CULTS: Heaven's Gate/ PART ONE/ THE TWO PROPHETS

planet Earth about to be recycled your only chance to survive or evacuate is to leave with us hello everybody and welcome back to my channel so if you have not been here for a cult series before this is a series that I do probably once a month about a specific type of cult and today we're talking about Heaven's Gate now we've done a one of these series before last month we did Jim Jones and Jonestown so if you haven't seen that yet and you're interested in cults I will place a card here and I will also put the link in the description box I would like to take a moment to thank my sponsor audible audible has over a hundred and forty thousand audiobook titles you can choose from it's easy to search through the library it's easy to search by genre or by subject I use audible all the time when researching these cases in doing research for the Heaven's Gate cult I download it and listen to the book called Heaven's Gate America's a UFO cult by Ben Zeller and I think it's one of the best books written on this cult and this group it's the most objective it's the most open-minded and it also gives a lot of information so audible is so great for that for being able to take in a lot of information while also still being able to do the things in your everyday life that you have to do believe me I wish I could sit down on my couch with my heated blanket and a cup of coffee and read books all day but unfortunately that is not how life is so I still have to bring the kids to all the places they have to go I still have to work out I still have to do the dishes I still have to cook dinner I still have to clean and audible is the best companion to all those activities where I feel like I'm still getting things done but I'm still taking in information at the same time but audibles not just for research or informative books there's fun books on there as well there's a fiction and humorous books there's autobiographies everything you could want whether for work or play you can find on audible for instance right now I'm listening to book one of the mortal engine series because it's just you know science fiction II and fun and not too serious and not too realistic so when I want to escape from all the real stuff that I'm researching I like to listen to something a little bit more out there and far-fetched so if you would like to try audible free for 30-days there's a link in my description box you can click on the link it will give you a free book and you can cancel at any time after that there's no contracts there's nothing that ties you in I think you'll really like it and it would also help me out so thank you guys so much for listening to me talk about our sponsor for a couple minutes now onto the video so Heaven's Gate was such a departure for me from Jonestown they are both still cults but they could not be more different I've been interested in Heaven's Gate for a couple years now it really was one of those stories that when I heard it I had to find out more because I had to kind of understand how something like this could happen so I dug a lot into the background of the people I dug a lot into the time period that this happened because culture and societal norms and what's happening in the world when things go on are really important to kind of determining why things happen in the way they do and when we're living here in 2019 sometimes we don't understand or can't wrap our heads around why somebody's mindset would be different in you know 1970 or 1980 so I really wanted to get a feel for the time period that this happened and the kind of mindset that was popular in that time period so let's just get right into the video we're gonna dive right in this is Heaven's gates on March 26 1997 police discovered the bodies of 39 men and women in a mansion in a gated community in upscale Rancho Santa Fe California it was soon discovered that these individuals had been part of a UFO cult and had taken their own lives in what is the largest mass suicide on American soil they were led by a man named Marshall Herff Applewhite but what a lot of people don't know is there was a second leader at one point to this group and her name was Bonnie Lou nettles as I always say in these videos whether we're talking about a cult leader or a murderer or a victim in order to truly understand the actions of a person you have to understand where they came from what kind of life experiences they had and who they were to truly kind of analyze why they could go on to do or be what they did and became Marshall Herff Applewhite was born on May 17th 1931 in Spur Texas the son of a Presbyterian minister Marshall would move around quite a bit in his youth because his father traveled around Texas opening different churches when Marshall was young he wanted to preach as well even attending seminary school for a couple of years but his real passion and talent was for music he attended Austin College where he was described as an extrovert with a magnetic personality and he even led their a cappella group for graduating with a degree in philosophy he served two years in the Army as Signal Corps and the Army Signal Corps instead of being in combat these people would basically be running like communications for troops and everything to keep everybody on the same page he then attended Colorado University and he graduated with a master's degree in News and voice he was reportedly a beautiful singer I believe he was an alto or a baritone he had like a really rich gorgeous AB erratic voice he taught music at Catholic schools he ran church choirs he even sang in the Houston Opera so he was really really talented as a singer he got married to a Texas girl named Ann Pierce in 1952 and they had two children life seemed to be going really well for Marshall Applewhite he had a good education he was married he had kids pretty good job but that all changed when he was directing the fine arts program at the University of st. Thomas a Catholic College in Houston Texas he was asked to leave this position after being caught having an affair with a male student it turns out that Marshall Applewhite was a very closeted bisexual man and even though the college is cited emotional health issues as the reason for him leaving I really suspect it was the controversy not only of an affair with a student but of an affair with a male student because we have to remember this was a Catholic college in Texas in the 1970s and although the 1960s had just assured in a whole new wave of a free love and acceptance I guess that Texas hadn't really caught on yet and this was where his life took a turn for the worst friends claimed he had been engaging in homosexual relationships for years prior to being caught at st. Thomas University and his marriage had deteriorated years before when he and his wife had separated in mid 1960 and finally divorced in 1968 he was completely estranged from his ex-wife and children didn't see them at all he had just lost a prestigious position doing something he loved due to a scandal and his life was in flux he tried his hand at opening a sandwich shop but that business went under soon after opening a year later he would meet someone who changed his path in life Bonnie Lou nettles was born in Houston Texas on August 29 1927 she was raised Baptist although many people who knew her said she attended church if she attended church because of social reasons she wasn't a super religious person she wasn't a devout believer she was biblically literate and she was interested in religions all kinds of religions but she didn't necessarily follow the teachings