On the evening of March 19, 1997, thirty-eight members plus the leader of Heaven’s Gate took phenobarbital mixed with applesauce, then washed it down with vodka. They secured plastic bags around their heads to induce asphyxiation before lying down on their bunks and covering their faces and torsos with a square purple cloth. Their decomposing bodies were discovered on March 26, 1997.
Marshall Applewhite was the son of a Presbyterian minister. He became interested in biblical prophecy in the early 1970’s, and in March 1972, he met Bonnie Nettles, who was also interested in biblical prophecy and theosophy. Bonnie was 44, and already married when they met, but the two quickly became close friends. Bonnie told him their meeting had been foretold to her by extraterrestrials, convincing him that he had a divine assignment.
Together they studied the New Testament, focusing on the teachings about Christology, asceticism and eschatology. By June 1974, they concluded that they had been chosen to fulfill biblical prophecies, and had even been given higher-level minds than those around them.
They penned a pamphlet describing Jesus’ reincarnation as a Texan, a shrouded reference to Marshall himself. In fact, Marshall believed he was Jesus’ successor and the “Present Representative” of Christ on Earth. They also concluded that they were the two witnesses described in the book of Revelation, and they would occasionally visit churches and other spiritual groups to speak of their identities.
Marshall and Bonnie often referred to themselves as “The Two,” or “The UFO Two,” and believed they would be killed, restored to life, and then transported onto a spaceship where all could see. They referred to this event as “The Demonstration,” and it was to prove their claims.
Most in the religious community dismissed their claims, so Marshall and Bonnie opted to contact the extraterrestrials. They published advertisements for meetings, where they pursued like-minded individuals to recruit as disciples, whom they called, “the crew.” They told their disciples they represented beings from another planet, the Next Level, and they sought participants for an experiment. All those who agreed to take part in the experiment would be brought to a higher evolutionary level.
In 1975, they shared with a group of 80 people, that they had been told they were the two witnesses written into the Bible’s story of the “end time.”
Members of the crew assembled at a hotel in Waldport, Oregon after selling all their possessions and saying goodbye to friends and family. Shortly after, they vanished from the hotel and from public eye. They went underground, sleeping in tents and sleeping bags. They took to begging on the streets all while evading detection of authorities and media so they could better focus on Marshall and Bonnie’s (or Do and Ti as they now called themselves) doctrine.
Unfortunately, Bonnie Nettles died in 1985, and Marshall revised the group’s doctrines. The group gained a reputation as a “cyberculture” form of religious thought reform. By the mid-1990’s, the group had become reclusive and was recruiting via the internet. Members of the group began hearing rumors that the upcoming Comet Hale-Bopp housed the secret to their ultimate salvation and ascendance into the kingdom of heaven.
In 1996, the clan took their recruitment to new levels. The group purchased alien abduction insurance that would cover up to 50 members and would pay out $1 million per person (the policy covered abduction, impregnation, or death by aliens). They lived in a large home they called, “The Monastery,” a 9,000 square foot residence in Rancho Santa Fe, near San Diego, California. It became the gathering place for the group’s final siren call, and the “Closure to Heaven’s Gate,” that the return of Comet Hale-Bopp signified.
On the evening of March 19, 1997, Marshall Applewhite taped himself speaking of mass suicide, and asserted “it was the only way to evacuate this Earth.” He claimed that a spacecraft was trailing Comet Hale-Bopp, and persuaded 38 followers to commit suicide so that their souls could board the craft. He told them that after their deaths, a UFO would take their souls to another level of existence above human, which he described as being both physical and spiritual.
On March 26, 1997, 38 members, plus Marshall Applewhite, were found dead in the home. In the heat of the California spring, many of their bodies had begun to decompose. They were later cremated.
Investigations showed that the members took phenobarbital mixed with applesauce and washed it down with vodka. Additionally, they secured plastic bags around their heads after ingesting the mix to induce asphyxiation. Authorities found the dead lying neatly in their own bunk beds, faces and torsos covered by a square purple cloth.
Each member carried a five-dollar bill and three quarters in their pockets: the five dollar bill was to cover vagrancy fines while members were out on jobs, while the quarters were to make phone calls. Members kept these in their pockets at the time of death as a sort of dark humor. All 39 were dressed in identical black shirts and sweatpants, brand new black-and-white Nike Decades athletic shoes, and armband patches reading “Heaven’s Gate Away Team.”
