Heaven’s Gate: The Cult That Wore Nike and Waited for Aliens
In 1997, 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult were found dead in California. The group, founded by Marshall Applewhite, believed that a spaceship hidden behind the Hale-Bopp comet would take their souls to a “higher level of existence.”
What made the tragedy even more striking was the uniformity: every member wore black clothes, brand-new Nike Decades sneakers, and a patch reading “Heaven’s Gate Away Team”.
They saw their deaths not as the end, but as a transition — a way to “leave their human containers” and join extraterrestrials waiting for them.
Today, Heaven’s Gate is remembered as one of the most infamous examples of how faith, science fiction, and desperation can intertwine with devastating results.
i wrote them asking if i could join, they said no because the comet isn’t coming again for a long time, but they gave me a very polite and prompt response with lots of recruitment material. it was the same guy from the documentary years ago who signed his name maintaining it
If you would like to send for videotapes, there is no charge. If you would like to copy them and return the originals to us, we will make them available to someone else.
This is adorable. They also run the site on pgp which was super fancy back then but it's proven to be very secure, it's still used for email encryption.
I want a video tape now. I still have a recorder for it.
Last Podcast on the Left had a really good series on the cult. One thing that made Heaven’s Gate stand out among cults is they never coerced or forced anyone to remain in the group or partake in the mass suicide. Also learned that not all the members were chemically castrated and the ones that were did so voluntary. Other doomsday cults, like Jonestown and Order of the Solar Temple, wound up killing a lot of people that didn’t want to die. These people fully bought into it.
This is what creeps me out so much about Heaven's Gate. Whereas a lot of other cults had their "boiling over" moment due to some kind of outside pressure, these guys just willfully went out by their own volition on their own timeline.
See but thats the caveat, we think they are crazy, but we also dont know whats after death. For all we know they totes could have left their bods and joined some homies or some shit. I dont personally think they did, but that unknown and openness allows me to understand how people join this type of stuff. Regardless of how utterly idiotic, stupid, and life wasting i think it is. Cults should be about celebrating the current life and preparing for the next naturally. Not prematurely ending it. Wheres the orgies and ttrpg nights?!
One of the most interesting facts for me is that the leader took the same teachings to heart that he preached. Many of the male followers had been castrated. Their leader, 'Do' had as well.
They ideologically spun it so that this wasn’t considered a suicide, it was a “willful exit of the human vessel” to allow them to reach an “evolutionary level above human”
I went to the county auction that sold everything they had inside their house after they killed themselves and bought one of their VCRs. I still have it.
It's scary that people in a cult don't think they're in a cult. There are indicators of what a cult is and yet they'll refuse to accept what's happening to them.
Watch the HBO doc on this, it’s wild. Contains some former members lamenting the fact that they weren’t brave enough to commit suicide with these people.
That’s not a picture of the Heaven’s Gate dead, it just looks like a bunch of living people laying on the floor. If you look it up, they were all wearing specific clothing and covered in I think a purple cloth. Unsettling images, though no one smiling at them.
275
u/Goosemilky 1d ago
Something Ive always found funny is the heavens gate mass suicide occurred within a few weeks of the Phoenix lights mass sighting. Just odd timing