Seven

 

This reminds me of the serial killer in the movie "Seven". Except that this is for real. This guy, who is clearly a psycho, actually crucified and killed a random priest in Arizona for "breaking the first commendment" as in worshipping Jesus rather than Yahweh?! 

And no, he´s doesn´t seem to be a Jewish extremist. Probably a quasi-religious nutjob in general. He wants the state to try and execute him ASAP, since he believes that God will somehow save him at the last moment. Of course, the Christian content-creator commenting the interview believes that the man is demonically possessed...

The laughing academy

 

Fundamentalist preacher Steven Anderson talks about his involuntary commitment to a mental hospital. And no, it´s not funny. In his sermon, the "pastor" spends a lot of time mocking the mentally insane, claims that they are demon-possessed, that a "life of sin" made them insane, and so on. The sermon is actually titled "My Trip to the Nuthouse". 

But why was he locked up in a psychiatric ward for 24 hours in the first place? That´s less clear, at least from the clips shown above. Anderson implies a vast conspiracy involving his own adult children, who recently accused him of abuse...

Stay tuned for more "demonic attacks" in the near future! 

Our Steven Anderson predicament

 

For those interested. An hour-long summary of the Steven Anderson situation.

Anderson is - diplomatically put - a controversial Christian preacher based in Arizona. He is one of the leaders of the "New Independent Fundamentalist Baptist Movement". Note that they actually call themselves Fundamentalist?! 

In 2019, Anderson planned a trip to Sweden, which gave him 15 minutes of fame in the Swedish media. In the United States, Anderson has been in the news far longer. He has called for gays to be executed, has prayed for the death of Obama, gives positively weird sermons and has people literally thrown out of his church in Tempe. He is also a de facto Holocaust denialist.

In the clip above, it turns out that Anderson has been "tased" by the police on a number of occasions, so he´s clearly not the law-abiding kind of conservative. His adult children recently came out and accused him of abusing them as they were growing up (the abuse was heavy beating). The pastor supposedly also beat his wife with an electrical extension cord. Anderson and his acolytes responded by preaching against the children from the pulpit!

The situation took a somewhat bizarre turn just a few days ago, when Anderson was suddenly committed to a mental hospital against his will. He was released after 24 hours. In a since deleted Facebook post, Anderson claims that a certain member of his own congregation had him committed. The name and photo of the person in question were shown, and this "Judas" was threatened with "imprecatory prayer" (a form of curse).

What´s going to happen now is unclear, and there is clearly a market for this kind of "religion", so another abusive fundamentalist preacher is probably waiting in the wings right now...    

No forests on Flat Earth?

 

Content creator Emma Thorne (a former conspiracy theorist turned basic left-liberal) comments a bizarre flat earth video, which is apparently something of a classic. 

I assume the original version is titled "No Forests on Flat Earth", but there is also a dubbed version called "No Trees on Flat Earth". Emma is commenting the original, narrated by a guy with a heavy Russian or East European accent. 

The whole thing could be a troll, perhaps a parody of flat earthism. Or it could be a real kook. This far out on a limb, it´s impossible to tell. Nor is it overtly obvious how any of the weird factoids in the video  proves that the Earth is flat?! But sure, the claims that Devils Tower is the petrified stump of a truly gigantic tree, that Grand Canyon is a quarry, or that a secret nuclear war was fought between 1780 and 1815, do have a certain intrinsic charm. 

There are other whackadillos and wingnuts out there who claim that dinosaurs never existed, that Stonehenge is a modern fake, that the US Socialist Workers Party killed Trotsky, that many insects are robotic UFOs...you get the picture. However, I know for a fact that the claim that birds are really drones covered in plumage is parody, and I strongly suspect it´s the same with the girl who believes the cicadas in her backyard are harbingers of the apocalypse. 

But, as any paranoiac will tell ya, that´s exactly what They *want* you to believe!

Forbidden archeology

 

"Yes, I´m George F Carter.
I´m an ascended master now!"

 

 

INCREDIBLE HISTORY is a moderately alternative history channel on YouTube. The content-creator, William Brown, is open to speculations about hyper-diffusionism, ancient aliens and ditto giants, but doesn´t go as far as, say, "Ancient Aliens". 

