Transcript
Brian (0:00)
In this episode of Haunted Cosmos, we learn that no dog is safe from the atf. And I learn that I have an astonishing amount in common with known cult leader David Koresh. This episode is brought to you by Zilli Creative Works, bringing you face to face family fun that is fierce, fast, and affordable.
Ben (0:23)
The world is not just stuff.
Brian (0:30)
Minus 111.9 the widely publicized mystery of.
Ben (0:43)
The flying saucers may soon be solved.
Brian (0:58)
By the time we're done telling you the sad tale at the heart of today's episode of Haunted Cosmos, you'll likely stand back from the cast of characters and ask, can all of them lose? And in a way, that is exactly what happened just outside the city limits of Waco, Texas. The year was 1987. It was a black night in East Texas. The wind whipped like a slave driver's lash between the gray headstones that passed beneath George Rawden's plodding feet. In his right hand he held a shovel, in his left, a gas lantern. He wasn't looking for just any grave. It had to be old enough not to upset his followers too deeply, but recent enough to still mean something to them. After more than an hour of reading epitaphs and narrowing down his options, he found one that seemed to fit. He set the lantern on a nearby marker and began to dig. The work was slow, grueling. Every time he wiped his brow with a dirt streaked sleeve, a new smear formed, aging him by what seemed like decades. By the end, his shirt clung to his body and soaked through. His pants were heavy with the thick, wet air. When the hole was finally finished, he collapsed onto its rim, breathless. The lantern's glow was now blocked by the edge of the pit, cloaking the grave's contents in a velvety darkness. After catching his breath, Radh and remained there, almost immobile with exhaustion. The wind still hadn't let up. It began to push his damp shirt against his freshly dried skin, sending a chill through his body. He took it as his cue to get back to work. After all, he wasn't done. Not yet. He climbed out of the hole, grabbed the lantern and knelt again. Now the light showed everything. The rotting wood, the hand from the old, dried out corpse fallen out of a hole in the coffin. Even in death, this nobody, for that was how Rodin thought of him, had been a victim of rats. Rahden jumped down into the grave and stood at the coffin's head, facing the corpse full length. He squatted and shuffled his hands beneath either side of the box till he had a firm grip Then he pulled up, hard and fast. In a second, between the coffin's sharp rise and its inevitable drop, he twisted his hands and began to push. A moment later, the wooden container and its macabre content tents stood upright at the far end of its own grave. Rahden gave it one final shove from the bottom and stepped back with an exhausted sigh as it fell onto the grass above. Back from Hades came this body, and Radhen intended to bring something else back, too. Early the next morning, Radden hadn't slept, of course. He faxed his foe, a man named Vernon Howell. In the fax was a challenge quote, raise someone from the dead and I will give all the power to you. I have exhumed one of my own, one who used to be your own, too. Come back home and prove your worth if you are such a prophet. Whoever can bring his soul back from the dead and give him life again will be the leader. It was the final straw for Vernon in a long string of bitter disputes between the two men. They had once been friends, living together on the same compound, but that was a nearly forgotten memory now. After the death of his mother, the previous leader, George Radden, became increasingly erratic, paranoid, threatened by anyone he believed might outshine him. The violence soon followed. Outbursts of rage, physical attacks on his own Seventh Day Adventist followers. Much of his insecurity focused on Vernon. Vernon was charismatic, sharp witted and trusted. He had massive portions of the Bible memorized cold. He spoke like a prophet, and unlike Radhen, he did so with authority. Naturally, he began to act like one, too. Now this chafed Radhen to the breaking point. Out of spite and to the unease of everyone, Radden excommunicated Vernon and his followers. After that, Vernon and his people settled in a smaller compound in Palestine, Texas. They moved on, preaching to new converts and leaving Radhen behind, at least in principle. But in practice, Vernon's influence lingered. Radhen couldn't just ignore it. Hence the hasty exhumation. Hence the furious invitation to a duel of necromancy, an invitation Vernon rejected outright. But he didn't stop there. He also contacted Texas