Episode 172: Under the Influence

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Even good leaders make mistakes.

That was still true back in 1754 when tensions were running high between the dominant world powers of the day, Britain and France.

After centuries of global conquest, these nations were growing very tired of always bumping into each other, and that frustration was at a boiling point.

In May of 1754, the British were trying to manage that tension on the edge of the world, in the backwoods of North America.

Britain and France both had colonies there, and there were constant disputes over territory.

So in late May, they sent a 22-year-old lieutenant colonel to represent the crown in a meeting with French forces.

But it didn't go very well.

On the way to this diplomatic meeting, the officer decided on his own that it would be okay to ambush a group of French scouts, and in the chaos their leader was killed.

So when word of the officer's attack reached the French authorities, it was like touching dry kindling with a lit match, and everything went up in flames.

That little unauthorized attack on the French erupted into what historians now refer to as the Seven Years' War.

It was a global conflict that claimed over a million lives as it burned between the French and the British, pulling in allies on both sides and playing out in the New World and Europe, and all because of a good leader's mistake.

Oh, and how do I know that this particular lieutenant colonel was a good leader?

Well, because two decades later he would find himself in the middle of another conflict in North America.

This time though, he fought as an enemy of the crown, and his rank had changed as well.

By then, he was the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, General George Washington.

Leaders make mistakes.

The good ones learn and grow and work harder to prevent them from repeating, but others lose sight of that goal.

They guide their followers down dark paths and through dangerous phases of life.

And while history is filled with examples of bad leaders, one man from a century ago set the bar incredibly low.

Lives were destroyed, families were torn apart, and an entire community was imprisoned by fear.

All

because of dark magic.

I'm Aaron Mankey, and this

is Lore.

It was either a journey of self-discovery or a descent into madness.

Born in 1878 in the English city of Birmingham, Edward seemed to have a path laid out before him that would lead to success.

But not everything was as it appeared.

His father was a craftsman and began passing those skills on to Edward at a young age, and whenever they could, the two of them would also head to the coast and go sailing, instilling Edward with the love for the sea early on.

But he had also been born into a world hungry for answers, and that curiosity had become an obsession at home.

Decades earlier, the world had begun going through a change.

The Enlightenment of the late 17th 17th century had led to massive scientific and medical advancements.

The world had become more defined, more understandable, and for a large portion of people, that sparked a renewed interest in the less definable things in life, the mysteries of the spiritual realm.

For Edward's family, that meant involvement in an unusual religious sect known as the Catholic Apostolic Church, no relation to the Roman Catholic Church.

They believed in a few things that would imprint deeply on young Edward, that the world would soon end, and that 12 special people, new versions of the Christian apostles, had been appointed to help make that possible.

But ultimately, curiosity would pull him away from home.

Leaning on the sailing skills he learned from his father, Edward left England and began a career on a number of ships that took him around the world.

After visiting a number of countries, he ended up in New Zealand in 1902 and found a reason to settle down, a woman named Marjorie Clark.

The couple married married and started a family, and for a few years Edward's life seemed to take on a normal shape.

Along the way, he learned new trade skills that allowed him to work as an electrician, a surveyor, a draftsman, and more.

But he wasn't the sort of man to settle down, and in 1907, he packed up the entire family and moved them to British Columbia.

The change worked for a while.

Edward was able to serve on ships again, piloting schooners up and down the west coast of North America, transporting lumber and other goods.

But there must have been something about that life at sea that was intoxicating to him.

By 1912, just five years after their arrival in BC, he abandoned his family and set sail for new lands and experiences.

Edward was beginning to see these travels as a sort of pilgrimage, a journey to discover not only new truths and knowledge, but also himself.

And he followed the clues wherever they took him.

Africa, Turkey, China, and countless other stops along the way.

But it was in in France in 1924 that he finally found what he was looking for.

He had settled down for a time in a small village in southern France, and his health had been failing.

On the night of October 19th, he recalled waking up to the feeling of a deep thirst.

When he lit a candle, though, what he saw was something unexpected.

The image of an Egyptian symbol known as an ankh, a sort of cross with a loop at the top.

And over the next several nights, that image was joined by a mysterious voice.

Soon enough, his visions were leading him to something that would have seemed familiar to anyone involved in spiritualism, automatic writing.

The voice continued to fill him with words as he traveled, all of which Edward recorded on paper.

He even claimed to have a few out-of-body experiences, and everything was being delivered to him by a single force, a presence that he referred to as the master of wisdom.