of Christianity she became a registered nurse and married a businessman in 1949 and they went on to have four children together a set of twin boys another son and an older daughter named Terry she and her husband for the most part had a pretty normal marriage and a pretty normal life until her disinterest in religion turned into an interest in all things counterculture things that were becoming popular for still considered to be unconventional for the times she began dabbling in theosophy which is a religion that draws from old European religions as well as Hinduism and Buddhism she also became very fascinated in the newly popular metaphysical and occult movements she was an amateur astrologist and she would create star charts or needle charts or astrological charts whatever you want to call them for people on the side for a little extra money she also believed she could channel the dead one of her most frequent visitors being a 19th century monk named brother Francis she began visiting psychics holding seances in her living room she was writing a small astrological column in her local paper and her husband was pretty much like who did I marry who is this woman I'm pretty sure that this is like a similar reaction that my husband had towards me when I started getting interested in Tarot a little while back and I can imagine her you know straight-laced husband coming home from work with you know his suit and his briefcase and he's like where's my martini and you know his wife's just in the living room with like a psychic holding seances and channeling 19th century monks so he was probably pretty shook by this he was not a fan of the new enlightened woman who now lived in his house and they were divorced in 1972 Bonnie Lou didn't have an easy life after the divorce she worked long hours and there were some medical issues with some of her kids that really needed to be paid attention to and kept up on her oldest daughter Terry says that she believes she and her mother had a special bond Terry thinks it's because her mother struggled with getting and staying pregnant before she gave birth to Terry her first child that she carried a full-term before giving birth to Terry Bonnie Lou had miscarried a little girl and she had also given birth to stillborn baby boy twins so Terry really felt like she was almost what her mother had been asking for and trying for she tried so hard to get pregnant and have a child and she had lost that opportunity many times before Terry came into her life so Terry believed they were very close and they had a special relationship that maybe her mother didn't share with her other siblings they both loved the sound of music and Terry loved the sound of music so much that bonny Lou made her one of those little outfits that the Von Trapp children wore the matching outfits that they wore in the movie so Terry would wear that outfit and sing the sound of music and it was just something that she recalls when she thinks about her mother back then that was an important part of their relationship an important little way of Bonnie Lou showing Terry I recognize what you're interested in I recognize what you love and I want to support that somehow Terry remembers her mother coming home from work one evening and she was very tired she was exhausted and she was sitting at the kitchen table with all the bills spread out in front of her and the divorce people were sitting in front of her and suddenly Bonnie Lou stood up grabs Terry brought outside and they stood there side by side looking up at the stars and they would dream you know wouldn't it be cool if all those twinkling lights up there were UFOs and they would come down here and pick us up and take us to different planets Terry said neither she or her mother had felt at that point that they belonged on earth the manner of the meeting of Bonnie Lou nettles and Marshall herthe Applewhite is speculated upon some say that Marshall struggling with his shame of his sexuality and where it had led him in life he checked himself into the psychiatric ward in the hospital and that's where they met others say he was visiting a sick friend and that's how they met Marshalls sister said he had been suffering from heart issues since he had gone through a near-death experience and that's why he was in the hospital either way they were in the same place in the same time and they somehow managed to come across each other the fateful day they met in 1972 would change not only their lives but the paths of so many lives it's pretty clear to us who are looking at this in one big timeline and with all the information laid out in front of us that both Bonnie Lou and Marshall Applewhite were experiencing life changes they were going through an existential crisis if you will they had both been living lives that hadn't turned out the way they expected and now they were both directional as' and maybe what connected them when they met that day was the recognition of this aimlessness in each other that connected them and made them feel close when Marshall met Bonnie Lou nettles he wanted her to do his star chart and he was so excited because he'd been wanting to get his star chart Donna for such a long time and he finally met somebody who would do it so he ran down to his car and got his birth certificate now the reason that he needed his birth certificate is because an astrological chart or a natal chart takes into account where every celestial body was in the solar system and in relation to the Sun an exact moment and date you were born this can give you insights into your personality into your life path into what times are the best to make certain decisions and moves in your life I like astrology and all that stuff and I know my daughter never does as well so I asked her about to these needle charts cuz I had never had one done and she brought me to a website and we got my birth certificate so we could find out what time I was born and we inputted my information into the website which then gives you your astrological or needle chart so I'm gonna put mine up on the screen right now because I thought it was pretty cool now the results of my astrological chart were super accurate I was shocked guys I was shocked I couldn't believe how accurate ninety ninety six percent of it was towards my actual personality the way I am the way I handle things in life my sort of outlook so it was kind of scary and if you haven't done it I suggest you do because if it's not just for fun it's kind of interesting to see if there are any parallels between these star charts or natal charts and the person that you actually are and I did this not because I wholly believe that it's a hundred percent accurate science but because I wanted to see how easy it would be for me to believe something that was created by an Internet program who doesn't even know me would I look at this description of my personality and find a way to make it work for me just because I wanted to believe it that was kind of my experiment and going into it and I had fun and I was surprised how completely accurate it was but of course there was a you know couple areas where it was completely off so who knows so anyways Bonnie Liu does Marshalls natal star chart and she discovers through her interpretation I guess that they had actually known each other in a past life and then Marshall was destined for something great in this life apparently all the hardships and the trouble he had faced in his life was because he was on this earth for a task or a quest if you will and all the stuff that he had to go through before discovering his purpose was there to teach him