Rumors of Alanzo's Death: Ex-Scientologist, Frank Report Contributor, and Contrarian Allen Stanfield Reported Dead — Unconfirmed

Frank Parlato · September 22, 2026

SharefXin✉

I have heard that Allen Stanfield is dead. Readers have heard it too. In the Scientology world, and here at Frank Report, he was Alanzo.

There is no confirmation. No death certificate. No obituary. No statement from the family. There is instead the rumor, the circumstances surrounding it, and the silence. The silence has now lasted three months.

So I report it as a rumor. If you know what happened, tell us.

WHAT IS BEING SAID

The rumor appeared this week on exscn2.net, a message board for former Scientologists. A longtime poster named Pooks said several people at HowdyCon, the annual gathering of Scientology critics, told her Stanfield had died.

Another poster, Type4_PTS, said the report was true. He said he had seen a Facebook post with Stanfield's photograph and identifying information. He did not post it. I have not seen it.

His phone has been disconnected for non-payment. That proves nothing. A man dying of cancer without income may stop paying the phone bill. Still, it fits.

I checked the obituaries and funeral homes in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where he lived. There is nothing. That proves little too. A man can die in Wyoming, and the wind keeps moving. No paper has to print his name.

WHAT HE TOLD US HIMSELF

What is not rumor is what Alanzo wrote himself. About three months ago, from a hospice in Cheyenne, he posted a series of messages on his YouTube channel.

He had squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck. It began, as terrible things sometimes do, by looking ordinary. He first thought it was an ear infection. There were lumps beneath his right ear. For two months he treated it with Walmart ear drops. He had no insurance and was still months from Medicare.

When he finally went to the clinic, a young resident felt his neck, pulled his hand away, and said, "That's cancer."

Alanzo's answer was, "I've had a good run."

Until Medicare began, he treated himself with fenbendazole, a dog dewormer he called "hillbilly horse paste." Then came six weeks of cisplatin chemotherapy and 34 radiation treatments. He lost 70 pounds.

Three and a half weeks after radiation ended, new tumors appeared on his neck. The cancer had spread to his lungs. There was nothing more to do. He entered hospice.

For those who wanted to blame the horse paste, he wrote, "you'd be wrong. I covered every base that I could in the only way our health care system would allow."

Then he returned to the sentence he seemed to have settled everything with:

"I've had a good run. That's what it all comes down to for me."

Even dying, Alanzo anticipated the prosecution's case and answered it before anyone could bring it.

"HOSPICE IS GOOD"

His last posts were not bitter. He said he had never been happier than he was in hospice. He had read Plato, Buddha, and Lao Tzu all his life.

Now, he said, he was seeing where the rubber met the road.

It was "pretty good."

He wrote a note and taped it to his door for the hospice staff. It was a summary of his life: a musician in Los Angeles, a mapper of Native American cave sites for the Forest Service, years overseas working archaeological digs in Egypt, Crete and Israel, hitchhiking through Egypt, Israel, Greece and Morocco.

It had been, by any reasonable standard, a life.

Then came the line that explained the rest:

"I've gotten myself involved in cults and anti-cults, and written about all of it."

That was Alanzo. First he joined the argument. Then he escaped the argument. Then he argued with both sides.

It is difficult to imagine a more economical summary of his talent for entering a tribe and eventually annoying it.

"I am very proud to have maintained the courage to not live the life offered to me by the milquetoast mainstream," he wrote. "

And he disposed of mortality in four words:

"What causes death? Birth."

He signed the note Allen "Alanzo" Stanfield.

He posted his favorite poem for "my fellow gladiators in the hallway here at the hospice."

His final post was not about himself. It was a cheer for Scottie Hochstetter, the Scientology protester whose cause he had taken up, after California removed Hochstetter's ankle monitor.

Then nothing.

WHO HE WAS

Alanzo spent 16 years in Scientology and, by his count, 15 years fighting Scientology. Then he walked away from both sides and spent the next decade criticizing each one.

He had enemies everywhere.

I respected him for that.

To acquire enemies on both sides of an ideological quarrel does not prove a man correct. It does, however, suggest that he has resisted the cheaper consolation of belonging.

He became a regular commenter here, then a contributor. I profiled him in 2021.

For Frank Report he went after questions other Scientology critics avoided: why Mike Rinder never examined the deaths of Kyle Brennan, Flo Barnett, Shawn Lonsdale and Ken Ogger; why NXIVM got obliterated by the feds while Scientology did not; and whether the anti-cult movement practiced its own kind of thought control.

The subjects he chose were characteristically inconvenient.

He did the same with NXIVM. He defended Dr. Danielle Roberts in her effort to regain her medical license and questioned whether she had belonged to a cult at all.

Alanzo possessed the irritating habit of noticing when consensus had begun doing the work of evidence.

HE CAME AFTER ME TOO

He came after me too, which I suppose was proof that the friendship was genuine.

He wanted to know why I refused to moderate my own comment section.

So I told him.

Last year he received death threats, and I wrote about circumstances under which the matter could become a federal case.

He was never dull. Nobody owned him.

And at the end, broke and alone in Wyoming, with death coming toward him, the troublesome man sounded peaceful.

IF YOU KNOW, TELL US

I would rather call a rumor a rumor than pretend I know what I do not know.

If Alanzo is alive, I will be glad to hear it.

He would probably enjoy telling me I got it wrong.

If anyone has confirmation — a date, a place, the Facebook post, or word from his family — write to me or leave it in the comments.

He deserves better than a rumor for an obituary.

A man who spent so much of his life insisting on evidence deserves some at the end of it.

THE TRIP I NEVER TOOK

The last time I spoke with Allen, he was already out in Wyoming.

I told him about my cowboy days. I said maybe I would come out there and the two of us could herd some cattle and keep an eye open for a stampede.

He liked that idea.

I meant it.

And I never went.

This is one of the ordinary cruelties of being alive. You say, I'll come out there. You mean it when you say it. There will be another month, another summer, another telephone call.

Then one day the telephone is dead.

And the trip you meant to take becomes the trip you wish you had taken.

And if the rumor is true:

Allen, you had a good run.

You said so yourself.