The cult that committed suicide while wearing Nike shoes

A noticeable loss in the dead in Rancho Santa Fe, an exclusive suburb of San Diego. blood or sign of trauma did not have. Besides wearing similar clothes and the same shoes, they had one more thing in common.

All 39 people were members of the “Heaven’s Gate” sect, also known as the “UFO Sect”. of leaders spiritual and extraterrestrial They believed so much in their promise that there was nothing they could not do.

They thought they were more special than the rest of the world.

Heaven’s Gate was founded in the 1970s by Marshall Applewhite, known as “Do”, and Bonnie Nettles, known as “Ti”. Members of the sect with a spaceship hidden behind the comet Hale-Bopp their souls to another dimension they believed they would carry.

Like many sects formed both in this period and today, the core belief of Heaven’s Gate is that its members Compared to all the rest of the world it was more special.

According to their belief, they would take their souls to the next level with the UFO.

Ti and Do convinced their followers that the chosen ones would also survive bodily, in a technological revival of the belief that a UFO would descend to Earth and lift the spirits of those who remained loyal to the cult to the next level. Over time, Ti and Do became social and religious. Disappointed managed to attract the attention of members by reaching people.

Members left behind contact with the outside world and all their possessions.

For several years, Applewhite and Nettles have worked hard for their followers to cut off all contact with family and friends and an asexual appearance demanded that they adhere to increasingly strange and strict rules, including encouraging its adoption. Applewhite, for example, advocated asexuality and had several male cult members involved in castration operations.

In 1975, Applewhite and a group of people from Nettles, Oregon, began to abandon their families and belongings and were sent by an extraterrestrial spacecraft. “to the kingdom of heaven” convinced them to move to eastern Colorado, which they promised to take.

They believed that they would take their souls and bodies to a higher level with the spacecraft hidden behind the Hale-Bopp star.

Nettles and Applewhite said that human bodies were only things that could be abandoned in favor of a higher physical existence, but Heaven’s Gate membership was dwindling as the anticipated spacecraft never arrived. In 1985, Applewhite’s “sexless partner” Bonnie Lu Nettles died, and Applewhite looking for members continued alone.

In the early 1990s, the cult resurfaced. Shortly after the discovery of comet Hale-Bopp in 1995, members of Heaven’s Gate behind the comet, They are convinced that a spacecraft hidden from humans is coming to Earth.

Some cult members were castrated.

In October 1996, Applewhite rented a large house in Rancho Santa Fe and owned it. angels of christian origin said to have occurred. By late March 1997, as part of the 4,000-year orbit of the Sun, comet Hale-Bopp was one of the most impressive astronomical events It passed near the Earth.

They committed suicide with the thought that they would go by spaceship.

Applewhite and her 38 followers drank a deadly mixture of phenobarbital and vodka, leaving their bodies hoping to get into the spaceship they committed suicide. These suicides lasted several days in groups of 3.

Members even left wills behind them. When they are found, all similar black clothes and Nike shoes, and their tops were covered with purple covers.