They Entered a Sweat Lodge Seeking Self-Help. Three of Them Never Came Home.

The walking labyrinth on the grounds of Angel Valley Retreat Center, (Photo: Annette McGivney)

Getting to Angel Valley, Arizona in October 2009 required crossing a rainbow bridge.

Painted in a palette of pleasing pastels, the colorful bridge stretching across the silver waters of Sedona’s Oak Creek was charming. It was also much more than that for guests arriving at the isolated New Age retreat center who were of a certain spiritual orientation. The bridge was a kind of welcome sign to the fifth dimension, placed there by the retreat center’s owners who had named their 70-acre property Angel Valley because they believed the land nine miles west of town was occupied by angels, galactic beings, and other non-human forces. The bridge was code for: “You are now entering another realm. The veil is thin here.”

No doubt the expectations of James Arthur Ray’s followers were high as they drove across the rainbow bridge on October 3, 2009. After being featured in the 2006 blockbuster movie The Secret , Ray’s fame had skyrocketed thanks to several guest appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show. His 2008 book, Harmonic Wealth: The Secret of Attracting the Life You Want , was a New York Times bestseller. Ray’s company, James Ray International, was earning more than $9 million a year with its national seminar circuit. More than anything, what made Ray so popular was the perception that he was not like other famous motivational speakers and self-help authors. Ray was a guru.

For those who wanted to be financially successful but also become enlightened, Ray’s Spiritual Warrior Retreat at Angel Valley was, according to his marketing material, the opportunity of a lifetime. The six-day event cost nearly $10,000 and was far more intense than what Ray offered during his weekend seminars in hotel ballrooms. And there was no better place to play “full on,” as Ray liked to say, than Angel Valley, a location steeped in Native American history and the New Age mysticism of Sedona’s red rock landscape. Most of Ray’s followers were urban white-collar professionals who were drawn to the unique pairing of experiences at Spiritual Warrior. In addition to promising answers about how to make more money, the pricey retreat offered a rare opportunity to connect with the spiritual aspects of authentic Native American culture and the natural world.

The Spiritual Warrior Participant Guide sent in advance of the 2009 retreat described Angel Valley as being located in a place of intense Earth energy. A list of what to bring included yoga clothes, power objects (“objects that hold special meaning for you”), Ray’s various CD collections of seminar recordings, and a bathing suit that could get “possibly dirty.”

But the itinerary that Ray shared for the six-day retreat was sparse. He liked to surprise his followers and keep them on edge. The first surprise was challenging participants to shave their heads upon arrival at Angel Valley as a sign of their commitment to a week of spiritual transformation. Several days later, he would send the 54 participants on a so-called Native American vision quest where they sat alone in the arid national forest lands around Angel Valley for approximately 36 hours. Each person was dropped off in an isolated location without food, water, or a cell phone. They were instructed to stay put, journal on their innermost thoughts, and chart a new path forward for themselves.

Upon safely returning from two nights in the desert, just about everyone assumed they had completed the seminar’s capstone experience. Many felt they had received some kind of epiphany. They were also exhausted, dirty, and dehydrated. Now it was time to go home.

But Ray had one last surprise for his followers: a Native American sweat lodge ceremony, or, more precisely, his corrupted version of the ritual.

The guru gathered everyone in Angel Valley’s Crystal Hall for a pep talk, which was recorded by his staff.

Ray wanted them to know how lucky they were to have this amazing opportunity for the ultimate transformational experience. Even Native Americans, according to Ray, were impressed with his modern spin on the ancient sweat lodge ceremony.

Then Ray got down to business, like a military commander prepping his soldiers before they head to a war zone’s front line. “This will be the most intense experience in your entire life. I guarantee that,” he said. “You will feel as if you’re going to die. I guarantee that… You will have to get to a point where you surrender and it’s okay to die…”

Ray asked how many people had ever been in a sweat lodge before. Just a few people out of the 54 raised their hands. He went on to clarify that his talk about dying was “symbolic” of letting go of all the things in life that had kept them from achieving their full potential. This release required reaching an extreme altered state made possible by the intense heat in the sweat lodge. There could be vomiting and fainting. He said that was normal.

Ray told the group he had been trained in how to do this by a Lakota medicine man. Ray also explained that he was following the Native American protocol for how the rocks were to be heated on a fire for the sweat lodge.

Angel Valley employees Ted Mercer and his wife Debra were in charge of this “sacred” responsibility. While sweat lodge ceremonies held at Angel Valley by other groups typically used approximately 30 rocks during four 15-minute rounds, the guru had requested that the Mercers prepare 100 rocks.

“We’ll be doing some chanting and saying some prayers but only when I tell you to,” he said. “I am the grand master in this temple. I am the priest. You don’t talk over me. You don’t say anything unless I ask you to say something.”

Ray wanted to make one thing very clear. If anyone needed to leave the lodge, they could only do it in between rounds. Otherwise, everyone had to stay put and remain quiet.

“You’re going to want to run,” he said, “but in those moments, this is your chance to live impeccably, to live honorably, to live your values.”

