HIGHER THAN TRUTH
[S1E3] MURPHY RANCH — CULTS OF CALIFORNIA
DID NAZI OCCULTISTS BUILD A MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR DOOMSDAY MANSION IN LOS ANGELES DURING WWII?
Note: Higher Than Truth is an ongoing series taking deep dives into strange mysteries, conspiracies, and forgotten history. Please refer to the table of contents for all articles in their chronological order.
“The existence of a large number of transients and visitors has always stimulated the cult-making tendency. It should be remembered that, for the last twenty-five years, Los Angeles has had, on an average, about 200,000 temporary residents.” — Carey McWilliams, The Atlantic, 1946
After reviewing the evidence I had uncovered in [S1E2] Murphy Ranch—Norman and Winona, there was no doubt in my mind that the Stevens were real people and that they were the original owners of Murphy Ranch, a supposed stronghold of Nazi occultists in 1930’s Los Angeles. But the reality of their existence, aside from providing a better picture of who they were as people, didn’t actually prove—or disprove—anything about the urban legend itself. And the only eyewitness I had found, Norman and Winona’s daughter, was quite clear about what she thought of the rumors: “All of this about nazis and a Herr Schmidt is a bunch of garbage…”
As vague as the story was, though, it did have a few specific details to it that needed to be confirmed or refuted. Nearly every version of the tale describes Murphy Ranch as an “occult” compound built at the insistence of a metaphysical leader named Herr Schmidt. Was there, I wondered, any hard evidence to actually link the Stevens with the occult? What does “the occult” even mean? And what could that have to do with Nazis?
I wasn’t the first to notice it, but in reviewing the various blueprints of Murphy Ranch, there’s an odd detail in one drawing from 1934 that stands out. In the entryway of the grand hall, inlaid in the floor, is a Zodiac symbol. Why?
My own understanding of the occult was, I admit, limited. And if I’d been pressed to offer any opinion on cults or religions in California, I might have been able to dredge up a few cliched anecdotes about hippies dancing in circles with crystals in the 1960’s — Dawning of the Age of Aquarius type-stuff. But, I was to learn, California’s relationship with new religious movements goes back much, much further.
Among the first recorded “cult leaders” in California history is one William Money, founder of “The Reformed New Testament Church of the Faith of Jesus Christ” in 1841. Also known as Doctor Money, Professor Money, and Bishop Money, he was the author of the first book ever published in Los Angeles— “‘We pronounce it a work worthy of all dignified admiration,’ the newspaper reviewer said with a wink…”—and he claimed to have personally healed some 5,000 people in his care, of whom, by his own accounts, only four died. In the 1910 compilation, A History of the Medical Profession of Southern California, author George H. Kress notes:
No country in the world was more productive of quaint characters and odd geniuses than the mining camps of early California. A man’s history began with his advent in the camp. His past was wiped out — was ancient history, not worth making a note of. What is he now? What is he good for? were the vital questions.
…[Money] is said to have come as the servant of a scientific man, whose methods and ideas he adopted. His wife was a handsome Sonorena. In [1846] the couple started for Sonora with Coronel, and were captured by Kearney’s force. They returned from the Colorado with the Mormon battalion. Money became an eccentric doctor, artist and philosopher at San Gabriel, where his house, in 1880, was filled with ponderous tomes of his writings…He aspired to found a great religious sect. He made his own creed and ordained himself Bishop, Deacon and Defender of the Reformed New Testament Church of the Faith of Jesus Christ. Dr. Money had the inherent love of a Scotchman for theological discussion. He was always ready to attack a religious dogma or assail a creed. When not discussing theological questions or practicing medicines, he dabbled in science and made discoveries.
