You're listening to American Shadows, a production of I Heart Radio and Greyman miles from Aaron Minkey. He was reluctant to share his secret. The call, though, was too strong in the secret to dangerous the world, you see, was coming to an end and everyone needed to prepare. A farmer by trade, William Miller, had once been a captain in the War of 1812, had seen a lot during his military service, and he attended church well, religiously.

In 1816, though, he no longer believed in Diesem, the idea that there is a supreme being whose hands off a certain the real truth was hidden in the scriptures he searched until he found it in Banyule 814, which read unto two thousand three hundred days. Then shall the sanctuary be cleansed? To Miller, the message was perfectly clear rapture by the hand of God excited, Miller concluded that doomsday would occur two thousand three hundred days after a revelation on creation from the Prophet James Usher.

With time running out, he told neighbors and friends he talked about his discoveries at church, too, and before long, locals began to believe him. Although he was never ordained, he penned a license to preach and took his sermons on the road. He published books and produced pamphlets in just six months. His message. Are you ready to meet your maker? Gain followers across the country? Of course, not everyone believed him. Angry mobs pelted him with eggs and rotten food, but their attempts to break up his sermons only made him more popular after 300 lecture's followers of what had become known as the Millerick movement exceeded 50000.

And with his shouts that the world would soon end, millions more were curious, if nothing else. Jesus would come for them, he promised he would arrive high on a mountaintop sometime between March 21st of 1843 and March 21st of 1844. When that didn't happen, Miller admitted he may have been wrong and adjusted the date to April 18th of 1844, and when that date came and went, he became certain that the end of the world would happen on October 22nd of that year.

Despite his being wrong multiple times, his followers doubled when they met for services, their enthusiasm was equal to any big tent revival. Miller's popularity soared. A one man, a dairy farmer who believed in Miller gave away all of his cows.

The reason there wouldn't be anyone at the farm to care for them once he had gone up, ascended, that is, and he wasn't the only one giving away their earthly belongings. Believers sold their land but gave away their jewelry and animals. They even busted up their furniture. They have no use for sofas and beds where they were going. Women cut off their hair and ripped the ruffles from their dresses, wanting to be properly attired for heaven. They began to wear long, flowing white garments.

In the late spring of 1844, a meteor flew across the sky at noon and the cosmic event was all the proof the millwrights needed. The end was near. On October 21st, Follower's put on their Ascencion robes and believing that Christ had chosen Mount Wachusett, climbed to the top and waited. Others who were physically unable to climb that far felt that apple trees were the next best bet. An entire family had perched themselves in the tops of trees in a local orchard.

And when a pair of travelers passed by a man in the tree asked if they were aware that the world would end by daybreak. One, a reverend said that the matter didn't affect him as he lived in Boston. The second author, Ralph Waldo Emerson, told him, The world doesn't affect me. I can get along without it. As the sun set, the millwrights waited, eager to meet their maker by sunrise, though, it became clear he wasn't coming.

The millwrights had just suffered the great disappointment. And now that the world wasn't ending, they began to suffer Great Depression that given away everything. And many were now homeless and broke newspapers printed their story, or at least some version of it. Many millwrights claim that reporters made up the part about the ropes. Today, though, the story is widely accepted as fact. But what happened? How did so many people come to believe? Miller historians speculate that it might have been because powerful leaders and trusted experts hadn't told the public otherwise.

No one holding a higher authority than Miller had proved them wrong. And by the time their cognitive biases had hit a fever pitch, such evidence was dismissed as disbelief and ignorance. You'd think that afterward they'd have gone back to how things were before Miller came along, instead of recanting their belief, though, they came to what they felt was a broader understanding. They'd just interpreted the signs wrong. The world itself hadn't ended because Christ had cleansed heaven, not earth.

