Speaker 1: Strange Arrivals is a production of iHeartRadio in gren and
Speaker 1: Mild from Aaron Manky. For the best experience, listen with headphones.
Speaker 2: This is the second of two interviews I did while
Speaker 2: researching Heaven's Gate for season three of Strange Arrivals. In
Speaker 2: the end, I did not include Heaven's Gate in the
Speaker 2: main episodes of season three for a variety of reasons,
Speaker 2: but wanted people to be able to hear these interviews.
Speaker 2: The first one dropped last week. You can listen to
Speaker 2: them in either order. This is an interview with Ben Zeller,
Speaker 2: who is a professor of religious studies at Lake Forest
Speaker 2: College in Illinois.
Speaker 1: My name is Ben Zeller. I'm a professor of religious
Speaker 1: studies at lake Forest College outside of Chicago, Illinois.
Speaker 2: Could you talk about apple White and Nettle's backgrounds, both,
Speaker 2: you know, religiously and otherwise.
Speaker 1: Marshall Hurt Applewhite, who is the leader of Heaven's Gate
Speaker 1: at the end, but only one of the two co
Speaker 1: founders at the beginning, came from a pretty conventional Christian background.
Speaker 1: His father was a Presbyterian minister, and apple White was
Speaker 1: raised basically in the church, so for him, Christianity was
Speaker 1: just sort of the assumed background. He went to college.
Speaker 1: He actually considered becoming a minister himself, and he started
Speaker 1: at seminary, so he actually has some training as a
Speaker 1: Christian minister. He left seminary because he felt drawn into
Speaker 1: music as a career. It's sometimes hypothesized he also left
Speaker 1: because he realized that he was bisexual. We don't have
Speaker 1: any hard evidence of that, but it's certainly plausible that
Speaker 1: a closeted bisexual would have not felt comfortable in a
Speaker 1: Presbyterian seminary at the time. Either way, he leaves seminary,
Speaker 1: but he sticks with it long enough to really pick
Speaker 1: up the details of Christian theology. Even at the very
Speaker 1: very end of Heaven's Gate, he talks about questions about
Speaker 1: predestination and election, which are Christian theological terms which make
Speaker 1: sense within the particular denomination he was trained in. So
Speaker 1: you can see he sort of never left it behind
Speaker 1: and he brings that Christianity with him.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 1: Bonnie lue Nettle's, by contrast, was raised a Baptist but
Speaker 1: was not particularly drawn into the tradition. A childhood friend
Speaker 1: said an interview much later that she only went because
Speaker 1: the family went, so she was sort of your typical
Speaker 1: once a week at most, maybe once a month attendant
Speaker 1: in keeping with sord of broader society. She was in Texas,
Speaker 1: so she was Southern Baptist and nothing surprising there. As
Speaker 1: an adult, she became deeply interested in alternative spiritualities. She
Speaker 1: briefly joined the Theosophical Society. She was interested in spiritualism, interested
Speaker 1: in channeling, and she was far more religiously eclectic than
Speaker 1: her than apple White was.
Speaker 2: How did they run into each other? How did they meet?
Speaker 1: There are different stories for how he how apple White
Speaker 1: and Bonnie Lune Nettles met. The only commonality that we
Speaker 1: know for certain based on what they said, what their
Speaker 1: friends said, but their family said as they met in
Speaker 1: the hospital. The reasons that Nettles was in the hospital,
Speaker 1: that's pretty clear. She was working there. Why Appley was
Speaker 1: in the hospital, there's a couple of different answers. He
Speaker 1: says he was visiting a friend. One of his family
Speaker 1: members said that he was suffering heart palpitations and was
Speaker 1: in there for treatment, And much later on after the
Speaker 1: Heaven's Gate suicide, there's the claim that he was a
Speaker 1: mental patient. We can dismiss that last one because Nettles
Speaker 1: was not a psychiatric nurse, so there's no chance they
Speaker 1: would have met in a psyche hospital.
Speaker 3: She wasn't working in much. She was working i think
Speaker 3: in obgy in rotation at the time, so not likely
Speaker 3: that he was in for that. I've always assumed, because
Speaker 3: we have sort of the two different stories, that yes,
Speaker 3: he was in for heart palpitations, but then he went
Speaker 3: to visit a friend afterwards. That's always sort of assumed
Speaker 3: that they're both corrected. It makes sense either way. He
Speaker 3: ends up running into Nettle's in the hospital, and at
Speaker 3: this point in his life, Marshall Hurf apple White feels
Speaker 3: like he's at a moment of transition. He's been experiencing
Speaker 3: these sort of spiritual encounters. He has these, he sort
Speaker 3: of hears these voices and feels this religious, spiritual calling.