Now, there's a lot going on here, and I could honestly spend the next hour explaining all of this.

But in the interest of time and focus, here's the most important stuff.

Edward believed that he was being called to a mission by this master of wisdom, and that he would be instrumental in ushering in the end of this world and the beginning of another.

And while 12 separate brothers would contribute to this work, he would be the head of them all, the 12th and most powerful, brother 12.

But a leader needs a community, right?

So after spending a bit of time in Italy Italy to refine his vision for the future, Edward Arthur Wilson, now known as Brother 12, received instructions for where to get started.

And those instructions led him back home, to England.

And when he arrived, he found a country that already knew who he was.

You see, all that time he'd been traveling the world and exploring himself, he had also been publishing articles through various magazines.

This included a publication called the Occult Review, and all those pieces of writing had drawn a large following who were excited to receive him.

It was during his year in England that Edward, I'm sorry, brother 12, learned three important lessons.

First, that he knew how to recruit.

Dozens of followers traveled to join him and learn from him, and it was exciting to see his community grow.

Second, those followers had resources, and they were willing to hand them over to him.

In fact, through the editor of the Occult Review, a man named Harry Sutton, the group received their first major donation, and everyone knows how attractive and addictive money can be.

And lastly, he learned that his community needed a new home.

This was a message he claimed to have received from the Master of Wisdom, so he told his followers that the group would be moving, and then started planning for a trip into the unknown.

Well, the unknown to them.

It seems the Master of Wisdom had conveniently chosen British Columbia as the site of their new community, but Brother 12 failed to mention that he'd already lived there.

All they knew was that their time in England was coming to an end.

But it wasn't really the end, was it?

In fact, it was just the beginning.

Brother 12 was like a two-way radio, and there was no way to turn him off.

After docking on the east coast of Canada in February of 1927, he boarded a train and headed west to the opposite coast, and the entire trip was spent evangelizing and recruiting for his group, now called the Aquarian Foundation.

But he also received messages, too.

During the journey, he stopped along the way and spoke at other similar groups, people like the Theosophical Society, to share messages from the Master of Wisdom.

And he continued to write, transcribing messages from the spiritual realm that would become part of the group's holy writings.

Once settled on Vancouver Island, Brother 12 and his early followers went through the boring process of setting up the Aquarian Foundation as an official society within Canadian law.

We can skip a lot of those details, but one important thing to remember is this.

Their group would be run by a board of 12 governors, and Brother 12 would report to them and be a tiebreaker in decision-making.

And then, life there began to take off.

The group had settled in the town of Denaimo, on the coast across the water from the city of Vancouver.

In fact, thanks to a bit of fundraising among themselves, they were able to purchase a plot of roughly 125 acres just south of town.

And it was beautiful.

Lush forests, beautiful waterways, green everywhere.

For them, it must have felt like paradise.

And like I said, they were growing.

Not just the community there on Vancouver Island, but also elsewhere around North America.

According to John Oliphant, who literally wrote the book on Brother 12, the foundation had grown to over 100 chapters in locations all across Canada and the United States.

Clearly, the charismatic and unique teachings of Brother 12 were catching on.

But something else was happening too.

First, those early experiments in fundraising had switched on a light in his mind.

Soon enough, new requests were sent out, and money absolutely flooded in.

Some of it funded their activities and mission, yes, but a lot of it was converted by Brother 12 into gold coins, which he stacked in glass mason jars, sealed with wax, and then buried in secret locations all around the property.

And the secrets went deeper, too.

You see, there might have been a board of governors, but Brother 12 was on a mission from the Master of Wisdom, and that meant that he felt empowered to do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted.

In 1928, just a year after their arrival there, he took some of their funds and secretly purchased a a 400-acre plot on nearby Valdez Island and had a separate settlement constructed.

Oh, and bought a boat, too.

But the governors didn't know this at the time.

What they knew was that Brother 12 was writing prolifically, teaching the community about their mission and demonstrating his mysterious powers.

In fact, many of those board members themselves reported having conversion experiences, complete with visions.

Obviously, something magical was going on.

Throughout 1928, hundreds of people moved to the community outside of Nanaimo, both individuals and families.

And as their numbers swelled, so too did their vision for a better world.

And for Brother 12, that included politics, because in his worldview, the only hope for the future was to replace both American political parties with one of his own.

There's not really a lot to say about it.

Brother 12 hopped on a train in the summer of 1928 to travel to Chicago, where he planned to build a political party around himself, uniting all the third-party voters under one banner.

