Please be advised this episode mentions topics of mental health, suppression of sexuality,

and suicide, and that may be triggering to some listeners.

Heaven's Gate is a story a lot of people think they know. It's the tragedy of 39 people who took

their own lives together in a rented house in southern California back in 1997. They did so under

the guidance of their leader, Marshall Apple White, who had convinced them that once they died,

their souls would be transferred to a UFO that was traveling behind the hillbop comet.

The belief system that the Heaven's Gate cult followed is easily looked at as bizarre,

but some of the details of how it came to fruition is actually extremely sad. Again, you may think

you know the story, but we have the disturbing details about how Heaven's Gate became a reality,

and number one is the most haunting part of it all.

Hey, all you weirdos! Welcome to Crime Countdown, a Spotify original from podcast. I'm Ash,

and I'm Elena. Every week we'll highlight ten fascinating stories of history's most engaging

and unsettling crimes all picked by the podcast research gods. This episode we're counting down

the top ten disturbing details about Heaven's Gate. Okay, we know this is a cult that definitely

gets covered a lot, like I've heard a million things about it, I've read a million things about it,

but that's with good reason, I would say. Oh yeah, it's just a truly fascinating set of events and

laws, really, that were created by a truly confounding human being. And the ways it all went down,

like ending in what is basically a mass tragedy is something I don't think any of us are ever

going to understand, and we talk about it, I think, because we just strive to find some kind of

meaning behind it, because we feel like something this tragic needs, some meaning to it, meaning

like something had to happen. But honestly, it's likely that we're never going to get to the bottom

of this whole cult's mindset. Honestly, cults in general are so fascinating to me, because it's

...