fucking disaster fast approaching. Some members were pretty much they were they lost it. There's some were weeping. Some were like throwing like they were. not okay yeah all their sacrifice throwing a fit yeah and so pretty much all their sacrifices and certainties teetered on the brink of collapse then at around
4 45 a .m martin she perked up she had received another divine message from the guardians now according to dorothy the guardians delivered astonishing news this cataclysm this this promised apocalypse had been called off. The earth was spared at the 11th hour by the innervation of a higher power. And the reason for this, Sarge, can you guess what it is? I'm just relieved that it's not happening anymore. But what happened?
Well, it's because the faith and devotion of this little group gathered in Dorothy's home had convinced God to postpone the apocalypse. Oh, so it wasn't about the apocalypse. It was about the friends you made along the way. Yeah, so pretty much in other words, their vigil of... like belief had averted this whole disaster. It's a Christmas miracle. This sounds like an Alex Jones thing. It really does. Yeah. It's
always on the verge of something. And then, you know, well, we, we stopped it because we believed in it so much. Yeah. Our people got involved and they took care of it. Yeah. So, yeah. So according to the message, the group's faith has spread enough spiritual light to convince higher powers to call off the destruction. The apocalypse
has been canceled. It was a stunning twist, a complete reversal of expectations, but it was also like an instant relief valve for all the emotional pressure that had been building for months. Like, imagine, like, you're planning this. You're convinced that, first of all, you're home. Everyone you know, everyone you ever loved is going to die. And then at the last... And you were going to have to evacuate and leave them behind on a fucking... Right. You know?
But at the last minute... It doesn't matter anymore. Like that's that had the weight that has to be lifted off your shoulders in that moment must feel so fucking good. But then like maybe 20 minutes later, you're like, oh shit, I don't have a TV anymore. That's a car. I'm wearing this stupid rope belt because they told us we couldn't have metal. Yeah, I don't. He would think that a. an advanced race could figure out the whole metal interferes. Are the ships not
made? I don't know. None of this works. The ships are made of plexiglass. Apparently one thing I forgot to mention is that so all these meetings were held in secret, of course, quote unquote, but I mean, eventually it gets out. It always does. So like around, I think it was like mid October, mid December. Like they had like, There was like reporters and stuff like in a group of skeptics. Every night would just come like hang outside the house in hopes of seeing something
happen. So you would think that like when nothing happened, that the group would just like slink away in shame, try and like hide from the media and all that stuff. I mean, they were celebrating internally, but externally you'd think they would try and like, no, dude, little embarrassing. No, they kind of made a weird pivot and it was kind of in the form of like. evangelism, if that makes sense. Join our cult. Yeah, so they pretty much doubled down. Join now and get a free rope
belt. Yeah, so within hours they began calling newspapers, reporters, everything. They were telling the world that their beliefs had saved humanity and that what had seemed like a failed prophecy became a triumph. They weren't wrong. They were just the saviors of humanity, which is fucking crazy. Can we just look at the glaring correlation between this kind of behavior and the people who follow the current government? Yeah. No, see, what happened? No, see, no. We
fucked up horribly. I mean, we fixed everything.
yeah so yeah so on the afternoon of december 21st literally hours after the failed prophecy dorothy martin and her followers began like i said they were they were contacting media outlets inviting people to hear their story um again before this was all they were like pretty much shunned publicly because like i said the the newspapers had already known that they existed and they weren't really yeah taken lightly to it america loves a good people to ridicule Pretty
much, yeah. And in the 1950s, this is like... This is out there. Yeah. But now they actively, like, the Seekers courted this. Like, they wanted the world to know that a catastrophe had been averted and why it had been averted. So over the next couple of days, the Seekers granted interviews to newspapers and anyone that would listen, proclaiming that divine -slash -alien intervention had spared Earth due to the group's
unwavering faith. But yeah, so buoyed by this narrative, they also held a firm that their alien benefactors might still arrive eventually. Of course. So Martin announced another gathering for Christmas Eve 1954. This time, not a private one, but a public demonstration of their continued readiness for contact. And she even distributed a press release about it, which is a crazy thing to do because I feel like that's how you get
riots started. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. Or at least people like me to stand on your front lawn and
