The End is Near
The mind of the fanatic, according to social philosopher Eric Hoffer in The True Believer, needs something to worship, even to the point of annihilation. He will sacrifice everything for the impossible dream. Many fanatical mass movements form in our society but only those that act in some dramatic manner, such as announcing the world’s end or committing mass suicide, seem to get widespread attention.
Heaven’s Gate was among the most startling.
A peaceful and secretive group, they made occasional forays into recruitment, but most of their time was spent in rigorous training for reaching a higher plane of consciousness. While there’s nothing unusual about that, they are among the few cults who went all the way. To understand how they formed the beliefs that led to their ultimate actions, we need to look at cults as a whole that hold philosophies of an approaching Armageddon and a savior messiah.
“All mass movements,” Hoffer wrote, “generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action; all of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred, and intolerance; all of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them demand blind faith and a single-hearted allegiance.”
Cults that promise a higher order from such extreme discipline appeal to a certain type of mind:
- Frustrated with the way things are
- hungry for change
- confident of the potential for human perfection
- eager to believe in a single truth
- able to envision an unprecedented society
- ready for action
Religious scholar Catherine Wessinger calls the groups that form around these doctrines millennialists, and in How the Millennium Comes Violently she says that they’re motivated by an ultimate concern: “the belief in an imminent transition to a collective condition consisting of total well-being, which may be earthly or heavenly.”
Salvation is for the entire group, not just the individual, and it’s generally ensured through a charismatic leader who knows how to socialize converts, reinforce beliefs and keep the group organized and focused. Monastic discipline, special diets, and social withdrawal cultivate dependence on the leaders and encourage the loss of individuality.
On A&E’s program “Cults” Professor Charles Strozier at John Jay College of Criminal Justice added that “there’s an important connection between what occurred in the 19th century and the latter part of the twentieth century in terms of movements of intense spirituality. There’s been a large expansion of the number of people joining these groups and claiming they’ve received a message from beyond, in particular that we’re not alone and can be helped to evolve toward greater insight and godliness.”
Among them are:
- The Millerites, founded by William Miller during the nineteenth century, interpreted the Bible to say that the world would end with the Second Coming of Christ on October 22, 1844, but it did not. They awaited the arrival of a comet as a celestial sign of the world’s end. Instead they ended up marking the day as “the Great Disappointment.” They fixed on several more dates, but none played out as predicted, which discouraged many members. Eventually the lack of veracity in these predictions shriveled the group’s numbers. However, some former members then went on to form the Seventh Day Adventists.
- In the 1930s, Victor T. Houteff initially led the Davidians, an offshoot of the Seventh Day Adventists who awaited the imminent final battle between good and evil. When it occurred, only the chosen would witness the return of Jesus Christ and be saved. Houteff purchased land for his group outside Waco, Texas, calling it the Mount Carmel Center. When he died in 1955, his wife Florence succeeded him and erroneously predicted that the world would end four years later. When it did not, another group broke off, forming the Branch Davidians, which was eventually taken over by David Koresh. He called himself the messiah and selected girls among his flock who would bear his “soldiers.” He insisted that as God’s “seventh messenger,” it was he who would set off the chain of events that would bring on the Apocalypse. When the group began to collect firearms, the ATF tried to raid the place in 1993, and after a 51-day standoff, Mount Carmel went up in flames, killing Koresh and approximately 80 of his followers.
- In 1994, during a police investigation, 52 members of the Solar Temple were found dead in Quebec (Canada), and Switzerland. Fifteen appeared to have been true suicides, while others were lured into ingesting tranquilizers and then were shot. A few people who were regarded as traitors were summarily executed. In 1995, 16 more members of this cult were found dead in Grenoble, France, including three children. Fourteen of the bodies were arranged in a star pattern and burned. They left notes telling those who found them that they were going now to another world. They believed they were the reincarnated Knights Templar, a medieval holy order founded by nine French knights. Two years later in 1997, five additional members committed suicide. These believers thought that death was an illusion and upon leaving the Earth, they would receive solar bodies on Sirius, the brightest star in the universe.