The clips above feature Hopi legends about ant-people from the sky, Utah´s Great Gallery, the Los Lunas Decalogue stone and the Bat Creek inscription. The usual suspects feature Mormons, Masons, Marranos and - you guessed it - aliens. 

Funny how all cultures around the world have legends about spirit-like beings coming down from the sky or up from the underground, I´m sure that´s just a co-incidence... 

Thunderbird epitaph

 

More info on the elusive "Thunderbird photo" mentioned in a previous blog post. Note the commentary section, in which several people claim to have seen the photo! 

So do I, but I don´t claim it was real. Probably another photo entirely which I misremember, or a photo-shopped image in some old Fortean magazine inspired by the urban legend.   

Seeking the missing thunderbird photograph

When Gloria Mundy met the angels

 

Actress Goldie Hawn and her husband, actor Kurt Russell, shares their UFO experiences. Goldie Hawn´s encounter sounds more "legit" in the sense that she might have had a genuine paranormal experience. But why "aliens"? Why not...angels? Russell apparently saw the Phoenix Lights, but that was probably the US military testing some of their little trinkets!   

Goldie Hawn says she encountered aliens decades ago

Northern Lights go south

Credit: NWS Anchorage 

Some are from Alaska, but others are from the Lower 48, as low as Phoenix, Arizona! Phoenix Lights, anyone? Pictures from March this year. 

Northern Lights in the United States

The Democrats are the real racists

 

This must be the most bizarre political ad ever. It´s popularly known as "Make Rifles Great Again"...

One snake too many

A winged snake? Sounds delicious! 

Cryptozoologist (or perhaps folklorist) Karl Shuker strikes again, this time with a highly entertaining article about "flying snakes", which are apparently seen on a semi-regular basis all around the world. Namibia, Bulgaria, ancient Egypt and even London are some of the places where this cryptid (completely unknown to me until now) has supposedly showed its fangs and, I suppose, wing membranes. 

Do I believe it? 

Not a chance. I´m not an anatomist, but I´m sure snakes with wings are as impossible as pigs that fly or moose that hover, so *this* won´t worry me a bit when I take a stroll outside tomorrow morning. But OK, I don´t live anywhere near Namibia (or London, for that matter) so perchance I speak too early?  

Snakes with wings and other strange things

Famine food

So I´ve been reading some more in "The Archeology of Global Change", a volume published by the Smithsonian in 2004. This time about the Hohokam. I´m not sure if the proponents of the "noble savage" myth include this particular culture in their list of Native American peoples who were supposedly "natural conservationists". The Hohokam, after all, were a kind of high culture. Or at least a proto-high culture. So perhaps environmental degradation is expected in their case?

The Hohokam culture existed from 1000 BC to 1500 AD. The place was the arid Sonora desert in what is today the US state of Arizona. The Hohokam are mostly known for their 500 miles long canal system which irrigated their main agricultural fields. The peak population is apparently difficult to gauge, with estimates ranging from 25,000 to 150,000. The Hohokam also grew food (specifically agave) on marginal lands, at so-called rockpile fields. There is no doubt that the Hohokam were a clever group of people, and while the exact causes of their demise is unknown, it might not have been environmental degradation, but rather European diseases (which reached Arizona long before the actual Europeans). That being said, the Hohokam certainly didn´t live in some kind of Edenic balance with nature. 

The Hohokam hunted and consumed ungulates, but the abundance of these animals decrease in the archeological record over time, suggesting overhunting. One way to get meat was trade, either with Hohokam settlements in the marginal areas, or with Native peoples elsewhere. Another was long-distance hunting expeditions by the Hohokam themselves. This hunting was not for everyone, but was probably in the hands of hunting specialists, with their own buildings, access to animal-like outfits (perhaps used to sneak up on the game animals), and weapons made from obsidian (a material not readily available to the Hohokam). 

When ungulates became scarcer, the Hohokam turned more and more to lagomorphs, fish, beaver and muskrat. The lagomorphs and fish were always part of the local diet, but apparently the size of the fish decreased with time, suggesting that this resource was being over-exploited. Beaver and muskrat only shows up relatively late in the archeological record, despite both being edible animals. Perhaps there were cultural taboos against eating them? There are apparently such taboos among the present-day Native population in the area. If so, beaver and muskrat would be "famine food", animals hunted only when the Natives were forced to choose between eating and ideology. (They chose eating). Yet, at some archeological sites, the former inhabitants suffered from "subsistence stress and iron-deficiency anemia", suggesting that they nevertheless didn´t get enough protein. 

