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15th Anniversary of Heaven's Gate mass suicide at Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. March 26, 1997
By Ah-Ha Banana Nation

15th Anniversary of Heaven's Gate mass suicide at Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. March 26, 1997...

Views of Heaven's Gate:An Oral History

The largest mass suicide in U.S. history took place at a rented mansion off Camino Del Norte in March 1997. Presented here is a graphic -- viewer discretion advised -- video detailing the incident.

Following the video is a timeline of the cult's activity and it's 1997 news release detailing its plans.

Then, we present two "exit" videos -- the group made about 15 -- with members explaining their mind-sets and some of the particulars of their behaviors.

The final video presented here is one of leader Marshal Applewhite's numerous indoctrination videos.

For more information, follow the video links to additional presentations on several video sites.

This is presented in the interest of providing a partial oral historical record of one of the most disturbing chapters in recent American history as well as partially detailing the most spectacular, and disturbing, event in Rancho Santa Fe history.

Again, viewer discretion advised...

-- Editor's Note

Heaven’s Gate: A timeline

Many of the Heaven’s Gate adherents who were found dead in a Rancho Santa Fe mansion March 26, 1997, had been with the group for most of their adult lives. Their leader was Marshall Applewhite.

They were found with their bags packed. Most were neatly laid out on beds, covered with purple shrouds. They wore running shoes and matching uniforms with “Heaven’s Gate Away Team” patches. Each had a $5 bill and quarters in his or her pockets.

The Heaven’s Gate group believed that once free of their earthly bodies, they would be whisked by spaceship to a celestial paradise and a “level beyond human.” They associated the Hale-Bopp comet, which could be seen in the sky that winter, with the spacecraft they awaited. They thought it was traveling behind the comet.

The Heaven’s Gate cult had existed for more than two decades. Its recruiting drives were followed by periods spent in near hiding. In its final years, its message was spread through the Internet. Here is a timeline of the group’s history.

1972: Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles, a nurse, meet at a Houston hospital. They set out on a spiritual quest and open a metaphysical bookstore.

January 1973: Applewhite and Nettles close their bookstore and set out to find their spiritual mission.

February 1973-August 1974: Applewhite and Nettles travel around the country, camping in parks and skipping out on motel-room bills.

Aug. 27, 1974: Applewhite and Nettles are arrested in Harlingen, Texas, on charges of credit-card fraud and auto theft. The charges against Nettles are dropped, but Applewhite is extradited to St. Louis and spends six months in jail.

March 1975: Applewhite and Nettles go to Ojai. Two of their recruits are a mother and her adult daughter.

April 1975: About 80 people meet at a Hollywood Hills home to hear Applewhite and Nettles. Twenty-four people from that meeting agree to meet in Gold Beach, Ore., with Applewhite and Nettles two weeks later.

May 5, 1975: The followers meet Applewhite and Nettles in Gold Beach. The leaders now call themselves Bo and Peep.

June 1975: Applewhite and Nettles abandon several followers in Sedona, Ariz.

Aug. 24, 1975: Applewhite and Nettles make a public appearance at Cañada College in Redwood City.

Sept. 14, 1975: The group meets in Waldport, Ore., expecting a spaceship to land. No spaceship shows up, but more than 30 people agree to join the group. The cult gets its first negative publicity over the fiasco.

Fall 1975: The group camps at the Colorado National Monument, waiting for a spaceship to pick up the members.

April 21, 1976: Nettles announces that the group no longer will hold public meetings. Many people leave the group during the next year. Its numbers drop from about 100 to two dozen. Nettles now calls herself Ti, while Applewhite goes by the name of Do.

June 19, 1985: Nettles dies of liver cancer.

May 27, 1993: The cult places a one-third-page ad in USA Today and once again begins recruiting members, this time using the Internet to spread its message.

June-October 1995: Heaven’s Gate members spend several months living in a compound in a remote New Mexico town.

October 1996: After living in several north San Diego County homes the year before, the cult moves into a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe.

March 26, 1997: The bodies of 39 cult members are discovered in the mansion.

May 1997: The husband of one of the dead cult members kills himself at an Encinitas motel. A member for 20 years, he had left the group in 1994. He had expressed regret that he was not with them when they died. A second former cult member who attempted death with him is revived.

February 1998: The second former cult member’s body is found in a tent in the Arizona desert, nine months after he survived the earlier suicide attempt.