“Cults have been part of American life since the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock,” said TV journalist Mike Wallace in a documentary he made on the subject. Some are highly unorthodox, he added, and among the most bizarre was Heaven’s Gate. Members of this group had an ideology crafted by a man and woman who believed they were aliens. For these two, people left families, jobs and friends to devote their lives to whatever it would take to attain ultimate spiritual perfection.
Whatever it would take.
Marshall Herff Applewhite was the overachieving son of a Presbyterian minister. He was always a classic leader who could easily persuade people to accept his ideas and follow. He had attended seminary, been a choir director, and had numerous roles in the Houston Grand Opera, but was dismissed from his teaching position at the University of Alabama School of Music over an affair he had with a male student. His wife left him, taking their two young sons, so he got another job and once again got entangled with a student, this time a young woman. In 1972, he admitted himself into a psychiatric hospital, according to some accounts, to cure his obsessions with sexuality. In his early forties, he viewed himself as being seriously ill.
(AP/Wide World)
There he met a nurse, Bonnie Lu Trousdale Nettles, a member of the Theosophical Society who was four years older than him. At the time, her own marriage was falling apart and she persuaded Applewhite that he could have a major role in her work and her life. He listened and was soon involved in her activities.
These two discovered a mutual fascination with UFOs, astrology, and science fiction. Nettles urged Applewhite to read The Secret Doctrine by Madame Blavatsky, and they opened a center in Houston for the study of metaphysics. They came to believe that they were the earthly incarnations of aliens millions of years old: they were the two witnesses mentioned in Chapter 11 of the book of Revelation, placed on this earth to “harvest souls,” i.e., to help save as many people as they could. Nettles persuaded Applewhite that as “The Two” they should embark on an evangelical mission to bring the truth to others. Nine months after they met, they severed ties with family and friends (she left her four children) and drove out of Houston together to spread their message.
What they told people was similar to what many other end-times cult leaders preached: that they would be persecuted and put to death by their enemies, their bodies would lie in the open for three and a half days, and they would prove their deity by rising from the dead and disappearing into a cloud. From there they would ascend to a higher level to be with God. Their interpretation of the biblical “cloud” was that it was actually a spaceship, and they expected to be welcomed aboard. Indeed, this was their only means of salvation from the “Luciferians,” who were evil aliens that enslaved humans through worldly concerns like jobs, sex, and families. Those who believed in the message could join The Two and be saved as well.
Before they could get much of a start, their invitation to the media for a press conference got them into real trouble. In Brownsville, Texas, Applewhite told a reporter that if he came to the press conference, they would give him the most significant story of his career. Believing it was about drugs, he brought the authorities. When The Two spotted the police, they left, which aroused suspicions. Officers looked up the license plate number of their rental car, discovered that it had been reported stolen, and arrested them.
They were charged with credit card fraud (charges were dropped) and car theft. Applewhite served six months in jail awaiting trial, and was convicted and sentenced to four more months. The judge ordered a psychiatric exam, which Applewhite passed but which he later admitted made him doubt his sanity.
Humiliated and even more paranoid when he left jail in 1975, he and Nettles went to southern California to start spreading the word. They called their group HIM, for Human Individual Metamorphosis, and picked up 25 disciples. Then they started their formal campaign in earnest.
The first official public meeting was scheduled in the seaside town of Waldport, Oregon in 1975. For months beforehand, they had posted fliers on telephone poles urging people to attend the meeting to discover the truth about reality. Two hundred people arrived at the Bayshore Inn to find out what the fliers were about.
The Two insisted that to be saved, spiritual-minded individuals must recognize that the appearance that most humans have souls is merely an illusion. Only those who truly had souls and were ready to be harvested by God would recognize the truth of the message. Once they did, they would give up their worldly clutter at once and follow a strict regimen. Using biblical notions about sexless angels and the praise Christ gave to those who sacrificed family life to follow him, they insisted that spiritual perfection came only at a price. One had to first see the truth about the evils around them and want desperately to free oneself.