During the mid-19th century, wildlife in the Southwest was relatively abundant and diverse, something not seen in the archeological record. This suggests that the animals recovered after the downfall of the Hohokam culture. Widlife becomes scarce again due to White American hunting during the early 20th century. At the same time, modern human activity has allowed the spread of animal species which never lived in Arizona before. So when conservationists talk about preserving an original "Nature", what exactly do they have in mind? Nature is always changing, often in response to human interventions, including those of the Hohokam...

Summerland of the soul

 

"What is life REALLY like on the Astral Plane? Rare details" is a YouTube clip featuring Cyrus Kirkpatrick, an astral traveler and afterlife explorer (or purported such, if you´re of a more skeptical bent). Kirkpatrick´s channel is called Afterlife Topics and Metaphysics. It seems Kirkpatrick is finally back in the States, Tucson to be more exact, after being stuck somewhere in the Phillippines for most of the COVID pandemic. In this clip, he elaborates on his view of the afterlife, which he calls "the astral plane". He claims to have visited the afterlife during out-of-body experiences, and have interviewed its denizens. 

Apparently, the inhabitants of the astral world call our world "the Earth plane", while there world is simply "Earth". It looks like an improved copy of our world. For instance, there are copies of our cities in the astral world, including astral versions of LA, Hong Kong, Jerusalem and even Tucson, Arizona. Paranormal abilities, such as telepathy, are considered normal. Teleportation and materialization of objects are skills that can be learned. Objects come and go, a house further down the street might not be there the next day, and this too is considered a normal thing. Time is less important, since important meetings can be held at once through telepathy, or people can bilocate (be at more than one place at the same time). 

Many inhabitants of the astral create entire fantasy worlds through visualization. Ghosts exist on the astral plane -  more exactly, the "ghosts" are physical people on the Earth plane, who are barely visible from the astral. 

Technology is better on the other side. They had smart phones already 30 years ago! UFOs and aliens visit the astral Earth on a semi-regular basis, apparently without anyone raising an eyebrow. 

A curious detail is that astral humans are potentially mortal. Surprisingly enough, there are both wars and conflicts in the afterlife, and people who join such "causes" can be hurt so badly that their astral bodies in effect die. The only way to fix the problem is by reincarnating on our Earth plane, whereby new astral bodies are created! Kirkpatrick therefore advises everyone to stay out of such conflicts...

A critic might argue that Kirkpatrick´s description of the astral plane sounds strangely dream-like, and that this proves it *is* a dream. Indeed, Kirkpatrick says in another YouTube clip that out-of-body experiences can be consciously induced during sleep paralysis! What skeptics take as proof against an afterlife, is here turned into a mechanism to explore a supposedly real afterlife state. 

With that little observation, I close this review. 

There is chocolate in heaven

 

"How to get the BEST Afterlife states" is a YouTube clip featuring Cyrus Kirkpatrick. I linked to some of his content before. 

Kirkpatrick has a very "concrete" view of the afterlife. After the death of the physical body, the astral body is reborn in a kind of twin world to Earth, where life continues pretty much as normal, except better. For this reason, Kirkpatrick is sharply critical of mediums who claim that the afterlife state is in many ways *worse* than life on Earth (I´m surprised such people even exist), or "better" in a purely spiritual sense (we become luminous orbs of light). 

In this clip, he takes on the former idea. Apparently, a certain medium have claimed that there is no chocolate in heaven, a depressive thought roundly mocked at Kirkpatrick´s web forum. Kirkpatrick believes that some astral bodies might simply be incompatible with life on the astral planes, presumably due to negative thoughts and actions while the individual was physically alive, and that this clouds their perceptions of "the other side". Such a person in effect becomes a kind of ghost at the astral plane, being unable to fully sense it (including the taste of astral chocolate). 

In reality, the astral plane is just a small part of a vast multiverse, and the only limitations to experience are all in our own mind... 

Possible, therefore probable

Just some rambling about nothing in particular...

The idea that Jesus or the Buddha were fictitious characters is often seen as absurd or impossible, since surely all religions must have a founder and it would be obviously absurd to have a fictitious (human) founder. And besides, wouldn't people *notice* such an absence?