 

 

Nov. 22, 1999: A county auction of Heaven’s Gate belongings raises $32,707. Some of the money pays for the auction; the rest goes to family members to help cover burial costs. Two former members who had tied up the estate in probate court eventually reach a settlement with the county and pay $2,000 for items of most significance to the cult.

 

To be issued to the News Media

 

 3-22-97
By the time you read this, we suspect that the human bodies we were wearing have been found and that a flurry of fragmented reports have begun to hit the wire services. For those who want to know the facts, the following statement has been issued.

 

HEAVEN'S GATE® "Away Team" Returns to Level Above Human in Distant Space

RANCHO SANTO FE, CA -- By the time you receive this, we'll be gone -- several dozen of us. We came from the Level Above Human in distant space and we have now exited the bodies that we were wearing for our earthly task, to return to the world from whence we came -- task completed. The distant space we refer to is what your religious literature would call the Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God.

We came for the purpose of offering a doorway to the Kingdom of God at the end of this civilization, the end of this age, the end of this millenium. We came from that Level, that time, that space, and entered this one. And in so doing, we had to enter human bodies -- which we did, for the most part, in the mid-seventies. Now it was time for us to leave those bodies (vehicles) -- bodies that we borrowed for the time we were here (by previous arrangement) for this specific task. The task was not only to bring in information about that Evolutionary Kingdom Level Above Human, but to give us the experience of working against the forces of what the human evolutionary level, at this time, has become. And while it was a good learning experience for us, it also gave all who ever received knowledge from that Kingdom an opportunity to recognize us and this information, and to even move out of the human level and into the Next Level or the Next Evolutionary Level, the "Kingdom of Heaven," the Kingdom of God.

The Kingdom of God, the Level Above Human, is a physical world, where they inhabit physical bodies. However, those bodies are merely containers, suits of clothes -- the true identity (of the individual) is the soul or mind/spirit residing in that "vehicle." The body is merely a tool for that individual's use -- when it wears out, he is issued a new one.

No one can enter the Kingdom of Heaven by trying to live a good life in this world, and then, thinking that when this world's life takes your body, you get to "go to heaven." The only time that Next Kingdom can be entered is when there is a Member or Members of that Kingdom who have come into the human kingdom, incarnated as we have, offering clarification of that information. To get into a discarnate condition just by disconnecting from your body doesn't mean that you are going to go anywhere, whether that loss of body is "premature" or not. When we step out of our "vehicle," we have to know where and who our "tour guide" (our Shepherd) is -- for what's next. We have to know we can connect with a Shepherd whom we trust, and that we have decided, "If that Shepherd will have me, I want to continue to be a sheep -- and I will do everything I can to please that Shepherd."

Periodically, that Next Level sends in a Representative -- a Shepherd -- and offers a graduation class, offers life, out of this evolutionary level into that Next Evolutionary Level, and we are at the end of one of those times. TI and DO were the names used by the Representatives of that Next Level, the Kingdom of God, sent to the "surface" of this planet to serve as our Teachers/"Midwives" at this time.

During a brief window of time, some may wish to follow us. If they do, it will not be easy. The requirement is to not only believe who the Representatives are, but, to do as they and we did. You must leave everything of your humanness behind. This includes the ultimate sacrifice and demonstration of faith -- that is, the shedding of your human body. If you should choose to do this, logistically it is preferred that you make this exit somewhere in the area of the West or Southwest of the United States -- but if this is not possible -- it is not required. You must call on the name of TI and DO to assist you. In so doing, you will engage a communication of sorts, alerting a spacecraft to your location where you will be picked up after shedding your vehicle, and taken to another world -- by members of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Only a Member of the Next Level can give you Life -- can take you out of "Death" -- but it requires that you disconnect, separate, from the last element holding you to the human kingdom.

We know what we're saying -- we know it requires a "leap of faith." But it's deliberate -- designed for those who would rather take that leap than stay in this world.

We suggest that anyone serious about considering this go into their most quiet place and ask, scream, with all of their being, directing their asking to the Highest Source they can imagine (beyond Earth's atmosphere), to give them guidance. Only those "chosen" by that Next Kingdom will know that this is right for them, and will be given the courage required to act.

 

SOME RELEVANT SCRIPTURES

 

  • Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father. JOHN 10:15--18

     

  • He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also: JOHN 14:12

     

  • And except that the Lord shorten those days, none shall be saved: but for the elect's sake, whom He has chosen, He hath shortened the days. MARK 13:20

     

  • He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. JOHN 12:25

     

  • Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. REVELATION 14:13

 
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