The Case of the Missing Chacmools: Soon after New Age icon and bestselling author Carlos Castaneda died in 1998, a group of his most loyal followers vanished, and many believed they’d made a suicide pact. Geoffrey Gray investigates the writer’s bizarre cult and finds himself entangled in a web of murky financial dealings, sex, possible foul play—and one death-defying supernatural being. (Geoffrey Gray, June 20, 2024, Alta)
Spirituality was Dee Ann’s escape hatch. She started reading New Age books, hanging out in sweat lodges, spending time with the local hippie set. It was the late 1970s, and, eventually, the inevitable next step was to head west, to move to California and find her guru.“That was her mission,” Chris says. “To find a man who would take her to the next spiritual level.”
Chris remembers the scene in 1985 or 1986 when Dee Ann moved away. She packed a bag and jumped into a convertible with some new friends. Dee Ann left her two young children with Chris, and the kids screamed and cried and hollered as their mom sped off and abandoned them.
“She was laughing her ass off,” Chris says. “She was free. She was free from the chains.”
Dee Ann had wanted her sister to come with her. Together, they could escape, she promised. But Chris didn’t go along, and that was one of the last times she ever saw her sister. After moving to Los Angeles, Dee Ann found her guru: the famous writer Carlos Castaneda.
She joined his cult and became a witch—as his female followers called themselves—or a chacmool, a word from ancient Mexico for revered statues depicting guardians of the gods. As part of her initiation, she changed her name. She became Kylie Lundahl.
Then she disappeared. Days after Castaneda died, in the spring of 1998, Dee Ann and five other chacmools mysteriously vanished. More than 25 years later, they are still missing.