what he needed to know when he went on his quest to marshal this reading made him feel better about everything he'd been through it gave purpose and meaning to all the seemingly random unfortunate events that he had gone through in his life losing his job and his career losing his family it made sense now and it gave him a sense of relief that it hadn't all been for nothing that it all had a purpose and his purpose was very important so not only did he feel better about all the crappy stuff that had happened to him but now he felt important and he also felt motivated because he had something he had to do now if it sounds strange to you that a grown man and a grown woman can place so much importance and so much stock into a star charts you have to really understand the culture of the times in the 1960s in the United States aasai growth in a sort of a counterculture movement now this happened all of the worlds at different times in a lot of places earlier than the u.s. but we're talking specifically about the United States right now the New Age movement of the 70s and 80s was rooted in the counterculture movement of the 1960's Theosophists believed that the release of new waves of spiritual energy signaled by the movement of the earth into a new cycle known as the age of the Aquarius had begun the coming of a new age you saw the age of the Aquarius become extremely popular in the 1960s it was referred to on advertisements for a Woodstock in 1969 it was the title song of the popular musical hair in 1967 the 1960s also witnessed in emergence of all sorts of new religious and spiritual movements the inner peace movement Transcendental Meditation the Church of all worlds the Church of seein many of these new religions stemmed from a mixture of Hinduism Buddhism and such as and beliefs and son ISM is essentially Islamic mysticism now starting in the 1970s this counterculture hippie movement that had taken over the 60s it began to steadily decline mostly that's associated with the collapse of the commune of Monteux love these are former hippies and counterculture participants basically kind of became the earliest members of the New Age movement I don't want to condense this movement too much and simplify it too much because it's not simple there's a lot of factors into why people kind of subscribed to these beliefs the school of Leif's and they still do to this day but essentially it was people searching for something as an alternative to mainstream society the New Age movement moved through the occult and metaphysical communities in the blink of an eye they loved it it already kind of you know defined what they were about and it became something else as it moved through all these different communities as all these different communities adapted the New Age movement into their lives the New Age movement transformed into what it would become in the 70s and the 80s its fundamental beliefs was that the movement would elevate consciousness it would make the human race better which in turn would bring an end to to racism war sickness poverty all the bad things in the world that were caused by humans essentially would be brought to an end in this age of the Aquarius it also put an emphasis on looking within looking within yourself to improve yourself this time period rise to the very popular genre of books that we still know of today which is self-help books looking inside yourself figuring out how you can be a better person it used common occult practices such as Tarot yoga meditation and astrology as a means to assist with personal transformation to heal and strengthen the soul with the idea that the more self-aware and ascendant each single person is the more people that do this by default the world will become a better place this was melded with the holistic movement which is basically healing the body with natural means instead of traditional medicine using acupuncture or eating a natural diet this would also give rise to the very huge popularity that veganism and vegetarianism would see in the next coming years in the 1980's the New Age movement would also start using crystals to heal and channel the other side and this was also right around the time where UFOs and aliens became very popular now people had been interested in UFOs and aliens for many years but at this time in all sorts of different media movies TVs and books you could see an otherworldly presence very clearly the book Chariots of the Gods by Erich von Daniken was a best-seller at this point and if you've ever seen even one episode of ancient aliens I'm sure you know of this book because I'm pretty sure that ancient aliens was like an offshoot of this book or at least of the hypotheses that were written in the book and basically Erich von Daniken's said that he believed that the human race had been visited by aliens in ancient times because without some sort of intervention from beings that were more intelligent and more advanced than us we wouldn't at that time have been able to create things like the pyramids of Egypt or the structures at Stonehenge or the structures on Easter Island he also interprets switches from the Old Testament of the Bible showing that all the people that we saw back in the day who we thought were Jesus or you know angels these were actually extraterrestrial beings who are coming down to give us messages and help the human race along and this is actually an excellent book I'm a huge ancient aliens fan I don't know how much of it I believe but it's super interesting to watch and to hear them kind of lay everything out for you and make these connections so ancient aliens it's a fun show to watch and the book at Chariots of the Gods it's a really good read very very interesting if you're interested in kind of diving deeper into this the first UFO abduction case was reported in 1961 and this was Betty and Barney Hill a couple who had claimed to have been abducted by aliens and they described everything they saw in their experience and people were just eating it up and let's not forget Roswell happened in 1947 where allegedly an alien spacecraft landed and the government then tried to cover it up so that the American public or the world would know about aliens to this day people still believe that in Roswell New Mexico an alien spaceship landed they had an alien being and they did like research and dissected it and tried to you know get some information out of it and the government covered this entire thing up and if you'd like a separate video on Roswell New Mexico and what happened there let me know because I would love to do one for you even the US government was getting on the new-age train between 1970 and the early 1990s the government had a secret project called Stargate this project was specifically designed to investigate the power of psychic abilities and to see if these psychic abilities could be used to spy on different countries like Russia so to understand the eagerness to believe in something that to us might seem outlandish or just a fun parlor game you really have to understand how Betty Lou and Marshall grew up they would have grown up right around this time where UFOs were becoming popular right around the time where the hippie movement and the new love movement were raging in the 60s and then they were actually coming into their own right when the New Age movement was taking root in the United States and they weren't the only ones at this time to believe these kinds of things the 1950s was considered the Golden Age of a science fiction and people who were in their 20s in the 70s would have been growing up watching invasion of the Body