On Heaven’s Gate by Benjamin E. Zeller
By Shane Timson
For High Plains Public Radio Readers Book Club, I'm Shane Timson in Colby, Kansas.
Today we're talking about the book Heaven's Gate by Benjamin E. Zeller. This book is about the religious cult that committed mass suicide as they were trying to get a ride on the Hale-Bopp Comet back in 1997.
I love reading about religious cults. And there's not a lot of stuff about this group because these guys were pretty secretive. They weren't out there, you know, recruiting a lot of people. They did recruit people, but they did it very quietly. It wasn't like some of the other more well-known religious cults.
They were a peaceful group of people. This group was formed back in 1975,
and it was basically because they wanted to find a higher calling. They were kind of disenfranchised with organized religion and they were looking for something else.
They're considered to be a UFO cult. Their influences were Star Trek, particularly the original series in the 60s and then later they liked Star Trek Next Generation. They said because Star Trek people may have fought enemies, but they never fought each other. And they were a very organized machine. That's the way Heaven's Gate tried to live -- very organized, and they never fought with each other.
The way they made money primarily was that they made websites once the Internet started to come on board in the mid-90s. So, they were making websites for
people.
Suicide was not something they were into. In fact, they would write publications against.
suicide and they've even had some radio shows they did -- they were involved in various broadcasts back in the early 90s and they were very much against suicide.
Some people speculate, including the author that the suicide option didn't happen until just a few months before the Hale-Bopp because their founder Marshall Applewhite might have had cancer. There were rumors that he had cancer. He was very sick, so maybe he wanted to go out, and this would be a way to do it.
How did they find the Hale-Bopp Comet? They had been saying for years that a
spacecraft would come for them, but it wouldn't land. They would have to catch the spacecraft kind of like some Christians believe that there's a Rapture where you're caught up. in the air and you meet Christ in the air. Well, they were believing that but instead of meeting Jesus they were meeting a spacecraft. They heard Art Bell who was a pioneer in alien talk radio for lack of a better term and when they heard Art Bell talking about the Hale-Bopp Comet they decided that's what they were going to catch a ride on.
They had been following Art Bell for a couple of months tracking the Hale-Bopp Comet. They picked the date of the mass suicide because that was when the comet was going to be in their area and they would be able to catch a ride on it.
So that's what happened.
I remember hearing about this and thinking, “Wow, we didn't know anything about these guys.” And like I said, this book was fascinating, but I still wish we knew more about what drove these people to do what they did.
According to the author, the Heaven's Gate website still exists and it's still in the same format that it was in in 1997. I haven't checked it out, but if you want to see what websites looked like in the early 90s, it might be worth checking out.
For High Plains Public Radio Readers Book Club, I'm Shane Timson in Colby, Kansas.