just point and be like. where's your god he didn't show up yeah it can't be good uh so yeah so on december 24th 1954 the remaining seekers again uh i say remaining there's just a small handful there wasn't a lot to begin with but after the first failed like i would have been gone after the first after the first ship didn't didn't arrive yeah like all right guys i gotta go buy back my i think i don't remember i think at most i think it was just like a couple dozen people
like it wasn't a lot to begin with but i feel like now we're just it's That was like seven guys. This is a bare bones cult. It's not, it's not Jonestown by any stretch of the imagination. Yeah. So they, they assembled outside, uh, Dorothy's house in the evening. Um, just ruining everyone's fucking Christmas tearing up the lawn. Yeah. They, they sang Christmas carols on the sidewalk. Um, I guess they wanted to. Bring aliens Christmas joy. Oh, I forgot. It's alien Jesus. Maybe alien
Jesus and regular Jesus. Their birthday is the same day. I don't know. Maybe they're bros. It could be. Sananda sounds like a girl. Yeah. Name. So maybe, maybe it's Jesus's sister. Maybe. Space sister. Spister. The spectacle drew a large crowd. 200 people showed up. That's a lot of people for a suburban neighborhood. The police were there. But I mean, again, after a while, no one showed up. So everyone's just like, whatever. Just a waste. A waste of resources. Yeah. So
following this fiasco, failed prophecy. the the seekers disbanded within days many members especially like the fringe groups like because there was like a group of like firm believers and there was like people on the outside who were kind of like oh this is kind of cool they just went back to like their their normal lives yeah like you do even some committed believers lost face after the christmas eve no show only like a core few um pretty much Martin and a couple of lawyers
clung to the notion that their faith had saved the world and the guardians might still come in the future. Now, importantly, the group's high profile activities on December 24th had angered the local community and attracted negative attention from authorities. The caroling gathering became unruly at one point due to the large number of gawkers. Police were needed to. So she really she literally did start a riot that night. Amazing.
Amazing. Oak Park's police chief, Thomas Kieran, considered the entire episode a public disturbance. And in the immediate aftermath, he weighed charging Dorothy Martin with inciting a riot and contributing to the delinquency of minors because neighborhood children had been exposed to her fantastical predictions and lost sleep from fright. Amazing. And on December 26th, warrants were reportedly prepared for the arrest of Martin and Dr. Chuck.
on those two charges uh but they did avoid legal action uh dorothy's husband who had not been involved in the cult i don't know how he just let this shit slide uh he intervened and he agreed to have dorothy undergo psychiatric evaluation and care outside of illinois persuading authorities to drop the charges. So essentially, Dorothy was sent out of state, temporarily institutionalized instead of being prosecuted. Dr. Charles faced
his own reckoning. He lost his university job after the affair, and in early 1955, he was briefly taken for psychiatric examination as well. Amazing. It's just so good. But they found out that he was not legally insane, just intensely mistaken in his beliefs. This case is wild. All right. So you want to dive into what really happened after this whole thing? Yes. All right. So in the fall before this whole UFO is going to come and kill everyone type thing, three researchers
had. secretly embedded themselves within the group in the fall of that year. Oh, God, yes. Leon Festinger, Henry Riken, and Stanley Schachter. And in 1956, the three researchers published this book called When Prophecies Fail, which was a groundbreaking book that chronicled the entire saga of the Seekers. Now, their goal wasn't just to, like, document a strange UFO cult. It was to understand how people deal with being
wrong when they've gone all in on belief. And their key takeaway was that when people make major sacrifices for a belief, like giving up jobs, friends, social standings, they become deeply invested. And when the belief fails, instead of abandoning it like they should. Like a normal person. Yeah, they're more likely to create new justifications that explain the failure without letting go of the core idea. And this became the foundation of Festinger's theory of cognitive
dissonance. This group invented the theory of cognitive dissonance, which is the psychological discomfort we feel when we hold two conflicting thoughts or when reality contradicts what we believe. So to ease that discomfort, we either change our beliefs or bend reality around them. So the seekers bent realities. Their faith had saved the world. Their narrative allowed them to stay committed without having to admit that
they were wrong. The seekers are the reason that the cognitive dissonance theory even exists. This makes me so happy. That's wild, right? That's fucking insane. Imagine failing so badly that your entire belief system becomes the example of failing badly. Dude, it's fucking wild. Incredible. Yeah. But I feel like the Seekers are like, this is not a story that a lot of people know. And it was pretty fucking wild. There's a lot that
I left out, obviously. Now, the Seekers might have faded into obscurity, but when prophecy fails ensured their place in history, like that book and the theory of cognitive dissonance, like that's really going to make sure they stay around. Yeah. So their story became one of the most important real world examples of belief.
