Scientology's deification of founder L. Ron Hubbard: More holy sites opening soon

While Scientology leader David Miscavige’s plans for turning downtown Clearwater, Florida into a massive shrine to L. Ron Hubbard hit a snag last week, the church’s ongoing deification of its founder is still scheduled to produce new holy pilgrimage sites in the next few weeks.

Scientology’s official position is that it was founded by a remarkable man, maybe the most remarkable man who ever lived, but that LRH was just that — a man, and not a god.

But Miscavige has figured out that turning Ron’s old haunts into pilgrimage sites of ersatz worship is good business, and he can use it to pry ever larger amounts out of wealthy members.

So Dave has Scientology’s formerly most secretive of subsidiaries, the Church of Spiritual Technology, not only maintaining several hidden underground vaults in California and New Mexico to store Hubbard’s words and voice recordings against civilization collapse, but CST has also become a little more visible with a wing, Heritage Properties, that buys up Ron’s old houses and restores them as shrines.

Last month, we found out that they were having a grand opening at a house in Elizabeth, New Jersey, that Ron and his second wife Sara and their newborn Alexis were renting in 1950 when Dianetics came out and where Ron first put out his shingle, offering courses in Dianetic therapy.

And at the LRH Birthday Event in March, Miscavige revealed that two more holy sites are opening up soon, and the church put out photos of them. We thought you’d want to see them, and we’d especially like to hear from former members about how you think these places are going to hit Scientologists.

First, here’s a look at the Elizabeth place on Aberdeen road that had its grand opening in April.

“Now fully restored, 42 Aberdeen Road stands exactly as it did in 1950—cedar shingles, long buried under white aluminum siding, once again gracing the façade. His Ford Deluxe Woody Wagon has likewise been returned to its original glory.”

“The Aberdeen Road Landmark Site became the nerve center of the nascent Dianetics movement. Here, the first-ever lectures and training of Dianetics auditors (counselors) took place,” Scientology says about these looks inside the house.

But as we said before, we think Scientology is fudging things a bit here. Records show that while Hubbard and Sara were living in this house, he had actually opened his first “Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation” at an office in town.

But whatever, the pilgrims will no doubt find this place to be a revelation.

The Elizabeth house opened in April, and Miscavige indicated that sometime this month, in May, CST would be opening another house that’s been restored, this time in Phoenix, where Hubbard was spending time in 1954 as he was shifting his focus from the prenatal engrams of Dianetics to the past life seances of Scientology.

“This unique Prairie-style heritage site on Osborn Road, which LRH described as ‘a beautiful place,’ was designed with rooms wrapping around a tear-drop swimming pool. Today it stands fully revived as it was in 1954, when LRH forged history from within its walls.”

“The center of intensive writing and research, Osborn Road is where LRH authored Dianetics 55! The site includes the Ampex 600 recorder—the very device LRH used to capture the Unification Congress and the classic Golden Dawn public lecture series.”

Hubbard also liked the touch of the small round porthole windows which reminded the Navy veteran of his time at sea — and would presage his return to the bounding main more than a decade later.

We haven’t heard yet when this month the Osborn Road house will get its grand opening, but we assume it’s any day now.

The third house that’s been restored is supposed to get its grand opening in June. It’s located in the city formerly known as Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe), where Ron spent some time in 1966 on a quixotic quest to find a country he could take over and make Scientology’s own.

“The site at 31 John Plagis Place has been meticulously restored, inside and out. In the driveway, visitors can see his transportation of the day: a 1965 Ford Mustang Fastback and the 1963 Pontiac Parisienne he provided to transport his staff to and from work.”

“Inside the historic site is the very room where LRH recorded his only filmed interview, An Introduction to Scientology. This same room was the site of a milestone breakthrough: it was here that LRH filmed the legendary Clearing Course lectures. The garments LRH wore at these famed events and the camera that captured those pivotal moments are on display.”

Yes, we do recognize that spot as the place where Ron gave a rather bombastic filmed interview to Tony Hitchman, and which yielded such good soundbites to documentaries like Alex Gibney’s Going Clear…

And thank you, Jens Tingleff, for pointing out that Scientology likes to pretend that Ron never actually gave another television interview, conveniently forgetting the epic conversation he had with Charlie Nairn aboard the ship Apollo in 1968…

We’d love to hear from any of our readers who happen to attend these grand openings or subsequently visits these shrines. Drop us a line if you do.

And in the meantime, we’ll patiently wait for Scientology to restore and open up Ron’s final destination in Central California…

---

Chris Shelton is going Straight Up and Vertical

Want to help?

Please consider joining the Underground Bunker as a paid subscriber. Your $7 a month will go a long way to helping this news project stay independent, and you’ll get access to our special material for subscribers. Or, you can support the Underground Bunker with a Paypal contribution to bunkerfund@tonyortega.org, an account administered by the Bunker’s attorney, Scott Pilutik. And by request, this is our Venmo link, and for Zelle, please use (tonyo94 AT gmail). E-mail tips to tonyo94@gmail.com. Find us at Threads: tony.ortega.1044 and Bluesky: @tonyortega.bsky.social

For the full picture of what’s happening today in the world of Scientology, please join the conversation at tonyortega.org, where we’ve been reporting daily on David Miscavige’s cabal since 2012. There you’ll find additional stories, and our popular regular daily features:

Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history

Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea

Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time

Past is Prologue: From this week in history at alt.religion.scientology

Random Howdy: Your daily dose of the Captain

Here’s the link for today’s post at tonyortega.org

And whatever you do, subscribe to this Substack so you get our breaking stories and daily features right to your email inbox every morning.

Paid subscribers get access to a special podcast series…

Group Therapy: Our round table of rowdy regulars on the week’s news