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People watch as traditional drummers perform at the annual voodoo festival in Ouidah in Benin, Jan. 10, 2016. Reuters

Members of a banned voodoo cult in West Africa died while waiting for the world to end as they ran out of fresh air while sitting in a prayer room burning incense and charcoal. Five members of the Benin religious sect died of asphyxiation and several others were taken to a local hospital over the weekend in Adjarra town, near the capital Porto Novo, BBC News reported Monday.

The cult known as the "Very Holy Church of Jesus Christ of Baname" is lead by a young woman, Vicentia Chanvoukini, who is a self-proclaimed god and is known by her followers as "Lady Perfect." Cult leaders told followers to wait in prayers rooms for the end of the world this weekend so as "not to be held accountable."

"With the help of old cloths, we sealed off all of the exits to the prayer room before using incandescent charcoal and incense to prepare for the descent of the Holy Spirit," one survivor, Yves Aboua, told Reuters at the Porto Novo hospital.

About 40 percent of the population practice voodoo in Benin, where Voodoo Day is a public holiday. In November, officials said people were digging up dozens of graves to grab human organs for black magic rituals.

"So long as there is Africa, there will be voodoo. As I've said before, we need to bring voodoo in from the dark," one of the country's most famous black magic priests, Dah Aligbonon Akpochihala, has told his followers.

West Africans aren't the only ones preparing for the end of the world. The New Yorker recently chronicled tales of rich doomsdayers. Steve Huffman, the 33-year-old co-founder and CEO of the online community Reddit, got Lasik ahead of the apocalypse.

"If the world ends — and not even if the world ends, but if we have trouble — getting contacts or glasses is going to be a huge pain in the ass," he told the magazine. "Without them, I'm f---ed."

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