The guy pictured, Marshall Applewhite, wanted to fuck dudes and was ashamed of it so he got castrated. Then, after his best friend and cult’s co-founder died, he convinced a bunch of people that the world was going to end and the only way they could survive was by committing suicide so that their souls could leave on an alien spaceship hidden behind Hale-Bopp comet as it passed by. Nobody can know what he was thinking but I’d wager he was just depressed and didn’t want to die alone.
There’s apparently been a couple of ex-members or maybe it was some members who just didn’t commit suicide with the rest that still supposedly keep it up for one reason or another.
The guy pictured, Marshall Applewhite, wanted to fuck dudes and was ashamed of it so he got castrated. Then, after his best friend and cult’s co-founder died, he convinced a bunch of people that the world was going to end and the only way they could survive was by committing suicide so that their souls could leave on an alien spaceship hidden behind Hale-Bopp comet as it passed by. Nobody can know what he was thinking but I’d wager he was just depressed and didn’t want to die alone.
EDIT: Originally said it was Hailey’s comet.
Fun fact, their website is still up https://www.heavensgate.com/
They were intentionally left behind to continue the mission/maintain the website. Lots of people have talked to them, they’re pretty easy to find interviews with.
Who’s paying for that?
There’s apparently been a couple of ex-members or maybe it was some members who just didn’t commit suicide with the rest that still supposedly keep it up for one reason or another.
Ah yes. Just seen it was the Hale-Bopp comet, not Hailey’s.
I think an array of mental illness and drug abuse is more likely.
I’m more interested in wtf everyone else was thinking.
Respect elders, follow till death.
Iirc, a lot of them were forced to drink it.
so internalized homophobia is what got them all killed
In November 1996, amateur astronomer Chuck Shramek of Houston, Texas, took a CCD image of the comet which showed a fuzzy, slightly elongated object nearby. His computer sky-viewing program did not identify the star, so Shramek called the Art Bell radio program Coast to Coast AM to announce that he had discovered a “Saturn-like object” following Hale–Bopp. UFO enthusiasts, such as remote viewing proponent and Emory University political science professor Courtney Brown, soon concluded that there was an alien spacecraft following the comet. Several astronomers, including Alan Hale, stated that the object was simply the 8.5-magnitude star SAO141894. They noted that the star did not appear on Shramek’s computer program because the user preferences were set incorrectly. Art Bell claimed to have obtained an image of the object from an anonymous astrophysicist who was about to confirm its discovery. However, astronomers Olivier Hainaut and David Tholen of the University of Hawaii stated that the alleged photo was an altered copy of one of their own comet images.
They died over someone’s computer settings being misconfigured 💀
And a whole lot of willful ignorance