Speaker 3: He thinks like he has some sort of fate is
Speaker 3: calling him to do something. He doesn't know what though,
Speaker 3: but he feels like he's at this sudden moment of transition.
Speaker 3: We should note where he's been recently divorced, he's been
Speaker 3: fired from his job. He's sort of at this sudden
Speaker 3: moment of transition in his life. Nettles is also in
Speaker 3: a transition. She is also separated or in the process
Speaker 3: of separating, and when they meet, the story goes and
Speaker 3: we have only their story to go with that. She
Speaker 3: said to him, well, let me do your chart. She's
Speaker 3: an astrologer, so she does his chart and she says, actually, yeah,
Speaker 3: you do have a fate. You actually do have a destiny,
Speaker 3: but it's tied up with mine. The two of us
Speaker 3: together are bound for a journey, and off they go,
Speaker 3: and that's the story of the origin of Heaven's Gate.
Speaker 2: Interesting what is sort of the origin of the interest
Speaker 2: in UFOs.
Speaker 1: Both Nettles and apple White were interested in UFOs even
Speaker 1: before they met. Nettles Is interest in UFOs was bound
Speaker 1: up with her sort of neo theosophical interest in channeling.
Speaker 1: Traditional theosophy involves sort of receiving information from the beyond,
Speaker 1: usually from humans or from spiritually advanced beings a generally
Speaker 1: human that sort of send messages. Neo theosophy sort of
Speaker 1: twentieth century theosophy. These ascended masters they come to be called,
Speaker 1: are often considered space aliens or angelic beings or supernatural beings.
Speaker 1: Today we would call it new Age. At the time,
Speaker 1: it was sort of predates New Age, but within her
Speaker 1: alternative spiritual miliu, it made sense as a channeler that
Speaker 1: she would receive wisdom from extraterrestrials as well. We know
Speaker 1: that she received contact or claim to receive contact from
Speaker 1: deceased humans, so from the spiritual realm, so it would
Speaker 1: have made sense she had looked at extraterrestrials as well.
Speaker 1: But she was also interested in just sort of UFOs
Speaker 1: as a phenomenon, so not just sort of the beings
Speaker 1: to communicate with her spiritually, but also the claims about
Speaker 1: sightings and crashes and things like that. Apple White was
Speaker 1: a little more conventionally Christian in that way. He was
Speaker 1: open to Nettles's interpretation, but he came into it really
Speaker 1: trying to make sense of the Bible, and he used
Speaker 1: UFOs and space aliens to make sense of the Bible.
Speaker 1: But it was really Nettles Bndingland Nettles who brought UFOs
Speaker 1: and ufology to him.
Speaker 2: This is something I was looking at with other people,
Speaker 2: is that there are people who kind of look at
Speaker 2: UFOs as being the sort of the spiritual almost like
Speaker 2: you know, paranormal type thing, and then there's others who are,
Speaker 2: you know, look at that thing in the sky, they
Speaker 2: landed at left marks, and then you know the people
Speaker 2: who try and sort of synthesize it or at least
Speaker 2: are willing to accept like both aspects of it as
Speaker 2: being real. I think it's kind of an interesting step
Speaker 2: that they have to take.
Speaker 1: Both Nettles and apple White really did try to harmonize
Speaker 1: that spiritual approach to UFO's neuthology and also then the
Speaker 1: more sort of scientific approach. They certainly didn't come out
Speaker 1: of that. So basically the same time they were starting
Speaker 1: their work as when like Moufon, like the mutual ufhone
Speaker 1: network was starting, although it was the Midwestern ufhone network
Speaker 1: at first, So there were sort of secular scientific UFO
Speaker 1: watchers and those who saw themselves as studying the evidence
Speaker 1: on the ground, literally on the ground, right the imprints
Speaker 1: and such. They did not come from that world, but
Speaker 1: they were interested in engaging that, and they were interested
Speaker 1: in speaking to those who had a secular approach to
Speaker 1: UFOs because they really did believe that ultimately the UFOs
Speaker 1: were real and that the beings who the Bible referred
Speaker 1: to as angels and gods and things like that are
Speaker 1: just biological extraterrestrial entities and that all the miracles of
Speaker 1: the Bibles are simply UFO technology misunderstood. So they did
Speaker 1: ultimately agree that science and technology and sort of a
Speaker 1: secular approach was the way to understand UFOs and upology
Speaker 1: and sightings and such. It's just that they were coming
Speaker 1: out out of a religious miliu, and that's what they
Speaker 1: really created as a religion. They really try to have
Speaker 1: it both ways, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2: What sort of novel ways did they use to integrate
Speaker 2: sort of the reality of UFOs and their view into
Speaker 2: sort of the theological and you know, spiritual concerns they
Speaker 2: had coming into their partnership.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of angles to what they tried to do.
