Visited the old Rajneeshpuram site in Oregon and it messed with my head

Honestly, I drove out to the Wasco County site last month after listening to that podcast series again. Standing in the middle of that dry land where they built a whole town, I kept thinking about how 7,000 people just handed over their lives and wallets to one person. The empty streets are still there, the hotel is this creepy shell, and you can see the foundation of the commune kitchens where they fed everyone. What got me was the gift shop selling books about it, like it's a tourist stop and not a place where they poisoned salad bars and ran a wiretap operation. The whole thing made me wonder how much of that pull is about charisma versus just being desperate for belonging. Has anyone else walked through a former cult site and felt like the place itself still had some weird energy to it, or was it just me? I almost expected to run into a survivor selling stories at the gate.

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