going-clear-scientology-hollywood-and-the-prison-of-belief-by-lawrence-wright-2

“So it was a suicide machine?”
“Basically.”
Pfauth was staggered by Hubbard’s request, but the challenge interested him. “I
gured that building a Tesla coil was the best way to go.” The Tesla coil is a transformer
that increases the voltage without upping the current. Pfauth powered it with a 12-volt
automobile battery, and then hooked the entire apparatus to an E-Meter. “So, if you’re
on the cans, you can ip a button and it does its thing,” Pfauth explained. “I didn’t want
to kill him, just to scare him.”
“Did he try it?”
“He blew up my E-Meter. Annie brought it back to me, all burnt up.”
This was just before Christmas, 1985. Hubbard died a few weeks later of an unrelated
stroke.
The believers are still waiting for his return.
1 City Children, Country Summer (Scribner’s, 1979).