Speaker 1: One is the sort of the Vondonic and Chariots of
Speaker 1: the Gods style approach, where they simply looked at ancient material.
Speaker 1: In this case, the Bible is evidence of ancient aliens
Speaker 1: and astronauts who had visited the Earth, and this was
Speaker 1: recorded by primitive humans or comparatively primitive humans and as
Speaker 1: religious as opposed to it actually being you know, space aliens,
Speaker 1: so that they were part of the vanguard of them.
Speaker 1: And this is the nineteen seventies, so they were ahead
Speaker 1: of the curve in terms of that approach. I mean, now,
Speaker 1: of course that's pretty you know, pretty standard, sort of
Speaker 1: within one aspect of peupology. What they also did, though,
Speaker 1: which was really different from that, is they tried to
Speaker 1: interpret the Bible and particularly the prophetic passages of Revelation
Speaker 1: with reference to this. So not just was it aliens
Speaker 1: visited the Earth in the past, but they're going to
Speaker 1: come back, and the Book of Revelation describes how they're
Speaker 1: going to come back, and how the end of our
Speaker 1: societies we know it is going to occur, and how
Speaker 1: those who have hopes of leaving our planet are going
Speaker 1: to be able to do that. And in particular, they
Speaker 1: took the idea of the rapture, which is a Christian
Speaker 1: and Evangelical Christian idea about how the save the elect
Speaker 1: will be lifted up off the planet and what will
Speaker 1: go into heaven. Within the traditional Christian idea, it's Jesus
Speaker 1: meets them sort of halfway up and sort of lifts
Speaker 1: them up into heaven, and everyone else is sort of
Speaker 1: left behind and in fact left behind. It there's a
Speaker 1: series of books called Left Behind, which were a fictional
Speaker 1: version of this right for them though, it's a UFO
Speaker 1: and Jesus is a space alien and it's a tractor being,
Speaker 1: and it's not heaven, it's the literal heavens, it's outer space,
Speaker 1: so that that's their interpretation. And they fused this with
Speaker 1: what today we would call a New Age focus on
Speaker 1: self transformation and healing and self development. So the initial
Speaker 1: idea was that you would go on bodily form onto
Speaker 1: the UFO, and you would perfect your bodily being in
Speaker 1: your consciousness and you'd sort of elevate yourself to a
Speaker 1: new level of being and sort of raise your vibratory frequency.
Speaker 1: It was very sort of new Age language. They're really
Speaker 1: pulling from Christian biblical prophecy, new Age healing and self transformation,
Speaker 1: and the very sort of early upology and sort of
Speaker 1: combining it all in a really fascinating way. I get.
Speaker 2: There's two questions. One is like, who were the people
Speaker 2: who responded to this message and what about the message
Speaker 2: was compelling to them?
Speaker 1: Most of the converts, most of the people who either
Speaker 1: attended the meeting. So they had these massive public meetings
Speaker 1: all up and down the West coast from Los Angeles
Speaker 1: up through the Bay Area up through Oregon and Washington.
Speaker 1: Most of the people who attended the meetings and most
Speaker 1: of those who actually joined, were what I would call
Speaker 1: spiritual seekers. Those who who stayed and those who left
Speaker 1: generally had tried other spiritual pursuits, and that ranged from
Speaker 1: actual other new religious movements like scientology or transcendental meditation,
Speaker 1: two sort of quasi religious forms of living, like commune.
Speaker 1: There was one number who had gone to Israel, Joenika Buotz.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of interest in psychedelia, in drug
Speaker 1: use and drug trips, so they'd all tried different things
Speaker 1: to sort of, you know, break out of the norm.