Snatchers Forbidden Planet destination moon they would have been glued to their television set every week to catch the newest episode of The Twilight Zone and let's not forget Star Trek Star Trek was so popular in that time this was a television show that followed the interplanetary adventures of the USS Enterprise and it's fearless leader Captain Kirk between the popularity of science fiction the widespread belief that extraterrestrial beings were out there they existed and they were gonna come down to earth and the move away from traditional religion to something more freeing it's no wonder that bonny Lou nettles and Marshall Applewhite were on board for anything that would give them a purpose or a meaning they began a platonic partnership meaning there wasn't any like romantic or a sexual aspect to their relationship their connection was based on mutual spiritual developments together they opened a bookstore called the Christian Arts Center which sold new-age books and it also taught classes on you know meditation arts music astrology metaphysics spite the name of the bookstore it had very little to do with actual Christianity within a few months the bookstore would fail they moved out to the country and they opened another kind of retreat place and they named it no place so this is no with a KN so like no no one's self here they focused on their own spiritual development and they also offered classes to others basically had groups and things where they helped other people on their path to their spiritual development it was around this time that they met with a Filipino occultist who practiced Hindu mysticism and he basically confirmed their beliefs that they were special people who are on this earth for a specific purpose he renamed nettles Shakti Divi which translates to powerful goddess and Applewhite became shri predominates into auspicious mantra these names that the filipino occultist gave them would be the first of many nicknames they would go by in their lives eventually they realized if they were going to be on a spiritual journey they needed to actually move away from the place that they were in 1950 Jack Kerouac published a book called on the road it had painted this rosy picture of a journeying across country to find yourself and God the search for inner peace and a higher consciousness was not abnormal for people at that time and they were just two of the many people who would participate in such pilgrimages so in January of 1973 they closed with a no place and they left Houston behind now Applewood was already estranged from his family he hadn't had contact with them in years but bonny Lou nettles still had four children who actually needed their mother and she abandoned them there's really no nice way to say this she she abandoned her kids her family her job everything she left everything behind they read everything about religion a spiritual ism and awareness that they could get their hands on they didn't consider themselves to be homeless or nomads they considered them to be religious seekers and you will see this theme of searching and being a seeker come into this video and the other parts to follow many many times it becomes a pattern the people who follow them they're all searching for something they searched for about seven months before they had an epiphany in Oregon on the banks of the Rogue River here the two were born in the Book of Revelations the two or the two witnesses are prophets of God who appeared to John of Patmos they tell him that the court of God's temple would be trampled on by the nation's for forty-two months and during this time period the two would be granted authority to prophesize they are the prophets of the end times they are also referred to as two olive trees and two lampstands they have power over the sky and the waters they're able to bring down plagues and apparently they can even shoot fire out of their mouths to destroy their enemies after this period of forty-two months the two are killed by the beast and for three and a half days the people of the earth who the two had tormented for so long with their prophecies and their plagues and all that they celebrate their deaths and they basically put their bodies in the streets and they don't give them a proper burial after the three and a half days God resurrects the two witnesses brings them back up to heaven and within an hour and earthquake strikes and kills 7,000 people I mean I'm over here reading books wanting to be katniss everdeen and Bonnie Lou and Marshall are like go big or go home we want to be two prophets who shoot fire out of their mouths and bring out an earthquake that kills a bunch of people so essentially they saw themselves as these two witnesses and they thought now that their mission was to bring a message to earth that the people of Earth did not want to hear they would then be martyred and resurrected for their efforts in this endeavor and the two are pretty serious stuff in like apocalyptical circles it was also very easy to claim that you were the two because no really what the two looked like who they were supposed to be what kind of people they were so you could just say were the two messengers and if you really you know believe it it hard enough maybe somebody would also believe you this new end-of-days rapture of the faithful mindset was a radical departure from their past new-age self-love self-help mindset but they saw the fork in the road and they chose to take the darker path they predicted that after their deaths at the hands of the non-believers a UFO would hover over them pick them up and bring them to a utopia and the heavens and anybody who was willing to hear and accept their message would be allowed to come along once in outer space their physical bodies would be transformed through chemical and biological processes into perfected extraterrestrial bodies they would then live forever on the next level which is heaven but not the way the Christians teach it heaven is an actual physical place and you do not have to die to get there remember that because that was one of their main appoints in the beginning you do not have to die to get to heaven you don't have to die to get to the next level they repeated this and drove this into people's heads over and over again in the first years of their group in May of 1974 they returned to Houston and picked up at their first convert a woman named Sharon who they knew from the no place they knew from the no place Sharon was also made identity crisis she was a housewife who was unhappy with her circumstances stuck in a bad marriage and looking for something more less than a week after reconnecting with the two Sharon decided to join them and she abandoned her husband and her daughters one of the daughters was a two year old little girl and she joined them on their nomadic journey because that was what you had to do you had to sever all ties to your past who your human self feelings emotions love bonds to other people those were messy human emotions nothing like that exists on the next level these were human weaknesses that you had to get rid of before your mind and your body would be ready to ascend Bonnie Lou and Marshall gifted Sharron a Bible that was inscribed with to Sharon the first fisherman to truly follow in our steps the two lampstands May 31st 1974 she wrote notes for her family left her wedding ring and she would travel ahead of the two to announce their arrival in each separate town and to prepare for when they would get their rent meeting spaces make sure she was advertising for you know when they would be there and everybody could hear them