Hi, I'm Holly and I'm Haley. Welcome to Mountain Mysteries Tales from Appalachia. Welcome back. Previously on Mountain Mysteries Tales from Appalachia, Holly and Haley went for a sandwich and stayed for the cold.
That was pretty good. Thank you. So we are back with our Hebrew names. That's right.
We did determine what they would be. Mine is Bersha. Yes. Which means with evil.
It's all right. It did. And mine is Jezebel. Absolutely.
Which means wicked. Yeah. I feel like that is just appropriate. Yeah.
Feels right. Bersha and Jezebel. Perfect. I feel like we should be on the handmaid's tail.
Oh, I don't want to do that. Actually, well, no, we won't be a handmaid. Oh, good. Okay.
Yeah. Who's like the, not to clean the floors or something? Yes. Those are the, um, I never watched it.
You've never seen that. I tried and it's, you know, I was working a real hard job at the moment and I was like, I can't do this. Martha's. That's what they call Martha's are the women who clean and do all the things.
Martha's. But they're not the ones that have sex. No, they don't have to have sex with anybody. Great.
Yeah. But that's not the cold that we're in. The cold that we're in. We are in.
We are having to engage. Well, you used to. Right. I got out of that.
But they cut you. They cut me from that because you wouldn't, you know, do as they want. Yeah. And I fell in line.
Yeah. Because I want to move up the line. Yeah. I'm 96 right now.
I'm 96. But if I can move, you know, what's your name? Miriam. Miriam.
That's it. If I can move her out of the 95 spot, I'm pretty sure I can take out Sasha. Mm. And then I'm just going to keep on going.
I'm just going to keep going. I'm eventually going to die off too. Well, so will Jezebel. He's pretty frail right now.
Right. Right. But like I said, you can make a turkey club. That's some more.
And that is important. Protein. And it makes the carbs. Yeah.
Yeah. You got to have them all. You do really to feel your body for more cold team. Absolutely.
Well, let's get back into this cold. Where did we leave off? So we left off talking about some of the wild things that this cold is getting into. They decided that they were going to move to Vermont.
We have established that this cold kind of operates a little bit in the restaurant scene because they start their churches by opening up things called the Yellow Deli where they do actually serve food and kind of have these like compounds. And it's just there's a lot happening. A lot of baptism. A lot of baptism.
So we've moved to Vermont. And the leader of this cult has had this premonition that they are now going to bring about the return of Jesus as colds do. Absolutely. Yeah.
The end is near. This is not a new idea. Right for colds. Okay.
So one of the recruiting methods for this cult of the 1980s was they would go, they would follow grateful dead tours. Absolutely. And recruit deadheads. Deadheads.
Pretty much. I mean, if you're high, you don't know what the hell's happening. You just want to make friends. Yeah.
So that they were pretty successful. But they were doing that. So that's really how they were recruiting people. In 1989, the church has become pretty wildly accepted in island pond Vermont.
And grew substantially in the 80s and 90s. They opened branches in several different countries, including the Czech Republic, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Spain, Germany, Argentina, and the United Kingdom. That's how you know you're a real cult when you go abroad. Absolutely.
So during this expansion in the early 90s, they were using the name Messianic communities. Okay. And or Masonic Masonic. I wanted the extra eye in there.
And they were using that term until 1995 when they officially took on the name of 12 tribes. Okay. So through the mid 2000s, the group remains controversial. We've got allegations of things like child labor, custodial interference, and illegal homeschooling.
I mean, I really feel like you wouldn't be in a cult unless you were homeschooling, not to poo poo anybody who homeschools. But I feel like, you know, there's a lot that in cults, you go inward and everything's like on the hush hush. Yeah, I'm not seeing a lot of cult kids in public school. Not typically.
Not because, you know, what happens in the cult stays in the cult. Right. So the public school is not a great place for the cult. No, exactly.
Because someone might be, you know, go rogue and tell about the things that we do. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So yeah, we're doing all those things.
In 2006, they come back to their roots in Chattanooga, Tennessee. They re-established there. Okay. The group also establishes its 12th and final tribe, Benjamin, named after the historical tribe of Benjamin of Israel, and centered around the American Southeast.
