Koreshanity: Cyrus Teed and the Story of a Civil War Doctor who became a Hollow Earth Theorist and Floridian Cult Leader

Located on Florida’s Gulf Coast only a few miles off of Interstate Highway 75 is a place called the Koreshan Historic Site.  The Koreshan Historic Site is part of the Sunshine State’s expansive and sprawling  Koreshan State Park, which is home to much of rural Florida’s flora and fauna and is  a sanctuary for the state’s many unique species of birds and reptiles.

The Koreshan Historic Site and State Park are located within the town of Estero.  Estero sits directly in the middle of the Gulf Coast tourist Meccas of Naples to the south and Fort Myers to the north.  Today Estero is home to about 37,000 people and it first became a thriving community in the 1920’s when construction on Interstate Highway 75, linking the cities of Tampa and Miami, was completed.

But, built in 1894 approximately three decades prior to the completion of Interstate Highway 75 is Estero’s most famous building-- the Koreshan Historic Site.  What is known today as the Koreshan Historic Site is a large, yellow mansion that rises out of the Florida wetlands on acres of property in true Gilded Age late Victorian Era elegance.  When first built in the late 19th century the large mansion in Estero was known all across Florida simply as, “The Yellow House”.  

The Yellow House, and all of the surrounding land that would one day become known as the town of Estero, was first settled and purchased by the followers of an eclectic physician, Civil War veteran and cult leader turned would-be Messiah named Cyrus Teed.

The Yellow House in Estero

Born on October 13, 1839 in Utica, New York, Cyrus Teed was a distant cousin of Joseph Smith, the man known world over as the founder of Mormonism or the Church of Latter Day Saints.  Though his family may have been steeped in the teachings of fundamentalist Christianity, Cyrus Teed went to school to practice medicine.  Eventually he established himself in his hometown of Utica as a physician in the days leading up to the American Civil War during the late 1850’s.

Because of his extensive medical knowledge Teed was drafted into the Union Army during the war and he performed countless amputations as a battlefield surgeon during the Battle of the Wilderness in Virginia in May of 1864.  He witnessed and lived through the carnage, bloodshed and horror of a Civil War field hospital firsthand.  Many have since speculated that the horrors Cyrus Teed saw during his service with the Union Army caused him to suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and recurring nightmares for the rest of his life, which some say may have directly led to many of his more eccentric actions in the years to come.

At the end of the Civil War Teed returned to Utica, New York and his medical practice, but he was a changed man with changed interests.

He began to experiment with the medieval pseudo-scientific practice of alchemy, attempting to turn base metals into gold, and he developed a fascination with the use of electricity. 

 After seeing so many maimed and disfigured soldiers on the battlefield, and after having personally performed so many gruesome amputations, it seemed as if Teed started to view the human body as some sort of machine and in addition to believing that he could use electricity to turn base metals into gold, Teed also believed that he could reanimate, bring back to life if you will, dead human beings ala Dr. Frankenstein.

It was in 1869 while performing one of his alchemical experiments using crude electrical batteries that Cyrus Teed said he had one of his first, “Divine illuminations.”

Teed purportedly blacked out for several minutes after seriously shocking himself with high voltage direct electric current.  He said that when he woke up he saw, “God in the form of a beautiful glowing woman,” and that she came to him and told him, “The truth and the secrets behind interpreting the Bible.”

Immediately after he had his “Divine Illumination” Cyrus Teed, Civil War veteran and physician from Utica, New York, changed his name to Koresh which is Hebrew for the name Cyrus, and he began referring to himself by this single Hebraic name.

During the last three decades of the 19th century, Teed traveled extensively across the United States.  He wrote about and codified the belief system of a new religious movement that he named Koreshan Universology or Koreshanity. 

The beliefs and practices of Koreshanity were based supposedly upon the Divine Illumination that Teed had first received in 1869.  Central to Teed’s belief system was something he called “Cellular Cosmogony”.