speak kind of like an apostle would do this group of three though they were pretty unsuccessful at getting converts like they didn't get really any they'd spend a lot of time putting up posters and just randomly talking to people I am sure they went door-to-door like Jehovah's Witnesses I can only imagine you know it seems like they always show up around dinnertime it's ridiculous in June of 1974 an anthropology professor at Boise State University remembers nettles and Applewood walking into his office and they told him they'd read his book and they really liked it but he kind of suspected they were just wandering the halls looking for an occupied office that had the door open they walked in and they're talking to him about how they're gonna be crucified and it's not gonna be long before the UFO comes and you should leave your wife and your kids in your job and come with us he declined of course but he says they were passionate and sincere but there was something about their eyes that were weird and off once he said no they were cool about it they were nice about it they said goodbye and they left there was no pressure no manipulation just they were throwing something at the wall to see if it stuck every time they went to they held meetings and they put up fliers for these meetings and the Flyers would say things like UFOs why are they here they come for when will they leave four months after Sharon had joined them she left her husband and her daughters had found out where she was and they confronted her and she felt guilty for having left her children which she should and she you know she left and she went back to a more traditional lifestyle obviously losing their first convert hurt Marshall and Bonnie lose self-esteem and self-confidence in the movement but it also affected them legally Sharon's husband charged them with credit card fraud saying they've used his wife's credit card while they were all traveling together and even though Sharon said she had allowed them to use it the cap still arrested them they did not press charges on them but while they were in custody they found an outstanding warrant apparently he had rented a car and never brought it back so he stole the rental car this is something known as antinomianism and it's basically the belief that's the laws of man don't apply to those who have been saved the word in Greek literally means opposed to the law the importance of Marshalls and Bonnie Lou's quest made them exempt from normal laws and rules they didn't have to follow those well apparently they did because Marshall was put in prison for six months while he awaited trial during this time Bonnie Lou went back to working as a nurse but she didn't return to her old life she waited for him she waited for him to get out of prison so she could rejoin him his trial was quick he was found guilty but he was sentenced to time served and released in March of 1975 where Bonnie Lou was waiting for him while Marshall Applewhite's time behind bars had actually given him the time and isolation that he needed to fine-tune their ideology while he sat in a Cell he realized he and Bonnie they weren't human at all they were extraterrestrials he wasn't sure how their extraterrestrial spirits had gotten into these human bodies but he knew that the bodies had been specially chosen for them by the next level they'd been somehow tagged or flagged for their arrival into the bodies he said this could have happened through reincarnation or maybe during the prenatal development of the body like he wasn't really sure he also figured out that Jesus Christ was an alien - from ancient times he was just like Bonnie and Marshall he had come many many years before to do the same thing that they were trying to do now and he'd been crucified and resurrected for it I mean this guy was writing the episodes for ancient aliens long before ancient aliens thought about it Bonnie Lou and Marshall settled at a retreat in Ojai California and they began ascending out their mission statement to all sorts of new age groups and individuals all over the country on April 19th 1975 the break that they had been waiting for came one of the organizations to receive the mailing was an la-based metaphysical group run by a man named Clarence Klug Clarence invited Applewood and nettles who had started calling themselves Bo and Peep to speak in front of his group at the home of a psychic named Joan Culpepper now Clarence clew couldn't been more different than the two his teachings were all about transcending human limitations through the uses of chemicals and tantric sex but the two said this is an opportunity for us to get in front of a lot of people who are kind of already on that counterculture train so this could be really good for our group the numbers aren't for sure but between 41 and 80 people attended this meeting between 23 and 27 of them ended up leaving with the two they had actually showed up in front of this group at a perfect time Clarence's followers were becoming disenchanted with his teachings and there was a lot of a social conflict inside the group rumors and backbiting also Clarence had tried to self publish a book which had failed and left a lot of his followers in some financial trouble they were already starting to wonder if Clarence was full of it by the time the two showed up and what they had to say really struck a chord with these people besides that they saw something in these two odd people that they kind of liked Marshall had a really beautiful way of speaking most likely from his musical training and Bonnie was said to have an aura about her like a magnetic kind of energy that people were really drawn to this psychic whose house they were at Joan Culpeper she actually said that the two gave off an aura of love which is ironic since elevated beings such as themselves didn't have time for dirty and pointless human emotions such as love basically what these people were seeing in Bonnie Lou and Marshall was charisma charisma is that thing that intangible thing that sets leaders apart from the people that they lead to the people who are in the presence of someone who possesses charisma they are enchanted by the natural way that this person has and they almost misinterpret it as this person being special or higher than other people when someone decided to join the group they were given a few days to get their affairs in order give away all their material possessions get everything settled and then get on the road to find the group because the group would have already moved on by now and a lot of past members who had left the group before the suicides in 1997 they said this was almost a test to prove your loyalty to the group you wouldn't really know where they had moved on to they would tell you where they were headed but they wouldn't tell you exactly how long they would be there or where they were going next and back in those days there weren't cell phones that was an email you just kind of had to figure it out and if you could find them then you proved that you were worthy of being one of them but this la Gathering was when they went from being two people who believed they were aliens to founders of a religious and spiritual movement it also gave them more legitimacy in the eyes of other potential converts it was a lot easier to join a UFO group that had many people in it as opposed to just two random people wandering around telling you they were aliens and you should come with them on their spaceship on September 14th 1975 nettles and Applewood had a meeting at the Waldport Inn in Waldport Oregon they walked away from this gathering with another