Applewhite and Nettles didn’t convince as many people as they had hoped, yet their strong belief in what they said, along with their intensity in delivering the message, proved compelling.
“They were a team act,” said one former member about these gurus. “They played off each other.”
“They were everyone’s mom and dad,” said another. “They made people feel protected and reassured.”
The Two gave several televised interviews about their beliefs and the miracles they would perform, which brought them nationwide attention.
“We’re going to stage, so that it can be witnessed,” said Applewhite on a news broadcast, “that when a human has overcome his human-level activities, a chemical change takes place and he goes through a metamorphosis just exactly as a caterpillar does when he quits being a caterpillar and he goes off into a crysalis and becomes a butterfly.”
That did not mean they would leave their bodies behind in graves, he insisted.
“We’re going to be murdered and when we are, after three and a half days, we’re going to walk up, just get right up, and you’re going to watch us.”
Twenty people from Oregon joined them. Some came home from the meetings believing they would soon acquire the kingdom of heaven and they made dramatic changes right away. One man and his wife actually left their 10-year-old daughter, certain she would get whatever she needed.
Once the believers were gathered together, they were told to get ready. Heaven awaited. The time was approaching. The world would soon see that it was foolish to ignore the message of The Two.
In that same eventful year, Applewhite and Nettles gave a date for their departure into outer space. The eager disciples were in a campground at the time and they learned that a spaceship was arriving to pick them all up. They congregated on the specified night to await its approach.
It didn’t come at the expected time, so they sat up through the night and continued to wait. Hours went by and nothing happened.
Finally, Applewhite apologized for his mistake and invited anyone who desired it to go ahead and leave. A few returned to their families, but others remained, opting to await the next opportunity. This was home now. There was nowhere else to go. They had sacrificed too much to just walk away and they wanted their higher destiny. Even when The Two reinterpreted their approaching resurrection to be metaphorical rather than actual (the media had “assassinated” them so they didn’t really need to lie dead in the street for three days), many people still stayed and waited for the next set of instructions.
Applewhite and Nettles instructed those who remained to cut their hair, wear androgynous clothing—a uniform that would set them apart and also remove temptations of the flesh—and adhere to a strict regimen of training and preparation. The idea was that their physical bodies had to be trained toward eventual perfection as genderless, eternal beings. They needed these bodies to get into heaven.
The demands for members were daunting, which curtailed the cult’s early success, but The Two believed that purging earthly ways was the only means for rediscovering the alien beings they truly were—all of them. There was to be no more sexual contact and no personal privacy. The members soon formed into an insulated community, sharing the same thoughts and repeatedly affirming the dogma and prophecies. They developed “crew-mindedness,” as Applewhite called it, working together in one mind the way they might have to function on a spaceship.
During all this activity, two sociologists who heard about the group on the news infiltrated it and pretended to be potential recruits. After a few months, they left, having learned very little. They did not see the kind of indoctrination and coherence among members that would ensure endurance. Little did they know. The program was evolving.
Applewhite and Nettles taught their disciples that they were all related. Applewhite was their father and Nettles, who was an older alien that had inhabited an older human form, was their grandfather. The Two renamed themselves variously as “Guinea” and “Pig,” “Bo” and “Peep,” and finally “Do and “Ti.” After they perceived that the media was distorting their message, they went underground. They had a plan to fulfill. Yet by the end of 1976, the group had diminished from around 200 adherents to only eighty.
A legacy of $300,000 bequeathed to them allowed them to keep going. To attract more people, they promised spaceship rides for $433 and they had dozens of takers.
Cult expert Steven Hassan says that the people involved in cults like these are typically intelligent and educated, but that a loving charismatic leader who presents beliefs for which there can be no reality testing manipulates them. A new identity takes over that is dependent on how the leader defines it. “The mind can learn,” he adds, “and it can learn things that are abusive to the self.”