perseverance and cognitive dissonance. And we see echoes of it today in politics, conspiracy theories, social movements, even in like our personal relationships, people defend what they've invested in. Yeah. Even when reality says otherwise, the more they've given up for a belief, the harder it is for them to let go of that belief. And so while the aliens never came and the world
didn't end, the seekers left something. behind far more enduring which is insight into how the human mind works when confronted with failure belief and the desperate need to make sense of it all and so with that sarge that is the story of the seekers kind of got fucked up in the middle because i ran out of time that's okay that's okay These were different Seekers. These aren't the Seekers I thought they were. What Seekers were you thinking of? Harry Potter, the ones
that get the snitch, right? No, there was like an org in the 60s and 70s and 80s. They were somehow loosely connected to the CIA. There's like a whole thing. It sounds like a CIA thing. Yeah, they're fucking weird. Maybe this was a PSYOP. Who the fuck knows, dude? Yeah. What was interesting is that they were also a cult. That's why I got brought in. Oh, really? I feel like the Seekers, that's too good a name to not be a cult. There's also a 1950s doo -wop group called
the Seekers or something like that. The Seekers were everywhere. And a song by The Who. And a song by The Who. Hell yeah, dude. What do you think? Were you expecting them to be the reasoning behind cognitive dissonance? No. I love stories like this. It absolutely makes my day. Yeah, it was crazy. I learned about the origin of cognitive dissonance and I learned where hiccups come from. So this has been a very productive afternoon.
If you learned if there's two takeaways from this episode is where hiccups originated and where cognitive dissonance. But yeah, but so embarrassing. So very embarrassing. Cognitive dissonance explains so much of this. This story
is so much. about now that it's yep bananas like i can't just overwhelming evidence of failure yet still people like no everything's working great this is awesome all right uh but yeah so that's that's uh i wanted to introduce cults into the into the show somehow i fucked up but i think i think this is fine that's right we've got so many more cults to cut our teeth on there's so many weird cults i almost did like lord royale in the rail that's a good one I tried to watch
a documentary about it. It was all in French. I said, fuck that. I do not have the mind power for that. I mean, don't get me wrong. I watch a lot of stuff for the subtitles anyways, but I was just like, I can't. You have to be in the mood. You have to be in the mood for a subtitle situation. Yeah. I mean, don't get me wrong. I watch shows in English with subtitles on, but it's mostly because I can't hear over myself chewing on chips. Same. Same. Yeah. The exact
same problem. Yeah. So there's that. But yeah, I mean, I thought it was fun. It's a good. dip our toes into it. If you know, let us know what you guys think. If you think we should do more cult stuff. I mean, it's fun. I think, um, I have fun with it. Yeah. I follow someone who's like a, like a religious therapist, like a, you get out of religion, religious trauma. Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, well, maybe one day we can get like one of those people on to like,
talk about. cult thought cult belief because i don't think they'll be willing to laugh at it as much as we are i think they're fine i think it'll be good i think it'll be fun to find um but let us know what you think if you want to hear more about weird cults that are kind of extraterrestrially uh there's not really any cryptic cults there's some like new age stuff that like they believe bigfoot is like a thing but like i don't have whatever interdimensional
being yeah uh all right so Yeah, that's the episode. Thank you so much for listening. Sarge, you got anything you want to plug before we sign off? Just a coloring book, sargesupernormal .com, $9 .99. It'll make you feel a little bit better about how terrible America is right now. Will it, though? We're going to have to eat it. We're going to have to start eating your coloring book. Yeah, we're going to have to start making fires with it because the heating costs will be too
expensive next winter. Exactly, exactly. All right, so yeah, sargesupernormal .com, grab his coloring book. You can follow us on Instagram, Crypto Cocktail, TikTok, Crypto Cocktail Party. You can follow Sarge. Just Google Sarge the Destroyer. You'll find him. I'll show up eventually. All that stuff is also in the link in our Instagram. Leave us a rating and review, please. It definitely helps the show. I've got a really interesting one a few weeks ago. Which was the nexus of Christian
Cocktail Party. I think next week, uh, next week we got, uh, a listener story that we can, that we're going to tell. I'll, I'll, I'll delve. If anyone does a false on Instagram, I'll let you know about the whole Christian cocktail party thing next week. Um, I think that's it. Uh, Patreon, uh, you can follow, you can subscribe there, support the show. Um, I think that's it. I don't really got anything to plug really. I think that's,
yeah. Yeah. I think that's it. That's good. Oh, yeah, and sorry for all of you that got fooled by the eyes of the Mothman. I got so many messages about that. Dude, I made it sound too real. Arrogance it. We made a case for it. Come on, arrogance it. Yeah. Don't make a case for us. I made it sound too real. People got real bummed out about it. Even my brother was like, fuck you, I'm following
you now. I'm so disappointed. All right, Sarge, with that out of the way, as usual, would you like to say goodbye and love you to the audience? Goodbye. And I love you.