Page Turner: Spencer Schneider on Writing His Way Out of ‘School’

<p>“We were invisible. We had to be. We took an oath of absolute secrecy. We never even told our immediate families who we were. We went about our lives in New York City. Just like you. We were your accountants, money managers, lawyers, executive recruiters, doctors. We owned your child’s private school and sold you your brownstone. But you’d never guess our secret lives, how we lived in a kind of silent terror and fervor. There were hundreds of us.”</p><br><p>That’s a snippet from Spencer Schneider’s compelling and creepy AF memoir: <a href="https://www.spencer-schneider.com/manhattan-cult-story" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Manhattan Cult Story: My Unbelievable True Story of Sex, Crimes, Chaos, and Survival</a>. This isn’t an ad, it’s just the truth: We think you’re going to want to grab yourself a copy before you hit the beach this summer. It’s that much of a page turner. In this episode of A Little Bit Culty, Spencer joins us to share more about what it was like living inside the nightmarish bubble of ‘School’, the ultra-secret Manhattan organization that consumed his life for 23 years. And just in case you’ve not heard of <a href="https://nypost.com/2019/11/11/inside-the-alleged-cult-that-has-been-quietly-operating-in-ny-for-decades/amp/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">‘School’</a>, this particular culty shitshow gives us <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyes_Wide_Shut" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Eyes Wide Shut</a> vibes with sprinklings of <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyes_Wide_Shut" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Eloise</a> if she lived at The Plaza in the Upside Down. For extra credit, read up on <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/06/18/accused-cult-leader-sharon-gans-horn-cut-kids-from-will/amp/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">the late Sharon Gans</a>, the eccentric School leader whose cult resume lowlights include: forced adoptions, arranged marriages, twisted displays of public humiliation and <a href="https://www.dailymail.