The Heaven's Gate Mass Suicide

Heaven's Gate was an American UFO religious cult based in San Diego, California, founded in the 1970s by Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles, who taught that Earth was about to be "recycled" and that the only escape was to leave one's human body behind and ascend to an alien spacecraft traveling in the wake of the Hale-Bopp comet. On March 19–20, 1997, 39 members of the group — including Applewhite himself — carried out a coordinated mass suicide at their rented mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, California, consuming phenobarbital mixed with applesauce and alcohol and applying plastic bags to their heads.

The members were found in their beds, dressed in identical black shirts, black sweatpants, and Nike sneakers, each with a five-dollar bill and three quarters in their pockets. Purple shrouds covered their bodies. Many had packed travel bags as if preparing for a journey. The discovery was made when two former members received goodbye messages and alerted authorities. It was the largest mass suicide on American soil.

Heaven's Gate had been a functioning, somewhat reclusive organization for over two decades before the mass suicide. Members were educated, often employed in web design and computer services, and had donated their assets to the group over years. Applewhite, who had himself been castrated and encouraged some male members to do the same, had an extraordinary ability to persuade intelligent people to accept his theology. Former members who left the group described a gradual process of total psychological absorption.

The Heaven's Gate website, maintained by surviving members who were not present for the mass suicide, remains active online. The group's theology, blending Christianity with science fiction concepts of extraterrestrial salvation, has been studied extensively in the sociology of new religious movements. The mass death of 39 people who genuinely believed they were about to board a spacecraft represented one of the most extreme examples of cult control and apocalyptic belief in modern American history.