Heaven's Gate

Villainous UFO Sect Full Name: Heaven's Gate Alias: Total Overcomers Anonymous Human Individual Metamorphosis Origin: USA Foundation: 1974 headquarters Manzano, New Mexico (1995–1996) San Diego, California (1996–1997) Commanders: Marshall Applewhite Bonnie Nettles Goals: "Ascend" to an higher plane of existence (technically succeeded) Crimes: Incitement to Suicide Brainwashing Theft Type of Villain: UFO religious cult

Heaven's Gate was a UFO sect founded and led by Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles.

History

Foundation

Ex soldier Marshall Applewhite and nurse Bonnie Nettles founded in 1974 the group called "Total Overconsumers Anonymous" and "Human Individual Metamorphosis", that later would be called Heaven's Gate, after going to some religious places claiming to be the two witnesses of the Apocalypse.

The Two would gain their first follower, Sharon Morgan, in May 1974, abandoning her children to join them. A month later Sharon left and returned to her family. Nettles and Applewhite were arrested and charged with credit card fraud for using Morgan's cards, despite the fact that she had consented to their use. The charges were later dropped. However, a routine check brought up that Applewhite had stolen a rental car from St. Louis 9 months earlier, which he still possessed. Applewhite then spent six months in jail primarily in Missouri, and was released in early 1975, subsequently rejoining Nettles.

Eventually, Applewhite and Nettles resolved to contact extraterrestrials, and they sought like-minded followers. They published advertisements for meetings, where they recruited disciples, whom they called "The Crew". At the events, they said that they represented beings from another planet, called "the Next Level", who sought participants for an experiment. They stated that those who agreed to take part in the experiment would be brought to a higher evolutionary level.

Arise of the group

In April 1975, during a meeting with a metaphysical group of eighty people led by Clarence Klug in Joan Culpepper's Studio City, Los Angeles home, they shared their "revelations" that they had been told they were the two witnesses written into the Bible's story of the end time. Between 23 and 27 individuals decided to join the group as a result of the meeting.

Later, in September 1975, Applewhite and Nettles preached at a motel hall in Waldport, Oregon. After that day, around 20 people vanished from the hotel and from the public eye and joined the group. From that point, the two leaders of the group led the nearly one-hundred-member crew across the country, sleeping in tents and sleeping bags and begging in the streets. Evading detection by the authorities and media enabled the group to focus on the two's doctrine of helping members of the crew achieve a "higher evolutionary level" above human, which they claimed to have already reached.

In April 1976, the group stopped recruiting and became reclusive, and instituted a rigid set of behavioural guidelines, including banning sexual activity and the use of drugs. Applewhite and Nettles also solidified that they represented the sole temporal and religious authority of the group.

The mass suicide

In October 1996, the group began renting a large home which they called "The Monastery", a mansion located near 18341 Colina Norte in Rancho Santa Fe, California. In the same month, the group purchased alien abduction insurance that would cover up to fifty members and would pay out $1 million per person.

On the 19th-20th March of 1997, Marshall Applewhite made an audio called "Do's Final Exit" in which he defined of mass suicide as "the only way to evacuate this Earth". After asserting that a spacecraft was trailing Comet Hale–Bopp and that this event would represent the "closure to Heaven's Gate", Applewhite persuaded 38 followers to prepare for ritual suicide so their souls could board the supposed craft. Applewhite believed that after their deaths an unidentified flying object (UFO) would take their souls to another "level of existence above human", which he described as being both physical and spiritual. Their preparations included each member videotaping a farewell message.

After that moment, the members of the group killed themselves.

Ideology

The sect believed that its founders were the Two witnessers to the Apocalypse of Saint John and that the main founder, Marshall Applewhite, was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.

They believed that there was a place in a remote part of the universe called "the Next Level" where they would ascend to a new stage of human evolution by living in both a physical and a spiritual world (they identified as the entrance of this place the Comet Hale–Bopp). And the only way to make that happen is to commit suicide.