authorities accusing Radhen of defiling a corpse, a crime. Authorities, however, did nothing. Something snapped in Vernon. Maybe it was pride, an opportunity to seize power in light of Rawdon's blunder. Maybe it was anger. Maybe it was something darker. Whatever the reason, Vernon shed his peaceful demeanor. He took up a new strategy, one that would mark him for the rest of his life. On November 3, 1987, Vernon Howell mounted a siege against George Radden's compound with seven armed followers. And he marched up to the Mount Carmel cemetery aiming to get photographic evidence of the exhumation that had so enraged him. It didn't go well. Tensions flared immediately and soon shots were fired. For hours the eight men from Palestine, Vernon at their head, pinned down Radden and his supporters with fire. The return fire came to line them. When it ended, six of Rahddin's followers were wounded. Radden himself was shot in the leg and and left hiding behind an oak tree. When the authorities arrived, Vernon and his seven men were arrested and charged with attempted murder. During the trial, six were acquitted, one was found guilty. And in Vernon's case, the jury deadlocked until the judge dropped the charges entirely. No photos were ever produced. Radden was never charged for the exhumation. On paper, the whole effort was a failure. But only on paper. Those still living at Mount Carmel, those still loyal to Vernon, saw things differently. They saw honor in his attempt. They saw a hero returning for a righteous cause. A man standing for truth even at the risk of his own life. They saw in him a David figure standing against the tyranny of Radden, their Saul. Like the biblical Saul, Radden's grip on power unraveled. His paranoia spiraled. His fuse disappeared. In 1989 he murdered a man with an axe. Radhen believed the man was a federal agent sent to assassinate him. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity and ultimately committed to a mental institution where he lived out the rest of his miserable days. Into the power vacuum stepped Vernon. He returned to Mount Carmel, welcomed now as both prophet and king. And he took up a new name. David. Maybe you've heard the rest. David Koresh and that little Seventh Day Adventist cult he lad they had a name too. They were called the Branch Davidians. Now David Koresh was born Vernon Wayne Howell on August 17, 1950 in Houston, Texas. He was the illegitimate child of an illicit relationship between a 20 year old man and a 14 year old girl. Before the birth, his father disappeared, never to return. The infant Vernon was left in the trembling arms of his teenage mother, Bonnie Sue Clark, who had no idea what to do. Bonnie soon rushed into a hasty marriage with a man named Joe Golden. Within a year, Joe revealed himself to be a serial abuser. Bonnie divorced him and fled into the arms of her mother, A. Erlene Clark. Erlein welcomed the boy and raised him while Bonnie tried to find her footing in the world. And so for the first four years of his life, the would be David Koresh lived with his maternal grandmother. In those years, he learned to walk and talk, though he only ever spoke with a stutter. And he developed a fascination with fishing. He didn't do much of it, but he obsessed about it. He studied it. Pictures, stories, men by the pond. He. He'd watch them for hours. But for all the childhood whimsy that may appear in hindsight, Koresh's early life was marked by darkness. Beyond the chaos of his parentage, the toddler lived in constant poverty. Erlein gave him love, but she struggled to provide. They moved nearly every year in search of work and housing. He felt unmoored, a fish out of water. Perhaps things would have been different with stable parents or siblings to ground him, but. But he had neither. One constant, however, was church. Erlene took him to the Southern Baptist Church as often as she could. To her joy, he loved it. Even as a child, the idea of divine revelation seemed to fascinate him. Erlene hoped this early spark might redeem his troubled beginnings. When Vernon turned 5, Bonnie remarried. Her new husband was a merchant marine named Roy Haldeman. Feeling stable for the first time, she reclaimed her son. But Vernon didn't know Bonnie was his birth mother. He'd believed Erlein was. The revelation devastated him. He had to say goodbye to the only real family he'd known and accept a new life with a stranger who called herself his mother. The Haldemans lived in Richardson, Texas. Despite his speech issues, school difficulties, dyslexia, and frequent bullying, Vernon gradually adjusted. He had half siblings he got along with relatively well. He finally got to fish, and