Speaker 1: Not all, I should say that there were a few
Speaker 1: who bucked the trend, but by and large, vast majority
Speaker 1: were spiritual seekers. Of those who attended their meetings, and
Speaker 1: they had these large meetings with fifty sixty, one hundred people,
Speaker 1: two hundred people at some of them, they usually wouldn't
Speaker 1: get any more a few, you know, a dozen at
Speaker 1: most to join. So this didn't appeal to everyone, but
Speaker 1: for those who did feel attracted to it. What was
Speaker 1: generally new was the UFO angle, from the way in
Speaker 1: which it connected to the Biblical prophecy because most of
Speaker 1: the folks who joined were probably already aware of sort
Speaker 1: of the New Age self transformation elements of it. There
Speaker 1: were somedividuals who joined for one reason or another who
Speaker 1: don't fit that pattern. So there were some people who
Speaker 1: were very, very Christian in orientation, and what really grabbed
Speaker 1: them was that this was a new way to interpret
Speaker 1: the Christian Bible and it made sense to them. There
Speaker 1: were also at least a few examples of people who
Speaker 1: came in really through the UFO angle. What they were
Speaker 1: interested in was making sense of UFO sightings and landings,
Speaker 1: and the religious spiritual stuff was sort of secondary. But
Speaker 1: most of the members were grabbed by sort of initially
Speaker 1: that spiritual seeking. But what kept them in, because most
Speaker 1: people who joined left, their nutrition rate was it was huge.
Speaker 1: The people who stuck around found that combination somehow appealing,
Speaker 1: and it was never a large number of people. There
Speaker 1: were never more than fifty sixty seventy people at most,
Speaker 1: even early on, and of course it ends with with
Speaker 1: approximately forty, but even at its peak it was no
Speaker 1: more than twice that size, So this was never a
Speaker 1: mass appeal. But for some people that combination New Age
Speaker 1: self transformation, biblical prophecy and making ends out of UFO
Speaker 1: settings and sort of broader uphology for some people that
Speaker 1: was very appealing.
Speaker 2: Was this sort of set up beliefs. Was it fairly
Speaker 2: static over time or were there changes as they members
Speaker 2: came and when and they sort of you know, apple
Speaker 2: white nettles sort of thought things over or had revelations
Speaker 2: or whatever.
Speaker 1: The central beliefs both were consistent and radically changing the
Speaker 1: entire time. So this is really what's quite fascinating about them.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, it's totally consistent from beginning to end.
Speaker 1: The point of the group that we come to call
Speaker 1: Heaven's Gate, and it hit other names too, was human
Speaker 1: individual metamorphosis things. From beginning to end, their goal was
Speaker 1: to get off the planet. It was to leave Earth
Speaker 1: and ascend to a higher level of being, a higher
Speaker 1: level of existence what they come to call the next
Speaker 1: level or the evolutionary level above human on a UFO.
Speaker 1: So from beginning to end, that's consistent. The details changed
Speaker 1: over time, and the huge massive change was whether they
Speaker 1: would go on bodily form. Initially they told their followers
Speaker 1: at these sort of not even their fowers at these
Speaker 1: mass meetings they said publicly, you don't have to die.
Speaker 1: What we're offering is a trip to get onto the
Speaker 1: UFO and to go to heaven in your bodily form.
Speaker 1: There is no death required. You're gonna transform your body
Speaker 1: like a caterpillar into a butterfly. Cataflars don't die to
Speaker 1: become butterflies, they transform, And that was the metaphor they use.
Speaker 1: The other metaphor they use was graduation. Students don't die
Speaker 1: to graduate. They graduate and it's in their bodies. So
Speaker 1: these were their metaphors. So you will graduate like a student,
Speaker 1: or you will transform like a caterpillar and go into
Speaker 1: the next level, and you will then be a perfected
Speaker 1: extraterrestrial being. You're gonna live forever and never get sick,
Speaker 1: never need to eat. You're not going to be suffer
Speaker 1: sort of the frailties at the flesh, and you get
Speaker 1: to take care of the universe. You're gonna sail around
Speaker 1: in UFOs and manage the universe and manage planets. By
Speaker 1: the end, that transition was no longer bodily, it was
Speaker 1: your soul. Will go on and do that. You're gonna
Speaker 1: get a new body and going to leave the frail,
Speaker 1: broken human body behind, and that that is a radical transition.
Speaker 1: There are other changes over time too, their particular biblical
Speaker 1: interpretations change things like that, but that's the big one.
Speaker 1: Everything else follows from there.
Speaker 2: My conversation with ben Zellar will continue after the break.
Speaker 2: My sense is that Nettle's death is like a major
Speaker 2: kind of turning point in the trajectory of the group.
