The Heaven's Gate Cult

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The Heaven’s Gate Cult

Is there a higher, physical level above humankind? Is there possibly an escape from our planet to another level of existence? The members of Heaven’s Gate believed these questions to be true, which led to one of the largest mass suicides in United States History.
Heaven’s Gate was formed and led by Marshall Herff Applewhite. His friends and family remember him as being funny and charismatic. Herff, as they called him, was a talented, over-achiever. People claimed he had a “conventional” life, with a wife and two children.
Applewhite was born in Texas in 1931. He was the son of a Presbyterian minister. In his teenage years, Marshall Applewhite wanted to preach also. However, he had real musical talents and went on to become a music professor at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. He was also the choir director at St. Marks Episcopal Church.
As well as teaching and preaching, Marshall Applewhite played the starring roles in stage musicals, such as “Oklahoma!” and “South Pacific”, and sang 15 roles with the Houston Grand Opera. His entire life suddenly changed in the early 1970’s, when he felt that his life was falling apart. As New York Times described, “…for reasons that were unclear, and with a suddenness that was equally mystifying, he was seemingly transformed into someone else from 1972 to 1975, a budding cult leader with beliefs in aliens and Armageddon.” He divorced and left his family in 1772. At some point soon after that, he ended up in the hospital due to some trouble with his heart and a near death experience. It was there that he met Bonnie Lu Nettles, who was 44 at the time, happily married and a mother to four children.
Nettles was a nurse caring for Applewhite. The two discovered a mutual interest in astrology and reincarnation. They soon came to believe that they were the earthly incarnations of aliens. The Heaven’s Gate Internet site states...