Listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussion of sexuality and castration.

This episode also includes discussion of suicide. Please keep this in mind when deciding if, how, and when you'll listen.

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Heavensgate first made headlines in 1975.

Within a matter of months, pretty much everyone had heard about the UFO cult and their spaceship

to heaven.

It seemed like a joke.

Except people joined them.

Hundreds, maybe even thousands, we'll never know for sure.

And even more shocking, they'd all walked out of their lives to follow the group.

One member sold off his house for $5.

Another left behind a successful real estate business. Friends said that he had perhaps the

finest family in town and that he was the last guy in the world you'd think would do a thing like

this. Parents and spouses were frantic. Their loved ones had vanished and cut off all contact.

It was so extreme, the public painted Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie

Lou Nettles as master manipulators who prayed on their followers. But all they'd really done

to recruit people was pose a simple question, what are you willing to sacrifice an exchange

for eternal life in heaven.

Hi, I'm Greg Polson.

And I'm Vanessa Richardson.

And this is our second episode in a special anniversary series on Heaven's Gate,

presented by cults.

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