Speaker 1: My interpretation is that when Nettles died, that's when that
Speaker 1: transition occurs. That's when they go from understanding and believing
Speaker 1: and assuming they're all going to go in bodily form
Speaker 1: unto the UFO two. And then she dies and her
Speaker 1: body doesn't go anywhere. UFO comes to pick it up,
Speaker 1: and she know, nothing hatches out of her. You know,
Speaker 1: there's not you know, it's not like alien right, So
Speaker 1: there's no evidence that she, in any meaningful way, in
Speaker 1: any bodily way, is going into the next level. So
Speaker 1: they come to adapt and to adopt this idea of
Speaker 1: the soul. And they don't call it the soul, they
Speaker 1: call it the other things. But it's basically the consciousness.
Speaker 1: It's an upload process. They use computer terminology. It's an
Speaker 1: upload the consciousness. But whatever it is that that is
Speaker 1: body Lunettle's leaves her human body and returns to utter space.
Speaker 1: And in her case it's a return because they understand
Speaker 1: her as having come from the next level, from outer
Speaker 1: space to begin with, and from there then that expands
Speaker 1: and that becomes the way eventually for all of them.
Speaker 1: There are ex members I should note who can test
Speaker 1: me on this who disagree with this argument, who say, no,
Speaker 1: this was not the moment of transition. It was much later,
Speaker 1: and there was not sort of a theological problem at
Speaker 1: the moment of her death. But I would never dispute
Speaker 1: those who were there. I understand, you know, their particular experiences.
Speaker 1: But for my interpretation, this was the pivotal moment. And
Speaker 1: it may have taken a decade until this was publicly
Speaker 1: discussed and until they decided to embrace suicide, which as
Speaker 1: we know, that's how it ends in nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 1: But the seeds of that were planted the moment that
Speaker 1: Bonnie ln Nettles died.
Speaker 2: What year was that.
Speaker 1: Bonnielin Nettles passed away in June nineteen eighty five. The
Speaker 1: rough chnology of the group is that T and do
Speaker 1: of bodylue Nettle's Marshal Herfapawhites meet in nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 1: The group itself begins in seventy four and seventy five
Speaker 1: and seventy six as they're expanding out. That huge moment
Speaker 1: of transition is when Nettles passes away, and then in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven is when the group ends. So that
Speaker 1: that's your rough chronology. You have it sort of a
Speaker 1: ten year period with her and then sort of a
Speaker 1: ten year period afterwards, roughly plus or minus a couple
Speaker 1: of years.
Speaker 2: There was sort of an acceleration of you know, I
Speaker 2: don't know if saying that it was sort of of
Speaker 2: performative devotion, but like sort of an intensity of showing
Speaker 2: how and I'm particularly talking about castration and you know, abstinence,
Speaker 2: like extreme abstinence, I guess. And was that something that
Speaker 2: in your view is a result of Nettles passing away
Speaker 2: and Apple Whites trying to kind of deal with it
Speaker 2: and keep the group together. I was trying to get
Speaker 2: a handle on that.
Speaker 1: In that case, I would disagree. All of those practices
Speaker 1: have their roots very early on the group founded was founded.
Speaker 1: The basic teaching was you had to move beyond your
Speaker 1: human existence. And you had to abandon your human practices
Speaker 1: that included sexuality, included drugs, and included attachments to the
Speaker 1: people around you. So you had to sort of give
Speaker 1: up all of those those human level addictions and attractions
Speaker 1: and ways of being because you were trying to give
Speaker 1: up your human way of being. And again they use
Speaker 1: the metaphor they set up, a caterpillar can't be a
Speaker 1: butterfly if it wants to cling to its caterpillar ways,
Speaker 1: it has to embrace its new life as a butterfly.
Speaker 1: So they taught very early on you had to be abstinent,
Speaker 1: you had to give up drugs and alcohol. You had
Speaker 1: to give up attachments to loved ones, to your birth family.
Speaker 1: You couldn't get too attached to your job. All these
Speaker 1: things go all the way back. They didn't enforce it
Speaker 1: for the first year because they were very poorly run
Speaker 1: for the first couple of years. Metals and apple Whites
Speaker 1: had all these ideas, but they took no lead in
Speaker 1: managing the group. So individuals did all sorts of stuff
Speaker 1: and then eventually t and do as they come to
Speaker 1: call themselves. Finally, Nettle's Marshall, clap boyd Bow and t
Speaker 1: Andell send people. So eventually T and Do say no,
Speaker 1: we have to follow the rules. Understandably, people leave, so
Speaker 1: they lose a bunch of people. Everyone who stays agrees
Speaker 1: this is how they want to live their life. They
Speaker 1: want to basically be a monastic and that was again
Speaker 1: a term they used. They said were basically monastics. So
Speaker 1: they embraced the monastic lifestyle. And after that, well, there
Speaker 1: were some people who left because they couldn't handle that.
