Episode 425: Unarius Academy of Science: Bad Cult, Awesome Films
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On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we talk about one of the craziest little cults you’ve never heard of, The Unarius Academy of Science. It was started in 1954 by Ernest and Ruth Norman, and they got fringe-famous for a series of over 100 odd books that detailed there cosmology and an alternate history of humanity. And then there were the videos. They made the most fantastically awesome awful films for public access television in the 1980s that are as bad as any Troma film and totally worth a watch. (Seriously. Google them or check the links below and go watch some!)
Like most cults, they started with a conman who could twist people into believing odd things. Ernest Norman met his soon-to-be wife while he was a conman taking money from grieving war widows during World War II. He’d claim to put them in touch with the spirits of their dead GI husbands and take their cash in the process. He met Ruth, and within weeks they were married, and she was spending her dead husband’s considerable restaurant fortune on Ernest and the birth of the Unarian ideas.
So what are their ideas? Like Heaven’s Gate, they believed that UFO space brothers would come by and rescue humanity, but they weren’t all dark and twisted about it, telling people to kill themselves. Actually, unlike most cults, they didn’t really take people’s money or have strange sex or anything especially cult like. (We think it’s because Ernest died early on, and his wife ran the joint instead, obsessing over making films and getting pictures of herself in utterly crazy outfits…)
The Unarius group believes in reincarnation and that their two leaders were major people in human history like Confucius, Ben Franklin, Julius Caesar, and even Tesla. They were also connected to archangels from other planets and would one day usher in 33 space ships that would form a city ship in the skies above El Cajon, California. Like you do…
So what was in these amazing videos they filmed? What did their current leader do to purge himself of sin? What happened when they let 33 doves free from a tin UFO in the high California summer heat? How much money are they worth, and how much property did Ruth Norman buy for a UFO landing strip before she died? Listen, laugh, learn.
Visit Our Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=n6dpt07UW9o
Unarian Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/unarius33/featured
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unarius_Academy_of_Science
https://dangerousminds.net/comments/the_unarius_academy_of_science_americas_zaniest_ufo_cult
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Unarius_Academy_of_Science
https://io9.gizmodo.com/meet-the-unarians-the-most-awesomely-bad-ufo-cult-ever-5675108
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/heard-apocalypse.html
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