A cult recruiting wealthy city slickers has been accused of forcing newbies to dig ditches in a vast retreat as its leaders live the high life.
The New York group are said to be expanding their recruitment of wealthy individuals and putting them to work on renovations and landscaping, according to records and a source close to the group.
Records show a company linked to members of the Odyssey Study Group (OSG) purchased a sprawling compound across 100 wooded acres in the outskirts of Margaretville, in New York State.
The estate was bought in 2021 - six months after the death of OSG’s longtime leader, Sharon Gans Horn.
The group also reportedly go by the name, 'The Work and A Fourth Way School' and under the late Gans Horn’s leadership had been accused of sexual and child abuse along with financially exploiting its members.
Leaders were also accused of using the money to live extravagant lifestyles in Manhattan, Boston, the Hamptons and Mexico.
In February a group of some 15 new recruits reportedly joined, paying $400 a month to participate in twice-weekly “study” sessions.
They were then said to be driven to the Margaretville compound and made to dig ditches for the construction of a pavilion, the source told The Post.
It comes after the local council approved a permit on May 27 to build a 2,880-square-foot pavilion on the property, according to public records.
The source said: "They are building the pavilion and also farming.
“They get members to do all the work.
"Long hours. No pay. Intense. People are taken there [Margaretville] without knowing where they’re going."
Gans Horn and her playwright husband Alex Horn, who died in 2007, co-founded OSG in San Francisco in the 1970s.
The group, known then as Theater of All Possibilities, was partly set up to put on plays by Horn before the couple closed it down in December 1978 following accusations from former students who had gone to police claiming they were sexually abused and beaten.
The couple then reportedly fled to Montana, before ending up in New York where they established the OSG while living in a number of luxury homes
OSG was registered as a for-profit company in 2001, and currently has 200 members on the East Coast, cult experts say.
Spencer Schneider, a New York attorney who spent 23 years in OSG and recently wrote about his experiences, claiming: "It’s very heavy mind control.
“I know it’s hard to believe, but [members] just don’t look them up. They’re afraid to look. If you do look them up and tell someone about it, you are punished and berated in front of the group."
The new 3,161 square foot property in Margaretville is listed as offering “soaring ceilings” and “theatrical lighting" as well as “glass walls in unexpected spaces [that] suffuse rooms with light, creating angular luminous splashes everywhere,”
The $925,000 purchase was finalised in July 2021 by MR100 LLC, a private company controlled by Greg Koch.
Koch is a contractor who has been accused of being one of the alleged leaders of OSG, according to court papers.
Two former members of the group have named Koch - along with three others - in a class-action lawsuit filed last year.
The two women Stephanie Rosenberg and Marjorie Hochman accuse the group of using them as slave labour between 2005 and 2019. The women
They said they worked for free, cleaning and doing renovations into the early hours on luxury properties, including on an $8.5million (£7m) apartment in the Plaza Hotel used by Gans Horn as a residence before her death from Covid in January 2021.
OSG follows the teachings of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, a Russian mystic and philosopher.
Gurdjieff also inspired the Fellowship of Friends cult, formed in California.
Schneider added: “The basic thrust of OSG’s teachings is that mankind is asleep and in order to awaken they must attend an esoteric school — a hidden school that teaches higher knowledge and self-awareness.
"It’s similar to Scientology in that they have charismatic leaders and hand-picked successors, but the big difference is that OSG is completely hidden and secret. Nobody wants to talk about it.”