But of course, this isn't the only example of such an event in America, moments of passionate belief that led people to do things most would never consider. Time may have distanced us from these movements, but their shadows are still there, painted across the pages of history. I'm Lauren Vogel, mom. Welcome to American Chateaux. The churchgoers in the town of Enfield, then still part of Massachusetts, were what their pastor called stubborn and maybe even lax in changing their less than Christian ways compared to neighboring towns and with a reputation on the line that wouldn't do.

The church invited another preacher to speak. Jonathan Edwards accepted the invitation and took the task seriously. If his speech didn't whip the pastor's flock into shape, nothing would. He stood before the congregation on July 8th of seventeen forty one and read his sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. He had already delivered the speech to his own flock not long before and to great success, his vivid descriptions of hell and the evil hit observed in the real world, coupled with scriptures showing that certain behaviors were a beeline to Satan's doorstep, had the terrified flock gasping and screaming.

There is nothing that keeps a wicked man at any one moment out of hell, Edwards railed. But the mere pleasure of God more gasps erupted from the crowd as Edwards continued his seething sermon informing them that such sinners deserved what was coming to them, that witnessing the bad events in life was just a taste of the horrors Satan had waiting for them. At any moment, he told them, God might allow Satan to seize their souls. God had given them chance after chance, and now he was furious with them.

Not only might he reign down his wrath on them, he'd let Satan have their souls to the congregation cried out for help for council. Edwards wasn't done, though not by a long shot. He continued to quote scripture and blend it with story after story at a fierce and unrelenting pitch. By the end of the sermon, his shouts were barely heard over the crowd. This type of speech, now referred to as fire and brimstone, is still studied today.

But what made the speech so effective?

The trouble began between the seventeen thirties and forties. New England found itself in the middle of the Great Awakening, one of three distinct periods of widespread spiritual revivals and new denominations and religious movements. The devil's in the details, they say. And while much of Europe was facing which histeria many Americans focused on Satan, their fear of the devil was part of what made Edwards speech so powerful. Throughout history, some sects of Christianity haven't taken to the idea of letting Judgment Day just come and go.

They've tried to fight it by identifying potential antichrists at all costs. The Antichrist, to the belief goes, would cause the end of the world with catastrophes and a host of other misfortunes identify and rid the world of them and all would be, well, wicked behaviours and even thoughts were believed to cause storms, bad crops, stillborn children, mental illness, disease and any host of further wicked behaviours. In short, the devil fed off the impure acts of man, gaining more and more power until he could challenge God by bringing about doomsday, the devil could hide anywhere to a cloven hooved man animals, including black cats and perhaps especially women.

Because they were perceived as the weaker sex was believed, women were more prone to the temptations of the devil. But the deepest pits of hell, Edwards claimed, had been reserved for Native Americans. They, he claimed, were agents of the Antichrist. He wasn't alone in his backwards and bigoted thinking. In early America, some settlers believe the devil had a strong hold over the Native Americans. Their pagan beliefs and their very existence threatened the settlers concept of what Christian life should be on their newly colonized land.

Further, these settlers believed that during the colonial era, the Antichrist had control of the church and the king of England. In short, some of these Protestant Americans were certain that non Protestants, immigrants, Native Americans, alcohol and any other obstacle that didn't agree with their ideology was doing the devil's bidding. If the Native Americans wouldn't convert to their way of life and Christian beliefs, if they didn't surrender land for the betterment of mankind, they must be killed to save the world.

Inane and racist, absolutely, and it sadly made sense to them the colonists were on a new continent, then encountered people unlike them in their speech, appearance and faith with a new land and life came tremendous instability and plenty of anxiety to go with it. Humans across the millennia have looked for ways to explain things they didn't fully understand in an attempt to feel in control during times of uncertainty, fear fueled irrationality and hatred among the colonists. Therefore, it became their duty to protect the Earth at all costs until Christ's return.

They believed that they had been uniquely tasked by God to conquer the land so that evil would not prevail, and all this change brought on a lot of experimentation concerning religion. In fact, during the American Revolution, two religious revivals were also occurring. The first and second grade Awakenings churches offered hope in a world that seemed more than a little hopeless. But times were changing and religious needs with them. And along the way, there were people who capitalized on the darker side of belief.

