Star Trek Suicide Cult Heaven's Gate 10 Years Later

Ten years ago this week, rubberneckers around the world were riveted by the tale of the biggest mass suicide to take place on US soil: the 39 drug/asphixiation deaths of the members of Heaven’s Gate, who died quietly in matching Nike track suits after spending several years working as Web designers in a huge Southern […]

Heavensgate

Ten years ago this week, rubberneckers around the world were riveted by the tale of the biggest mass suicide to take place on US soil: the 39 drug/asphixiation deaths of the members of Heaven's Gate, who died quietly in matching Nike track suits after spending several years working as Web designers in a huge Southern California mansion. Though the cult suicides were freakish in themselves -- they believed that they would be ressurrected by aliens on a spaceship trailing the Hale-Bopp comet -- what caught people's imaginations was the trail left by the cult online.

As Web designers, the cult members were uniquely positioned to take advantage of Web 1.0 to gather followers (though the cult had its heyday in the 1960s and 70s, with thousands of members). The group adored the show Star Trek, incorporating iconography from the show into their designs and religion. Their Web site had an "outer space" background, and each of the suicides wore a patch that said "Heaven's Gate Away Team" on it. After news of the suicides reached the public, several people mirroredthe cult's Web site so that anyone could find out for themselves what the group represented. If you take a look today, the site offers double strangeness: not only is it a group suicide note, but it's such a perfect slice of mid-90s Web design that anyone who Web-surfed through that era will get the retro-shivers.

As CNN remarked a year after the suicides:

It was perhaps the strongest sign yet that the Internet was coming ofage: it was implicated in a tragedy that shocked the nation. The 39
members of the Heaven's Gate cult who took their own lives one year agowere professional Web page designers who used the Internet to attemptto win converts and spread their message . . . That ease of access to information led to fears that the new mediumoffered new opportunities for cults to recruit, and that the sci-fipastiche of Heaven's Gate was a perfect fit. According to Wendy GaleRobinson of the Department of Religion at Duke University, cult memberYvonne McCurdy-Hill left five children and all her worldly possessionsto join the group after finding it on the Web.

I love the whole "surprise the Internet has power" tone of this story because it gives me that old-timey Clinton Era feeling. But the takeaway message is true enough. Heaven's Gate was the first Web-enabled cult, and it won't be the last. SignOnSanDiego has an interesting film about the police officers who found the bodies, as well as the cult itself.
Deputies Remember Heaven's Gate 10 Years Later [via SignOnSanDiego.com]