With that, the followers hurried out of Crystal Hall. They had only seven minutes to change into their bathing suits and “hydrate, hydrate, hydrate,” as Ray advised

The 54 spiritual warriors gathered at the sweat lodge site along Oak Creek around 2:30 P.M. The circular, domed structure was about four-and-a-half-feet high and 20 feet across. A frame made of willow branches was covered with blankets and brown plastic tarps that were weighted down around the perimeter with rocks. The floor was red dirt and the cave-like interior was cut off from all light.

According to interviews with law enforcement that would be conducted in the days that followed, these doctors, lawyers, engineers, real estate agents, software developers, life coaches, marketing executives, and entrepreneurs trusted Ray implicitly. They believed something very special awaited them inside as they crawled one by one into the crude, dark shelter.

Once everyone was seated, 12 stones were ferried into the pit. Ray poured water onto the rocks and the lodge filled with a cloud of searing steam. The door was closed. It was pitch black. The guru’s voice rose from the darkness.

Dozens of participants crawled or stumbled into the daylight in a heat-induced delirious state. Some collapsed into a pool of their own vomit. Some were unconscious or barely lucid.

Fire tender Debra Mercer had been worried about participants’ welfare during the ceremony, and she was alarmed by how bad off many people appeared. She also suspected the followers sprawled and moaning on tarps were not the only victims.

After everyone had supposedly exited, Debra ducked her head into the dark lodge to discover that her worst fears were confirmed. A man and a woman were lying motionless at the back of the tent. She shouted for help to pull them out of the structure. Their faces were gray and their lips were blue. The woman had foam coming out of her mouth.

The sweat lodge site had spotty cell phone reception so Debra sprinted about an eighth of a mile to her house to call on a landline for help.

“Okay, is this the result of a shooting or something?” the operator asked.

“A sweat lodge? Okay,” the operator responded incredulously. Emergencies involving firearms were far more common in rural central Arizona.

When the first EMTs arrived at the chaotic scene they immediately called for more help. A caravan of ambulances soon followed as well as four helicopters.

At 6:21 P.M., Thursday, October 8, James Shore, age 40, of Milwaukee and Kirby Brown, age 38 of Westtown, New York, were pronounced dead on arrival at Verde Valley Medical Center in Cottonwood. Nineteen others were also transported to area hospitals, including four participants who were near death. They were flown to Flagstaff Medical Center and placed in intensive care.

About 30 minutes after the 911 call came in, the first Yavapai County Sheriff’s officers arrived on the scene at Angel Valley. They had been warned by the dispatch operator that they could be walking into a mass suicide. Nearly all the participants had shaved heads and many were seemingly delirious. Several officers initially assumed the seminar participants were part of a cult.

“Who is the leader of this thing?” a sheriff’s deputy asked the people near the lodge, assuming the leader must be in the immediate vicinity helping out.

“James Arthur Ray,” replied Angel Valley owner Michael Hamilton. “He is in his room.” Hamilton led deputies Jed Steward and Robert Bollen to Ray’s private cabin. They found the guru sitting at a table eating a sandwich. Ray was not pleased with the intrusion.

“I told him he needed to come to the site and answer some questions,” Bollen wrote later in a report.

Ray tried to decline. He said his manager Joshua Frederickson was at the site and could answer their questions.

By 7:00 P.M., after the deaths of Kirby Brown and James Shore were made official at the hospital, sheriff’s deputies had transitioned from responding to a medical emergency to processing a possible crime scene. And Ray had become a primary focus. An officer stood guard at Ray’s cabin to make sure no one entered until a search of Ray’s possessions could be carried out. The officers would discover the guru’s bags were already packed.

Darkness fell on Angel Valley , the night sky pulsing with the flashing red and blue lights of police and fire department vehicles. Ray sat in the back of a deputy’s heated car talking to his attorney on his cell phone, who advised him not to speak to investigators. Ray was released by the officers and went to the private Angel Valley office where he began strategizing with his closest staff members about how to handle the crisis from a legal and public relations perspective.

The families of the victims would later wonder why Ray and his staff did not do more to support people harmed in the lodge. Why didn’t they share emergency contact information with police that participants had provided on their seminar enrollment forms? That night, back in New York and Wisconsin, the families of Kirby Brown and James Shore had no idea their loved ones were in the Yavapai County morgue.

Meanwhile, the Spiritual Warriors who were physically able, gathered in Angel Valley’s dining hall. They were eager for news about their fellow participants in the hospital and were stunned to learn of the deaths of Kirby Brown and James Shore. They were also waiting to hear from their leader. What happened? Surely, Ray would be walking through the door of the dining hall at any minute.

As the participants sat at tables trying to hydrate, many still in shock, detective Jay Parkison sat in a corner with a digital recorder and began taking statements. Over a period of six hours, he would conduct more than 20 interviews with participants. Many said they were surprised about what had happened but did not place blame on Ray. Almost no one had been in a sweat lodge ceremony before or had direct knowledge about what the ritual was supposed to be like according to Native American traditional practices.