so he fished constantly. He still loved the church and memorized scripture obsessively. When he recited verses, strangely, his stutter vanished, so he committed entire passages to memory. His family, delighted with this, encouraged it. But soon they began to worry. As Vernon entered adolescence, his reverence for the Bible morphed into an almost obsession. He immersed himself in Old Testament prophecy, especially the apocalyptic books Isaiah, Daniel, and Revelation. He'd read and re read them deep into the night, scorning distractions that might make up a healthy teen's life. Then, one spring morning, he told his mother that he'd received a divine vision the night before. He didn't say what it was, but its impact was visible. He stood taller. He spoke with conviction, and he carried an air of authority and certainty that he hadn't had before. Soon after, he dropped out of school during his junior year and bounced from job to job, never staying long. He either quit or was fired from each one of them. Still, his spiritual fervor only grew and grew. His zeal outpaced the teachings of any church he attended. He increasingly developed an air of almost mystic spirituality that set off alarm bells in the actual leaders of the church that he attended. Their increasing wariness, sometimes subtle, sometimes overt, felt like pure rejection. To Vernon, this pastoral rejection reopened old wounds in Vernon. It echoed the abandonment and isolation of his early years. The cycle turned vicious, but what came next was worse. At 19, Vernon approached the pastor of his baptist church after service one Sunday. With visible passion, he described a vision God had given him. He was, he said, to marry the pastor's daughter. She was only 16. The pastor naturally thought very little of this vision and thought even less of the boy bringing it to him. He forbade Koresh from ever approaching his daughter and encouraged him to stop attending the church if he would be unable to control himself in response. Of course, Kreste Koresh seduced the girl and impregnated her. After the initial charm wore off, the now disillusioned girl wanted nothing to do with him. She left town and took their child with her. Vernon never even met his first child. A year later, Vernon declared himself a born again Christian and joined the southern baptist denomination officially. But almost immediately, he shifted again, this time to the more fringe seventh day Adventist church. The transition wasn't entirely his idea. His mother was a devout adventist and now had spiritual influence over him. Vernon took to the new church eagerly and quickly became a familiar face in the congregation. It was there again that he fell into yet another illicit relationship with a pastor's daughter. This time, Vernon was 20 and she was only 15. According to Koresh, he had been praying when he opened his eyes and found his bible open to Isaiah 34:16. None shall be without her mate. He took it as a direct revelation to himself, confirming his desire for the girl. He did what he'd done before. He approached the pastor and said that God wanted him to marry his daughter. Again, he was refused. Again, he was expelled in disgrace. This time, he left more than a church. He left for waco, Texas as well. There, Vernon Howell found his people. He fell in with a seventh day Adventist splinter sect known as the branch Davidians. But before we follow him to Waco, before we trace the next step of Vernon Howell's transformation into David Koresh, we have to ask a deeper who were the branch Davidians really? For that, we have to wind the clock back all the way to the autumn of 1840. In 1844, a Baptist minister named William Miller stood before the solemn faces of his congregation. A horde of people looked up at him, people who had, until that very moment, looked to him for spiritual guidance. Through their growing uncertainty, for years leading up to this day, October 22nd, to be exact, Miller had spearheaded a zealous Christian movement, firmly proclaiming that Christ would return by day's end on October 22 to usher in the millennial reign. But as the sun dipped below the horizon, as the sun faded from its pale light to blue and then to black, silence descended. Silence and sorrow, and not a small amount of embarrassment mixed in as well. Christ had not returned. From that day forward, many left Miller's circle, but some inexplicably stayed. Until his death in 1849, William Miller remained steadfast. The return of the only begotten was imminent. His remaining followers agreed. Miller's legacy eventually evolved into the Seventh Day Adventist Church, a denomination with a complex and fascinating