So in 2006, they held a reunion in Chattanooga, where can they marry them in the occasion? They also opened a new yellow deli in Chattanooga in 2008, nearly 30 years after leaving. Well, and I love that they're really taking advantage of the economic crisis in 2008. You know what, for our reunion tour, we're going to make more sandwiches.
Watch out Chattanooga. We're back. We're back, baby. So the founder of the tribe, Elbert Eugene Spriggs, Jr.
dies in 2021. He was visiting his hidden night, North Carolina property. Within the tribes, he was known as the anointed one, and by the Hebrew name, I love it. They have all of the typical religious cults.
Ideologies. When you're thinking like fundamentalist Christian, they are very into the like, the skirts. Yeah, the long, yeah, they kind of have certain ways of dressing, which we'll talk about in a minute. They also have like the idea of courting almost like if two people decide they want to get to know each other, the whole community has to like vote on it.
And then once they vote that you're allowed to court, you can then hold hands. That's as far as it can go. And then the whole like wedding celebration is this like big, almost like theatrical type event that is put on. It's very strange.
Now I think there was a clause in there as I was reading about if it was people who were underage, I think just the parents had to sign off, not the whole community. Ew. Yeah, it's not great. Ew.
Not great. Yeah. So there's some like sketchy stuff going on there. That's 100%, which is, you know, typical and cool.
Yeah. So that's kind of all going on all the typical religious cult things. They can hold hands when they're courting, but they cannot kiss or hug or anything until they're married. Right.
And then once they're married, they can have sex. That sounds. But only for the purpose of having children, they believe that sex for pleasure is a big no-no. Huh.
How do I break this to Jebediah? I know. So what do they do when the women are going through menopause and they're not going to be having anymore babies? I think they just stop having sex.
Okay. Well, I mean, yeah, we handled it. So the group sex aspect, I don't think has really come to this yet organization. I think we could bring it.
I think it could get there. I think if they trust us enough, yeah, we could take them to that level to that level. That's really what our goal is, essentially. Not with each other.
We're not we have established. We're not that kind of friends. Right. Right.
Right. But I mean, you know, it was to say, it was to say, yeah, so they're you know, doing all their cults things, culty things on April 22nd of 2022, which was actually Passover. The tribes began what's called the 49-year race. The tribe expects Jesus, or as they call him, Yeshua, to return in the 50th year, which will be a year of Jubilee.
The tribe attached significance to this as the year 2070 is about 100 years since the founding of the light brigade church. Okay. So that's how they picked it. Okay.
Yeah, it's just a random way. So each member, like I said, gets the Hebrew name. They get a Hebrew name. I guess just like us.
They also believe there are three eternal destinies. Okay. They believe that after the fall of man, every person was given a conscience, conscience, and that after we die, every person goes to a state of being called death, regardless of their faith. Upon the future second coming, believers will be brought back for the thousand years to reign with Yeshua before the last judgment.
At the end of this millennium, all the non-believers will be judged according to their deeds and put into one of two groups, the righteous and the filthy or unjust. The filthy and unjust will be sent to the lake of fire while the righteous will go on into eternity. Wow. So pretty good stuff.
How are you doing on the lake of fire? You know, I got a canoe. That's good. Yeah.
I don't have any of it. Yeah. So it is a mix of like some, you know, traditional beliefs. Yeah, it is.
But then also like, whoa, they have to put Yeshua in there. Yeah. And like they sprinkle in the like fire broom stone, like fundamentalists. You will go to hell.
Yeah. You will be saved. Yeah. That kind of idea.
But you know, it does bring about some of those questions, and I'm not certainly any, you know, great theologian here, but it does bring about the question is, you know, what does happen when we die? Is it one of those things that you immediately go to heaven? Is it one of those things that you're in limbo, sort of waiting for Jesus to come back? You know what I mean?
Like, I don't know. We don't know the answer to the mystery of life. But soon we will. Soon we will.
Not tonight. No. I'm fine. Hopefully.
