Cult of the Great Eleven

Written by Samuel Fort

Narrated by Ben Granger

Cult of the Great Eleven is a true account of one of the twentieth century’s weirdest and most mysterious cults. Human and animal sacrifices, vanishings, the preserved corpse of a teenage cult princess, angelic encounters, a woman cooked in an oven, a mother chained to her bed for two months, resurrection experiments, refrigeration warehouses for the dead, abductions, nocturnal rituals, orgies, a breathing universe, an esoteric tome known as The Great Sixth Seal, hints of Hecate worship, and a post-apocalyptic world ruled by eleven queens from a hill in Hollywood…

The United States witnessed an explosion of cult activity in the 1920s that today is almost inconceivable. California, in particular, was a haven for an estimated 200,000 cultists, with over 400 active cults in southern California alone. These ranged from “love cults” that conducted ritual orgies to “devil worshipping” cults that branded their members with hot irons and beheaded their enemies. 

Among all these, the Simi Valley's “Divine Order of the Royal Arms of the Great Eleven” was considered by many to be the most extraordinary. A death cult, the Great Eleven was founded by May Otis Blackburn, Portland, Oregon’s unheralded filmmaking pioneer, and Ruth Wieland, her luscious femme fatale daughter. The cult was so bizarre that accounts of its activities “elicited expressions of amazement” from justices on the California Supreme Court in 1931, who admitted, “they have never heard anything so weird.” 

Not until the nephew of oil magnate J.B. Dabney admitted he had been a member of the cult would the world at large learn of the existence the “divine order.” Not until detectives opened a trap door in the floor of a cult couple’s Venice cottage would the world be exposed to its darkest secrets.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nisirtu Publishing
• Release date: Jul 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781987168686

Samuel Fort

I've spent the last three decades as a military cryptographer and intelligence analyst, private investigator, researcher, and overseas operations manager in the Middle East, Southwest Asia, and the Far East. But what I really enjoy is writing. I write for fun, and usually give my books away (as I do here), but I depend on customer feedback and reviews to keep me motivated.

Reviews for Cult of the Great Eleven

[Anna Puchar-Krause · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed this book. I recommend all history in true crime readers. As for audible readrs, the narrator isn't bad.

[James van Scoyoc · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It's a great true crime tale especially for those interested in the life and times of Los Angeles a century ago.

But could Ben Granger not have taken a little more time learning how unfamiliar words are pronounced? I mean being apparently a native speaker of English and all.

Pronunciations like 'STEN-o-GRAPH-er', 'sa-LOHM' (for Salome, the dancer in the Bible story), and 'kyronics' (cryonics) are not only laughable but distracting as well.