Before we start, I need to warn you that this episode of American history hit contains discussions of suicide.

It's 1997. A giant celestial ball of rock, dust, and ice, a comet, its surface modeled by craters,

hurdles through the silent ink-black vacuum of space.

As it moves through our solar system, closing towards the warmth of the sun,

ice on the comet's surface begins to vaporize.

Gas and dust erupting from its nucleus, trails behind like cosmic exhaust.

Illuminated by the sun, the comet begins to glow with two tails unfurling.

One broad and golden made of dust, the other a fainter blue of ionized gases.

Though it never comes closer to the Earth than 122 million miles, this comet named Hailbop, visible to the naked eye,

will nonetheless make its impact felt here on Earth.

Just not in quite the way anyone would have expected.

Music Don Wildman here. Welcome to American History Hit. The story of cults in America is a long and twisted chronicle of

extreme visions and extraordinary personalities leading their flocks of followers, from self-help

prophets to psychedelic communes to Marxist enclaves chasing utopia. The boundaries between belief

and delusion have often been blurred. On this podcast series, we've covered the ravaging fires of Waco, the sweltering silence of

Jonestown, and the homicidal heat of the Manson family ranch.

Today, we are again in Southern California, where back in the late 1990s,

39 lifeless bodies were discovered in a large house, located in an otherwise

ordinary suburb of San Diego. The fateful two-decade passage of these people is one that

fused apocalyptic prophecy with sci-fi salvation, meaning literally spaceships. Who were these

searchers? What did they believe?

And how did it all go so wrong for the members of Heaven's Gate?

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