Hopefully. So after the group went to Vermont is when they kind of started developing that really, like the thing to look, you know, they have the more traditional dress. So men are wearing long shirts paired with vests and they all have shoulder length hair that is tied back in a club. So like a long bun type situation.
Okay. The women. Yeah, no, it's not cute. The women are dressed in long pinnabours, skirts, or pants.
So a little progressive. We can wear pants. They have loose with loose fitting blouses. Yeah.
They keep their hair long. Follow First Corinthians 11, 5 covering your head, steering church services with a head scarf, which is a symbol of submission to their husbands and to the elders. Their diet is centered on whole grain bread, which they regard as nourishment for both the body and soul. Well, I mean, we did talk about complex carbohydrates and protein.
So sandwiches, really. They're probably eaten a lot of those delisances. So they go back to, are they representing like the body of Christ kind of thing? So they're going back to kind of Old Testament, okay, style of like before there were like, if you're not familiar with Christianity, after the Old Testament, there was kind of a reawakening of like things you could eat.
So like if you're traditionally Jewish, like a kikosha, that's kind of, I think, where they're going. Okay. With that, gotcha. They're following the like Old Testament rules.
Gotcha. For most things. All right. So the ham is out.
Yeah. Ham's out. No, I'm sorry. We've got to stay away from that board.
Yeah. So I did in my research, I was like, well, how does this all relate back? I mean, this is, you know, really centered in Appalachia. And I was like, well, how on earth did this happen?
Apparently, they target folks hiking the Appalachian Trail. Dear Lord, and it all comes back. So I read several different, let me see if I can pull them up here. So I can get some credit here to different Reddit threads.
So what happens? People are just walking the trail and they're like, put in me, you know, they're in their like, birds and buns and what, what typically happens is, as people are walking the trail, and there are places you can stop along the trail to, like, to stay for an night or two, you know, like different hostels, different like campsites, right places that like there's little towns that you pass through. And there's like, camper spots, like, I got spots pop up delis. Yeah.
So this is kind of what it ends up being, is like, it's a hostel that's attached to the yellow deli. And you don't realize what it is, unless you know what it is, you know? Okay. So I was looking on, come brother, have a sandwich and talk with us.
Yeah. So I was looking at Reddit, because as one does, and they say they use their their locations to recruit, obviously. And they go, like, if you stay there, they usually will like, they're very kind, like they're very hospitable. So they'll get you in, they feed you, like, this great food, they talk to you, they are just really nice, like, put you up, like, in a nice room for you to stay.
And everyone's kind of describing them as a little bit predatory. Like, if they kind of like look for, um, certain types, yeah, vulnerable people as their, they also will, um, kind of cruise the trail, um, looking for hitchhikers to, like, hikers that are, like, trying to hitch into town or something like that. So they'll kind of like, pick them up and be like, Oh, well, you have this, like, you can stay in our restaurant. Yeah.
And a lot of people are like, you know, they didn't really realize what it was until they were like, everybody says like, oh, it felt really weird. Like, it was a really odd place, but they couldn't quite figure out, like, what was off about it. Like, everybody kind of had an off feeling, but they're like, I don't know what this is. And then they would kind of swoop in with the like, well, why don't you just stay with us?
Like, brother, no need to leave. Yeah. No one gives hugs such as we. And they're like, actually, let's not, let's just keep on going.
Um, people are like, they look like hippies, but they're not hippies. Brother, that would be a mistake. You should never leave. Actually, you can't leave me on you.
Yeah, it's, um, it's a lot. Um, a lot of people are like, you know, having a creepy experience with them is just like part of a rite of passage on Appalachian Trail. Cause they're everywhere. Damn, I did not realize that hiking the Appalachian Trail.
I mean, I thought like you get off, you could die, you know, get a venom of snake, something to that effect. I did not think about cult leaders and a whole band of them just sitting out there, you know, waiting for you to get thirsty. Yeah. And tired.
Yeah. Take advantage of it. Or like, you know, one guy that I read in his story, he was like, you know, had an injury. So I stayed at one of their hostels while I was like recovering from this injury.
