Inside Heaven's Gate: The UFO Cult Leaders Tell Their Story in Their Own Words

by Hayden Hewes, Brad Steiger

Occult True Crime Non-Fiction

Genres: Cults

256 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published May 1, 1997

Reviews

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A VIEW OF THE CULT FROM AUTHORS WITH A LONGTIME ASSOCIATION WITH THEM

Co-author Brad Steiger wrote in the introductory section of this 1997 book, “When I learned of the mass suicide of a number of unidentified cultists in San Diego, California, on March 26, 1997… I immediately recognized concepts from the Human Individual Metamorphosis (HIM) cosmology of Marshall Herff Applewhite and Bonnie Lu Nettles, whom my colleague Hayden Hewes and I had known in the mid-1970s as Bo and Peep. The deceased cultists … were later identified as members of a group known as Heaven’s Gate… the references to the Hale-Bopp comet as the … sign for which the group had been waiting, were recent additions to their cosmology… In 1985, we had learned that Bonnie (‘Peep’…) had died of cancer and that Marshall (’Bo’…) had carried on their mission of informing Earth’s humans that salvation hovered overhead in a spaceship… As more details of the mass suicide were revealed, some found the discovery that many of the male members had been castrated to be even more shocking than the taking of their own lives. We knew that Bo and Peep had always preached a disciplined, asexual path for their followers…

“Regardless of the position in which Heaven’s Gate and its outer-space theology may be placed in the future, Hayden Hewes and I were there interviewing Bo and Peep and their followers at the very beginning. Hewes’s association with the two flying saucer missionaries began [in] 1974, when they appeared at the headquarters of his International UFO Bureau in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and informed him … that they were aliens who had come from another evolutionary level… I saw that The Two were combining ufology with Judeo-Christian religious ideas and were leaning heavily on the words of Jesus… but Bo and Peep had added an assertion which offered a new, rather dramatic wrinkle. They claimed to have originated from the same level as Jesus, and they asserted that they were the two witnesses referred to in the Book of Revelation who would be the harbingers of a great harvest time for humankind…

“[O]ne of my editors called to say that there was publishing interest in the mysterious Two who were luring man and women away from their families to join a UFO cult… I laughingly answered.. They had already found me through my friend and colleague Hayden Hewes… Bo and Peep gave us the manuscript of their manifesto, and they were delighted that their belief structure would now be presented to the world… Just before the book was released, Bo and Peep and several of their followers visited Hewes in his office and expressed their disappointment with the final manuscript… On May 27, 1993, an advertisement in USA TODAY declared that the Earth’s present civilization was about to be recycled… I was certain that it had to be Marshall Applewhite resurfacing after all these years. However, when I wrote for more information about the group, I received no reply. I was undoubtedly still persona non grata after the publication of [our book]… And then came the sad announcement of the mass suicide … Marshall Applewhite had at last found the narrow window of opportunity for graduation to a higher level provided by the Space Brothers. Tragically, he had taken thirty-eight loyal followers with him.”

They explain, “The leaders, who were now calling themselves ‘Bo’ and ‘Peep,’ urged their followers to ‘renounce all earthly pleasures and material goods---money, sex, alcohol, and property are out.’” (Pg. 21) “The Two told Harlingen police that they had been sent to the Rio Grande Valley ‘by spiritual
guidance.’ The Two were not married, they admitted, but were living together. ‘We have renounced sex in preparation for our journey,’ Bo told them.” (Pg. 24)

They note that The Two said, “We are part of a preparation, a preliminary, so to speak, of Christ’s coming; and the ones who will overcome will be literally lifted up to a spacecraft and leave.” (Pg. 117) Earthly religious leaders (Billy Graham, the Pope, etc.) “are not in touch with our Father. Jesus was Jesus while he was on this planet, but he is a Father in the next kingdom.” (Pg. 137) They also asserted, “Every candidate on the trip has to reach the point where he does not have to have sex. Otherwise he is still addicted to the Earth.” (Pg. 163)

They stated, “In our Father’s kingdom they have physical bodies. They all receive their bodies from human equivalents. They are not products of the garden, for this garden is young and has not had its first graduating class---though members from the next kingdom have come at several intervals to help bring it up a notch or two. But no products of this garden that came into their germination on this planet have yet graduated into the next level.” (Pg. 181)

They clarified, “One who has completely overcome any desire for sex or physical addictions is far more of a virgin than one who has never had sex but desires it. All must become completely pure of their humanness.” (Pg. 189)

This book will be “must reading” for anyone wanting to know more about this cultic group.

[Claudia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating look inside the H.I.M. which metamorphosed into Heaven's Gate after Ti's death. Very gnostic.

[Leila · Rating 4 out of 5]

I probably would have joined this cult myself.