Applewhite continued to sail his ship onwards and upwards so to speak. He lectured followers that if they wished to board the spaceship to heaven they would have to embark on even more disciplined training. His disciples had to give up practically everything, including family, friends, alcohol, tobacco and sex. Applewhite was surgically castrated and five of his male followers followed suit.
The group adopted a whole range of space related jargon in order to describe their ideas. Applewhite was the Captain and his followers were the crew. Food turned into ‘fuel’ and their bodies were the ‘physical vehicles’ that would help take them to the heavenly space ship. Members wore identical uniforms which consisted of collarless monotone tunics, Nike™ trainers and, male and female alike, all had cropped hair cuts. Their tunics were disturbingly similar to something that could easily be associated with a sci-fi television programme such as Star Trek, and it is believed that many of the group’s members were in fact avid sci-fi fans.
According to Applewhite, the Bible provided an array of proof regarding what their ideologies entailed. Passages from the four gospels and the Book of Revelations could apparently be interpreted to show references to UFO visitation.
As the years went by each of the members individuality lessened. They had been given new names by Applewhite which helped crumble their sense of past, they were no longer the people they had once been, they had been completely brainwashed for the cause of the higher level. This mind-control was supported by members being assigned a partner. If one half of the pair was falling out of the much needed mind-set the other crew member was there to put them back on track. The individual thought process had been predominantly wiped out, except maybe the individual thoughts of Applewhite himself.
NEW RECRUITS
In the early ’90s the group came out of seclusion and began a campaign to get their message across to as many people as possible. They recorded video messages, held open meetings and lectures, took out advertisements in national newspapers and set up their own website called Heaven’s Gate. The website allowed access to the group’s sacred text: How and When Heaven’s Gate May Be Entered and also contained essays by both Applewhite and his students explaining their theories and where they were going. An ‘Earth Exit Statement’ posted on the site by a student named Glnody discusses the dominant and corrupt governments of the world and how due to technology there is no longer such a thing as freedom on earth. It was around the time that their website went live that they started loosely calling their movement Heaven’s Gate . . .
In 1993 news broke of an incident at Waco, Texas where 81 members of the Branch Davidian sect including leader David Koresh had died in a fire after a 51-day siege with ATF and FBI agencies. This caused Applewhite to panic about his own cause, Heaven’s Gate already felt disassociated from governments and forces, so guns were purchased and stored in preparation for an attack. By 1995 they had built a cement strong hold but a message from Nettles advised Applewhite to abandon such attempts at war. Applewhite believed that their cause was far greater than anything that had gone before it.
HALE-BOPP
Another event happened in 1995 that caused Applewhite to sit up and take note. Two astronomers, who were hundreds of kilometres apart at the time, were looking at the globular cluster M70 when they noticed a fuzzy object come into view. It soon became apparent that they had both fallen upon a previously undiscovered comet within seconds of each other. It was given the name of Hale-Bopp due to the surnames of the two discoverers and was to become the most photographed comet of all time. Hale-Bopp was such an amazing discovery as it was visible to the naked eye for over a month. The comet was estimated to be between 40 and 100 kilometres wide, and was described as a dirty snow ball with an extremely long gassy tail. From the day of its discovery Hale-Bopp became rather a mystical comet and reports started to circulate that there was more to it than science as we know it.
In November 1996, amateur photographer Chuck Shramek took a photo of Hale-Bopp using a 10 inch SC telescope and a CCD camera. In the photo there appeared to be another object following behind the comet’s tail. Shramek described it as a ‘Saturn like object’ due to the ring-like form that seemed to embrace its strangely shaped body. This was all it took for Applewhite to believe that closure of the lower life was imminent. He went on to preach to his crew that the saturn like object travelling behind Hale-Bopp was the spacecraft coming to take the Heaven’s Gate members to the higher level. Applewhite believed that Nettles had contacted him to inform him that Hale-Bopp was the sign that the apocalypse was getting close.
HIGHER LEVELS CALL
At the same time the Heaven’s Gate crew had managed to acquire enough internet skills to set up a company called Higher Source that designed websites for other customers. The money from this enterprise allowed the group to rent a $7,000 a month Spanish style villa just outside of San Diego. The villa was to become the home of 40 members. they would wake up at 3 a.m. to begin prayer, eat two bland meals a day and make themselves as genderless as possible so as not to arouse any form of sexual attraction from other members.
Members began recording video diaries where they happily stated that they were looking forward to leaving the Earth behind to join Ti (Nettles) on the higher level. Applewhite constantly stated that his crew members were allowed to leave at any time, and many of them did, but so powerful and controlling was his mind that it was the weaker crew members who stayed – maybe people who would have had suicidal tendencies even without being in such a cult? One member even wrote a passage on the website stating that even if they were wrong and there wasn’t a higher level, there wasn’t anything to live for on Earth anyway so it was worth a try. People who feel that low about themselves, maybe depressed about how their lives have gone so far, of course will embrace the idea that life on Earth is in fact meaningless and there is something better to come from the ‘next stage’. If an idea is expressed in an interesting enough way it will cause people to think, even if they do not necessarily agree with the statement in question, it will get their mind working – is that all it takes to get inside the mind of another human and completely change their destiny?
Applewhite had made his crew members believe that the only way for them to progress to the next level was through an Older Member, so without Applewhite, they did not stand a chance; they needed him. Therefore the logical process would be to leave this world when Applewhite left.
THE YEAR OF THE SUICIDE
The Heaven’s Gate crew members enjoyed their final year on Earth. They went to a UFO conference and purchased insurance against alien abduction. At the beginning of March all 39 members went on a four day coach trip that took them to Golden Beach, the place where Ti and Do had held one of their first meetings in 1975. They went on day trips to the local zoo and some members went to San Diego Sea World. They ate out every night; pizzas, burgers and steaks were consumed. On March 21, the entire crew went for a final lunch at a Marie Callendar restaurant in Carlsbad where they ordered 39 identical meals of chicken pot pie, cheesecake, and iced tea. That was the last time they were to be out of their villa.
On March 26, 1997, the San Diego Sheriff’s department received an anonymous phone call stating that there had been a mass suicide at the Rancho Santa Fe. The bodies of 39 people were found in the villa just north of San Diego. At first it was believed that they were all men ranging between 18–24 years old. But after a closer look it became clear that there were 18 men and 21 women whose ages ranged from 26–72. The confusion had arisen because all the bodies looked identical and sexless.