Then in 1985, Ti died of cancer and was not physically resurrected as promised. Such a mundane death seemed out of keeping with the sacred doctrines of the two witnesses, and it was clear that she was not going to get into heaven with a perfected body. Applewhite had to repair the damage, so he continued to emphasize the discomfort that true believers have with mainstream American society and he said that Ti had gone on before them to get things ready.
It wasn’t difficult to use social alienation to create what Messinger calls “a context in which it seemed reasonable for believers to exit Planet Earth.” While devaluing life around them, Applewhite revised his philosophy to interpret their physical bodies as mere vehicles for the soul that had to be shed before they could board the spaceship. In fact, Applewhite now claimed that Ti herself would be piloting the “mothership” that would carry them to a better place. That made the idea even more familiar and inviting.
Cults by Sarah
Moran
In 1993, Applewhite launched another campaign for advancing into something “more than human.” Calling the group Total Overcomers Anonymous, he placed a large ad in USA Today to alert the American populace to the fact that the earth would soon be “spaded under” and they would have one last chance to escape. He went so far as to say that he was the alien that had been inside the body of Jesus Christ, but two thousand years earlier, the souls had not been ready. He had returned in the form of Applewhite to take those who were prepared, but he was still the very same alien with the very same mission.
He got a few more people aboard and then had to decide what to do next. In The Secret World of Cults, Sarah Moran says that after the travesty at Waco, Texas, in the spring of 1994, Applewhite spoke about Koresh, began to collect guns, and hinted at a similar form of persecution. To achieve peace and avoid the Earth’s destruction, says religion scholar William Henry in The Keepers of Heaven’s Gate, it was mandatory that they leave the planet…soon.
Fe marked (AP)
In 1994, several members told a reporter for the LA Weekly that they would all be departing. They were going to walk out to the Santa Monica pier and catch a ride into space. But that did not take place, and in October of ’96, they went to southern California, renting a large seven-bedroom house in the wealthy community of Rancho Santa Fe, north of San Diego, at 18241 Colina Norte. There they developed a computer business as Web page designers. They called the place “the Monastery” and their business “Higher Source.” They also used the Internet’s worldwide communication capabilities to promote their beliefs and gather more disciples. They renamed themselves Heaven’s Gate. At this time, according to Wessinger, they had only around 25 adherents left in the group.
On the Web page, Applewhite posted six key points, paraphrased as:
- I and my partner are from the Evolutionary Level Above Human and we took over two human bodies in their forties, which had been tagged at birth as vehicles for our use.
- We brought a crew of students to Earth with us from the Kingdom of Heaven.
- Many of us arrived in staged crashes of spaceships and authorities confiscated some of our bodies.
- Others came before us to tag our bodies with special chips.
- Before our human incarnation, we were briefed by older beings with details about how to take over the human vehicle.
- The Kingdom of God is genderless, multiplying through metamorphosis, and its inhabitants have free will.
There were more messages regarding Earth’s impending demise, and once again, a few people left everything to grab their “last chance” and join the cult.
Then in November and December of 1996, a comet called Hale-Bopp made a big splash, not just for Heaven’s Gate but for the entire New Age community and beyond. Its last visit had been in 2200 BC, which was viewed then as a harbinger for the arrival of a great teacher, or Peacemaker, who would visit many different civilizations around the world to deliver a sacred doctrine. He would bring purification and save true believers from the tribulations of the end times.
It’s no wonder that many who knew about this viewed the approach of the comet as a sign of great change.
One amateur astronomer said that a ringed object was following the comet, which was four times the size of Earth and which had thrown the comet off its course several times. It was even said that the Vatican was looking for some sign in the heavens, since this would be the last comet of the millennium. It supposedly signaled the final three years of Satan’s reign on earth and would usher in a more enlightened age.
Do told the group that Ti had communicated telepathically to him that it was time and that Hale-Bopp was the sign. On their Web page they excitedly announced Hale-Bopp’s approach.