new impressive a group of flowers between 20 to 35 people from that meeting went with them during the meeting their message was clear we are from a higher level the next level we are millions of years old and we have come down to earth to give you all the opportunity to come back with us to the next level this world is done it's corrupted it's evil it's been destroyed by the people who have been living here it's pretty much on the verge of just being wiped out so we're giving you guys the opportunity now to come with us to this heavenly utopia on a different planet before that happens the next level was a physical place you could reach with your physical body and this process would be known as human individual metamorphosis which would change the human body into an alien life-form that could survive and flourish in the next level you don't have to die but you do have to sever any and all connections to the physical world we are going to be here on earth for 1260 days gathering up ambitious souls who want to become a part of this next level this opportunity is similar to the opportunity that their predecessor Jesus had put forth to so many people back in the day this would be a limited-edition opportunity it wasn't gonna be around for long and it wouldn't come around for another million years only adults could join and if you had children you had to be willing to leave them behind or not join it all which is very confusing to me if this next level is such a utopia if this next level is the place you want to be why are children not allowed to be there why are children the most innocent and worthy of such a utopia the ones that are not allowed to come and be in the Utopia it almost makes me wonder if Bonnie Lou and Marshall knew the whole time that this would eventually end in death and they didn't want children involved in that okay so now they had a good amount of followers but no actual plan and no organization or structure add to that their appearance in Waldport had caused quite a stir so many people had just disappeared when they rolled into town the people in the town started to wonder where did they go and what's up with this UFO cult the police investigated but then they realize you know these were all adults and they couldn't do anything about it but the story did make national news for a couple of days when it was reported and they didn't like that kind of publicity the group which now called themselves him after human individual metamorphosis they settled in Colorado and the Rocky Mountains at this point Betty Lou nettles and Marshall applewood began calling themselves tea and dough after the notes in the tonal scale and it's really funny to hear them talk about leaving behind all sign of your human connections from your past and yet Marshall was a huge fan of music he was a music teacher music had been a big part of his previous life and he's using notes from the tonal scale on top of that bonnie Lou's daughter teri The Sound of Music was her favorite movie they shared that love together and obviously the song doremi is one of the most popular songs from The Sound of Music probably besides The Sound of Music which was the most popular one so they were actually naming themselves after things that were still important to them from the past while urging their followers to give up all traces of the people they had once been in the beginning T&O did not give their followers a lot of direction besides telling them what they were not supposed to do they were not supposed to drink alcohol they were not supposed to indulge in food that tasted good and would give them pleasure they were definitely not supposed to have sex no drugs no recreation of any kind they were to follow the old nastic doctrine of turning away from all things pleasurable so they would be considered clean and fresh when they were ready to be brought to the next level the group was split into smaller groups of two which they called check partners now obviously Marshall and Bonnie Lou were each other's check partners but they also teamed up the check partners in the group very strategically sacks was a big thing for Marshall Applewhite he I think looked at sex as something that had gotten him into trouble he looked at his normal sexual human urges as something dirty and bad to be ashamed of and he projected that on his group so he would actually team people up and check partners of the opposite sex if you were a heterosexual and if you were a homosexual he would pair you up with other homosexuals of the same sex so you would constantly be faced every day with your sexual urges but you would have to fight to suppress them this way they could always be like on top of their game always striving to be better they never traveled as a group only in their Czech partner pairings and basically every morning they would wake up roll up their sleeping bag they would check in with their check partner they would have to sign their drivers license and car keys out from Marshall and Bonnie Lou because they had them they had to sign them out before they left and then they would hit the road and their job was to basically go get more people to join us but T and don't ever give them any directions of how they should accomplish this task what they should say which is a really stupid way to get more people to join your group if that's your plan because there's no continuity and how people are recruiting others there's no direction there's no instructions on how to do this and since everyone was always traveling and never really together there was no real enforcement of these rules people when they were out on the road we pretty much do whatever they wanted they would still contact their family members they would drink they would you know do drugs they would do whatever they wanted because there was nobody around to say you shouldn't do this and we're watching you an ample whey and nettles clearly didn't even really know what was going on with their group they were interviewed in 1976 and asked how many people are in your group and they said somewhere between like 300 and a thousand which is a pretty wide gap if you don't know if it's closer to 300 or closer to a thousand do you even know what's going on with the people in your group half the followers fell off around this time and the reason for that is because there was no actual structure so a lot of people would go out on the road and they would just never come back because they were like this is boring this sucks other people especially the ones who had come from clearances group the tantric sex group they were frustrated by the fact that everybody was always talking about sex but nobody was allowed to have sex so they did lose a great amount of people during this time of uncertainty the two decided they needed to get organized because their group was falling apart they had to settle somewhere more permanent stop recruiting and focus on teaching the people they still had about the next level and about how you got there on April 21st 1976 the bonny Lu nettles announced to the group The Wandering is done the harvest is closed basically that means we're not taking on any more people they ended up any more permanent settlement in Medicine Bow National Park in Wyoming and there's about 88 people there at this time they cultivated a more strict lifestyle all teachings and instruction came directly from the to hours and hours and hours of teaching and instruction and the defection rates fell later that year the group would run out of funds and some of the members would have to go out into that evil dark world to get jobs to get money