Yes, ‘Haunted’s’ “Cult of Torture” Episode Is About a Real Evangelical Doomsday Cult

When it comes to Netflix’s definitely horror/maybe docu-series Haunted, everyone wants to know the answer to one question: is Haunted real or fake? After all, the series begins every episode with text claiming that the stories are true, but whether or not they actually are tends to depend on how you define “true.” Since the existence of ghosts and demons and aliens is highly contested and nowhere in the realm of accepted, mainstream, scientific truth, there’s a whole lotta room for skepticism when it comes to tales about possessions and vengeful spirits. But Haunted isn’t there to prove the existence of well ghosts or shape-shifting demons. It’s there to give people, purportedly not actors, a chance to tell stories about what they believe happened to them (or, as in way too many of the cases, is still happening to them).

Where Haunted gets into murky territory is when it tells stories that aren’t driven by supernatural means. The “Slaughterhouse” episode in Season 1 stirred up a lot of controversy because viewers were shocked that the show identified a supposedly real serial killer who murdered dozens of people. Similarly, Haunted Season 2’s “Cult of Torture” episode deals with a very real horror, one that also affected dozens (if not hundreds, if not thousands) of people beyond the main subject. But whereas Google sleuths can’t find any evidence that the events in “The Slaughterhouse” ever took place, “Cult of Torture” is the first episode of Haunted that you can prove without a doubt is based on a very real, very upsetting story.

Is the “Cult of Torture” episode real?

Yes. To summarize–and this description comes with a massive trigger warning for abuse and torture–trauma survivor James Swift tells his story of what it was like growing up in a Christianity-based doomsday cult in Louisiana. His mother joined the church, then known as the Worldwide Church of God, when he was very young. The Worldwide Church of God was founded by Herbert W. Armstrong, a televangelist and the host of a program called The World Tomorrow.

By the time Swift was a teenager, he underwent horrifying torture in order to rid his body of the “gay demon” that was “possessing him.” Church officials pegged Swift as gay before he even knew what gay meant, all because of his effeminate mannerisms, and subjected him to long stretches of total isolation without food. His mother even sexually assaulted Swift in an attempt to make him react to a woman’s touch, which was her way of performing an “exorcism.” When Swift was 15, he was sent to the New Bethany Home for Boys in Arcadia, Louisiana, where he was hosed, kept in a cage, subjected to electroshock conversion therapy, and anally raped. He was kept there for 17 weeks and, after being returned to his abusive home, he and his brother were taken in by his aunt. The church was disbanded, Armstrong was outted as a pedophile who molested his daughter, and the conversion camp was raided and shut down.

That’s the story told in the episode. Here are the facts, and they’re right in line with Swift’s story.

What was the Worldwide Church of God? Who was Herbert W. Armstrong?

Herbert W. Armstrong was born into a Quaker family in Iowa in 1892 and spent the first 30 years of his life working in print advertising. It wasn’t until he and his wife moved to Oregon that they got involved in the Church of God (Seventh Day) movement, and he was ordained as a minister in 1931. In 1934, Armstrong became one of the first broadcast evangelists when he started a radio program. He was soon kicked out of the Church of God (Seventh Day) as his beliefs grew more radical. He preached nothing but doomsday prophecies, proclaiming Hitler and Mussolini were the literal Beast and False Prophet of the Book of Revelations. He was a believer in British Israelism, the belief that the people of Britain and America are descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. He believed himself to be a literal modern-day Apostle and that he himself was a harbinger of Jesus’ rapidly-approaching return.

Armstrong relocated from Oregon to Pasadena, California in 1946 to expand his reach. He even founded a college Ambassador College, in 1947 (its many campuses were all shut down by 1997). His church was reborn as the Worldwide Church of God in 1968 and his ministry grew rapidly in the ’70s thanks to his television program, The World Tomorrow. It’s estimated that through The World Tomorrow, he reached 20 million people across 165 stations (including James Swift’s mother).

What were the Worldwide Church of God’s beliefs? What did Herbert W. Armstrong preach?

Armstrong continued to preach his doomsday message throughout the ’70s, although he preferred to remain vague about the specifics of when the world would end. It was all contingent on World War II when he began his ministry in the 1940s, but that sermon morphed into one about a fast-approaching, never-arriving World War III. He wrote a book about the hellscape that would be 1975, and then 1975 came and went.

Members of the Worldwide Church of God were not allowed to celebrate any holidays or birthdays, as they were all part of a pagan tradition. They weren’t allowed to see doctors for anything other than broken bones. Armstrong demanded that all men have no piercings and short hair, and that all women have long hair and be free of makeup. Smoking was prohibited, as was masturbation and loud clothing. Homosexuality, interracial marriage, and adultery were definitely sins, as was divorce. Armstrong was so against divorce and remarriage that if a member of his congregation was remarried, he’d pressure them to get divorced under the belief that remarriage meant you were being unfaithful to your first spouse.

It should surprise no one that Armstrong, whose first wife died in 1967, got remarried to a woman 47 years younger than him in 1977 and then divorced her in 1984. It was during those divorce proceedings that his much younger wife revealed what she knew about Armstrong’s disgusting sexual perversion.

Did Herbert W. Armstrong molest his daughter?

Yes, according to both his second wife Ramona Martin and his son Garner Ted Armstrong. Armstrong’s lawyers were successful in limiting what Martin could say about her ex-husband’s “prior incestuous conduct with his daughter for many years.” It’s also been said that Armstrong’s son Garner Ted threatened to expose his father’s dark secret after their relationship went south.

Was the New Bethany Home for Boys real?

Yes. It was a companion torture compound to the New Bethany Home for Girls, and stories from these horrific camps have been covered in Mother Jones and The Daily Beast.

The “homes” were all part of the Independent Fundamental Baptist movement (itself at the center of numerous abuse controversies), and the New Bethany compounds were founded in 1971 by Mack Ford. Ford opened many of these “schools,” which stayed in the news for decades with repeated news about escaped “students,” stories of rampant abuse, and numerous allegations of sexual abuse against the staff, including Ford. Ford died in 2015 at the age of 82.

Did the Worldwide Church of God disband?

Technically yes, but actually no. Herbert W. Armstrong died in 1986 after naming a successor as the head of the church. But under Joseph W. Tkach’s leadership, the Worldwide Church of God quickly began to distance itself from all of Armstrong’s teaching as it tried to assimilate into the mainstream evangelical movement. Armstrong’s writings were disavowed and Armstrong himself was declared a false prophet and heretic. Church members were not a fan of this and 80% of the congregation left the church in the 1990s. The World Tomorrow TV program ended in 1994 but, FUN FACT, old episodes were added to the Library of Congress archives by Senator and 1996 Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole.

After all this upheaval, the Worldwide Church of God renamed itself Grace Communion International in 2009. It’s now headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina and boasts 50,000 members across 900 congregations.

Armstrong’s teaching, known as Armstrongism, still lives on through a number of splinter religions that were formed in the ’90s as Worldwide Church of God crumbled. They’re now known as the Global or Living or United or Restored Church of God.

Where is James Swift today?

James Swift is now an author, who writes under the pen name of his drag moniker Ms. Fifi Frost (follow them on Facebook and Twitter). The story featured on Haunted was previously told in Swift’s memoir Rusted Rhinestones, and Swift spoke about it in a 2016 interview with the Shreveport Times.

Stream Haunted "Cult of Torture" on Netflix