Their message, however, wasn't one of hope. It was one of fear. Broadus Lie was just 13 when she married twenty three year old IRA Wakeman in 1800. Over the years, they had 15 children together. But IRA was not exactly the ideal father and husband. He was a big man who liked to throw his fists around, especially when drunk, which was quite often two things set IRA off the most rotas, attendance at Methodist meetings and reading the Bible.

And it was the Bible reading that brought on constant death threats. Rhoda believed her husband might kill her any day, and in 1825 he tried to go through with it. He'd lit a fire and sat her in a chair before it. He coerced her and God, swearing that the world would never be at peace as long as she were part of it. The story varies slightly here, depending on who tells it. It goes either that IRA beat her unconscious or that he stabbed her with a piece of burning firewood.

Regardless of how the assault took place, Rotha later claimed that she died. Upon her death, she claimed red eyed imps danced around her when a bright white spirit emerged. Moments later, the scattered and that spirit took her by the hand and escorted her up into the clouds. But once in heaven, she claimed she met both Christ and God, but after welcoming her as one of their own, the angels returned to Earth and then vanished. Rota took her experience as a revelation, she was one with heaven now, and if she'd survived her husband, it was God's will.

After all, her husband was an agent of the devil put on earth to kill her, and he tried to do just that. He'd failed, though, because Rotha had been chosen by God. When she awoke, she left him and went to live with her daughter, Caroline. Determined to spread the word, she began preaching door to door, certain that she had been chosen as the prophetess of God. She set about convincing others as well. Her half brother, Sammy, whom she also lived with from time to time, had experienced a brain injury but left him more like a child than a grown man.

And Sammy, above all, believed every word his sister told him. Before long, Rhoda and her followers paid Eira a visit. They tied him up and wrote stabbed him. She told everyone it would free Eira of the devil, although he survived the initial attack. He died sometime later. Rhoda claimed she'd had another revelation, though, that IRA had died when the devil no longer had any wicked plans for him. Her followers agreed, saying that for being in league with the devil, IRA got exactly what he deserved.

The wake nights message of doomsday continued to gain more followers, but Rotha had high standards for her followers do and believe, as she said and all would be well and disagree, though, and she would expose them as being the Antichrist. And that criticism was extended to the churches full of believers around her once after watching people enter one of these churches, she openly wept. She woke her daughter Caroline, in the middle of the night claiming that heavenly spirits wouldn't let her rest.

They came to her night after night, she said, begging her to preach in the churches. In 1852, though, Caroline's husband, Efrem, dared to speak out. Mother, he said, there is nothing in your doctrine's. It's all a delusion. And with that, Rhoda became convinced that her son in law was possessed and wanted to kill her. She was afraid, she told Caroline, and not just afraid of Efrem, Rotha claimed another of her son in laws, Charles Willoughby, was also possessed.

According to Rotha, Charles had not only caused a winter's worth of storms, but it also plagued Sammy with thousands of EMCs that crawled over his head and back. But like her husband, Efrem, Caroline felt the stories about the imps pushed things too far, and she expressed her thoughts to her mother. As you might expect, Rhoda wasn't at all pleased. Don't call me mother, she shouted. Anybody that wants to kill me needn't call me mother. Rhoda would disown Caroline.

Then she, Sammy and another follower named Tankful Hershey moved to New Haven, Connecticut, where they found a small house by the Grove Street cemetery practically under the eaves of Yale University. They sold fruit syrups and herbal medicines and even boarded children to earn additional income. Rotha preached to nearby farmers and workers, meeting with them every Sunday and once more later in the week, Charles Sanford, fresh from his release at the Hartford retreat for the Insane, joined them in hopes that Rotha could cure him of his mental illness.