And it was very weird. Um, another one that I read, this was more in like, in Europe, they had a group of people and the group of them stayed at one of these places, not realizing what it was. And they said, you know, they're very quick to kind of separate you from your group members to get you like alone and like talk to you one on one, like under the guise of like making friends, but they're just like, they're pretty intentional about separating you, which is really scary. Um, like, oh no, I'm sorry.
Um, Haley is my lover and I cannot be separated. I cannot be separated. I'm not separated. Um, yeah.
And a lot of people were saying like, you know, it's not bad food. Again, I mean, again, yeah, um, they do have like, it's, they have a website for the yellow deli. Can, so here's a question. Let's look at the food.
Can you order something and they can ship it to you? Let's find out. Let's check the website. And let's see which one is the closest to us that we could, you know, I mean, I love some good cold food.
I mean, we can go to Spain. And let's look at locations locations. Okay. New York, New York, Chattanooga, Tennessee.
I think we got to go to the original. Okay. California, California. Well, of course they're out there.
Um, worldwide, let's wait, let's look at locations. Please hold on. Oh, we got Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan. They have limited hours.
Um, oh no, that's Canada. Ontario has limited hours. Um, Spain, United, States. So let's see.
We got a North Carolina in there. Hidden night North Carolina. Uh, where he had a home where he died. Yeah.
Yeah. Where is hidden night? North Carolina. I have no idea.
Okay. I'm going to Google this really. Yeah. Just to see, you know, how far hidden night.
Watch it be on the post or something. I mean, they're really pretty. Oh, really? Yeah.
Let's look at the menu. We got on there. Okay. Here we go.
Hot steam sandwiches are their specialty. They've been serving hot steam, deli sandwiches since their beginnings in the 70s. It is not that far. How far is it?
It's an hour and 57 minutes. It's 98 miles northeast of Asheville. In a rural area offering a stark contrast to the bustling touristy heavy mountain city of Asheville, making it a hidden gym for mining enthusiasts. I think we have to go.
I mean, but I think we got to go with the OG. I think we got to go Chattanooga. You think so? Yeah.
I mean, I'm down with whatever. Let's do it. Okay. Um, so we can get sandwiches.
Okay. Healthy salads. Of course. Homemade soups and desserts.
Sea soups. Yes. Unique drinks. I love that.
Um, I'm going to say not alcoholic. Um, damn it. I know. Can we go there and say some crazy shit?
You know, I think we just have to go and see what happens. I, if, if I'm being very, very honest, I don't think they would want us. I don't know. But they have a whole thing like their history on here.
It says the yellow deli was our Heavenly Father's gift to us. Well, maybe we'll give it to everyone. Sorry, the food. Yeah.
It's um, it's pretty intense. I mean, the sandwiches look really good. Do any of you cold tees validate parking? No.
All right. Well, maybe next time. Yeah. Um, okay.
So I was trying to see if they had any here where they like, um, talked about, okay. So they have a whole section here about their homes in each town where there is a yellow. This is directly from the website. Okay.
In each town where there is a yellow deli, there's also a cluster of homes following the pattern of those first believers we share our common life together there. That would maybe hard for many to imagine living and working together, sharing a pure and holy life that is really all we desire to do. Coming from many different backgrounds, we who have decided to live this life are very thankful for the refuge we have found among those who believe and respect the word of God. Sadly, fear of evil or perverse behavior going on among us has caused some to circulate unfounded rumors about us.
I think we must have bad motives. We hope that they're having an open and hospitable place like our yellow deli people will be able to see that we are not really strange and scary, just friendly folks who love God in our neighbors. It's a different life, but it keeps brings down contentment to our souls. We enjoy this peaceful environment free from TV and drugs.
So our children at least have a chance to grow up enough to decide their own past or less will take. Yeah, so they're acknowledging that there's some history there. They are, but they're also still rationalizing it. Hey, listen, we just want the best and we're good people is what they're but I think that this drives home how they end up recruiting people because it's just like, hey, we just want to love everybody.
Like let us love you and take care of you. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. They have an accessibility statement, which is great. Allergens, we have an allergen statement.