to survive and you would think at this point that the defection would again continue to rise because people will had to go out into the real world and they would see how different it was than what they were dealing with in you know their little group of UFO believers but it didn't actually it stayed pretty much leveled out which the people just went out work too got some money and came back the people who had remained with the group through its infancy and its struggle they seem to actually really want to be there one of these members who joined in the early days and remained with the group throughout its entire lifespan was named David his mother Nancy clearly remembers the confusion she experienced when she found out from one of her other sons that his brother David was leaving and if anybody wanted his stuff come get it because he was getting rid of it this was the summer of 1975 and she looked all over for David she went to San Francisco where he lived and she couldn't find him she called everyone that he knew and eventually she got ahold of one of his friends named Lacey now Lacey was also joining the group and when Lacey talked to Nancy she said we know you want us to come and say goodbye but we're not gonna do that T&O say we should not do that and Nancy begged with this girl on the phone please I will not stand in your guys this way I just want to hear from the mouth of my son that this is what he really wants the next day David and Lacey show up at Nancy's front door and they sit down in the talk about their decision to join this group and leave David said he had gone to a few meetings and what the two had to say it really spoke to him he said I'm not sure if this is what's right for me but I'm gonna find out and if it's not good and it's not right for me then I'll just come home Nancy thought well that's fair enough she hoped that he would just go to this place and hang out with this group for a few months before getting bored or wanting to move on to something else and he would come back she knew her son was an adult and she couldn't actually physically force him to stay she also knew from hearing him talk that he seemed really sincere and excited about being a part of this group so she had to let him leave a week later she received a postcard from David saying they'd found the group in Southern California camping and that he was there with them he was okay and he would be in touch soon Nancy would live with this uncertainty never knowing when she would hear from him not knowing if he was okay where he was who he was with four or five years before she decided to do something about that and we will get to that in a little bit another member who calls himself Sawyer he signed up in Oregon and was instructed to meet the group in the Rocky Mountains when they were camping out there he said as soon as he got there they cut his hair off and shaved his beard and they did this to everybody women included they wanted to make everybody look the same and genderless they didn't want you to identify with any particular sex or gender they didn't want you to identify at all with the person you had been previously to this so they basically took away individuality by making everybody dress the same and look the same you even had to choose a new name for yourself because they didn't want you to use the same name you had used in your past human life usually these names would end in OD the sound OD oti so dance OD tone OD live OD things like that those were the names that they would pick and they could pick their own names but they had to pick a new name according to acts of members T&O would hold these classes together but it was pretty evident that T & O were not equal Applewhite was clearly deferential to nettles she was his elder partner she knew the most about astrology and spiritualism and he would go to her with questions when he was feeling confused or lost about something everyone pretty much saw her as the true leader and once again people would often say when you were around her there was a certain charge and energy and electricity coming off her she felt different to them than he did or than anybody else did the difference of levels of knowledge was pretty clear to anyone who was around the two and they were often not on the same page they did record a lot of their classes there's over a hundred hours of these recordings and you'll sometimes hear Marshall will say you know close your eyes and then Bonnie Lou will come in and say no no you have to look up so they didn't really know what they were doing they didn't know what they were talking about they were kind of just flying by the seat of their pants and they would always recover from this and make a joke about it and you know it wouldn't be awkward but it's pretty it's pretty evident that they were making this up as they went along I mean in my opinion if you are both millions of years old you should probably have figured out this process by now and be on the same page about how you're gonna teach it like get the syllabus or something they would often be asked what's the next level like what kind of place is it what happens there and they would say it's impossible to talk to you guys about the next level because your minds aren't elevated enough to possibly understand what we would be saying to you or do you just not know what it's like because you're not aliens and you've never been to the next level they would even use tuning forks to get everybody on the same wavelength that they would like hit the tuning forks and then put them on people's heads so that their brains would like get on the wavelength and vibrate inside their skulls it just sounds dangerous and painful and not fun at all but I don't know maybe this is something that people do I personally would not another thing that caused some tension and issues in the group was the time period for when this would happen when the UFO would come and take them away to the next level and the date kept changing very similar to other people who have predicted the end of the world when that date comes they adjust the date like oh no my calculations were off I put an addition symbol in there when I should have put a multiplication symbol it's completely wrong I was you know wrong and but this is right this one's right this one's gonna be it so they would continue to do this every time the date would come nothing would happen so they would have to like keep changing the at first they said five years and then the five year mark came and everybody got ready went outside and looked up waiting for the UFO which never came and then Bonnie Lou and Marshall would just like not address it but behind closed doors by me Lou's getting really down on herself about this because she's the one that's basically predicting this date and it continues to be wrong and she's starting to second-guess herself eventually the two became so disheartened and down on themselves they said to the group maybe we aren't the two messengers maybe we're not the two lampstands maybe were nothing you know we've been wrong so many times and that's when their followers banded together and bolstered the hopes of their leaders they said no you are who you think you are you absolutely are this is just a test from the next level to see if we're loyal enough to follow you even when you're wrong this is just a test for us to see if we're ready this is just another test it's always a test and Bonnie Lou nettles was embarrassed about her wrong predictions for when the UFO would come she was starting to lose her nerve she was questioning herself and her own powers and while she