In Book II of [Miscellaneous Records of L. A. County], recorded Sept. 18, 1872, is a map or picture of a globe labeled “Wm. Money’s Discovery of the Ocean.” Around the North Pole are a number of convolving lines which purport to represent a “whirling ocean.” Passing down from the north pole to the south, like the vertebrae of a great fish, is a subterranean ocean. Beyond this on each side are the exhaustless fiery regions, and outside of this a rocky mountain chain that evidently keeps the earth from bursting. At the South Pole gush out two currents a mile wide marked Kuro Siwo. There is no explanation of the discovery and no statement of which ocean, the whirling or the subterranean, that Dr. Money claimed to have discovered. The record was made, no doubt, on the principle of protecting his discovery by a sort of patent right on the ocean he found swirling around in the interior of the earth. The theory of his discovery can only be inferred from the drawing. Evidently a hole at the North Pole sucks in the waters of the whirling ocean, which pass down through the subterranean ocean and are heated by the exhaustless fiery regions which border that ocean ; then these heated waters are spurted out into space at the South Pole. What becomes of them afterwards the records do not show. From some cause Dr. Money disliked the people of San Francisco. In his scientific researches he made the discovery that that part of the earth’s crust on which that city stands was almost burnt through, and he prophesied that the crust would soon break and the City of the Bay would drop down into the exhaustless fiery regions and be wiped out like Sodom and Gomorrah of old!
Although William Money is largely forgotten today, his legacy of biblical allusions, questionable medical practices, doomsday prophecies, and notions of a “hollow earth” would live on long after his death, with “an image of the Holy Virgin above his head, an articulated skeleton at his feet, and a well-worn copy of some Greek classic within reach of his hand.”
Twenty years after Money’s passing, a new religious sect set up shop at Point Loma, outside of San Diego. In 1875, the Theosophical Society was founded by the Russian mystic, Helena Blavatsky, and American military officer, Colonel Henry Steel Olcott. Described as “an unsectarian body of seekers after Truth, who endeavor to promote Brotherhood and strive to serve humanity,” the Theosophical Society taught a complicated doctrine of evolution—both physical and spiritual—taking place at a cosmic scale overseen by a hidden hierarchy of Ascended Masters. While Blavatsky’s teachings are far too complex to abbreviate to a quick paragraph, one source says:
The Theosophical God was immanent, transcendent, sexless, and impersonal. Theosophists believed in “evolutionary monism,” a harmonial spirituality stressing cosmic balance and interconnectedness. As citizens of the cosmos, humans were connected to every atom in the universe and throbbed with divine potential. Consciousness of the divine Absolute was available to all regardless of sex. In Theosophy’s optimistic assessment of human nature, people embodied the wisdom of nature and the ages. Therefore, there was no human depravity and no fall.
Theosophy proved incredibly popular, and within only a few years branches of the Theosophical Society sprung up around the globe. But when Blavatsky died in 1891, infighting began almost immediately and multiple schisms occurred in the group’s leadership.
Among these new sects was the Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society, founded by Katherine Tingley who, after experiencing a vision while living in India, in 1897 placed a $3000 downpayment on 120-acres of property she would dub, “Lomaland.” Only a few months later, Tingley’s “school for the revival of lost mysteries of antiquity” expanded to a full 235-acres. Among its leaders were such occult luminaries as Gottfried de Purucker, Arthur Conger, and Max Heindel.
Lomaland was considered the only successful Theosophical compound in the United States. Women reportedly outnumbered men 60/40, and the beautiful property attracted philosophers, artists, and musicians from all walks of life. Families brought their children, who learned music, drama, calisthenics and military drills, as well as the teachings of theosophy and Raja Yoga. A Greek amphitheater, which still exists today, was built for the production of plays ranging from Greek tragedies to Shakespearean comedies.
According to the San Diego History Center:
The roles and treatment of women at Point Loma emerged from a complex interplay of four ingredients: (1) notions of femininity in Theosophical beliefs, (2) Tingley’s personality and leadership, (3) the division of labor in the community, and (4) representations of femaleness in Point Loma art and architecture. These four aspects of Lomaland’s construction of womanhood reveal two countervailing impulses: one toward egalitarianism and gender-blindness, the other toward hierarchy and gender-exclusiveness. These impulses were also prevalent in wider American cultural gender ideologies of the day. Women were attracted to Point Loma precisely because these opposing femininities mirrored tensions in their own lives.
But on October 28, 1901, the Los Angeles Times published an article about Lomaland and Katherine Tingley under the eye-catching headline, Outrages at Point Loma — “Women and Children Starved and Treated Like Convicts.”
