On 13 October, 1307 France's Knights Templar were summarily arrested in a grand coordinated effort. They were accused of defiling the cross, worshipping false idols, and performing sinful sexual acts. In this episode, we uncover the French King's plot against the Templars, the satanic conspiracy that has dogged their reputation through the centuries, and their ties to the Holy Grail. Also, the Pope gets slapped.

Nesta Helen Webster is one of the originators of modern Illuminati conspiracy theory. She argued that there was a continuous line of anarchist black magicians running from the Gnostics to the Bogomils to the Knights Templar, medieval witches, Rosicrucians, and Adam Weishaupt's Bavarian Illuminati. Our exploration of Webster starts our ninth series in which we ask whether or not there is a long-standing occult conspiracy to control or otherwise manipulate the world's population.

Sherry Shriner ran one of the most infamous internet cults to date. She propagated theories of soul scalping using snakes, celebrity vampires, British royalty crossing animals with people, and the anti-christ. Her views inspired at least one homicide and at least one suicide with the cult leader becoming directly involved with the victims.

From the nineteenth century through World War Two, white colonizers and occupiers sought to convert the people of Papua New Guinea and the islands of Vanuatu and press them into forced labor on plantations. These efforts resulted in mass death. Visions of liberation from the whites and then the Japanese Army took shape in what have come to be called Cargo Cults. Believers gave up working for the occupiers and paying taxes and awaited the imminent arrival of a ship carrying the spirits of their ancestors and a great cargo that would provide for their every need.

Do aliens from outer space bookend human history? Were we planted here on earth by visitors in UFOs and will they come again to bring about an apocalyptic paradigm shift? In this episode, we trace the history of the Raelian movement and the theory that extraterrestrials can account for the events in the Bible as well as ancient mythology.

Did Nikola Tesla, the inventor of alternating current and one of the most important thinkers of the nineteenth-century, create plans for a death ray or particle beam peacemaker that would put an end to all warfare.

In our first Campfire Confessional, we respond to listener questions and tell stories submitted by listeners including tales of bee demons, haunted houses, werewolf corpses, sigils, and mechanical birds.

In Western New York's "burned over district" a series of religious movements rose up with apocalyptic visions. In this episode, we discuss two post-apocalyptic groups: the Shakers or Shaking Quakers, led by Mother Ann Lee, and the Perfectionists at the Oneida Community led by John Humphrey Noyes. Both believed that Christ's Second Coming had already happened and both argued for a complete overhaul of the way human beings had or didn't have sex.

The concept of a rapture is a relatively recent idea although a time of evil, destruction, and tribulation is as old as John's Revelation. In this episode, we trace theories of rapture, tribulation, the anti-Christ, and the judgment from John the Revelator to the present day.

Kali is one of the most notorious of the Hindu pantheon. As the unamiable consort of Siva, she needs to be calmed by her husband to keep from destroying the world. Christian missionaries accused her of encouraging human sacrifice, but her real mission was the destruction of the demons that hold humanity back from enlightenment. For this reason, Kali has become a key figure in Tantric worship. What makes Kali so fascinating and what does she have to teach us about staving off apocalypse?