The adherents, between the ages of 26 and 72, are believed to have died in three groups over three successive days, with remaining participants cleaning up after each prior group’s deaths. Fifteen members died on March 24, fifteen more on March 25, and nine on March 26. Leader Applewhite was the third to last member to die; two women remained after him and were the only ones found without bags over their heads. Among the dead was Thomas Nichols, brother of the actress Nichelle Nichols, who is best known for her role as Uhura in the original Star Trek television series.
Only one of the group’s members, Rio DiAngelo/Richard Ford, did not kill himself. He videotaped the mansion in Rancho Santa Fe; however, the tape was not shown to police until 2002, five years after the event.
When the news broke of the suicides and their relation to Comet Hale–Bopp, the co-discoverer of the comet, Alan Hale, was drawn into the story. His phone “never stopped ringing the entire day,” and he did not respond until the next day when he spoke at a press conference on the subject only after he had researched details of the incident. On July 24, 1998, he spoke at the Second World Skeptics Congress in Heidelberg, Germany.
Dr. Hale discussed the scientific significance and popular lore of comets and gave a personal account of his discovery. He then lambasted the combination of scientific illiteracy, willful delusions, a radio talk-show’s deception about an imaginary spacecraft following the comet, and a cult’s bizarre yearnings for ascending to another level of existence that led to the Heaven’s Gate mass suicides.
Hale said that well before Heaven’s Gate, he had told a colleague:
“We are probably going to have some suicides as a result of this comet.” The sad part is that I was really not surprised. Comets are lovely objects, but they don’t have apocalyptic significance. We must use our minds, our reason.”
Two former members of Heaven’s Gate, Wayne Cooke and Charlie Humphreys, later committed suicide in a similar manner. Humphreys survived a suicide pact with Cooke in May 1997, but ultimately killed himself in February 1998.
So what did the Heaven’s Gate cult ultimately believe?
- They believed the planet Earth was about to be “recycled” (wiped clean, renewed, refurbished and rejuvenated), and the only chance to survive was to leave it immediately.
- While the group was against suicide, they redefined it, in their own context to mean, “to turn against the Next Level when it is being offered”
- They believed their “human” bodies were only vessels meant to help them on their journey. In conversation, when referring to a person or a person’s body, they routinely used the word “vehicle”
- The members of the group added -ody to the first names they adopted in lieu of their original given names, which defines “children of the Next Level”. This is mentioned in Applewhite’s final video, Do’s Final Exit, filmed March 19–20, 1997, just days prior to the suicides.
- They believed “to be eligible for membership in the Next Level, humans would have to shed every attachment to the planet”. This meant all members had to give up all human-like characteristics, such as their family, friends, sexuality, individuality, jobs, money, and possessions.
- “The Evolutionary Level Above Human” (TELAH) was as a “physical, corporeal place”, another world in our universe, where residents live in pure bliss and nourish themselves by absorbing pure sunlight.
- At the next level, beings do not engage in sexual intercourse, eating or dying, the things that make us “mammalian” here.
- Heaven’s Gate believed that what the Bible calls God is actually a highly developed Extraterrestrial.
- Members of Heaven’s Gate believed that evil space aliens—called Luciferians—falsely represented themselves to Earthlings as “God” and conspired to keep humans from developing. Technically advanced humanoids, these aliens have spacecraft, space-time travel, telepathy, and increased longevity. They use holograms to fake miracles. Carnal beings with gender, they stopped training to achieve the Kingdom of God thousands of years ago.
- Heaven’s Gate believed that all existing religions on Earth had been corrupted by these malevolent aliens.
According to Heaven’s Gate, once the individual has perfected himself through the “process,” there were four methods to enter or “graduate” to the next level:
- Physical pickup onto a TELAH spacecraft and transfer to a next level body aboard that craft. In this version, what Professor Zeller calls a “UFO” version of the “Rapture,” an alien spacecraft would descend to Earth, collect Applewhite, Nettles, and their followers, and their human bodies would be transformed through biological and chemical processes to perfected beings.
- Natural death, accidental death, or death from random violence. Here, the “graduating soul” leaves the human container for a perfected next-level body.
- Outside persecution that leads to death. After the deaths of the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas and the events involving Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge, Applewhite was afraid that the American government would murder the members of Heaven’s Gate.
- Willful exit from the body in a dignified manner. Near the end, Marshall had a revelation that they may have to abandon their human bodies and achieve the next level as Jesus had done. This occurred on March 22 and 23 when all 39 members committed suicide and “graduated.”
Marshall Applewhite wasn’t the only one looking for bible prophecy. Just look at Revelation 12 and the Tribulation.
