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Imagine that you were a 6-year-old and you were told the world was going to end. Your community taught you to believe this terrifying idea. But they also taught you that you would be saved. A spaceship would come and take you and your family members to outer space to live on Earth’s nearest neighbor, the planet Venus.
These are the ideas that Guinevere Turner was taught to believe as a member of the Lyman Family. Since Turner was only 6 at the time, she didn't realize her family was actually a cult.
Turner writes beautifully and bravely about her experience growing up as a member of the Lyman Family in her memoir, "When the World Didn’t End: A Memoir." She also explains how she managed to leave the cult, attend Sarah Lawrence College and go on to establish a successful career as a screenwriter.
When no spaceship came on Jan. 5, 1974
Turner told Wisconsin Public Radio's "BETA" about what it was like on Jan. 5, 1974, when the cult her family was a part of expected the world to end.
"The adults were very somber, glum," Turner said. "There were some tears. There was anxiety in the air. The leader of the family I grew up in, he never came out and really spoke to everyone as a group. But he said that it was because our souls weren't ready and that we had kind of ruined it for him."
"He was ready and he hadn't realized that we weren't," Turner continued. "And so there was a somber period of everybody feeling guilty about not being Venus-ready and about working on our souls more. And they started the year at zero. So that was the year zero one."
A 'normal' childhood
Turner said that the first 11 years of her life were "like the first 11 years of anyone's life."
Lyman Family children were homeschooled and they worked hard — tending to crops, taking care of animals and doing a lot of food preparation and laundry.
During the evenings, there was a lot of music because all the members of the community played instruments. They also sang a lot and listened to the tapes that Mel Lyman — the cult leader — made for them.
Turner said the mixtapes were "curated for a particular reason or of a particular era."
"When he first released them, they would come with liner notes and we would listen to them and read the liner notes, and then we would write him a letter about what we thought about it," she said.
Turner also told "BETA" about her perspective on the cult's leader Mel Lyman.
"Because I left when I was 11, I didn't have, and I still don't have, an adult sense of really what he was after or what he wanted or even what his doctrine was," she said. "We were raised with this kind of idea that you need to be present and you need to be full of love and you need to think not only in terms of yourself — don't be selfish, work hard and raise your consciousness, evolve into someone who is not just a grunt of a human."
"I was told that I'd been on the Earth too many times because I hadn't learned my lesson. I was this old soul that kept messing up like Matthew McConaughey in 'Dazed and Confused' like the grown-up who's hanging out with high school kids. And when we didn't go to Venus, I thought it might be my fault because I'm the one who didn't learn a lesson," Turner continued.
Turner eventually left the Lyman Family and reunited with her mother and her younger sister, Annalee. But her mother's boyfriend was abusive and violent. She escaped that turmoil when her boyfriend's father Lloyd Spears agreed to adopt her and allowed her to live with them until she finished high school.
"That was an incredible moment in my life. I'm forever grateful," Turner said.
A career in film
Turner has gone on to establish a successful career as a screenwriter and actor. She co-wrote the screenplay for the 2000 film, "American Psycho." She played the part of Elizabeth in the film.
"I don't like scary movies. I wonder how long it would have taken me to watch the film if I hadn't been a part of making it," she said.
Turner also wrote the screenplay for the 2018 film, "Charlie Says." It's about the women who killed for Charles Manson, focusing on the time they spent in prison.
"The producers of that film approached me because they were fans of 'American Psycho' and I had a very satisfying moment in the meeting of saying, 'Yeah, I did write 'American Psycho,' but also I grew up in a cult.'"
Turner is currently working on adapting her memoir into a film.