Mrs. M Leavitt of №418 West Fourth Street, a believer in what she terms “the true school of theosophy,” …has some startling things to tell concerning Catherine [sic] Tingley and her associates…Mrs. Leavitt seems to be thoroughly informed on two of the latest outrages perpetrated at the spookery, the cases of Mrs. Neirsheimer and Mrs. Holbrook, both well-to-do Eastern women.
…During the day time, [Mrs. Holbrook] was worked in the field like a convict, forced to plant trees, hoe corn and forced to perform all sorts of hard labor, and at night she was shut up in a cell and guarded as if she was a raving maniac. When her husband found what a trap she had fallen into, he hurried here and took her out by force.
…[Mrs. Neirsheimer] has been separated from her husband…and is not allowed to speak to him. She is forced to live alone in a little tent in the grounds that surround the crazy institution. Armed men guard this place of horror and, Mrs. Leavitt says, solitary confinement, hard labor, and starvation are resorted to by the Tingley managers as punishments upon those who disobey their iron rules.
Tingley immediately sued for libel, resulting in a lawsuit the following year. Testimony from a variety of witnesses included descriptions of Tingley’s early career as a spiritualist, hypnotist, and medium as well as accusations that she claimed her dog was her, in fact, the reincarnation of her dead husband. After a lengthy trial, Tingley won her libel suit and returned to rule Lomaland until her death in 1929. Without Tingley’s oversight, the compound managed to scrape by during The Great Depression, but finally closed its doors in 1941. Remaining students relocated to Covina, California, and today the site exists as the Point Loma Nazarene University.
But even as the esoteric cults flourished, so too did new sects of more traditional religions. In 1905, William J. Seymour—the son of freed slaves—a one-eyed itinerant preacher who studied under the Kansas evangelist Charles Fox Parham, began holding church services in the private home of a family living on Bonnie Brae Street in Los Angeles. As his popularity grew, both white and black congregants attended—a rarity during the Jim Crow era. On April 9, 1906, after five weeks of Seymour’s preaching and three days of fasting, a member of the congregation spontaneously began speaking in tongues —“breathing strange utterances and mouthing a creed which it would seem no sane mortal could understand,” according to the Los Angeles Daily Times. Others soon followed and, three days later, so too did Seymour himself. According to an eye witness at the time:
“They shouted three days and nights. The people came from everywhere. By the next morning, there was no way of getting nearer the house. As the people came in they would fall under the power, and the whole city was stirred. They shouted there until the foundation of the house gave way, but no one was hurt. During those three days, there were many people who received their baptism, who had just come to see what it was. The sick were healed, and sinners were saved just as they came in.”
Crowds consisting of as many as 1,500 people soon gathered—far too large for the small Bonnie Brae Street home so Seymour moved his congregation to a “tumble down shack” on Azusa Street, which he named The Apostolic Faith Mission. Services were held around the clock. One member described the scene as such:
Many were slain in the Spirit [in a trance-like state], buckling to the floor, unconscious, in a beautiful Holy Spirit cloud, and the Lord gave them visions. How I enjoyed shouting and praising God. During the tarrying, we used to break out in songs about Jesus and the Holy Spirit, “Fill Me Now,” “Joy Unspeakable,” and “Love Lifted Me.” Praise about the cleansing and precious blood of Jesus would just spring from our mouths. In between choruses, heavenly music would fill the hall, and we would break into tears. Suddenly the crowd seemed to forget how to sing in English. Out of their mouths would come new languages and lovely harmony that no human beings could have learned.
According to The International Center for Spiritual Renewal:
As a direct result of the Azusa Street outpouring, thousands of individuals were led into a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ. People began to study the Word of God, become convicted of sin, and surrender their lives to Christ. They were baptized with the Holy Ghost, who led and guided them into greater spiritual truths found in the Word of God. The Spirit of God empowered them with boldness to fulfill the great commission. Signs and wonders followed those who believed, such as blinded eyes being opened, deaf being able to hear, mute being able to speak, the lame made to walk, and the dead raised to life again. Such reports are commonplace among these early Pentecostal believers, and all of these signs testify of the glory and power of the Risen Christ.
