Bad medicine. I'm Jason Horton. I'm Rebecca Leib. And this is Ghost Town.

In mid 1999, a failed Australian tennis coach named Sergei Ben Hayan, and I hope I'm saying that

correctly, was sitting on the toilet, doing his thing when all of a sudden he heard a voice.

Then another voice. Startled, he listened more closely, and according to an Australian news outlet,

Ben Hayan said, quote, I just gave myself a time to sit and feel that moment,

and that I could feel something really, really beautiful. Almost immediately,

Ben Hayan became both a compelling and controversial figure,

called a sexual predator, an abuser, and a, quote, charlatan who prays on cancer patients.

With Ben Hayan at its helm, the bona fide cult of universal medicine took shape.

An organization that continues to pray on Europe in Australia's sick, weak, vulnerable, and underaged.

Sergei Ben Hayan was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1964, to wealthy clothing manufacturers,

but moved with his family to Australia when he was six. There isn't much in Ben Hayan's childhood,

really, but it is known that Ben Hayan and his family settled in Sydney while Sergei excelled at

sports and went to school. In the 1990s, Ben Hayan got married, had four kids, and didn't live

his pro-athletic dreams. No, instead he took a mid-level job teaching tennis in Australia,

with future plans to buy a tennis center on the Sunshine Coast. But in 1999, Ben Hayan had what

universal medicine's website describes as, quote, a series of unfoldments that led to a reconnection

or union of old. As a result, he initiated these impresses via the expression of esoteric healing,

using the forum of his sessions to present the teachings that not long after became his vast

collection and volume of service to many thousands. Deep breath. It is a big bullshit word salad,

obviously, but don't worry, because other sources describe this epiphany a little more clearly,

that Ben Hayan had heard voices. In an interview with a Sydney morning herald,

...