Stuart T. Penelope c, Aimee H, Howard V, Leonard F, Bernadette W, Roger B and Shelley C.
The Children of the Sun was a quasi-religious cult that wandered from city to city throughout the Northeastern United States from the Late 1970s to the Mid-1990s, often taken over abandoned structures in the cities they stopped in as their bases. In several cities, they preyed upon teenagers and individuasl with mental and social problems to indoctrinate into becoming members. Not much is known about the cult, but its membership included around a hundred to 150 members in 1995.
Not much is known about the cult, but it is believed it was founded as part of the Old Holy Springs Community Church near Dunkirk, New Jersey. The church was founded on a site known for mineral springs by Reverend Ephraim Tucker in the Early Fifties, which was visited by mass numbers of visitors coming to enjoy the curative powers of the area and stayed to hear his sermons based on health and purity of the soul. Tucker was a Lutheran minister who founded this society on truly noble motives, but his son, Stuart, was more into financial gains, selling bottles of water from the springs and phony remedies to the gullible among several other side franchises. However, after Reverend Tucker passed in 1958, Stuart was guided into replacing him by three associates named Roger, Howard and Penelope, and the four of them gradually began turning the once moral and decent church into a religious community based on his role as a faith healer with members posing as sick and injured believers coming to be cured for non-existent maladies.
Over time, Stuart started denouncing the government and the system as the true source of mankind's ills. Challenging law and government, he preached that he had been sent to save humanity and used twisted tenets from other religions and tenets that fit his world views. He and his core followers soon began collecting money and followers from all over the tri-counties area of Atlantic, Gloucester and Camden Counties. While many of the older members of the church departed, they were being replaced by runaway teenagers, drifters and outlaws running from the government. Posing as hippies, the congregation spent their time raising and farming anything they could develop while Stuart, Roger, Howard and Penelope were living to the excess on the funds of donations to the church. Anyone who challenged this status quo were mistreated or threatened or further brainwashed with lies over their devotion and allegiance to the church. It is believed the cult might have been responsible for indoctrinating as many as fifty to seventy teenagers disenchanted by their families, having the teens claiming to be abducted for huge ransoms that went into the church. One of the teenagers was Lisa Miller from Dunn's Creek, Connecticut, who disappeared on October 13, 1978. Stuart started having his most devoted followers, which by now included Leonard, Bernadette, Aimee and Shelley, conducting classes to further indoctrinate its members to embrace an increasing distrust of all authority figures, both legal, federal and financial. Once indoctrinated, many of these kids were sent on holy missions to bring new members into the church, who when they failed to bring in new members, were abused or re-indoctrinated to strengthen their devotion to the church. Many of the members were forced or asked to surrender their surnames as their devotion to the church, using single letters as replacements.
Around 1975, the mineral springs that were the main source of wealth to the cult were polluted by flooding that also wrecked their vegetable gardens and uprooted their apple, pear and peach trees. The members began migrating into the Church of the Golden Ray near Hartford, Connecticut run by the Reverend Sun Rey Sung, where Stuart added the cult's Eastern yogi beliefs into his church. Once they infiltrated the church and gained access to its finances, Sung mysteriously disappeared with Roger posing as Sung to hide his disappearance. Stuart meanwhile was running the church behind the scenes. The church structure also had the facilities for Stuart the hide several of the more illegal activities from the members, such as the growing of marijuana plants and development of street narcotics among other illicit activities. The urban setting only magnified Stuart's lust for power, but it also made him increasingly paranoid. He reportedly read and studied other cults to learn from their mistakes and forced his most loyal members, his "children," to oaths of loyal punishable by death. In the media, Stuart's Church of the Golden Ray became known as the "Children of the Sun."
After the Reverend Sun's body was found decapitated and missing his hands and feet several miles away in the Connecticut River, Stuart had his children taken equal numbers of the church and flee Dunn's Creek. They turned up taking over abandoned schools, prisons and hospitals in three cities in Massachusetts, Holyoke, Northampton and North Adams, gradually ending up in Ashford Falls, New York, where they took over the abandoned Hathaway House. Wherever they went, his "children" went out trying to draw in members while his life-long members, who called themselves "Sunnies," sold their grown vegetables, arts and crafts on the streets. While Roger, Howard and Leonard were often getting in fights with the locals, Penelope, Aimee and Shelley were often robbing homes or shoplifting from the local stores.
