This morning as I was checking my emails, I saw that I had a message from a man who had run across my name when doing a Google search for Red Boiling Springs, Tennessee.  He wanted to know what I knew of the Anzara Hotel and the cult who ran it. I thought I would write a quick piece about it before responding to him.  Wow! The Anzara Hotel!  What a place!  It is now called The Thomas Hotel and is supposedly haunted. The crew from the show Paranormal State have done a few shows there and ghost hunters from all over come to stay and hope to see a ghost.  They are in the wrong place.  The most haunted house in all of America is in Red Boiling Springs, Tennessee, let me tell you ,and it ain't the Thomas Hotel.  I never saw anything ghostly while staying there, and I'm pretty certain this is just a gimmick to draw business, but, as I've learned from my own experiences, no one has any right telling anyone else what they saw or what did or did not happen to them when it comes to the supernatural, so let me back off there.  Okay! Back to the cult!  So, as I've said in my bio, I was raised by coyotes.  And since that was the case, I left home at sixteen.  My now husband (then boyfriend) had a similar background (Please read his book Anneewakee - such a great book)  anyway,, so we left our abusive homes and ran away (no one was following but we ran anyway) to Red Boiling Springs, Tennessee.  I have so many stories about Red Boiling and our wonderful time there- they would fill a book -  and I hope to one day write about it but for now, I want to talk about the Cult.  We stayed at all three hotels in Red Boiling at different times, but for a few months we lived at the Anzara.  I was seventeen then and very naive, I knew nothing of cults or anything like that, and wasn't even sure they WERE a cult until we'd left and Dateline or one of those shows did a piece on them, somewhere around 1990.  By the time they did the piece, the cult had picked up and split.  Anyway, my boyfriend and I got a room at the Anzara.  At that time, there was a very big, hard-nosed woman who owned the hotel (she was the leader of the cult) and in the beginning, I thought they were just Baptists or something and I remember telling her, "I'm a Christian......Baptist?" - She just looked at me like I was stupid. Our room was downstairs by the laundry room. I remember some strange people staying there, which I chalked up to just people being strange.  My seventeen year old mind was blown, though, one night, very late, when my boyfriend went down to the kitchen (we were allowed use of the kitchen)  and saw the people staying at the hotel, naked, and dancing in the dining room.  He ran back to our room, like, "What the fuck did I just see?"  ---- I remember, also, there was a very rich lady staying at the hotel.  I now know the cult was milking her for her money, but back then, I wasn't hip to people and their motives.  Anyway, so this fancy pants lady was from New York City and she had a little white dog and she and I would sit on the swing on the front porch and I would smoke her Pall Mall filterless cigarettes with her (and almost die because they had no filter!)  and we had a lot of long talks.  I don't remember now about what but, I really liked this lady. I do remember that she was sad and she seemed very lonely. It was summer then, and I recall that she drank a lot of sweet tea. -- Funny, as I think of our time there, I also remember that there was a front desk in the foyer, with an old fashioned cash register, and back then, it cost fifty dollars a week to stay at the hotel and my boyfriend would pay our fee, and then, when the cult leaders were out of sight,, he would go back and hit the NO SALE button, and take our money back.  Don't judge! I told you we were raised by wolves.  There's more I could write but I'll close with my most memorable time at the Anzara.  One night,  we were starving and my boyfriend stole down to the concession stand that was by the pool.  It was unlocked, and he snuck inside and stole all kinds of snack food and brought it up to the room.  I was so excited- look at all this food! Ho-ho's, ding dings, icicle popsicles! Holy crap!  We stuffed ourselves silly.  Once we were nice and full, we lay back on the bed, thrilled that we'd gotten all this free food (remember, back then we were young, poor teenagers)  smiling, wrappers all over the bed, and then we began to remember the things we'd seen; At that point, my boyfriend had begun to suspect that they were a cult or that something was up, and then we became terrified.  What if we'd been poisoned, Jim Jones style? What if this food we'd eaten had been intended for their big finale? We were so scared then.  I'll never forget laying there thinking, "Oh no. What have we done?" We might die. Oh God... Oh God....    We left not long after. Recently, I stopped by the Thomas Hotel and chatted with the new owner.  She said that the lady who'd run the cult had come to the Thomas Hotel at some point after she'd bought it and told the new owner that she'd once owned it and the lady knew who she was. I guess everyone has a story in them, or many stories, but my life has played out like frames in a movie.  My Red Boiling Springs experience was one.  My Mondovi experience was another. I have had a very strange life..... UPDATE---  Since posting this,I have now had two more people contact me regarding the Anzara, both are working on a book about the town and the hotel. The last guy told me that after the new owners took over, they found giant circles with feathers and blood in some of the rooms, beneath the carpet and folded metal prayers in the trees.  That is certainly interesting!  What in the world was going on at that hotel?

To read about our time in Red Boiling Springs, click here: https://www.amazon.com/House-Dale-Street-Boiling-Tennessee-ebook/dp/B078K563RR/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1520614222&sr=8-1&keywords=the+house+on+dale+street&dpID=51sc8s6lWQL&preST=_SY445_QL70_&dpSrc=srch