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Before Leon Fessinger created experiments in 1957 he and his colleagues Henry Riecken and Stanley Schachter were interested in conditions under which disconfirmation of beliefs leads to increased conviction. They wrote about their investigation in the 1956 book, When Prophecy Fails. It was motivated by a study of rumors after an earthquake in India in 1934. Among people who felt the the earthquake but had no damage from the earthquake, rumors circulated and were accepted about worse disasters to come. Festinger reasoned that these rumors were actually "fear-justifying." The rumors functioned to reduce the inconsistency of people's feelings of fear despite not directly experiencing the effects of the earthquake by giving people a reason to be fearful.In 1954, Fessinger heard about a woman named Dorothy Martin (1900–1992) from a newspaper account. She was a former Dianetics follower who was doing autonomic writing and felt she had been contacted by aliens from a planet named Clarion. The newspaper article was titled "Prophecy from planet Clarion call to city: flee that flood." Her messages said that the world would end in a great flood before dawn on December 21, 1954. She gathered followers and Fessinger and his colleagues infiltrated them in 1954. Many of the followers had taken strong actions to show commitment to the belief. They left jobs, colleges, and spouses, and had given away money and possessions to prepare for their departure on a flying saucer which was to rescue the group of true believers.Fessinger thought that when the world did not end it would lead to the arousal of dissonance in the followers. Changing their belief would be difficult because they were committed at considerable expense. Another option would be to enlist social support for their belief. Festinger wrote, "If more and more people can be persuaded that the system of belief is correct, then clearly it must after all be correct." Festinger and his colleagues predicted that the inevitable disconfirmation would be followed by an enthusiastic effort at proselytizing to seek social support and lessen the pain of disconfirmation.In the book (which I really recommend) they found that before the end of times date the followers were very secretive. On December 20 the group gathered and expected a visitor from outer space to come at midnight and to take them to a waiting spacecraft. The group removed all metallic items from their persons. By midnight all zippers, bra straps, and other objects are discarded. At 5 minutes after midnight no one had come. A different clock said it was only 11:55. They decided that one must be right. At 12:10 the other clock strikes and no one comes. They sit in silence visibly upset until 4 am. They believe the world will end in the morning. At 4 am, the leader begins to cry. Some try for different explanations and excuses. None work. At 4:45 am Mr Martin gets another message. It says that God has decided to spare the planet from destruction. It says "The little group, sitting all night long, had spread so much light that God had saved the world from destruction." On the afternoon of that day they call newspapers and start spreading their message. The group begins an urgent campaign to spread its message to as broad an audience as possible.In his book Fessinger aid that 5 conditions must be met. These ideas were later in 1957 used to create experiments and further develop his theories. His conditions were:A belief must be held with deep conviction and it must have some relevance to action.The person holding the belief must have committed himself to it. He must have taken action that is difficult to undo. In general, the more important such actions are, and the more difficult they are to undo, the greater is the individual's commitment to the belief.The belief must be sufficiently specific and sufficiently concerned with the real world so that events may unequivocally refute the belief.Such undeniable disconfirmatory evidence must occur and must be recognized by the individual holding the belief.The individual believer must have social support. If the believer is a member of a group of convinced persons who can support one another, the belief may be maintained and the believers may attempt to proselytize or persuade nonmembers that the belief is correct.After the failure of the prediction, Martin left Chicago after being threatened with arrest. She moved to Peru. She later explained that she had been healed by Sananda (Jesus) and instructed to go to South America. Much of that time was spent at the Brotherhood of the Seven Rays, the community established by fellow contactee George Hunt Williamson. Before returning to the United States she began to send out transcripts of the messages she was receiving from the masters.In 1961, now named Sister Thedra, she returned to the United States and settled in Arizona. She established the Association of Sananda and Sanat Kumara in 1965 and a short time later relocated to Mount Shasta, California. In 1988 she and the group returned to Sedona, Arizona. The association existed as a far-flung network of people who received the teachings of those who spoke through Sister Thedra. The advanced beings she said she channeled were seen as both spiritually advanced and coming from outer space. She continued to practice channeling and to participate in contactee groups until her death in 1992. The Association is still exists and they have a newsletter.