But he wasn't her only new follower. A 17 year old named Amos Hunt also joined up and quickly rose through the ranks of the White Knights. Sometime later, Amos and his wife arrived for a meeting bearing pies and cakes. Rotha ate a slice of pie and then polished off one and a half of the cakes all on her own. It's probably no surprise that she became sick, but Rhoda claimed that the sweets had been laced with poison and had nearly killed several followers, although there's no record that anyone else fell ill.

Four days, Rota lay sick in bed before visiting her doctor, his diagnosis insanity. Undaunted, she claimed Sammy was having a Yale chemist test the remaining cakes, but even before he announced his findings, she told her followers that enough poison had been found to kill at least 10 men. And the poison in question hadn't been arsenic, though she said that as a prophet of the Lord, she was immune to that. No, she claimed the cakes had been made from something worse a concoction of men's brains, oil of their bones, the eyes of dogs and roosters, basil, topaz, copper, zinc, putina and toad entrails.

Some wait minutes thought Hunton, his wife, had made the poisonous cakes to determine if Rodo was divine or merely human, hunt, though, was instantly accused of being the devil's agent. The SAMME even suggested that Hunt should die for his sins against the prophetess. Well, that or pay a cash settlement. Perhaps surprisingly, Hunt paid five hundred dollars and none of this sat well with the rest of the Waco Knights rotas. Disciples begin to wonder how the prophetess hadn't seen the betrayal coming.

But worse than that, they were shocked that she'd accepted a payoff from a man of sin. Rotha attempted to regain her followers trust with more lies and fear the world would inevitably be destroyed. She told them taking the money had placed an evil influence on every one of them, not just her. Frightened by the prospect, they wanted to know how to save themselves. Not surprisingly, Rotha told them exactly what had to be done. In December of 1855, Rotha and Sammy moved again, settling into a small house that was often crowded with fellow awake nights.

It was there that she told the others that the Antichrist had left Amos Hunt and had found its way to a pistol factory worker named Justice Washington Mathew's. He had attended a few of their meetings, often accompanying one of their own, Marrable and her sister, Polly.

Justice didn't care much for Rotha, and the feeling was mutual. The damning evidence against justice had been that his wife had suffered a convulsion around the same time that Rotha had fallen ill. The timing, she claimed, had not been a coincidence. The Antichrist had taken possession of justice, and now the weak knights must wage a battle to rid him of the devil. Oddly, justice didn't object to their first attempt at exorcising the devil from him. Maybe he felt pressured or maybe he felt that the tea they wanted him to drink brewed from the bark of a witch hazel tree wasn't so bad.

Afterward, though, Rotha determined that the tea hadn't worked, believing that justice was still possessed the way Yemenites began to pray over him.

But when no one witnessed a spirit leaving his body, they began to plead with him to give up the demon. Rotha, however, had a different solution in mind. Blood. On December twenty third, she and her followers conducted Sabbath worship in an upstairs bedroom. All told, 15 people came and went for services that day and throughout the evening by 10:00, Sami had a nice fire going in the front room when justice arrived with his wife and sister in law.

He removed his damp boots in front of the fire. And that's when Rotha screamed, claiming the demons were torturing her.

She wasted no time in instructing Polly to blindfold justice because eye contact with a man of sin would harm her brother. Claiming she feared for her safety, Rotha also asked Polly to bind Justice's hands behind his back. Not wanting Rhoda to be frightened of him, justice allowed it, those present then led him to the daybed and began the exorcism for two hours. They alternated between praying for his soul and shouting at him to give up the devil. Rhoda eventually retreated to her room where she claimed the demons continued to torture her in the most excruciating of ways after an hour.

She said the demons were crawling around inside her and that she would soon die and that if she did, the world would end. Alarmed at her revelation, members raced down the stairs. He's killing her, they shouted. He's killing the messenger. The prayers turned into a discussion to attendees, said that it would be better to kill justice than to let Roeder and the entire world die, the remainder of the group quickly agreed. All except Sami, who thought they should try one last thing.

