Renaud Marhic (born July 1965) is a French writer and journalist. He has written non-fiction books on topics including cults, the far-right, pseudoscience, terrorism, and religious fundamentalism. Marhic is also the writer of several crime novels, and the children's book series .
Renaud Marhic was born July 1965, in Brest, Brittany, France. He had a column in the newspaper ', which focused on rumors. He contributed as an investigative journalist to several other publications, including Charlie Hebdo, Le Nouvel Obs, VSD, and .
Marhic was the founder and president of the group . Formed in June 1999, they gathered in Paris to celebrate the failure of Paco Rabanne's predictions of the Mir space station crashing into France. The group was to be disbanded later in August.
Marhic has written non fiction books on topic relating to cults, the far-right, pseudoscience, terrorism, and religious fundamentalism. He has been referred to as a cult expert by the media. He was the editor of the series, which focused on pseudoscientific and paranormal topics from a scientific perspective.
In 1995, he published a book discussing the Order of the Solar Temple cult affair (a religious movement that had committed several high-profile acts of mass murder-suicide). The following year, he released an updated and expanded edition. In the book, he argues that the OTS did not dissolve after the first mass suicide, and a new leader had succeeded the dead ones; the group would commit another mass suicide later that year. He does not name the supposed third leader, but implicates Michel Tabachnik.
His past experience writing books related to crime, including the Solar Temple case, led to his interest in writing crime fiction. After the turn of the millennium, he wrote fiction novels and children's literature. He is the writer of the novel series Polars & Grimoires, published by and the children's book series published by . is inspired by Marhic's childhood experiences being told Breton folk tales. In presenting his works, he sometimes has displays of his characters as holograms.