Well, let's see...

The strange new religion of Tensegrity has a founder. His name? Carlos Castaneda. Nobody doubts that this best-selling author was a real person. But Castaneda himself didn't claim to be the founder of Tensegrity. He supposedly got his knowledge from a Mexican shaman named Don Juan. Interestingly, Don Juan wasn't an angel or other kind of otherworldly entity. He was a flesh-and-blood human whom Castaneda encountered at a bus stop in Tucson, Arizona! He even has a biography. 

There is just one problem. Don Juan isn't real. Castaneda made him up, to give his new teachings a more ancient lineage (Don Juan was supposedly initiated into an old religious tradition which, for all we know, isn't real either). 

So while Castaneda is the *real* founder of Tensegrity, Don Juan is its *mythological* founder. 

But wouldn't anyone notice? Well, some people did. Except for the 20 million people who bought Castaneda's books, dubbed "non-fiction" by the publishers... 

But surely *today* it's different, in the Age of the Internet? Can anyone today start a movement with a fictitious founder? 

It turns out that it's perfectly possible. Indeed, it happened right under our poking noses. 

Yes, I'm thinking of QAnon. 

Who is the "founder" of QAnon? A mysterious person named Q. But Q is (of course) fictitious. While the human or humans behind the keyboard are real persons, the character they are LARP-ing is pure fiction. And while many people are skeptical of QAnon, it can hardly be denied that the movement has been highly succesful. Just last week, some of their supporters stormed into the Capitol! 

If it's possible today, why should it be impossible 2,000 years ago? Or 2,500 years ago? 

And there's more. How long does it take for a real historical person to be mythologized? I suppose it might take one or two generations to *fully* mythologize somebody or something. But the initial phase can happen very quickly. Just look at how George Floyd was turned into a saint by the BLM last summer. It took a couple of days. People are even getting baptized at the spot were Floyd died. Regardless of your take on the death of Floyd, it's a fact that the man was a common crook, nothing more. Yet, he was almost overnight turned into a secular and even religious saint by the protesters. 

Now, imagine somebody with more charisma, a more powerful messaging and/or more fanatical followers. Mythologization would follow pronto. Someone like Elvis Presley, maybe. Or Donald Trump... 

There is also the annoying argument about "manuscript distance", popular among evangelical apologists. The idea is that the Gospels simply must be true because they were written relatively early. But this doesn't work as an argument either. Take Sai Baba. He was supposedly born of a virgin, a claim he made himself during his lifetime. Indeed, his mother was sometimes present at his mass meetings. What if a brave disciple would have rushed forward to "double-check" the claim of Sai Baba's miraculous birth? Presumably the mother of god would have confirmed it! Here, the manuscript distance is *zero*, yet no evangelical apologist would accept it at face value...

Does this prove that Jesus or the Buddha were fiction? Of course not. However, it does show that you can't disprove mythicism by an appeal to the modern religious or political milieux.

Amber psy-ops

The Phoenix Lights was a strange phenomenon appearing over Phoenix in Arizona in 1997. Many associated the mysterious lights with UFOs and aliens. Arizona government Fife Symington ridiculed the UFO true believers during a notorious press conference, but years later, the now ex-governor admitted that he had seen the Phoenix Lights himself!

This documentary was made by Lynne Kitei, an eye-witness to the phenomenon. Interestingly, she saw UFOs already three years before the Phoenix Lights appeared. I don't doubt the honesty of the witnesses interviewed, but I think it's obvious that what they saw was some kind of secret military experiment. The UFO angle is a psy-ops, and I wouldn't be surprised if the governor's sudden “conversion” is really part of the operation. The US military uses belief in UFOs and aliens to cover up its experiments with spy planes, stealth planes, etc. Officially, they are never tested above urban areas. In reality, they obviously have to be so tested…

For more on this, see John Michael Greer's “The UFO Phenomenon” and Greg Bishop's “Project Beta”. In 30 years or so, we will get to know the truth about the Phoenix Lights. Or even earlier, if the US uses the “V” (or whatever it really was) to bomb some enemy nation in the Middle East…

A bee in the bonnet

A review of the "MonsterQuest" episode "Giant Killer Bees" 

Killer bees are no urban legend, but this episode of "MonsterQuest" is an example of the sensationalist media hype surrounding this rogue hybrid. The token sceptic (who is a trained entomologist) tries to tell the producers that killer bees can't live in cold or dry environments. Despite this, the "documentary" attacks the scientific viewpoint, choosing instead to believe in the words of an anthropologist whose main area of expertise seems to be the killer bee as cultural metaphor?! Yet, he claims that killer bees could spread all the way up to Canada and Alaska...

