A Brief History
On March 26, 1997, 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate awaited transport for their souls to a waiting UFO with $5.75 in each person’s pants pocket to pay for tolls!
Digging Deeper
Digging deeper, we find Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles heading up a religious cult founded by Applewhite after a “near death” experience in the 1970’s when he had a heart attack.
Claiming to be descended directly from Jesus Christ, Applewhite also claimed that he and his nurse, Bonnie Nettles, were spoken of in the Book of Revelation part of the Bible that mentions “The Two.” These two became religious leaders eager to spread their word, combining Christian religion with UFO related beliefs, sometimes going by aliases and changing the name of their cult a few times, notably from Human Individual Metamorphosis to Heaven’s Gate.
Applewhite taught his followers that they were just shells of the people that had previously occupied their physical bodies that had been taken over by aliens, or what he called “walk-ins.” In order to avoid the imminent end of the world all the walk-ins would have to kill their human host body and have their alien soul transported to a space ship hiding behind the Hale-Bopp comet that was passing brightly past earth in 1997.
Of course, anyone deserving of eternal happiness in space needed to live a clean and austere life on earth, and all members renounced material things and sex, with some of the male members including Applewhite voluntarily undergoing castration to help achieve a pure life!
On March 26, 1997, outside of San Diego in a mansion the group rented in Rancho Santa Fe, Applewhite and his followers, complete with extra-terrestrial toll money, downed pineapple and Phenobarbital and followed with vodka for good measure. If this incident is not cracked enough, they also put plastic bags on their heads to be sure to suffocate when they passed out! Knowing how important it is to look good when traveling, all group members were dressed in black shirts and sweat pants, and each member wore brand new Nike athletic shoes! Just in case anyone would wonder who they were, each member also sported an armband that had “Heaven’s Gate Away Team” on it!
Additional cracked facts about this incident include one of the members was the brother of the actress that played Uhura on the Star Trek (original) television program, and that it took 3 days for all members to kill themselves. Additionally, one member remained alive in order to continue to spread the word about their religion. Members ranged from as young as 26 years old to 72 years old, with Applewhite being 66 years of age. Bonnie Nettles missed the big event, having died in 1985.
Although we are pretty sure the world as we know it has not ended or been “cleansed” of humanity, we have no way of knowing if Applewhite and his followers are up there in space somewhere, traveling and paying their tolls! Question for students (and subscribers): What do you think? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Burke, Cathy and Bill Hoffmann. Heaven’s Gate: Cult Suicide in San Diego. Harpercollins, 1997.
Hewes, Hayden and Brad Steiger. Inside Heaven’s Gate: The UFO Cult Leaders Tell Their Story in Their Own Words. Signet, 1997.
Simpson, Deb. Closing The Gate: A Heaven’s Gate Cult Biography. PIney D Press, 2013.
<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="1587 http://www.crackedhistory.com/?p=1587">9 Comments
That’s insane. It’s hard to believe that people can become so brainwashed, in a sense, that they believe someone so intensely like these two people’s followers believed them.
This is crazy. It’s so bizarre that people truly believed this to the point they would kill themselves and convince others to do it too.
Wow! I can’t believe that happened, who would ever go to the point of death just to stand up for their beliefs? One thing is that they really really stood strong to show people what they believe in.
This is absolutely crazy. I do believe that sometimes when people die their souls do go to heaven and they speak to God and God sends their souls back into their physical body with some mission and purpose. There is no way that God and Jesus would send someone that died back to earth to create a whole new religion based on UFO sightings and convincing people to kill themselves. That’s something God and Jesus wouldn’t want someone to do because God already shared with everyone his word and his word is the Bible and the Bible only.
I find this article to be crazy ! I can’t believe that people actually believe all this.
I can’t believe people would even believe what Applewhite was telling them. I found this article to be very weird. It’s hard to believe that so many people killed themselves for such a stupid reason.
This article is very different. People actual believed this stuff and would kill themselves. Like really??
What? This is crazy. I can’t believe that people truly believe this! It reminds me of the fourth kind, that stuff freaks me out!
its crazy to think about what people do if they believe in something