Blackburn Cult

The religious group known as the Blackburn Cult, the Divine Order of the Royal Arms of the Great Eleven, or the Great Eleven Club, was started in 1922 on Bunker Hill in Downtown Los Angeles, California; and later formed a retreat in the Southern California Simi Valley. The group's founder, May Otis Blackburn, is said to have received revelations directly from angels, and along with her daughter Ruth Wieland Rizzio believed she was charged by the archangel Gabriel to write books revealing the mysteries of heaven and earth and life and death.

Newspaper articles from the time period reported strange rituals including the sacrifice of animals, sex scandals and attempts to resurrect a dead 16-year-old girl. Police found the corpse of Willa Rhoads under the floor at the Rhoads' residence, wrapped in spices and salt and surrounded by the bodies of seven dead dogs. Mr. and Mrs. Rhoads later confessed to the police that they had placed their daughter in the tomb fourteen months earlier at the suggestion of May Otis Blackburn.