Texas is an enormous state, and has long been sought out by people wishing to forge their own path and break from conventional life. There are a lot of places in the Lone Star State to lose oneself, and that opens up both positive and negative possibilities. Sometimes Texas has acted like a magnet, attracting free-thinking individuals of all sorts and from many different walks of life. Other times, Texas has been home to various religious cults, probably enticed by the ability to live mostly unnoticed in a state where people tend to mind their own business.

A few of these cults are famous enough that almost everyone has heard of them. Others are more obscure, and they are vastly different from one another. But they all spent some time in the great state of Texas.

5. The Yearning for Zion Ranch About a decade ago, a rogue, weasel-faced "prophet" named Warren Jeffs led followers of his Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to establish a closed town of sorts, just outside of San Angelo. Jeffs's congregation was a strict throwback to early Mormon beliefs, including polygamy and arranged marriages between young girls and older male church members.

Most of the group's approximately 500 residents had relocated from communities in Utah and Arizona, quickly erecting several large structures in their new settlement and neglecting to follow various building regulations. The YFZ Ranch eventually attracted attention for allegedly allowing systematic child sexual abuse to take place. While those allegations, and the eventual raids on the YFZ Ranch, are controversial with some people, many of the group's leaders, including Jeffs, were eventually found guilty of various sexual abuse charges and issued lengthy prison terms.