Despite its criminal activities, FBI Agent Sherman Oakes told Sheriff David Carmichael of Ashford Falls that Stuart's church was more of a nuisance than a cult, especially after the FBI failed to connect the cult to the Reverend's death. Local reporter Melissa Strickland interviewed both Stuart and Bernadette for the local news affiliate, responding with sarcastic remarks to their beliefs, but Carmichael started speculating the sudden rise in thefts and robberies in the area were linked to the cult. With a coordinated offensive with State Police officer Roy Clarke, Sheriff Earl Hackett and other local sheriffs, joined by former private detective Lou Riley, he began elevating the stress on the Sunnies with non-stop surveillance, focused stories aimed at them through the press and encouraging the locals not to interact with them. Unable to sell their goods and with Stuart getting increasingly paranoid, the cult left the area, breaking up briefly once more and leaving the area, but not without a few new members, such as Nicole Browne and Bud Mason.
In their haste to depart, member Jeff Hodges, formerly Jeff H, having gone into the woods to commune with nature, was left behind with three other members. Having lost ties with the church, they joined the local Buddhist church. It is believed this is where the group partially split, one splinter taken by Leonard and Bernadette to start a farm around an abandoned military base in Jefferson County, New York. The rest of the church ending up in the small village of Cutter's Cove, Rhode Island, the home of businessman Lionel Barrett and his wife, Victoria Luckweather. By now, Stuart was interested in developing more power and wealth and colluded with Barrett and two other businessmen to take over positions in the city council and the local church. Barrett had other much more political desires, and Stuart started helping to heavily promote him to run for State Governor. Victoria, however, saw through the cult and was dismayed by the dark turn the pact her hhusband had with Stuart was having on their marriage. She met by chance Dr. Samantha Oh, who was searching for a lost portrait for the Woods Family of Ashford Falls. Through Dr. Oh, Victoria called upon her former husband, Barclay Woods, for help her fight the cult and break its control on the town.
At this point, Stuart, Roger, Penelope and Shelley had even began dabbling in arcane and dark magic in trying to place curses on their enemies. Several town leaders and businessmen reportedly died in strange accidents through their actions, and Stuart and Roger successfully acquired several properties under unknown means. Joined by Quentin Woods and Jeff Hodges, Barclay and Victoria began secretly running interference in the cult's activities by exposing their secret activities to the press, creating obstacles that kept Stuart from buying several businesses and notifying Sherman Oakes of the church's clear criminal violations. Stuart retaliated by sending members to explore Barclay's dark past, and Lionel cut Victoria off from their joint bank accounts, leaving her penniless. Despite these losses, Barclay ended up freely revealing an unknown dark secret from his past that terrified Stuart so badly that he fled to his secret vault in one of his properties. Despite forcing his followers to a hippie/wanderer-like society, he was caught having hoarded a massive expensive sport memorabilia collection with their money and a huge entertainment system among other luxuries. Enraged, they attacked him and left him for dead.
Meanwhile, Quentin dueled with Roger and Howard in a skirmish over the cult's activities in Ashford Falls, particularly an incident that nearly took the life of Maggie Winters, his then girlfriend. As they tried throwing Quentin off the third floor of the local church, he got the upper hand, and Howard fell to his death. Lionel and Jeff then joined the scene against Quentin and Roger, and in one misstep, Lionel, Jeff and Roger crashed through the dilapidated church's staircase to their deaths with Quentin surviving on the church's third floor level.
In the aftermath, the members of the church were scattered or taken into custody by Oakes and the State Police. Victoria ended up going into a year-long depression. The events also exacerbated a life-long debilitating genetic disease Barclay had previously been treated for, and he departed for over a year to Canada and then England for fresh treatment. Quentin meanwhile returned to Ashford Falls to renew his relationship with Maggie.
Unfortunately, the cult failed to disappear completely. Having limped away with his injuries, Roger and Shelley started building the church up again on its original much simpler views of rejecting society and living from nature. Based in an abandoned mining community in the hills over Peytonville, they renewed the brainwashing techniques, both attracting disillusioned teenagers and lost travelers. In 2008, reporter Melissa Strickland and former horror movie hostess Jenny Turbeville arrived in the area attributing the disappearances to Tic-Toc, a fabled creature that reportedly dragged its victims into the woods. Believing it was responsible for the growing string of public disappearances, they found themselves taken captive and pushed into the brainwashing process. Unable to escape, Melissa started a fire on purpose that quickly decimated the derelict structures, attracting the fire department and State Police, and landing Roger and Shelley in prison.