In December 1973 French automotive journalist Claude Vorilhon claimed he had been visited by aliens in a volcanic crater.
Taking on the name Raël, the man claimed he'd been given a message by the aliens and tasked with delivering it to the people of this planet.
Basically the message is that all life on Earth was created by aliens and they kept trying to talk to us, though the people they picked were misunderstood because humanity wasn't as civilised as the aliens who created us.
Advert
He called these aliens the Elohim and claimed he was supposed to build them an embassy, quitting his job the year after he claimed he'd had his alien encounter.
A year after that, he said he'd been abducted by aliens and taken to another planet where he'd met Buddha, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, and that his real biological father was an alien named Yaweh.
Pretty bonkers right?
Advert
You'll be able to delve into the details of this story for yourself in the new Netflix documentary that's come to Netflix called Raël: The Alien Prophet.
You can watch the trailer here:
Speaking to his followers, critics and the man himself, the documentary is aiming to paint the picture of how this man who claimed he'd encountered UFOs and become the herald of an alien species started a cult which gained thousands of members.
Advert
In the documentary, former members of the cult claim that Vorilhon ruined people's lives and alleged that he made 'sex slaves' out of some of the women who joined up.
They also describe alleged manipulative practices which quash people's free will as the cult bought land and created their own 'garden of eden' in France, where people were encouraged to strip naked and have sex.
Former followers of the cult claimed to the documentary that people were not allowed to turn down his advances, particularly after he formed the 'Order of Angels', a group of young women he chose to 'welcome' the aliens when they made their presence known on Earth.
Advert
Since the cult leader claims humanity was actually made in a lab by an alien species, he has tried to achieve 'eternal life' by attempting to clone babies.
The cult claimed they would clone a human baby by 2001 and later said they'd managed to do so in a secret location, but no evidence of this cloned baby yet exists.
While many of these cults you hear about have collapsed in some way or another, Raël is still alive and espousing his beliefs to anyone who'll listen in his new home in Japan.
Raël: The Alien Prophet is available to watch on Netflix now.
Topics: Netflix, Documentaries, TV and Film, Aliens, UFO, Conspiracy Theory
Joe Harker