history that, while important, lies mostly outside of this tale. Suffice it to say, the Millerite foundation of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, with its apocalyptic doomsday DNA, makes the later rise of sects and cults unsurprising. Enter Victor Hoteff. In 1929, Hoteff, a teacher at a Seventh Day Adventist school, published a series of pastoral essays under the title the Shepherd's Rod. It was a firebrand document, part theology, part doomsday call, demanding radical reform within the Seventh Day Adventist Church in light of God's impending. One of the book's central claims was that the 144,000 saints mentioned in the Book of Revelation Referred literally to 144,000 Seventh Day Adventist members who would be spared from God's coming wrath, wrath that would destroy the rest of the denomination, which Houtev likened to Babylon. The church rejected the book outright, of course, and when Hutf refused to recant his teachings, they excommunicated him. A reasonable move by any standard, to be fair. But Hutev was undeterred. In fact, he expected the rejection. It confirmed everything he already thought. After all, Babylon always rejects the call of the prophet. So he wasted no time gathering a small flock of believers and formally broke away from the Seventh Day Adventist Church. His group called themselves the Davidians, a nod to the Davidic line of the Messiah. Houtef and his group settled in Waco, Texas, living an austere life on the open plains. There they remain until Houteff's death in 1955. At that point, the leadership passed to his widow, Florence Houteff. Florence declared herself a prophetess, of course. She claimed the end of the world would arrive in 1959, and that all 144,000 saints had to gather at their Waco compound, which Victor had named Mount Carmel. Predictably, the prophecy failed. Of course, you're here in the year of our Lord 2025, listening to this podcast. So of course it failed. 1959 came and went unevent, a familiar pattern. Florence Hutef became William Miller, reincarnate. After that, Florence was denounced as a false prophet, and yet another leader rose to guide yet another iteration of the cult. Benjamin Radden, husband of Lois Radden and father of George Radden, the man with whom this episode began. Benjamin renamed the group the Branch Davidians, and thus the infamous cult took its final name. In 1978, Benjamin Rodden died. Leadership passed to his wife, Lois, who assumed the role of prophet. Then, in 1981, a young man named Vernon Howell, soon to be David Koresh, arrived at Mount Carmel. He was welcomed warmly, even after it became clear that Vernon had brought with him not just personal baggage, but prophetic ambition. The welcome remained. Only weeks after joining the Branch Davidians, Vernon claimed to have received a special revelation. He was to father a promised seed, a final prophet who would usher in a new golden age. And this child, he said, was to be conceived with none other than Lois Rawdon, the current leader of the group. Now, she was in her late 60s. Vernon was in his early 20s. Despite, or perhaps because of this jarring age gap, Lois accepted the prophecy without protest. She believed him, or claimed to. Her belief legitimized him. And just like that, one startling act of sexual deviance became a divine calling. Koresh was no longer just a young zealot. He was now a mouthpiece of God. The chosen child, of course, never came. But it didn't matter. Koresh had Lois and the people, numbed by years of shifting doctrine and escalating prophetic claims, simply floated along the river of madness. Eventually, Lois Radden died. A power struggle erupted between her son George Rawden and Koresh. That was the conflict that began this episode. So it was that the Branch Davidians, now under the spell of the occultic Koresh, took their final form in the rolling hills of Waco, Texas. And from that quiet compound, they would go on to leave a permanent mark on American history. A mark that still scars the face of the nation to this very day. Escape Master is a fast paced fantasy card game that your family game night needs. Think of speed or Dutch blitz. Mixed with deep fantasy lore, battle strategies and character building made by a Christian husband and wife duo with the goal to bring your Family together. It's portable for on the go play family friendly and wildly fun. Order now at Zilly Creative Works.com and get 10% off with code Z Cosmos. All lowercase. That's ZillyCreative Works.com with code Z Cosmos. The nighttime is crawling with dangerous creatures. Bigfoot, sleep paralysis demons, the Mothman. Now imagine what would make them even more terrifying. That's right.