I don't think he understood that he couldn't be a presidential candidate, not having been born on American soil, but I also don't think he was the sort of guy who operated by logic and common sense.

The political adventure was a failure, but the journey to Chicago and back added two new members to the Foundation's community.

One was a woman named Mary Connolly, an incredibly wealthy woman from Asheville, North Carolina.

Her family was well well-connected, and their fortune was old.

Mary fell for everything Brother 12 was selling, packed up, and moved to Nanaimo.

The second new member was more personal to Brother 12.

On the train to Chicago, he met a woman named Myrtle Baumgartner, who was traveling alone.

The two struck up conversation and hit it off on multiple levels, both spiritually and physically.

By the time the pair returned to Nanaimo, she was pregnant, and they believed that they were reincarnations of Osiris and Isis, ready to give birth to a new Horus.

I know, just roll with it.

Because believe me, Brother 12 was a whirlpool of crazy, and anyone who sailed too close was swept up and swallowed whole.

Myrtle was clearly the victim here, succored by a smooth-talking, self-styled guru, and he knew it too, which is why he kept her secret when they reached the community.

And I mean that literally.

He smuggled her in, and then quickly transported her her over to the secret settlement on the nearby island.

But deceit is a tangled web and soon enough the governors found out.

Actually they found out about everything ⁇ the mistress, the boat, the island settlement ⁇ and that got them digging through the community's finances where they found a lot of problems.

Brother 12 might have held his followers in the palm of his hand, ruling them through fear and oppression.

But none of that authority meant anything if it was all built on a foundation of lies.

And so the board of governors decided it was time to hold him accountable for his actions.

Of all the new arrivals in their community, mistrust and division were the most powerful.

And soon enough, that division would play out in an unlikely place, not in a gathering of the Aquarian Foundation, or even in a meeting of the group's governors.

No, the next battle would be fought in the courtroom.

Now, I know what you're thinking.

Courtroom drama is rarely entertaining, and it's certainly not the place we would expect to find powerful examples of folklore and the supernatural.

But it's always dangerous to assume, and I look forward to proving you wrong.

First, a bit of political maneuvering.

Because the Board of Governors were still firm believers in Brother 12's vision for the future, they didn't want to just throw him aside because that would also throw aside their life's work.

So in September of 1928, they gave him a chance to make things right.

The trouble was, he turned them down.

Life got intense after that.

Friends turned on Brother 12.

A journalist published a series of expose-like articles that cast him and his cult-like group in a terrible light.

And then the Board of Governors filed a lawsuit against him, accusing him of mishandling the group's money.

Soon enough, it was clear that it was going to take something otherworldly to stop his downfall.

The trial began on October 30th of 1928, and you can probably imagine what the atmosphere and process were like.

Brother 12 was on one side, legally there as Edward Wilson, with his attorney, and the governors were on the other.

And for a while, things didn't look good for Brother 12.

Then, at some point in the trial, the attorney hired by the governors, a man named Thomas Morton, stood up to address the court.

Remember, he was in charge of defeating Brother 12, so Morton was the enemy.

And as he spoke, the papers in his hand began to shake involuntarily.

A moment later, it was Morton who was shaking, trembling so violently that he fell to the floor.

And not just Morton, Three or four others in the courtroom also became overcome with a mysterious force, toppling over where they sat, only to continue writhing on the floor.

The audience seemed stunned.

And Brother 12?

Well, he seemed satisfied.

It was almost as if he had intended the disturbance to happen.

Naturally, the magistrate presiding over the trial tried to restore order, but as he shouted for everyone to return to their seats, something invisible seemed to attack him.

In a heartbeat, he went from addressing the people in the room to literally growling like a dog.

With a Herculean effort, the magistrate was able to adjourn the the trial without a verdict, and Brother 12 walked away victorious.

But his enemies weren't about to let up just yet.

Just a month later, in early December, Brother 12 was forced back into court, this time to defend himself against a lawsuit by a member of his own community.

The man named James Lippincott had been a passionate follower, but had been hired by Brother 12 to help build that secret second settlement on the nearby island, and he was never paid for his work.

And Lippincott's attorney?

Thomas Moore, the same man the governors had hired in the previous trial.

And so on December 6th, Brother 12 found himself back in the courtroom, back in danger of losing everything he had built, and back in the spotlight of the press.

The most dangerous moment of the trial was when Lippincott and Morton called their star witness, one of the members of the Board of Governors, a man named Colson Turnbull.

Just minutes after he was sworn in and the questions began, though, the man began to tremble uncontrollably and then collapsed right there in the witness seat.