This remarkable statement is "proven" by an experiment in which a colony of killer bees survives cold storage by huddling together in the centre of the hive. Now, it took me about 15 minutes of research to find a scientific website (University of Florida) which indirectly debunks this "experiment": killer bees store much less honey than "European" honey bees, and would therefore die if forced to remain inside the hive for a more extended period of time. That's why they can't live in areas with long winters. The "MonsterQuest" experiment proves nothing.

Nor do I see the point of collecting killer bee samples from Nevada and Arizona - to the best of my knowledge, nobody denies that killer bees have been found in these states, certainly not Nevada! A quick glance at a Wiki range map could have solved *this* little mystery in about 15 seconds... The experiment supposedly proving that killer bees have become more aggressive is intriguing, but given the general character of this show, I'm going to assume that it, too, is bunk until proven otherwise...

I'm not the only one complaining about this particular episode of "MonsterQuest". Ironically, they are at their best when chasing Bigfoot! Something tells me the squatch won't have to cope with aggressive bee swarms when he's out looking for honey in British Columbia or Alaska, LOL.

Michael Moore (who claims that killer bees are an urban legend and hence don't exist at all), you have been forgiven!

The Flagstaff Jay

Can´t anyone stop this faux reviewer? And now he´s insulting my kind...

OK, I admit it. I stopped reading John Marzluff's "The Pinyon Jay" after just a few chapters. I have read other books in this series, but this one is just too detailed and technical. Indeed, most of them are - I was apparently lucky picking up "The Magpies" by Tim Birkhead and "Cuckoos, cowbirds and other cheats" by N. B. Davies.

I don't doubt that Marzluff is one of the foremost experts on corvids in the United States. I'm sure his 20-year study of a flock of Pinyon Jays in Flagstaff, Arizona (which just happens to be the location of Northern Arizona University) is extremely interesting for other ornithologists, in particular those doing research on corvids. Personally, however, I admit that I found it extremely boring.

I mean, Pinyon Jays? Geezus, John, get a life...study Magpies! *They* are the true parrots of the North.

However, if you believe the information on Pinyon Jays found in "Handbook of the Birds of the World. Vol 14" is too terse, then I heartily recommend this book for further study and elucidation. Also, I will gracefully give it four stars. And hey guys, since I'm the only reviewer, you can't complain about this customer review without writing one of your own!

And now, I'm going to watch the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. Cheeers...

A positive look at Mormon polygamists

"Fundamentalisms and Society", edited by Martin E. Marty, is part of a multi-volume series on various forms of religious fundamentalism.

I haven't read the entire series. In fact, I haven't even read all articles in this volume. I'm reviewing it because of one particular text, which I found very interesting: "Plural marriage and Mormon fundamentalism", written by D. Michael Quinn. It's a relatively short but very informative piece on Mormon polygamists in Utah and Arizona. Quinn is otherwise mostly known for his notorious book "Early Mormonism and the magic worldview", a work that actually got him expelled from the Mormon (LDS) Church. Despite this, Quinn still considers himself to be a "DNA Mormon", and he has a surprisingly positive attitude to the Mormon polygamist groups he describes.

The Mormons practiced polygamy for generations, until the United States federal government finally forced the LDS Church to abandon the practice in 1890. Despite this, small groups of Mormons have continued the practice. These groups are known as Mormon fundamentalists. Since the LDS Church excommunicates people who practice or preach polygamy, most fundamentalists belong to breakaway groups.

