Author: Stefano Nazzi
Publisher: Mondadori
Date of publication: 15-09-2025
There is one thing that Eviana, a young babysitter who died in an apartment on the outskirts of Pordenone in 1988, has in common with Emmanuelle, who was found among the ashes of a fire in the Swiss canton of Valais in 1994. Their deaths were the final link in a chain of manipulation and violence that took shape within a cult.
From “acts of purification” that were in fact sexual abuse, to mass suicides disguised as rituals to board extraterrestrial spacecraft, and cold-blooded murders committed in the name of Lucifer, cults can take many different forms, but they share one fundamental characteristic: the leader’s word is law, and it justifies every sacrifice.
Everything rests on the charisma of these “prophets of darkness”, capable of imposing unspeakable forms of violence – physical, sexual, but above all psychological. Designed to isolate followers from their previous lives and make them subservient to a new community, cults are exclusive and tightly knit, often impenetrable to those outside them.
In this book, Stefano Nazzi explores seventeen such groups, taking us behind the scenes of their secretive worlds. From the UFO doctrine of Telsen Sao to the macabre mass suicide of Heaven’s Gate, from the psychological torture involving LSD carried out by Aum Shinrikyo to the neo-Nazi and Satanist ideology of the Order of Nine Angles, the book delves into the darkness of these groups to explore the lethal combination of fascination and terror that can turn a cult into a crime.
An investigation that goes straight to the heart of some of the world’s most dangerous cults, where the power of manipulation knows no bounds and leaves lasting scars on the lives of survivors. A journey into the darkness of mind control, seeking to understand how a cult is born, how it can subjugate people to the point of making them commit – or endure – horrific crimes, but also how it is possible to break free and learn to live again.