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Here Are Photos of Scientology's Super Secret Armageddon Compound in Lake Arrowhead

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[Images via Daily Mail; map via The Underground Bunker]

In 2005 or 2006, Shelly Miscavige, the wife of the head of the Church of Scientology, disappeared (high-profile Scientology member Leah Remini eventually left the Church over the disappearance), and eventually it sort-of came out that she was being kept at the Church's top secret, 500-acre compound near Lake Arrowhead, the headquarters of its Church of Spiritual Technology, sometimes known as Twin Peaks, Rimforest, Rim of the World, or Crestline. Scientology watchdog Tony Ortega calls CST "the most hush-hush unit of a secretive organization"; it owns the copyrights to L. Ron Hubbard's works and "In order to preserve Hubbard's legacy for future generations — and in order to ensure that his legacy survives a nuclear holocaust — CST's job is to create underground vaults for storage." Tom Cruise, John Travolta, and other high-level Scientologists supposedly have secret nuclear apocalypse bunkers at the site. And now Daily Mail says it's dug up the first close-up photos, and they add "It's the only Scientology base never to have been pictured before apart from afar on Google images."

Both DM and TO talked to apostate Dylan Gill, who worked at the base; he told TO that "CST Headquarters has several buildings that are used for housing workers and for doing the work of archiving — plans for the vaults include etching Hubbard's millions of printed words on steel plates and storing them in titanium boxes." It also has "upscale residences" and an exercise yard (a gyro-gym!). Work started in 1989 and was originally budgeted at $18 million, "but it cost way more," according to Gill, who says also that it is lousy with cameras and heat and motion sensors.

The majority of Scientologists, even high-ranking ones, supposedly don't even know about the compound. Or they didn't, assuming they believe anything the Daily Mail says.
· EXCLUSIVE - Pictured for the first time: Secret 'Twin Peaks' Scientology base in the California mountains 'where Shelly Miscavage has lived since disappearing seven years ago' [DM]
· SHELLY SPEAKS: Scientology Leader's Banished Wife Says She'll Get Out "Only One Way" [The Underground Bunker]