Chaos erupted, partly because it was disturbing to see, but also because many in the room had attended the previous trial.

Here again was proof that Brother 12 could defend himself through some supernatural power or influence over other people.

In fact, Turnbull's wife was heard shouting from her seat, urging her husband to ignore the evil man, telling him that he couldn't hurt him.

And it seems that for a time, it worked.

Order was restored and the trial moved forward.

But toward the end of the session, Thomas Morton stood up to wrap up his case against Brother 12 when he suddenly stopped.

But not because he decided to quit talking, but because it seemed as if his voice just sort of gave out.

There was this moment when Morton simply stood there with a look of panic on his face.

Clearly, he had wanted to speak, but the power to do so had been stripped away and it had left him frightened.

And the room was silent, save for the soft sound of his papers trembling in his hand.

From the outside, it certainly seemed as if Brother 12 had ways of stopping those who spoke out against him, powers that allowed him to silence, sometimes quite literally, any and all of his enemies.

And to have those powers demonstrated in public, right in front of a room full of officials and professionals, Well, it built a strong case for something supernatural, or at the very least, unexplainable.

And as a result of this second disturbance and Morton's inability to verbally tie everything together, the case against Brother 12 was tossed out.

He was escorted out of the courthouse by his driver, and the press was left to ponder what had brought it all to an end.

Later, conversations with members of the Foundation would reveal a complete lack of surprise.

Of course, he had powers over others, they said.

They had seen it all the time in their own community.

Brother 12, they said,

was too powerful to touch.

Part of being human is believing that there's something more.

We see that in our inventiveness, the way some people can look at a problem and envision a better tool or device.

We see it in our faith and our ability to find hope in the darkest of times.

And we see it in people like Brother 12, who seem to offer proof that there's something more to this world than we can see with our eyes.

In one sense, though, he and his Aquarian Foundation were just one more expression of a long trend that filled the two centuries that preceded them.

spiritualism and mysticism in search of something more.

And Edward Arthur Wilson seemed like a man uniquely wired to give people what they wanted.

There were many observers, both during his time and in the decades that followed, who believed he was gifted in some supernatural way.

Some think he was possessed by a demon.

Others believe he was insane.

There are even some who think his arrival on Vancouver Island exposed him to some dark power, and it took control like a puppet master.

Life after the trials was different in a lot of ways.

Yes, a good number of his followers stuck around, but a lot of them left too.

His mistress, Myrtle Baumgartner, suffered two miscarriages before leaving her island hideaway, and Brother 12 replaced her with another, known only as Madame Z.

And yes, he replaced her because that's how the man treated everyone around him, like tools without personality or value.

Group members were there to work and donate their resources.

And that was it.

And that only got worse over time, with the settlement becoming more of a forced labor camp.

In 1932, four years after his victory in court, a group of former disciples all worked together to sue him for the money he took from them, including Mary Connolly, the wealthy elderly woman from North Carolina.

But rather than stick around to defend himself one more time, Brother 12 and Madam Z, which I realize sounds like some badly written comic book duo, dug up a bunch of their gold, boarded his ship, and sailed off into the unknown.

The next time we hear about Brother 12, he was sick in a hospital bed in Switzerland, where he is said to have died on November 7th of 1934.

The trouble is, the physician who certified his death was a disciple of his, which clearly invites a lot of questions.

One last story.

In 1936, two years after Brother 12's supposed death, his former attorney received a phone call.

According to author and historian John Oliphant, that call was overheard by the attorney's son and eventually led to a family trip to San Francisco.

Once in the city, this attorney withdrew a huge amount of cash from the bank and then visited a small ship at the docks.

When the attorney returned from the ship, the briefcase of cash was gone.

Later, the man sat his son down and showed him an object that he said related to the mysterious phone call and the cash he had handed over.

It was the corporate seal of the Aquarian Foundation.

Cult activity hasn't been a rare or unique occurrence throughout history, but certain groups managed to stand out above the rest.

I hope our tour today through the story of Brother 12 and his special community made that clear.

But even in turn of the century American history, his story isn't alone.

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They were the most unlikely duo.

Ruth and her mother May had been working together since the early 1920s to attract followers to their Southern California gatherings, and it had been working like a charm.

Ruth was just 24 and her mother May was 60.

They weren't powerful men, they didn't come from a wealthy family, and they had no political connections, but they had a compelling story and an attractive promise, and that's what drew the people in.

It was a group based loosely on the Christian faith.

There was the typical obsession with the return of Jesus, predicting its date and engaging in rituals meant to speed that event up a bit.

