As much as I would like to use this title as a euphemism for something else, I mean it as it sounds. It's been around 1 1/2 years now, maybe closer to 2 - I'm not too sure - that some very, lets say, odd people moved in next door. Now some of you may not know (or may not remember), but we live in a very secluded area in Southern Missouri. The county road that we live on, which is about a mile long, is home to three separate households. Coming down the road, our neighbor, Ray, is the first house on the right, then you drive down maybe a quarter mile and we're the driveway on the left. As you drive past our house, there's a very large pond or small lake behind us, then about a half mile past us sits our new neighbors. The ones that I'm convinced is a... you guessed it, cult.
From the very beginning when I first met these people, I thought they were different. Absolutely nothing wrong with being different, I consider myself very different, but these people are a special kind of different.
It started with little things, like them being in the dry stream gathering rocks which was supposedly for their orchard. Then them telling us not to mention to anyone around here that they moved in behind us or who they were, just weird stuff like that. Huge red flag, right? Well after I precured their last names and did just a small amount of digging online, I discovered that the guy that lives there once went by a different name. Creepy, right? I mean, people could change their names for a variety of reasons. To protect themselves, to get a fresh start or something much more sinister, because they're running from something. Be it good or bad, I'm assuming it's bad, but that's just me.
After several months to a year went by, they started coming around more and more. They told us more about themselves and that they're Seventh-day Adventists, they're vegans - even though I saw them getting ice cream from a store that I used to work at. I don't think they know what being vegan means, unless they're just lying about it.
This past spring/early summer, they had their first "cult" meeting. There were literally dozens and dozens of people from all across the states that showed up. Mind you, this was at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, but they still had that many people from all over right at our back door. It started on Friday and lasted through Sunday. Naturally, I had to work all 3 days, but that didn't stop me from spying when I got off from work. And by spying I mean using my telephoto lens to stretch my view, so to speak, across the lake to see if I could see anything out of the ordinary.
At first glance, all I could see were people standing and sitting around. Then my gaze drifted to a couple standing in front of a very large bonfire. Mind you, they stood in front of this first and looked into its burning haze the ENTIRE time I was spying. It was very American Gothic, considering they stood there like statues the entire time. It was quite spooky. I also caught an image of what appears to be a man floating in the background. There are plausible explanations, like him being on an elevated part of the yard, but considering his foot placement, I don't know, it just looks off to me. At one point on Saturday morning they were walking around chanting and ringing bells. Like what the actual eff.
Let me back track a few months. This was probably in February or so before the COVID pandemic, which is why we so freely let this happen. Apparently they have a young boy staying with them, no more than 15 or 16. They walked down to our house one evening to bring us something they got from the food pantry - yes, they somehow get that service - and they had the young kid in tote. He needed to use the bathroom, so of course, we let him. One time after this, he brought some produce down to us and insisted that he carry it inside, which we didn't allow because there was no need. Then the following day he retrieved our mail... from OUR mailbox and walked it down to the house! I'm sorry, but that's just not okay.
I don't know what it was, but it was like he was insisting on being inside. I'm assuming to assess the house. Perhaps he was looking at all of our exits, maybe? Well hopefully he saw the .22 rifle and .410 shotgun leaned up in the corner of the kitchen. I know having weapons is frowned upon, but when you live in the middle of nowhere with sketchy people and meth-heads all around you, you need to have a weapon readily available. No shame there.
Anyways, back to the cult. They had an additional cult meeting in the middle of the summer, but this was in the height of the pandemic and only a couple different cars showed up. They're very strange folks. The woman of the house is one of those people that you can never recognize. It doesn't matter if I've just seen her the day before, but she literally always looks different. The man looks the same. He's tall, slender, dresses in a mainly all black attire and sports stringy dark brown or black hair. She's impossible to describe. Other than the fact that she's short and thin. I can never remember what she's wearing, how her face looks or even how she styles her hair.
I'm turning this into a mini-novel, but I have one more thing to add.
We put out two very large gardens over the summer. I can't even begin to give you the measurements, but they were BIG. One plot down by the chicken coup had 20+ zucchini plants, plus some yellow squash, cucumbers, potatoes, green beans, 2 random pepper plants, acorn squash and watermelon. Hopefully that give you an idea of size. Then the one up in the yard in front of our house had 20+ tomato plants, radishes, peppers, carrots that didn't grow, lettuce, green beans, corn and I believe that's it.
I get my green thumb from my gran and my aunt, so thankfully we were blessed enough and all of our stuff grew and did really, really well. Minus those bastard carrots. Anyways, our neighbors came down to look at the garden quite a few times and even asked to borrow the tiller, which we agreed, but they never actually borrowed it. According to our other neighbor, Ray, they put out a semi-large garden themselves. It wasn't until late in the year that Ray told us that they were extremely envious of our garden. I'm not sure why, considering we offered help whenever they would seek it, but apparently, for some ungodly reason, they were jealous. They used lye, netting and left rocks in their garden bed for their "mineral" properties. Unbeknownst to them, the majority of the minerals are in their soil. So most likely, their garden got overcrowded and smothered, which is why they had such bad luck.
My aunt visited them one evening, per their request, and ended up asking my aunt very odd questions about cucumbers. Like if it was already pickled.. I'm sorry, what!? Then after my aunt told her that she had to pickle it herself, the lady asked if she could eat it... Um, yes woman, you can eat a cucumber. After my aunt told her that she could eat it, she asked her how and what on. Like this broad is in her 50s or 60s and doesn't know what the heck to do with a cucumber. This is where it gets kinda funny; this woman is planning on teaching gardening classes! No joke, she's gonna show people how to live off the land. They're planning on hosting "events" where they teach people how to garden, hunt and survive.
I swear if I see a Kool-Aid truck rolling in, I'm out.
We've always had elderly neighbors who have never given us any issues. Our other neighbor is awesome, but there's something really off about these guys. I normally don't like to talk about people, but they make me feel extremely uncomfortable and uneasy. I've watched enough documentaries about cults and cult like behavior to know what signs to look for and these people check almost every box. Hopefully they are just super religious and aren't actually a cult, but I'm going with the latter here.
And with this novel coming to a close, I'll leave you with one of the many photos I took the night they had their largest "gathering". I don't feel comfortable sharing pictures of the actual people, but a big part of me wants to. Instead, I'll leave you with an accidental photo that I took that night that happens to be one of my favorites.
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| My failed attempt at spying on the cult, but actually ended up being an awesome shot of the weeds with some amazing bokeh lights. This was taken with my 70-300mm Nikon lens. |
