Heaven's Gate: The Suicide Cult That Shook the World in the '90s Still Has a Website

On March 26, 1997, the cult known as Heaven's Gate organized a mass suicide that took the lives of 39 members, including its leader, Marshall Applewhite. The idea was that through suicide they would abandon their "vehicles" (i.e., their bodies) and reach a "higher level" by being teleported to a supposed alien spaceship following comet Hale-Bopp. One of the most striking remnants of Heaven's Gate is its official website, essentially turned into a time capsule maintained by two surviving members.

A Prophetic Discovery

Comet Hale-Bopp was discovered on July 23, 1995, jointly by astronomers Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp. Almost prophetically, Hale told a colleague that "probably we're going to have some suicides" related to the comet's arrival, but he never imagined what would happen. The history of the Heaven's Gate cult began sometime in 1974.

The Leaders and Their Mission

Its leaders, Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles, had met two years earlier (Nettles' family indicated it was at a drama school, not a hospital as Applewhite reported), and for lack of a more sophisticated phrase, they "found each other." Both abandoned their families in 1973, and became "the spokesman and the wise one," "the two UFOs," or simply "Do" and "Ti."

By the end of 1975, Heaven's Gate (under a different name at the time) had nearly a hundred members, and their disappearance from public life gave rise to all sorts of speculation, as well as serving as the basis for a movie (Mysterious Two). The members of Heaven's Gate continued spreading the message by traveling as nomads and stepping up their recruitment efforts (they did not allow minors, and apparently members did not join under threats or blackmail, but did so of their own free will), until Nettles died of liver cancer in 1985. According to Applewhite's view, she had only "abandoned her broken vehicle," and over the years they turned their strategy toward the Internet.

(Editor's note: I recommend watching the video at 1.25x)

A Time Capsule of the Cult

To learn more about Heaven's Gate, nothing is better than its official website, perfectly preserved by two surviving members with the task of "protecting the digital legacy" of the group. The site looks like it came from a GeoCities city in the Internet Archive, but don't be fooled. It contains several videos (which must be requested), complete transcripts, and the group's formal farewell, or rather its "return to a higher level," beyond the human.

Official site: