"Decades before Charles Manson's followers spread terror in Los Angeles and Jim Jones orchestrated mass suicide in Guyana, a bearded mystic named Thomas Lake Harris preached salvation in the hills above Santa Rosa. He claimed to speak with spirits, rewrote the Bible and battled demons in trances. His followers gave him their money - sometimes a great deal more. What began as a utopian experiment called Fountaingrove ended in scandal and headlines about "spiritual harems" and mind control."
"Harris said he experienced an "overflowing" love of Christ at 15, when he attended a revival meeting. He began his public life as a Unitarian minister in New York around 1845. But his path soon veered into the realm of spiritualism. Claiming the ability to serve as a medium, he drew inspiration from the teachings of the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, whose writings sparked a lifelong fascination with the spirit world."
Thomas Lake Harris migrated from England to the United States as a child and transitioned from Unitarian ministry into spiritualism, claiming visions, trances, and mediumship. He founded the Brotherhood of the New Life in Britain and later established Fountaingrove near Santa Rosa as a utopian community centered on spiritual purity and manual labor. Devotees surrendered significant funds and accepted Harris's reinterpretations of scripture and spirit-world communications. The community unraveled amid allegations of sexual impropriety, "spiritual harems," financial exploitation, and mind control, producing a scandal that anticipated later American cult panics and enduring questions about faith, power, and desire.
Read at The Mercury News
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