Speaker 1: The ex member Sawyer, for example, who who was very
Speaker 1: explicit about this, and he said he just he couldn't
Speaker 1: handle the abstinence. This is what wasn't him, so he
Speaker 1: left for that reason. But there were others who left
Speaker 1: for other reasons as well, so that that wasn't the
Speaker 1: only reason people left. So that really those extreme practices
Speaker 1: we see at the end the castorrations and such, go
Speaker 1: all the way back to the beginning after Te's death.
Speaker 1: So the question is was there a sort of a
Speaker 1: hyper focus on apple White and on sort of dedication
Speaker 1: to him in the group. We do see the group
Speaker 1: sort of focus narrow. However, I think given that there
Speaker 1: was now one leader instead of two, that simply that
Speaker 1: just follow us from if the group hadn't known that
Speaker 1: they would have dissolved.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's a group dynamic that's not specific to them.
Speaker 1: We have to remember Heaven's Kate, although it eventually died
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety seven, that the group ended, they were successful,
Speaker 1: so that means they're going to be marked by certain
Speaker 1: social characteristics. They did things effectively to keep going. We
Speaker 1: could imagine the world in which after Nettle's died, apple
Speaker 1: White was incapable of a leadership of the group, in
Speaker 1: which case we wouldn't be having this conversation. They would
Speaker 1: have dissolved in the nineteen eighties. It's only because apple
Speaker 1: White was able to transform the understanding of salvation, of
Speaker 1: getting to the next level and who Nettles was and
Speaker 1: who he was. Only because because he was able to
Speaker 1: transform that did the group survive ten more years. There's
Speaker 1: plenty of new religious movements UFO focused, and otherwise it's
Speaker 1: just disappear when the founder dies or loses interest or
Speaker 1: is arrested or something like that. It's the rare one
Speaker 1: where the founder a co founder dies and they keep going.
Speaker 1: Heaven's Gate's really unique in that way. Not unique, I
Speaker 1: mean the classic nineteenth century cases the Mormons right when
Speaker 1: they kept going, but it's unlikely that a new religious
Speaker 1: movement keeps going after one of the founders dies unexpectedly.
Speaker 2: Can you talk a little bit about sort of leading
Speaker 2: up to the suicide and what the dynamic there.
Speaker 1: Was the suicides or in nineteen ninety seven. Build up
Speaker 1: to the suicides is really nineteen ninety four, So for
Speaker 1: the first time in nineteen ninety four, the suicide is
Speaker 1: discussed openly as an idea. And there's different stories about
Speaker 1: how this came up. But the most frequently told story
Speaker 1: I've been told by ex members who were present was
Speaker 1: that this was at a warehouse in California, and that
Speaker 1: it was nineteen ninety four, and that Doe apple White
Speaker 1: had a group meeting and said, how would you all
Speaker 1: feel if we left our human vehicles? That was their
Speaker 1: term for their body, So if we left our human
Speaker 1: vehicles voluntarily? According to those who were present, there was
Speaker 1: at least one person who said, I'm not intered in
Speaker 1: the left, but the rest of them said they were willing,
Speaker 1: and actually we do know over the coming three years
Speaker 1: there were other people who said, I'm not understanding going
Speaker 1: to leave. So Rio D'Angelo famously he's the one who
Speaker 1: finds the bodies. He had said that. He said, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not into this. I'm not going to I don't
Speaker 1: want to commit suicide. I feel like I have a
Speaker 1: recent to stay here. There were others as well. In
Speaker 1: that three year time period. This was three years before
Speaker 1: the actual suicides. They vacillated over whether they actually were
Speaker 1: going to do this or not. They still hoped the
Speaker 1: UFO was going to pick them up in bodily form,
Speaker 1: but it was an open possibility over whether that was
Speaker 1: going to happen and if they would have to leave
Speaker 1: their human vehicles as they called them behind. They also
Speaker 1: for a while were wondering if they would be murdered.
Speaker 1: So this is around the same time as the Branch
Speaker 1: Davidian assault, so for those who know their sort of
Speaker 1: history of American government relations with New religions.
Speaker 3: So this was.
