Stay Gold: Heaven's Gate

The GRAND FINALE of MARCH CULT MADNESS...
This infamous Cult headed by Marshall Herff Applewhite is no longer around today. They all perished by assisted "suicide" on based on firm beliefs that they were leaving their "containers" and finding salvation via the Hale Bopp Commet. 21 women and 18 men voluntarily committed suicide in three groups on three successive days starting on 1997-MAR-23. Most were in their 40's; the rest covered an age range of 26 to 72. 1 Two months later, two additional members, Charles Humphrey and Wayne Cooke attempted suicide in a hotel room a few miles from the Rancho Santa Fe mansion; Cooke succeeded. Humphrey tried again in the Arizona desert during 1998-FEB and was successful. Overall, 41 members died.
Despite the absence of a core group, 2 members of Heaven's Gate who did not "leave" have been maintaining their web site at www.heavensgate.com and distributing materials and information that the group left behind. Seriously check out their web site! It's an exact replica of when the group exited planet Earth.
During the 1980's the group made over 500 audio tapes of their secluded classroom teachings. They also made 11 video tapes and wrote a large anthology of their teachings. The survivors have digitized over 200 hours of those audio tapes, and about 20 hours of Video material and stored the entire archive on three CD-ROM's. They feel it is important to offer this world a permanent record of this groups activities. They are making the CD's themselves available at no charge, asking only that the shipping charges be covered by the recipient. Email rep@heavensgate.com with your postal address to receive the material.
(i may have to proceed with this!)

Below is an article from Time magazine. If you want to continue reading the article just click on the link following the 3 paragraphs! Also below, are featured videos of Heavens Gate members and delusional founder.

TIME Cover Story

The incredible saga of how a charismatic former music teacher and 38 androgynous followers killed themselves in order to hook up with a UFO.

"Planet earth about to be recycled. Your only chance to survive--leave with us."
--Do, leader of Heaven's Gate

By Elizabeth Gleick

If a group of people are going to choose to die together, it is best to have a master plan: proper burial outfits, packed suitcases, lists, farewell videotapes, even recipes for death. The ghastly jumble of bodies piled upon bodies discovered in Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978 may have provided a stark lesson in how not to do it. That mass suicide was a disorderly, ungracious way to meet your maker, a study not in serenity but in chaos.

So last week, in that spacious Rancho Santa Fe mansion, with the bougainvillaea in full bloom outside, 39 bodies were laid out on their backs on bunk beds and mattresses, looking like so many laboratory specimens pinned neatly to a board. Each was dressed in black pants, flowing black shirt, spanking-new black Nikes. Their faces were hidden by purple cloths, shrouds the purple of Christian penance. Those who wore glasses had them neatly folded next to their body, and all, helpfully, had identification papers for the authorities to find. The house, more than one awed witness noted, was immaculate, tidier even than before the victims had moved in. It was as if, in preparing for their death, the members of what the world now knows as the Heaven's Gate cult were heeding the words of the prophet Isaiah: "Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live."

But though the victims may have believed their bodies were merely irrelevant "containers," to be left behind when they were whisked away by extraterrestrials, to the sheriff's deputies who first encountered them, the corpses were most certainly the real thing. The 21 women and 18 men, ranging in age from 26 to 72, were in varying stages of decomposition; the smell permeating the house was so putrid that two sickened officers went to the hospital to be sure they had not inhaled poisonous fumes. As the San Diego medical examiner reported, the cultists died in three groups: a first round of 15, then the next 15, then seven, all apparently by ingesting phenobarbital mixed with a bit of applesauce or pudding, kicked by a shot of vodka, then helped along by the asphyxiating effect of a plastic bag over the head. The final two men--the ultimate angels of death--had only bags, no shrouds. Alone in the master bedroom, his order in the march of death still unknown, was the master himself: 65-year-old Marshall Herff Applewhite.
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