and Marshall were preaching day in and day out about how if you did not sever your ties with the past you would not be allowed on the next level she was not following her own teachings remember her daughter teri the one she had the close bond with the one that she loved she watch The Sound of Music with while she was still writing teri letters one a month at least she would also send Terry money to help out the family that she had left behind Terry still has the letters all 47 of them Bonnie would write to Terry and remind her to take her vitamins and take care of herself send my love secretly to your siblings because nobody else could know that Bonnie was writing Terry she had to send her love secretly and like I said she would send her money and she'd say listen don't tell anybody where this money came from if you keep this promise and I'll know if you don't I'll send you more money she was sending the group's money to her family that she had abandoned a small and to that Bonnie Lou nettles was starting to second-guess herself and the life she chosen comes in the form of a letter she wrote to her daughter Terry on August 13th 1982 it said Terry if you are with others please don't let them know who this is from I am well and safe as of now I do hope you and Joey and the twins are all okay be good strive for goodness and by all means conform to society so you will have peace of mind give my love silently to everyone love always mom PS I am NOT where the postmark shows by all means conform to society so you will have peace of mind did that mean that Bonnie Lou did not have peace of mind because she had chosen to not conform to society conforming to society was everything bonnie stood against why would she be telling her daughter to conform to society for peace of mind was it because she had found that maybe this path that she'd taken wasn't the right path after all but she was so far down it so deep into it she'd already left her family she had people looking up to her now she couldn't back out Terry thinks this was her mother expressing her desire to leave the group but not knowing how to and doesn't the fact that bonnie was still contacting and clearly thinking about the children and the family she'd left behind does that mean that she didn't think you had to sever your ties to your emotions and your family and your loved ones in order to make it to the next level did she not even believe there was a next level because according to what she and Marshall told their flowers you can't reach this next level if you're holding on to the baggage from your past so did she know she wasn't gonna reach the next level did she care did she believe it was there we will never have the answers to the questions of how Bonnie Lou nettles felt at this time about everything because unfortunately within a couple of years she would pass away but we'll get to that in a little bit as more time goes on the families of the people who had left to be a part of this UFO group they were getting more and more concerned especially Nancy David's mother David had been with the group since he was 9 tene and five years had passed Nancy I thought he was going to come home by now but he never did he was young and just trying to find himself like so many other people of that generation Nancy remembers that in his youth he was kind of hyperactive and never settled down and when he was a teenager he seemed aimless he had once told her he just didn't see the normal life that others saw or had he just could imagine graduating from school getting a job getting married having kids it just didn't seem like that was for him after the day he came to say goodbye to her at her house she didn't hear from him again and she lived day in and day out with the anxiety and the worry and the stress and she started to just get depressed thinking like nobody understands how I feel about this nobody gets it I can't even talk to anybody about this and then one day dawned on her people do understand there are other people like you who have lost loved ones to cults and you can reach out to them and you can help each other and at least be a support system for each other she got right to work sending out letters to others who had lost loved ones whenever Marshall and Bonnie Lou rolled into town they all started contacting each other sharing information and eventually she started a newsletter where she could send it out every month with new information what people thought where they might be all this stuff to just keep everybody apprised of the situation with the group she even attracted some media attention the San Francisco Chronicle did an interview with her and the day she got back from San Francisco doing the interview there was a message waiting for her on her machine from her son David it appeared that Marshall and Bonnie Lou or maybe not too happy about Nancy digging around and exposing their private business at this time there was a lot of deprogramming going on with other cults so basically the programming is when you kidnap somebody from a cult or what you think to be a cult and you bring them home and you like reverse brainwash them to get them on brainwashed from the brainwashing that happened earlier so you brainwash them again anyways it's called deprogramming and Marshall and Bonnie Lou were terrified of this didn't want people busting in on their group and grabbing people up and bringing them home to be deprogrammed they really resented Nancy's interference and Bonnie Lou even wrote to her daughter Terri do not anyone know about us especially that Network woman Nancy Brown she's not to be trusted which is funny coming from a woman who was responsible for Nancy son leaving his family and not contacting them again T and DOMA must have been putting the pressure I'm David to get Nancy off their backs because David called her and he left this message this is your son David if you want to know how you can help these parents who want to hear from us if you would print in your newsletter the names of those parents who promised not to kidnap their family members or keep them from doing what they want to do I promise you that most of these parents will hear from their loved ones pretty quickly it was the first time she heard his voice in years and she still has that message after this many families of the members of the group did receive phone calls but all the phone calls bore the same pretty clear message like we're okay but we're not coming back so this is going to be the end of part one I know this is probably going to be in two or three parts probably three parts knowing how long I've been recording today I can just tell hopefully this will post on Saturday I'll try to get part two up on Sunday and then part three up on Monday which means there will be no mystery in Monday this week just because I undertook this big a heavily researched project so there will be no mystery Monday this week but I'll give you a really good mystery Monday next week to make it up to you okay guys I hope you're enjoying this cult series special it is February now it's my birthday month so shout out to all my fellow Aquarians and I will see you next time stay kind and stay beautiful she's like a sickness in my brain a vision standing by the window pane to ripple through the blind in a dance it's in the way about a moon me the way [ __ ] better and the toxic

Channel: Stephanie Harlowe

Views: 454,221

Keywords: cults, heavens gate, marshall applewhite, new age, documentary, stephanie harlow, bonnie nettles

Id: -RrcQfBwro0

Length: 66min 59sec (4019 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 04 2019