Valerie Ross | The Underground Bunker

Val Ross: From Scientology spy to extreme drug withdrawal guinea pig

TODAY AT SUBSTACK: If you’ve signed up for free emails at Substack, you will receive today’s feature story at your inbox: Valerie Ross continues her deeply personal series about her Scientology past, from spying on the FBI to, this time, serving as a test subject for L. Ron Hubbard’s quack ideas about drug detoxification. [What […]

Val Ross: Midnight terror in the career of a Scientology spy

[Natalie Cole was a top target for Val’s Scientology recruitment efforts]

TODAY AT SUBSTACK: If you’ve signed up for free emails at Substack, you will receive today’s feature story at your inbox: Val Ross continues her incredible series about serving as a Scientology spy in the 1970s, even infiltrating the FBI before and after the infamous […]

What awaits you at the end of Scientology’s long, arduous journey

TODAY AT SUBSTACK: If you’ve signed up for free emails at Substack, you will receive today’s feature story at your inbox: Last time, Val Ross told us about spying at the FBI after its raid on Scientology in 1977. She’s working on a subsequent installment, but in the meantime sent us this look at what […]

Val Ross: What it was like to infiltrate the FBI for Scientology

This is important to know: A lot of what I’m telling here is because I did something most people in my position didn’t do — I never stopped writing letters […]

For an outfit that sells immortality, Scientology really sucks about death

[Yvonne Gillham Jentzsch, center, and the early Celebrity Centre community]

In June 1976, my grandmother died in my little sister’s bed. She was 80. She was my last living grandparent. After her husband, my grandpa, had died in 1968, I spent several summers at her house with her, just the two of us, staying up late […]

How I trained to be a Scientology spy in order to save L. Ron Hubbard from SMERSH

The minute you start Scientology’s very first course, the Communications Course, you are told they are going to teach you to be a master […]

Scientology in the ‘good’ old days: Prison of belief just as confining as today

[Heber Jentzsch at a protest over the 1977 FBI raid of Scientology]

People talk about how the old timers say it was fun in the “good old days,” back when L. Ron Hubbard ran Scientology. And it did seem like it was more fun than it would be these […]

Giving birth (shhhh, silently!) in Scientology: What is that really like?

One of the accepted beliefs in Scientology is that founder L. Ron Hubbard knew everything about everything, no exceptions. Honestly, I’m not sure why that was accepted. I don’t call my orthopedic surgeon’s office or my attorney’s office and ask questions about why my eye hurts, I don’t call my attorney to ask him what […]

PODCAST: She spied on the FBI for Scientology and lived to tell about it

Readers have been raving about the pieces that Val Ross has been writing for us lately, so we thought it would be fun to have a conversation with her for our latest podcast […]

Val Ross: Scientology draws you in so you don’t realize what it’s about until it’s too late

[Val at her desk back in the day, the Grade Chart on the wall]

The spring of 1972, I was 17 and in my senior year of high school. The school was in Grants, New Mexico, 12 miles away from where we lived. I only had one class to finish to graduate, and was taking courses […]

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