Murder, Madness and Mayhem: Twenty-Five Tales of True Crime and Dark History by Mike Browne

Author:Mike Browne [Browne, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781443461597
Google: x_UrzgEACAAJ
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada, Limited
Published: 2021-11-02T23:56:24.003263+00:00

Chapter 15

The UFO Cult

On March 26, 1997, police found the bodies of 39 members of a religious UFO cult known as Heaven’s Gate in an 830 square-metre (9,000 square foot) home in Rancho Santa Fe, a San Diego suburb. All, including the group’s leader, Marshall Applewhite, had died in a ritualistic act of mass suicide. The headline on the cult’s website, which remains online today, stated, “Hale-Bopp brings closure to Heaven’s Gate.” Over the following weeks, as investigators probed what happened in the home, the story of the Heaven’s Gate cult emerged, each detail weirder than the next.

Human beings have always been fascinated by what we observe in the night sky. We have been giving names and meaning to the twinkling shapes overhead for thousands of years. Rare sightings of objects in the sky, like comets, were considered to be bad omens: a sign that the gods were displeased. Ancient civilizations blamed comets for many misfortunes, including plagues, crop failures, fires and the downfall of empires.

Our scientific understanding of astronomy has been a more recent development. With the advent of more powerful telescopes and other means of analysis, we understand that a comet is simply a massive, dirty ball of ice hurtling through space on a predictable orbit around our sun. As a comet approaches the sun, it begins to melt and gases and dust trail behind it, creating what is commonly called a tail.

Even with all the scientific knowledge available, in 1910, when Halley’s comet was due to pass, some people were fearful about what might happen when it came close to the Earth. Many worried people bought “comet insurance” and “anti-comet pills” from con artists who had whipped them into a panic, claiming deadly gases from the comet would envelop the planet and destroy those who left themselves unprotected. But Halley’s comet passed then, and again in 1986, without incident.

Independent of one another, in July of 1995, two astronomers, Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp, discovered a new comet with a 30-kilometre (19 mile) radius. It was much larger and brighter than Halley’s comet, and in May of 1996, the newly named Hale–Bopp comet became visible to the naked eye. As Hale–Bopp made its way across the night sky, people with unusual beliefs came out in droves. Some of them believed Hale–Bopp was a special message to the universe, while others felt it was a sign that otherworldly beings were visiting us.

In 1996, as Hale–Bopp was high above Earth, the comet became a popular topic on late-night radio host Art Bell’s nightly talk show, Coast to Coast AM. Bell broadcast from his double-wide trailer in the high desert in Pahrump, Nevada, not far from the mysterious and storied Area 51. The nightly program was an excellent place for supernatural and paranormal nerds to get their fix of weirdness. Art Bell’s show covered conspiracies around the Hale–Bopp comet on multiple programs.

One of the call-in guests on Art Bell’s show on November 14, 1996, was Chuck Shramek, an amateur astronomer, conspiracy theorist and radio announcer on KTRH out of Houston.

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