Aimee Semple McPherson

1890-1944

Aimee Semple McPherson was the top Pentecostal evangelist of her era. She pioneered the use of radio to spread the gospel and beg for donations. Her weekly sermons at Angelus Temple in Los Angeles had all the glitz and showmanship you'd expect from a megachurch just down the street from Hollywood.

In 1926 she mysteriously disappeared while swimming at the beach. She was presumed to have drowned, and the nation mourned, but four weeks later she staggered into a desert town in Mexico, bedraggled and claiming to have just escaped kidnappers. No one believed her.

Timeline

Religious Figures Mysterious disappearences