Speaker 1: The over month long siege of the Branch Davidians in Waco,
Speaker 1: which ended with the fire, which it's still extremely contentious
Speaker 1: whether that fire was set by the Branch Davidians or
Speaker 1: by the government, whether it was an accident, no one
Speaker 1: really knows, but they almost all died. The Branch Davidians
Speaker 1: so the members of Heaven's Gate thought for a while,
Speaker 1: maybe the government's going to come kill us, you know,
Speaker 1: they're going to besiege us, and we're all going to
Speaker 1: get shot or burned to death, and that's how we're
Speaker 1: conscious will be freed from our human bodies to go
Speaker 1: into the UFO. Of course, that didn't happen, so they
Speaker 1: had to sort of figure out how we going to
Speaker 1: get from point A Earth to point B outer space.
Speaker 2: Why the hail bop comet, How did that sort of
Speaker 2: relate to the theology, if it did at all.
Speaker 1: Members of Heaven's Gate had become quite attuned to a
Speaker 1: conspiratorial subculture. This actually was coming from the bottom up.
Speaker 1: I don't actually think apple White himself was initially into this,
Speaker 1: but there were several members of Heaven's Gate who were
Speaker 1: quite into sort of Internet culture or proto internet culture.
Speaker 1: Actually it wasn't even the Internet, it was dial up
Speaker 1: BBS's and they were part of sort of these chat
Speaker 1: groups that was into government conspiracies. And that makes sense
Speaker 1: because they believed in UFOs. So they believe the government
Speaker 1: was conspiring to hide the presence of UFOs and the
Speaker 1: presence of extraterrestrials on Earth, and they believed that there
Speaker 1: were nefarious extraterrestrials who they called the Luciferians. For those
Speaker 1: who know sort of pop culture gothology, think sort of
Speaker 1: the reptiles. I think the Reptilian hypothesis here. So there's
Speaker 1: David Ike and such like that. So there's there're these
Speaker 1: reptilian evil space aliens who are conspiring against us, and
Speaker 1: there's crashed UFOs and things. So there's there's conspiracies against us.
Speaker 1: So they get plugged into the conspiratorial world and they
Speaker 1: get connected to this claim that the government is hiding
Speaker 1: the presence of a UFO behind helpop comet and that
Speaker 1: all of the publicly released photos have been doctored. And
Speaker 1: then this breaks into the mainstream with the Art Bell
Speaker 1: radio show. So Art Bell Coast to Coast AM Coast
Speaker 1: to Coast. Yeah, there's conspiratorial stuff, but that was actually
Speaker 1: pretty mainstream. Art Bell was not sort of just a
Speaker 1: nut job. Art Bell was listened to by a lot
Speaker 1: of people. So Art Bell has this very popular late
Speaker 1: night AM radio show and he gets a call in
Speaker 1: that says, yeah, I've seen it, and I have photographic
Speaker 1: evidence that there is a UFO. Following Helpop comments, and
Speaker 1: then a couple of days later there's another call in
Speaker 1: from a distance viewer who says, yeah, I was able
Speaker 1: to project my consciousness and I was able to see it,
Speaker 1: and I was able to tour this UFO trailing help
Speaker 1: up comment. So there's claims that there's evidence that it's there,
Speaker 1: and they really bought into this. Now they head to
Speaker 1: their benefit. They said, well, even if there's not a
Speaker 1: UFO there, that doesn't matter. This is the marker we're
Speaker 1: looking for. The commet itself is the markers. Even if
Speaker 1: there's not a UFO behind Helpop, we know the UFO
Speaker 1: is up there anyways. It maybe somewhere else, but the
Speaker 1: whole world is paying attention. This is our chance to
Speaker 1: demonstrate to the world the truth of what we've been
Speaker 1: saying for twenty plus years. And now is our chance,
Speaker 1: with the world watching for us, to show the truth
Speaker 1: of our message and to get our word out. You know,
Speaker 1: they made a website, they had a book, they made videos,
Speaker 1: they had transcripts, they had basically a press release. They
Speaker 1: really in some ways, we're trying quite intentionally to get
Speaker 1: our attention. They'd be in some ways thrilled we're still
Speaker 1: talking about them twenty five plus years later. That was
Speaker 1: their intentions.
Speaker 2: I think I've talked about how they regret not having
Speaker 2: been there and taken that leap what is sort of
Speaker 2: the afterlife.
Speaker 1: There were several members, and sometimes we call them X
Speaker 1: members members. When people leave these groups, sometimes they rejoined.
Speaker 1: So there were ex members who left the group in
Speaker 1: the seventies or eighties and came back in the nineties.