But at the foundation of it all was an outlandish claim that surprisingly, many people believed.

You see, Ruth and May claimed that they had been in contact with two archangels, Gabriel and Michael, to be exact, and through their conversations with these angelic beings, they had learned powerful secrets, secrets that they promised to share with their followers as time went by.

But like all things, access to this sort of power came at a cost.

They called their little group the Divine Order of the Royal Arms of the Great 11, which is admittedly quite the mouthful.

In the early days, it was simply a way to convince investors to hand over money, but in the process, it also attracted devoted followers.

It didn't take long before they built a series of cabins out in the hills north of Malibu and Simi Valley, land donated by an investor, of course.

Actually, this investor would turn out to be rather, well, invested.

His name was Clifford Dabney, and he was a rich oil tycoon with a hunger for success.

So when Ruth and her mother May approached him with an offer, he listened to their story.

It seems that they were writing a book, the content of which was being dictated to them by those angels I mentioned earlier, and in the book they promised to reveal the location of gold and oil deposits.

Naturally, Dabney wanted in.

In exchange for $40,000, they agreed to keep the book private for three years to allow him enough time to pursue those deposits without competition.

But of course, writing that book would take time, and there were other activities to keep them all busy while they waited.

What sort of things did the Divine Order of the Royal Arms of the Great Eleven get up to?

Well, they apparently had a secret temple built in their community in the hills, where an 800-pound gilded wooden throne stood watch over their gatherings.

It was flanked by a gilded lion's head on a pole known as the Light of God, which they revered as a sacred object.

And then there were the sacrifices.

It seems that the community kept a number of mules on hand and occasionally gathered in an outdoor location where a number of small hills met at the base, forming a natural theater-like space.

There, Ruth and the other priestesses would arrive wearing purple robes, leading one of the mules to the center of the audience, and then sacrifice it for all to see.

And all of this went on for years.

For Ruth and May, it was the ride of their lives.

They had money, power, and connections in a world where women typically lacked all three.

But they were also attracting the attention of the world around them, who found their beliefs and rituals to be more than a little unusual.

And then, of course, there were the investors.

By 1929, Clifford Dabney had waited long enough.

He had given May and her daughter a lot of money, and they had failed to hold up their end of the bargain.

So he contacted the authorities, told them about her fraud, and watched as she was arrested and brought to trial.

But that's not all that happened.

First, the body of one of her cult members, a 16-year-old girl, was found hidden away beneath the floorboards of her adoptive parents' house.

She had died of natural causes and had been preserved in the belief that she would rise from the grave one day to rejoin them.

But while the authorities ruled out foul play, I think you can guess how the surrounding communities viewed that sort of discovery.

Another member of the group, 30-year-old Florence Turner, also died.

and the circumstances of her death were much more questionable.

It seems that she had been suffering from what the newspapers at the the time referred to as a blood malady, and in an effort to treat her, she had agreed to lay inside a brick oven to have her illness baked out of her.

In the end, none of the deaths could be pinned on May or her daughter Ruth, but along with Dabney, a number of other group members also defected and filed suit, resulting in a long and drawn-out legal battle.

When it was over, May was found guilty of multiple counts of grand theft and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

A year later, she managed to successfully appeal her conviction and get released.

When she left San Quentin, she rejoined her daughter and their remaining followers, and then they all packed up and headed farther north to the hills around Lake Tahoe.

And they were never heard from again.

This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research by Sam Alberty and music by Chad Lawson.

From time to time, my researchers will find a book that provides a deep well for a particular topic, and while an episode like this only tries to scratch the surface, curious listeners might want to learn a bit more.

To that end, I want to point you in the direction of Brother 12 by John Oliphant.

Every detail that I've skipped over today and all the deep intricacies of the story are expertly covered in this very readable book, so I highly recommend it if you want to learn more.

I've put a link to it in the episode notes and on the episode page on the lore website, but you can also purchase it directly from the author on his website at brother-x-i-i.com.

Lore is much more than just a podcast.

There's a book series available in bookstores and online and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video.

Check them both out if you want a bit more lore in your life.

I also make and executive produce a whole bunch of other podcasts, all of which I think you'd enjoy.

My production company, Grim and Mild, specializes in shows that sit at the intersection of the dark and the historical.

You can learn more about all of these shows and everything else going on over in one central place, grimandmild.com.

And you can also follow this show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Just search for lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button.

And when you do, say hi.

I like it when people say hi.

And as always,

thanks for listening.

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