Bethany Joy Lenz says a Bible study that first seemed welcoming gradually became a controlling force in her life while she played Haley Scott on One Tree Hill. Her memoir, Dinner for Vampires, recounts how she says the group gained influence over her time, relationships, money and autonomy—and how becoming a mother helped her find the resolve to leave.
How the Bible study became a controlling group
Lenz has described her experience as ten years in a cult. In a July 2023 episode of the One Tree Hill rewatch podcast Drama Queens, she said, “I was in a cult for 10 years….So there’s a lot to tell.” In a 2024 interview, she described the group’s origins as an apparently innocuous Bible study among fellow creatives, later calling it a high-pressure group and “a Bible study gone sideways.”
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On her official website, Lenz names the group The Big House Family and summarizes her account as a gradual loss of autonomy, manipulation and fear under the guise of a church covenant. The memoir and publisher’s synopsis describe a progression from Bible study into increasing involvement with the group and its leadership. These are Lenz’s recollections as presented in her memoir and interviews, not findings independently adjudicated or verified by the sources cited here.
What Lenz says life inside the group involved
According to the publisher’s synopsis of Dinner for Vampires, Lenz eventually moved to a compound in the Pacific Northwest overseen by a minister and married his son. The synopsis says group “minders” were assigned to her on the One Tree Hill set, while meetings and counseling with group leadership helped maintain her loyalty. Lenz says those arrangements contributed to the group’s influence over her life.
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Her account also describes financial loss. TIME reported in 2024 that Lenz wrote she discovered almost $2 million had been taken from her bank account by the time she left. Vanity Fair separately summarized the memoir as saying she lost more than $2 million during her years with the group. Those figures reflect her account; the sources do not provide an independent audit.
How the group overlapped with One Tree Hill
Lenz played Haley Scott on One Tree Hill, which ran for nine seasons and ended in 2012. The contrast at the heart of her memoir is between the career viewers saw and the private group life she says remained hidden from viewers and costars.
Vanity Fair reported that Lenz credited the show’s long filming blocks with keeping her from becoming more deeply entangled in the group. Her experience of the production itself was mixed: she has described both good and painful parts of that environment. Her account of the group should not be conflated with separate allegations involving the show’s creator.
Why she says she left
The publisher’s synopsis says becoming a mother gave Lenz the courage to leave. In her interview with Vanity Fair, she said she hopes readers take from the book “a sense of hope, that they’re not alone.” The memoir is her detailed account of how she says she was drawn in, what life with the group became, and how she got out.
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About Dinner for Vampires
Dinner for Vampires is available in print, ebook and audiobook formats listed by publisher Simon & Schuster. Its ebook page gives an October 22, 2024 publication date. The publisher’s audiobook page lists the same date, an 8-hour, 17-minute runtime and narration by Lenz, with cameos from One Tree Hill cast members Tyler Hilton, Paul Johansson, James Lafferty and Chad Michael Murray. Simon & Schuster lists a trade paperback edition dated August 11, 2026, at 320 pages. Edition dates and availability can vary by region.
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