Can we have some gluten-free options? Is that an option there? Not that I am gluten-free, but I just want to make sure, you know, because that would be another reason for me to get out of the call. I think there's no gluten-free.
Oh, I'm sorry. I think that's an option. I can be converted. I'm thinking that's a that's not going to happen.
I have a gluten allergy. I must leave immediately. For press inquiries, oh, you can contact each local deli individually. Okay, so that's good to know.
There's also a website, a disciple sign in. Okay, so when you're looking up the menu at the bottom, you can go to the disciple sign in. I don't know how you get an account. Could be just a good old gmail.
But I feel like that's something we've got to look into. I think we should. I think we should too really should. They want to know my location.
I got to get off this website. I need to know what I should wear. I think, you know, from the photos of the community, it looks like just like normal stuff. I mean, this little girl does have a button up, allows buttoned all the way to the job button.
Oh my God. Okay. I think that's going to be in. What you're wearing now is probably not going to be it.
I don't think so. I've gotten like two buttons undone and I'm showing all kinds of cleavage. Yeah. I think the less cleavage about the better.
Really? For the purpose of the deli. The deli. Yeah.
That's fine. Yeah. I do think we should go though. I think it just looked really good.
I'm excited about this. Yeah. What if, you know, we bring our mics and they start, you know, trying to recruit us. We could maybe, you know, get them on an episode.
Maybe. Yeah. We could go there with our fake names. Yeah.
We might, we might have to like tame our names a little bit. Okay. Because they might get scared. I'll be Jessica.
Who will you be? Jessica. I'll be Esther. Esther feels right.
Yeah, but that feels too religious. Oh, true, true, true. You want them to try. They have Rachel.
Okay. Well, I could be Rebecca. Rebecca. We're sisters.
Rachel and Rebecca. Yes. Oh, I love that. That's who we will be.
We go. Oh my gosh. Love it. I'm excited for this.
I want to try the soup. We'll keep you posted. We'll let you know as soon as we go. Honestly though, while I know that the original one is in Chattanooga, it is closer to go to the one in the nights.
Yeah, that's true. Night. But I'm a little more scared of that one because it's a real rural. Chattanooga is not that rural.
That's true. You know, that is true. Like I think if we needed to yell for help, Chattanooga might be a little bit better. My God, we could be there, eat in our sandwich.
And the next thing you know, you know, there's a tissue with chloroform on it. Yeah. And then we just kind of, we wake up and we're in the dump-back room. Exactly.
Yeah. Then you just baptize to get your wilt. Exactly. And I can start screaming.
My soul is already been saved. Yeah. Yeah. Double dunked.
Yes. And you can say I've been there done that. Yeah, been there done at once. Exactly.
What it'll do again. But while they, I mean, they would hold you down. That's true. Likely.
Yeah. That's true. You have a lot of sin. Yeah.
And then you'd be fighting and fighting until you just don't fight anymore. Just don't fight anymore. No. That just blows my body.
Is that, is that? I mean, I'm sure that has happened. See, it's a Chattanooga feels safer. That's so safer.
Okay. Okay. Let's do it. Let's do it.
All right. Well, y'all, we'll let you know if we end up at the Yellow Delly. What are our students? At least try it.
Yeah. I think we should watch us get food poisoning or something. Oh my god, probably. Yeah.
Knowing our luck. Yeah. Well, we'll catch you next month. So if you are, you know, hanger in for more Mountain Mysteries, from Appalachia, please join us on our Patreon and Patreon folks got this episode early.
So yay. And you guys, usually we give you once a month, but in this scenario, we gave you the next week episode. Yeah. So, Haley, how can they get in touch with us?
You can get in touch with us by emailing us at Mountain Mysteries Tail from Appalachia. Nope. Mountain Mysteries.appleatcha.net.gmail.com. That's the one Instagram Mountain Mysteries dot appleatcha.
Check us out on Facebook, Mountain Mysteries Tail from Appalachia. And our Patreon is patreon.com slash Mountain Mysteries. Absolutely. And we've got a big shout out to Utica, New York.
Thank you so much for listening. All right. We will catch you next time. Bye.
Bye.