The heyday of the Azusa Street Revival lasted about six years, but Seymour continued preaching there until his death in 1922. He, along with Charles Parham, are now credited with birthing the Pentecostal movement, which now has over 500 million adherents today.
Though Seymour’s success can’t be understated, no discussion of California’s new religions would be complete without Aimee Semple McPherson, who offered her own eclectic version of Pentecostalism. Says author Carey McWilliams:
Aimee, who was “not so much a woman as a scintillant assault,” first appeared in California at San Diego in 1918. There she began to attract attention by scattering religious tracts from an airplane and holding revival meetings in a boxing arena. That Mrs. McPherson’s first appearance should have been in San Diego is, in itself, highly significant. In San Diego she unquestionably heard of Katherine Tingley, from whom she probably got the idea of founding a new religious movement on the coast and from whom she certainly got many of her ideas about uniforms, pageantry, and showmanship.
From San Diego Mrs. McPherson came to Los Angeles in 1922 with her Four Square Gospel: conversion, physical healing, the second coming, and redemption. She arrived in Los Angeles with two minor children, an old battered automobile., and $100 in cash. By the end of 1925 she had collected more than $1,000,000 and owned property worth $250,000.
Some estimates claim that up to 10% of the population of Los Angeles belonged at some time to McPherson’s Foursquare Gospel Church (otherwise known as Full Gospel), which got its name, she said, from the four qualities of Jesus Christ’s ministry: “Savior, Baptizer with the Holy Ghost, Healer and King.” According to The Los Angeles Times:
The most popular Angelus offerings by far were Sister McPherson’s Sunday night illustrated sermons, which borrowed from the theatrical repertoire of nearby Hollywood. Once she showed up as a USC football player to dramatize a sermon about “carrying the ball for Christ”; on another Sunday she donned a policeman’s uniform and posed with a highway patrolman’s motorcycle to “put sin under arrest.” With these and other services and activities, McPherson could fill the 5,300-seat temple several times every day. Eventually, she and her Angelus Temple became an L.A. institution and a major tourist attraction.
In 1944, McPherson died after overdosing on sleeping pills. Though she is not well remembered today, like Professor Money, Katherine Tingley, and William Seymour, her influence lives on. Her Foursquare Gospel Church, once considered an oddity, joined the National Association of Evangelicals in 1952 and thus became a part of what is now considered mainstream Christianity with more than 6 million members worldwide.
But these examples constitute only a small fraction of the religious groups that took hold in the early years of California. A 1913 column in The San Francisco Call, notes:
It is inevitable that Los Angeles should offer rare and glowing opportunities for faddists and mountebanks — spiritualists, mediums, astrologists, phrenologists, palmists, and all other breeds of esoteric wind jammers. The city is cursed with an incredible number of these cabalistic scaramouches. Whole buildings are devoted to occult or outlandish orders — mazdaznan clubs, yogi sects, homes of truth, cults of cosmic fluidists, astral planers, Emmanuel movers, Rosicrucians and other other boozy transcendentalists. These empirics do a thriving and luxurious business. They fill the papers with mystic balderdash. They parade the streets in lush kimonos. They hold “classes” and “circles” and wax fat on the donations of the inflammatory. No other city possesses so large a number of metaphysical charlatans in proportion to its population.
There was, it seemed, no shortage of obscure religions or sects available for membership in Southern California. Could one of these have been the “occult” group to which Norman and Winona supposedly belonged? As usual, there wasn’t much to go on, but I began sending inquiries to any of the groups who had existed in the 1930’s and still existed today. The vast majority never responded to me, and the few that did had no record of either a Norman or Winona Stevens in their files. But after months of searching, I opened my email to see a polite message from the archivists at the Theosophical Society of America in Wheaton, Illinois:
Norman F. Stevens joined our national organization, then called the American Theosophical Society, on March 24, 1927 as a member of the Olcott Lodge in Los Angeles. His address then was 875 La Loma Rd, Pasadena. He was sponsored for membership by Elizabeth M. Birdsey and Sanford E. Bell.
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