He ran out into the yard, and when he returned, he was carrying a two foot long piece of wood. Perhaps he suggested they could beat the devil out of him. They secured the doors and shuttered the windows to the room and then turned their attention to justice. The first blow struck him in the right temple, knocking him to the ground. After that, Samme hit him again and again, then claiming some unknown influence was urging him on.

He slit Justice's throat with a pocket knife, not satisfied that the job was done.

He retrieved a large oven fork used to lift the stove lid and drove it into Justice's chest not once, but 12 times in a pattern designed to make the shape of a cross. The holes, Sami said, would force the demon to leave. Justice's brother in law, who'd been pushed into another room during the exorcism, heard gurgling noises. He pounded on the door, but others pulled him away, insisting that if justice died, he'd be raised. The sound of the blows and justice's cries sent a few scurrying away to a corner to pray.

Another hour passed before Sammy finally opened the door. At 2:00 in the morning, Sammy's clothes were washed in a basin, his sleeves were so stained that they were ripped from the shirt. The floor was then mopped clean and the piece of wood still caked with justices, hair and blood was dropped down a hole in the front yard. The Samis pocketknife was placed next to the corpse to make it appear that justice had killed himself, then tired from their efforts.

The wake when I finally slept the next day, one of them left, returning with Justice's eldest son, the site of his father's bloodied corpse sent him running to a neighbor who alerted the authorities.

Upon their arrival, the police took in the gruesome scene and then instantly arrested everyone present. Soon enough, they were all in court making their statements regarding the possession. Newspapers were quick to report the trial. The New York Times called the murder a horrible case of fanaticism, adding that it was a frightful event of militarism. By then, the American public often thought cases of violence or public insanity were due to Miller ism. But on the twenty sixth of December, Sami confessed and ROTAS imaginary world collided with reality.

She and the others awaited the grand jury's decision from a prison cell. While she did, she took to writing letters to various ministers and lawyers. Those messages alternated between pleas and threats. She would surely die in prison, she claimed, and her death would be avenged by God. It wasn't her own life that hung in the balance. It was the fate of the world. That following Jan Rotha, Sammy and the other night sat in court once more, Rotha again insisted that the world would end if they found her guilty, though she might decide to permit everyone to live a little while longer.

However, she could call for Judgment Day whenever she felt like it. The trial dragged on until April. Members of the community, family and experts all took the stand to testify, and it was determined that none of the defendants were competent enough to stand trial. Rhoda and Sammy openly wept, while others had difficulty with the court's finding that she was clinically insane. A New York Tribune journalist sat before her and jotted down notes. Despite the ruling of insanity, a grand jury still convicted the entire group.

Sammy was found guilty of murder, while Rhoda and the other followers were convicted as accessories before and after the fact. Naturally, Rota was happy to tell her side of the story how her followers were simply trying to save her and all of humanity, killing justice had been the only way to rid him of the evil inside him. She claimed that, sadly, when justice had died, the evil spirit inside him had left and had spread far and wide into the world.

She settled back in her seat and offered the reporter one last bit of advice for his readers. Those who remained devoted to her had no need to worry, though as long as they remained free, they would continue to seek out more men of evil and if they found them, that each be put to death. Until then, she cheerfully urged readers should brew a strong cup of witch hazel tea.

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Quick, better oral health made simple and rewarding. His outfit was colorful, the green military frock coat was made from the finest cloth, lined with silk, patterned with bold braids and of all things, Frogs' his black silk vest matched to the black leather cap, inverted like a comb.

His sash was a deep crimson and his pantaloons, a type of close fitting pant fastened to the calf, wear either green or black.

The choice depended on the weather, as did his footwear, either sandals or meticulously polished Wellington boots.

It's eye catching, as it was, none of those were as important to him as the fine, double edged sword he wore, and even that paled compared to the iron rod he carried. The rod, he believed was instrumental in ruling the world.

