Heaven's Gate: The Cult of Cults

I'm Do...

Some called our partnership

Ti and Do.

That's not my name, but that's how I'm referred to

on Planet Earth, at this time.

I've been talking to my students

that are sitting in front of me.

Jmmody, would you want to stand up and--

so that we can take a look at your uniform.

Okay.

And maybe we can back up a little bit

and get a little wider picture of the uniform.

Okay, now, maybe we can zoom in on the patch

that... great.

See, it says "Heaven's Gate Away Team."

We've been away, and now we're going back.

Okay, thanks, Jmmody.

Now let's go to Dvvody.

Dvvody.

They're all camera shy.

We-- okay, come on over, to Stlody.

We... came from distant space,

what your religious literature

would call the Kingdom of Heaven.

And we're about to return.

We might see you all again,

and then we might not.

That's-- we hope that you remember us as we were

and not how other people are going to try

and tell you that we are.

And one last thing we'd like to say is,

39 to beam up. Thank you.

There is confirmed 39 deceased.

All of the individuals were similarly clothed.

It appeared as if there were almost a uniform.

2nd MAN: This was a voluntary situation.

They may or may not have been influenced,

but we'll never know that.

But, at this point, this is considered

a mass suicide investigation.

This wasn't just something that--

oh, there's a spacecraft, let's kill ourselves.

These people spent 22 years

preparing for what they did,

and I wish people would examine that 22-year period

instead of just examining their method of leaving.

A score of persons

from a small Oregon town have disappeared.

It's a mystery whether they've been taken

on a so-called trip to eternity

or simply been taken.

Terry Drinkwater takes a look at that story.

Here along the cloud-covered coast

near Newport, Oregon,

a mysterious couple appeared three weeks ago,

circulating a flyer proclaiming

a UFO would soon be ready

to take whomever would follow them

to another life, another world.

They held meetings, one at this motel,

to recruit voyagers.

Francine Furst attended but was unconvinced.

Those people who choose to go along will be

picked up by a UFO,

and they will be leaving this Earth forever.

Why didn't you decide to go?

I'm too human and too normal.

- - I love to travel,

but I also like to know where I'm going.

There were 34 people that actually...

ended up joining because of the Waldport meeting.

All different kinds of numbers were reported,

and I was among them.

I was living in Waldport, Oregon.

I came out of a band practice,

like an all-nighter party kind of thing,

and I saw that poster.

What piqued my interest about the poster

that I remember making a comment about to my partner is,

"I wonder what these people look like," you know,

they were talking about them being from outer space.

"If you ever entertained the idea

"of a physical level above the human level,

you will want to attend this meeting."

Back then, I had a girlfriend,

Erika, and we had

been together for three years.

We were gonna take a vacation to Oregon

to visit my cousin.

I was excited.

But at that point...

The place was packed.

I would estimate there were, like,

close to 200 people in this room.

And Ti and Do came out onto the stage,

and they just sat there for maybe a minute or two,

which seemed like a long time to me.

These are "The Two."

The two who promise to take their followers

literally out of this world in a spaceship.

They said that they had come to teach

the process of becoming

a member of the Next Level.

When a human has overcome

all of his human level activities,

a chemical change takes place,

and he goes through a metamorphosis

just exactly as a caterpillar does

when he quits being a caterpillar.

And he goes off into a chrysalis,

and he becomes a butterfly.

They said, if you followed their approach,

that your body would chemically and biologically transform

into a perfected space alien.

And you would go physically on board a UFO

and sail physically into Heaven.

What they would call

"The Next Level."

I was impressed

with listening to the man.

He was kind of mesmerizing.

I kept looking at his eyes.

These kind of eyes

that you would look through,

and I just remember

feeling like,

could this, like-- I was trying

to pick up on his energy, like,

if it was really true.

There was this haze floating around them,

like a shimmering light.

It wasn't like a smoke haze.

It was more electrical-looking.

And I turned to my left,

and above the crowd, the people,

there was that same kind of haze,

but it was less distinguishable

as electrical.

And so I recognized that that might've been,

like, the Holy Spirit.

I was pretty young, I was 24,

so I didn't maybe have a lot of concrete beliefs,

but I believed everything he was saying.

I felt euphoric.

Higher than a kite in this meeting.

Erika had felt the same thing.

Same euphoric feeling.

I felt like I sat in front of the equivalent of Jesus.

By the end of the meeting, I looked at my partner,

and she looked at me, and it was like

we knew that we wanted to do this.

All they wanted you to do was to make the choice to go,

and then leave your possessions.

Leave everything that was connected to your humanness

and to go with them to begin to repair.

People have disappeared, yes, we have roughly

fifteen to twenty people that are no longer in the area.

You had to say goodbye to everybody

in your life and leave.

Nobody else wanted to go with me.

They thought it was crazy. I just went.

They told us to bring

any camping gear with us.

Then we were given instructions to go

to a campground at Boulder Canyon,

where they would split us up into groups.

I definitely was seeking something more than I had.

But I didn't know what that was.

I'm allowed to do this now.

But not federally.

These guys.

My children. It's mild.

I don't like any intense stuff, you know?

I wanna be able to function.

I was in high school when I was experimenting

with drugs and LSD and stuff like that.

I started to get into spirituality.

I was experimenting with different spiritual groups.

You know, meditations.

I would dance with the Sufis

and relate to the Hare Krishna people.

I read the book "Paramahansa Yogananda,"

you know, "Autobiography of a Yogi."

And I remember thinking,

gosh, I wanna be enlightened like that.

Like, I wanted that.

I wanted to have that specialness.

Heaven's Gate was never exactly mainstream,

but it wasn't as alternative as we think about it today.

So, you have to imagine what it was like in the '70s.

So, this is the time when hippies and beatniks

and-- and folks like that are

looking outside of established religions.

Many people who were drawn to Heaven's Gate

had tried all sorts of religious options.

I was struggling

with what I wanted to do with my life.

I was a young beautiful girl.

A child model in Hollywood.

I went out to Moran and became a hippie.