Speaker 1: And there were people who left because they couldn't follow
Speaker 1: the rules, but they still believed the basic principles the
Speaker 1: ideas of the group. And this is true across lots
Speaker 1: of you know, lots of moments, big and small, old
Speaker 1: and new, in the number of sort of Catholics who
Speaker 1: sort of you know, they go to the church, but
Speaker 1: they sort of like, you know, they still do some
Speaker 1: Catholic stuff, right. So Heaven's Gate was the same way.
Speaker 1: So there were people who had left the fold, but
Speaker 1: they were still basically accepting the premise of the group.
Speaker 1: And several of them did commit suicide or in their terminology,
Speaker 1: they performed their exits and abandoned their vehicles. Wayne Cook,
Speaker 1: who went by the name of just Justodie within the
Speaker 1: group in May nineteen ninety seven, so that was just
Speaker 1: a few months afterwards, committed an exit and Chuck Humphrey,
Speaker 1: who was his check partner, so they always worked in
Speaker 1: groups of two, he attempted to and his attempt failed,
Speaker 1: and then later on he attempted it then and successfully
Speaker 1: committed suicide or performed an exit. There were several other
Speaker 1: members as well who had ex members. They're all gone now,
Speaker 1: and there's there's still a few sort of true believers
Speaker 1: left who are present on the internet. You can you
Speaker 1: can find them around. So Sawyer is probably the best
Speaker 1: example of sort of a true believer who's left and
Speaker 1: still talked about his time in the group and in
Speaker 1: fact has expanded and tried to sort of explain what
Speaker 1: the group was about. And he has a pretty active
Speaker 1: web presence, and you can find him on last I checked,
Speaker 1: he's on YouTube, he's on Twitter, he's all over the place.
Speaker 2: What important thing, haven't I asked you about?
Speaker 1: So many misconceptions about Heaven's Gate. So the first is
Speaker 1: sort of this idea that they were brainwashed jobs, that
Speaker 1: there was something wrong with these people. They all left
Speaker 1: or not all, and nearly all of them left either
Speaker 1: video testimony or written testimony about why they did what
Speaker 1: they did, about why they thought suicide made sense. We
Speaker 1: may disagree, and I disagree. I don't support suicide, and
Speaker 1: I'm not a believer and have it's skate, so it's
Speaker 1: not my not what I would do, and it's not
Speaker 1: my beliefs. But then again, there's lots of religions out there.
Speaker 1: They're not what I would do, and not my beliefs
Speaker 1: and not my community. And some of them are pretty extreme.
Speaker 1: And while Heavens Get may to be more extreme because
Speaker 1: of the suicide, I don't think we can immediately assume
Speaker 1: people who do extreme things are crazy or are diluted.
Speaker 1: They had reasons for what they did and a lot
Speaker 1: of that. Actually, your listeners can can just go to
Speaker 1: their website. It's still up there. It's maintained by x members.
Speaker 1: You can read some of their exit statements. You can
Speaker 1: see why it made sense to them, and there's there
Speaker 1: was video exits as well, and they're they're floating around.
Speaker 1: They were on Vimeo one point. You can if you
Speaker 1: search for Heaven's Gate exit videos you'll find them there.
Speaker 1: They're floating around. I find these very powerful to listen
Speaker 1: to because it really humanizes them for me. Again, I
Speaker 1: don't agree with what they did, and I don't believe
Speaker 1: as they do, but I want to take them seriously
Speaker 1: as human beings, ironically, because they did not want to
Speaker 1: be human beings. So I always say this when I
Speaker 1: talk about that. It humanizes them for me. But I
Speaker 1: recognize they didn't want to be human. That's the last
Speaker 1: thing they wanted to be. I, as a human, see
Speaker 1: them like me. They in fact wanted nothing to do
Speaker 1: with our planet or people like you and me because
Speaker 1: they wanted to transcend that. But again, I'm a scholar
Speaker 1: for religion, so that's okay. I'm okay disagreeing with the
Speaker 1: people I'm studying. I try to recognize the community in them,
Speaker 1: even if they don't recognize it themselves.
Speaker 2: Strange Rivals is a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and
Speaker 2: Mild from Aaron Mankey. This episode was hosted by Toby
Speaker 2: Ball and produced by Rima L. Kayali Jesse Funk, and
Speaker 2: Noemi Griffin, with executive producers Alexander Williams, Matt Frederick and
Speaker 2: Aaron Manke, and supervising producer Josh Thain. Learn more about
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Speaker 2: Yeah