Orphaned at seven and raised by strict elders of the Presbyterian Church, Robert Matthews spent a brief stint as a shopkeeper, a husband and a father. But all that held him back from what he considered his true calling and pursuit of spiritual perfection and religious truth. He preached to anyone who'd listen mostly about doomsday customers. And then employers found his outbursts and fits of violent rage more than a little frightening, which, as you might guess, made earning a living difficult.

Lack of employment kept his family in poverty, though he was adamant that it was his wife's fault, not his.

Not just regarding the jobs either.

She was his undoing for everything that went wrong. And he kept a rawhide strap to beat her with. He was certain his wife was filled with evil spirits.

He'd tried to join an evangelical Christian church in Argyle, New York. But like the customers and employers, the congregation there found his laziness fits of rage and violence abhorrent. On June 20th of 1830, he was arrested for disrupting service. After his release, he moved to Manhattan, leaving his family behind. He preached on street corners, asking people to address him as the prophet Matthias. His message was that of a male dominated kingdom of God with him as the king on Earth.

He had learned of another prophet, though one with a large following. So on the first Saturday in May of 1832, Matthias paid him a visit at his apartment on Fourth Street. That's where Elijah Peerson, the Tesche Bite, lived with his servant, a formerly enslaved woman named Isabella Bohm free. Soon enough, Peerson became convinced that he was Mathias's John the Baptist, paving the way for someone greater than himself. The following Sunday, Pierson gave a sermon to his followers, then turned them all over to Matthias, and the handoff couldn't have been more timely.

Soon, Pearsons Health began to deteriorate. He found himself experiencing nervous fits that only worsened over time. But Matthias wouldn't allow doctors to treat him, insisting that Pearsons problem was an infestation of demons that must be vanquished. Pierson never preached again, fully surrendering his pulpit to Matthias, determined to set up in his own style, Matthias convinced one follower named Benjamin Folger to give him a plot of land just north of the Hudson River. He led his followers to the castle and christened it Mount Zion.

There, he assigned sexual partners as casually as doling out chores. Matthias moved in with Pierson and on July 28th of 1834, fed him two plates of Blackberries for his dinner. Immediately, Pierson fell violently ill. Once more, doctors were turned away, both men stating that only prayer would save Pierson. That night, Matthias left Pierson lying in his own vomit and excrement, and by morning the man was dead. Pearson was autopsied and doctors determined that he'd been poisoned, Mathias, having quickly been abandoned by his followers, found that only two remained loyal Benjamin Folger and Isabella Pomfrey.

In fact, when Mathias was arrested, it was Isabella who helped secure lawyers for him, but Folger had other plans for Isabella. He spread rumors that she had once tried to poison in his coffee, trying to throw suspicion on her angry. Isabella retaliated by filing a slander suit against him. Folger didn't worry about it much. He was confident that no white male jury would believe the word of a black woman.

But he was wrong about that. Isabella won and the court granted her one hundred and twenty five dollars, which is roughly four thousand today. During Pearson's murder trial, one of the doctors unexpectedly withdrew his earlier statement of poison, claiming he'd found no such evidence of arsenic without enough proof against him. Mathias was ultimately released. He quickly fled New York and headed west. Isabella, however, stood her ground and stayed in New York, and she was used to fighting for herself.

The lawsuit against Holga hadn't been her first either. She had previously sued her former owner, a man who had illegally sold her son, Peter. A white family helped intervene, and together they took the man to court to win her son back. The case made her one of the first black women to take a white man to court and win. In 1840 three, Isabella found a different spiritual calling. She became an activist for women's rights and a staunch supporter of the abolition of slavery.

And along the way, she changed her name, a name that just about every history book includes.

Sojourner Truth. American Chateaux is hosted by Lauren Vogel Bomb. This episode was written by Michelle Muto with researcher Robin Midnighter and produced by Miranda Hawkins and Trevor Young with executive producers Aaron Manque, Alex Williams and Matt Frederich. To learn more about the show, visit Greyman Mile Dotcom for more podcast from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.