According to Quinn, there are several misconceptions about Mormon fundamentalists: that there are many of them, that they have a penchant for cultish violence and murder, that they dress in old fashioned clothes, and that all of them practice polygamy. In reality, Quinn argues, there are only about 21,000 fundamentalists spread out over the United States, Mexico and Canada, and this number includes children. Also, many fundamentalist groups are loosing members. Ironically, more men than women defect. While all Mormon fundamentalists by definition preach polygamy (or rather polygyny), few actually practice it. The notorious exception to the rule is the Fundamentalist Church at Colorado City in Arizona, where most married men and women are involved in polygamous relationships. In other fundamentalist groups, only a minority of the membership practice polygamy, perhaps because of societal disapproval. While the Fundamentalist Church lives in a small, isolated town dominated by their own members, other fundamentalists live in urban or suburban areas, some even in Salt Lake City. As for their dress, there are still extreme members of the Colorado City community who insist on clothing their children in home-made trousers and pants, but this is increasingly seen as an embarrassment even there, although Colorado City inhabitants as a general rule do have a more "fifties look" than urban or suburban fundamentalists, whose teenagers may look indistinguishable from the majority.

Quinn further writes that the association between terrorism and Mormon fundamentalism is unfortunate, since the only murderous group within the fundamentalist community is the small cult around Ervil LeBaron. However, their deadly attacks on other fundamentalists gave the movement as a whole the reputation for religious terror. In reality, Quinn believes, the killing spree of Ervil LeBaron's cult might actually have helped the other fundamentalists, who worked closely with federal law enforcement. Some peaceful fundamentalists even got a certain amount of support from federal agencies against local authorities in Utah.

"Plural marriage and Mormon fundamentalism" describes all the main groups on the fundamentalist scene: the Fundamentalist Church (the group virtually controlling Colorado City), the Apostolic United Brethren, the Church of the Firstborn, and the mysterious Davis County Cooperative (a successful business venture appended to a secretive polygamist group). There are also "independent fundamentalists", who seem to be very different from the others. Thus, one independent group consist of many people who aren't even Mormons, and some who are gay!

The article also describes who converts to fundamentalism, why, patterns of dating and courtship, family dynamics, and the future of Mormonism. Quinn hopes that the LDS Church will one day permit polygamy, at least in Third World nations where polygamy is legal. A vain hope, if you ask me!

If there is any problem with the article, it's the positive tack taken by the writer. Remember, this man seems to *like* Mormon polygamists. But then, it's quite common that articles on extreme religious groups are written by scholars who somehow sympathize with them. With this caveat in mind, "Plural marriage and Mormon fundamentalism" is an indispensable starting point for those interested in modern Mormon polygamy.

I'm sure the rest of "Fundamentalisms and Society" is equally interesting, but I haven't bothered reading it. The five stars are for D. Michael Quinn's article.

Escape from Hell

Credit: Naomi Banta (Pexels)

"Sons of Perdition" is a documentary about the small town of Colorado City in Arizona, a community controlled by a bizarre cult known as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS).

I read about Colorado City in several books, but this is the first time I've actually seen how the community looks like. The people wear old-fashioned dresses, and the girls ride horses or ponies. It looks creepy, like M. Night Shyamalan's movie "The Village" in real life. But of course, some people might find it idyllic, a little bit like the Amish. In reality, child labour is common, dating is prohibited, and all marriages are decreed by the leader, Warren Jeffs. The cult is polygamous, there are no real schools, and defectors are shunned. Warren Jeffs himself was recently sentenced to life imprisonment for various polygamy-related crimes.

"Sons of Perdition" follow a group of teenagers who manage to escape from the clutches of the cult. They move to the nearby town of St. George, where they are taken care of by social workers and volunteers. The defectors are harassed by cult members who want them to move back. Life on the outside turns out to be problematic: many of the defected teens can't go to high school since they lack a real address, the local Job Corps look like a stockade, and the U.S. Army doesn't want them either. One of the local philanthropists in St. George get sick and tired of his teenage wards after they start taking amphetamine, met and cocaine. The educational level of the young ex-cultists is dismally low. One of them think Bill Clinton started World War II, while another doesn't know that Washington is the federal capital of the U.S.!

Still, "Sons of Perdition" ends on a positive note. It seems most of the teens featured eventually make it, and manage to stay out of trouble. Some eventually attend high school. As already mentioned, FLDS leader Jeffs serves a life sentence, and the documentary gives the impression that more and more people are leaving Colorado City. One of the teens managed to rescue both his mother and one of his sisters.

"Sons of Perdition" is a pretty low key documentary. If you're into action or hefty scandals, you might actually find it boring. However, people interested in cults, polygamists or the darker side of Mormondom, might find it interesting.