Dr. Courtney Brown, claiming to be adept at “remote viewing,” or seeing things that occurred far away, told radio host Art Bell that he was in possession of photographs of the comet. They clearly showed an object in its wake and this object had all the appearances of an alien craft. In fact, Brown said he’d “looked” inside and had seen alien life forms. This claim drew many expectant listeners who wanted to see the photos, including members of Heaven’s Gate.
Sensing the arrival of the most significant event in their short history, the crew-minded group went together to watch Star Wars. They also attended a UFO conference, bought insurance against alien abductions and impregnation, and purchased a high-powered telescope. They were looking for the “companion” to Hale-Bopp, they told the store manager, which they described as a small shape near the comet. That was their mothership. When they failed to find it, they returned the telescope. The manager found their ideas puzzling.
Then in January 1997, the promised photographs were finally posted on Art Bell’s Web site and then were quickly exposed as a hoax. Yet the Heaven’s Gate crew was not deterred. On their Web site they wrote, “Whether Hale-Bopp has a companion or not is irrelevant from our perspective.” Its approach alone was significant as “the marker we’ve been waiting for.” Visible or not, the spaceship would be there ready to take them home. They were about to “graduate” from human to more-than-human. Those who were reading the message might even want to get their own “boarding passes.”
By the end of that month, on January 23, a remarkable celestial event occurred: the outer planets of our solar system aligned themselves in what many people said was a six-pointed star. That was the Jewish star, the symbol of Jesus. The last time this alignment had occurred had been just before the Renaissance. There was every reason to believe that something of universal significance was about to occur.
On Friday night, March 21, 1997, the members of Heaven’s Gate went to a chain restaurant called Marie Callender’s, where they ordered 39 identical meals of salad and pot pies, and finished off with cheesecake. This was to be their final earthly meal, because the next day, the comet would be in its closest proximity to Earth. It was time to begin their departure.
On Saturday, they started the process. Everyone dressed identically in black long-sleeved shirts and black sweat pants, with new black-and-white Nike tennis shoes. On their left shirtsleeves were armband patches on which the words “Heaven’s Gate Away Team” were stitched—possibly a reference to the television program Star Trek: The Next Generation on which a small crew called the “away team” went off on planetary ventures. The members of Heaven’s Gate each packed a small overnight bag with clothing, lip balm, and spiral notebooks, and they placed these bags at the foot end of their beds. They also put three quarters and a five-dollar bill into their shirt pockets—a habit they had developed whenever they went out so they would always have cab fare or change for the phone. The Nike slogan at the time was “just do it,” which could explain why they all wore Nike shoes.
They worked in three teams. The first team of 15 received the barbiturate phenobarbital mixed into pudding or applesauce. They then drank vodka to wash it down. A lethal dose was some 50 to 100 pills. It’s surmised that after consuming this toxic mix, they lay on their beds with plastic bags over their heads until they passed out. Those who still lived removed the bags and covered their bodies with purple shrouds. The following day, Sunday, the next team of fifteen followed. Finally there were seven on Monday, and then only two.
The final two people, both women, were not shrouded but they had placed plastic bags over their heads to assist them in dying.
Two videotapes were sent by federal express to former members, who realized what had occurred and alerted police.
Deputy Sheriff Robert Bunk went over to the mansion on the afternoon of Wednesday, March 26. An overpowering stench indicated the presence of corpses, so he called for back-up. Together, the two officers entered the home. Now they knew for sure there were bodies and remembering Jonestown, they wondered about some kind of mass murder. Yet they soon realized that the deaths there had been peaceful, voluntary, and surprisingly uniform.
(AP)
There were 39 bodies lying on ordinary cots or bunks. Because they were all dressed alike with their hair cropped short, the investigators assumed they were all male and reported that to headquarters. The news media spread this as well. However, it turned out that among the victims were 21 women and 18 men, all white, from ages 26 to 72. Most had joined during the seventies, but eight had joined more recently during the nineties. It was the largest mass suicide to date to occur within the United States.