Essentially, Cellular Cosmogony was a Hollow-Earth Theory that stated that the universe was a giant hollow sphere and that God had placed the earth (which itself was a hollow sphere) directly in the center of the universe.  Teed also stated that humans lived inside the earth and not on the earth’s surface and that it was centrifugal force, not gravity, which kept us pinned to the ground.

Additionally, Teed renounced all commercialism and adopted a fervent adherence to communism.  He told his followers to live with all things in common and he renounced all worldly attachments including marriage.

Surprisingly, over the course of the next thirty years or so, Teed, now going by the name Koresh, was able to recruit quite a number of followers in major cities across the United States such as New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco.  His disciples met to talk about his holy vision and follow his dictates in what they called “Koreshan Unity Groups”.

In about the year 1903 the number of Teed’s followers peaked at around 300 to 350.  As with most cult leaders, as Teed continued to surround himself with more acolytes and believers, his theories and teachings became more and more outlandish.  He began to proclaim himself the Messiah and said that, much like Jesus Himself, he would rise from the dead and with his followers form a New Jerusalem, a new Heaven on earth where in the end times true hollow-earth believers of Koreshanity would be protected from the wrath of Satan.

It was at this time that Koresh and his followers bought the land in Estero, Florida, and built the giant yellow house as the headquarters  of the cult of Koreshanity, or as Cyrus Teed’s followers called it, “The World College of Life.”  Koreshan Unity members also constructed a power plant to provide electricity to their New Jerusalem--the first of its kind in the state of Florida--a printing press, a bakery and they even formed their own political party and took an active part in the Floridian state government.

Koreshan Unity Picnic in Estero ca. 1900

However, as word of the Hollow Earth cult spread via newspaper and word of mouth and the ideas and beliefs of Cyrus Teed became more and more outlandish, many local residents near Estero, Florida started to take exception with the cult in their midst.  

In 1908 the New Jerusalem formed by the adherents to Koreshanity was about to come crashing down.

Teed and some of his followers were in Fort Myers awaiting a train headed north to Atlanta where they planned to go spread the word about Koreshanity.  While waiting on the train platform Cyrus Teed heard shouting and noticed a scuffle breaking out between locals and some of his followers.  It was reported that Teed himself walked over to try and calm things down but that he was pistol whipped by a local resident and his skull was fractured.  Teed, the man who called himself Koresh and who claimed to be the Messiah, crumpled to the ground in an unconscious and bloody heap.

This supposed pistol whipping by an irate local is what his followers said killed the man they called Koresh but there is no credible proof that such an altercation ever occurred.  In fact, Cyrus Teed’s own death certificate stated that he died of, “A circulatory ailment,” most likely a heart attack.  In all probability the pistol-whipping story was simply circulated in later years by the adherents to Koreshanity in an attempt to martyr the man they considered to be the Messiah and to keep alive their delusional belief that he might one day rise from the dead.

As it was, after his death, the Koreshan believers kept his body in a tub of water inside the giant yellow house in Estero for days and weeks in the hopes that their leader, their Messiah, Cyrus Teed would rise from the dead.  Eventually, Florida police and the state’s health inspector forced their way into the giant yellow house in Estero and took away Teed’s rotting corpse to give it a proper burial.

Tomb of Cyrus Teed

Amazingly, belief in Koreshanity in and around Estero continued for over half a century after Teed’s death!  Membership in the cult did decline but even as late as the end of World War Two in 1945 there were still upwards of three dozen believers in Koreshanity.  In fact, the last documented convert to the cult founded and led by Cyrus Teed was herself a woman named Hedwig Michel who had fled oppression in Nazi Germany in 1940 and traveled to Estero, Florida, after hearing about Teed’s hollow earth belief system.

And it was Hedwig Michel, one of the cult’s last surviving members who sold the 300 acres of land originally bought by Cyrus Teed and his followers back to the state of Florida in the 1960’s.  In 1976 the Koreshan Unity compound was officially added to the National Register of Historic Places and what today is known as Koreshan State Park was born.