Authorities have reportedly recovered more than 20 bodies as they continue to investigate an alleged starvation cult. Kenyan police began exhuming the remains on Friday from a site in Shakahola forest in Kilifi county, to the east of the country.

A video producer claims he was fired after he complained that an obscure group based in the Sierra foothills dominated a business unit at Google.

Hough was 15 when her family left the Children of God cult. Afterward, she struggled to face the trauma of her past. Her new collection of personal essays is Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing.

A trove of essays in the archives of the Hoover Institution provide some insight as to what attracted everyday women to extremist ideology.

Eighteen years on from his time inside the Twelve Tribes religious sect, Matthew Klein is still scarred. "They not only control your medical care, they control your food, when you get to see your family, they try to control when you make love to your wife, they try and control your children," he told A Current Affair.

Ben Shenton was raised in a cult that thought the world would soon end. It didn't - but one day his world abruptly changed.

The Order is a secret society that failed to stay very secret after a series of horrific murders and mass suicides during the ’90s in Canada, France, and Switzerland thrust them into the spotlight. They believed that death was an illusion and that they'd be transported to a planet near the star Sirius post-illusion. In 1994, 23 members in Switzerland were found in an underground chapel in ceremonial robes, most shot. Twenty-five members were found in ski chalets with children grouped together. Sixteen bodies were found in the Vercors mountains in France, arranged in a star shape.

The quarantining in St. Lucia of the Freewinds, a ship owned and operated by the Church of Scientology, because of a confirmed measles case, could be a “blessing in disguise,” according to actor Leah Remini. National Chief Medical Officer Dr. Marlene Fredericks James announced the quarantine on Monday and with a large concentration of people in a small area, it raised concerns about the disease’s ability to spread. However, Remini saw a case of measles on Scientology’s top vessel as an opportunity for some people on board.

There are definitely some giant mistakes you shouldn't make. By Caroline Thompson.

Relying on clues from the past, a team of 19th-century archaeologists uncovered Delphi, the site where ancient Greeks asked questions, and Apollo answered them. By María Teresa Magadán.

In 1978, I went to Guyana on a fact-finding mission. By the time I returned, more than 900 people died. I was almost one of them.

In 1978, I went to Guyana on a fact-finding mission. By the time I returned, more than 900 people died. I was almost one of them. By Jackie Speier.

Shocking footage showing a South Korean pastor beating her followers and ordering them to beat one another has emerged as Korean police investigate claims that she ran a cult in Fiji, forcing people to work without pay and endure violent rituals. The footage appears to show violent assaults on members of the South Korean Grace Road Church.

A doomsday cult leader told a judge Wednesday he was following "heavenly laws" when he took a 7-year-old child as his bride last year. John Alvin Coltharp, 34, expressed no regret for sexually abusing the girl. Instead, he said he is Jacob from the Old Testament, among other biblical figures, and has returned to earth to promote child marriage. Family members of the child could be seen cringing in the courtroom as he spoke in Manti's 6th District Court.

“This is an organization that really preys on people’s weaknesses.” By Ellen Huet.

A former Hollywood actress, Mack rose up the ranks of the cult Nxivm—whose founder, Keith Raniere, was recently arrested in Mexico—to second in command.

Reports of a Scientology-style sect infiltrating schools have aroused concern in the Netherlands. A television investigation claimed to have found at least six private schools governed by "Avatar wizards" and guided by the principles of the Avatar ideology. So what is Avatar (besides a blockbuster movie)? And how influential is it?

“I'm proud of being a leader of a poop cult,” Jillian Mai Thi Epperly once joked to fans of her signature recipe: a fermented slurry of salted cabbage that produces “waterfalls” of diarrhea. Here's the wild story of how she convinced thousands to believe her dangerous science, and how a grassroots movement shut her down when Facebook wouldn't. By Nidhi Subbaraman.

The Mithraic Mysteries worshipped a pagan god from subterranean temples buried throughout the empire. By Kerry Wolfe.

Last March, five women gathered in a home near here to enter a secret sisterhood they were told was created to empower women. To gain admission, they were required to give their recruiter — or “master,” as she was called — naked photographs or other compromising material and were warned that such “collateral” might be publicly released if the group’s existence were disclosed. The women, in their 30s and 40s, belonged to a self-help organization called Nxivm, which is based in Albany and has chapters across the country, Canada and Mexico.