The place was eerily quiet as the San Diego County coroner went from one room to another, videotaping the scene. Twenty white plastic trash bags were found piled in the trash, along with elastic straps. On computer screens throughout the mansion were images of alien-human hybrids, along with one screen flashing a “Red Alert” from the Heaven’s Gate Web site. Hundreds of videotapes found there featured cult members speaking to people they had left behind about how excited they were to be joining Ti on a higher plane. Clearly, each person had died of his or her own free will and had wanted very badly to do so.
Brian Blackborne
(AP)
Then San Diego County medical examiner Brian Blackborne announced another shocking find: seven members of the cult had been castrated, including Applewhite. Former cult members admitted to reporters that, yes, Do had done that and others had followed his example. It was all part of crew-mindedness and the battle against the Luciferian influence.
Professor Strozier at John Jay College said that Applewhite clearly had issues with sexuality, and other members who strongly identified with him would feel that they had to do whatever he did. It was all part of losing their individual identities.
The bodies were finally released to grieving and perplexed next-of-kin. Some openly said that their relative had done what seemed best, while others thought the cult member had been brainwashed and would never otherwise have committed such an act.
Then there was yet another shock. On Easter Sunday, March 30, writer Lee Shargel told David Brinkley on a television talk show that Applewhite had cancer. People who heard this wondered if he had led 38 other people into taking their lives simply because he had nothing to lose and didn’t want to go alone. Yet autopsy reports showed no sign of cancer in his body. Shargel was a fiction writer. Had he just made that up? No one knew.
Wayne Cooke, 56, a former cult member known as Justin, appeared on 60 Minutes with Lesley Stahl to talk about his experience with Heaven’s Gate and his feelings about missing the “graduation.” There were tears in his eyes as he described what the departure meant and how much he wished he’d gone, too. In fact, his wife had been one of the thirty-nine.
Five weeks later on May 6, he and another former member, Chuck Humphrey, 55, both dressed in dark clothes, packed a bag, pocketed five dollars and three quarters, and used the same drugs to take their lives in a hotel room in Encinitas. Cooke succeeded, but Humphrey survived. In a videotape, Cooke told his surviving daughter he had to follow his wife. “I’m just really happy,” he said.
Humphrey decided that he’d been held back to continue to proselytize, so he created a Web page to dispense Heaven’s Gate theology. He did as much as he thought he could to get the word out, and then in February 1998, he ended his life in the Arizona desert. He placed a plastic bag over his head and used his car’s exhaust to fill it with carbon monoxide. Dressed in black with the requisite “fare,” he left a purple shroud on the seat next to him with a note that said, “Do not revive.” He called his suicide “an opportunity for me to demonstrate my loyalty, commitment, love, trust and faith in Ti and Do and the Next Level.”
It’s unlikely that the full story will ever be known and the mystery of the 39 suicides will become a permanent part of weird Americana. Yet one thing about Heaven’s Gate does stand out. Unlike many cults who are criticized for warping young minds, no one who “graduated” to the “next level” took children along for this ride. Only adults, they believed, could make such a decision. They did not leave to escape persecution or hardship, and in fact had a luxurious home and a thriving business. It seems they simply wanted to catch a ride while they still could and move on to another truth.
“Cults,” Twentieth Century with Mike Wallace. The History Channel, 1996.
Henry, William. The Keepers of Heaven’s Gate: The Millennial Madness. Anchorage, AK: Earthpulse Press, 1997.
Holliman, John. “Applewhite: From Young Overachiever to Cult Leader,” CNN.com./specials/1998/.
Krueger, Anne, and Susan Gembrowski, “Strange odyssey of Heaven’s Gate,” San Diego Union-Tribune. April 13, 1997.
Moran, Sarah. The Secret World of Cults. Surrey, England: CLB International, 1999.
“The Next Level,” Newsweek, April 7, 1997.
Thornton, Kelly, and Susan Gembrowski, “Cult claims two new victims,” San Diego Union-Tribune, May 7, 1997.
Wessinger, Catherine. How the Millennium Comes Violently. New York: Seven Bridges Press, 2000.