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Left Alive And Unchanged: The Heaven’s Gate Website

thebodyintl.com

121–130 of 136 posts

Re: Left Alive And Unchanged: The Heaven’s Gate Website

#122
post #6

Title should be clarified to match the article. Not everyone associated with the cult has perished. Several ex-members are alive and some remained close to the cult in a way that's hard to describe, and took on the maintenance of the website. HBO's series, Heaven's Gate: The Cult of Cults, is highly recommended. It is a fascinating, tragic, and ultimately humanizing look at the cult, through the eyes of observers and…

As an atheist Heaven's Gate claims are as legitimate (and outlandish) as those of Christians or Buddhists, whose to say they aren't reborn on an alien planet? So let's call it "assumed perished".

I tip my fedora to you good sir.

Re: Left Alive And Unchanged: The Heaven’s Gate Website

#124
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote a creepy poem about the whole affair, as I was an angsty goth-adjacent teen who didn't like poetry assignments.

Please share! I have plenty of poetry from 20 years ago that’s probably quite cringe and I can’t bring myself to look at it. But yours! I’m intrigued. And maybe it isn’t cringe maybe it’s great.

Alas, it's lost to the sands of time. Also, I could never touch Silvia Plath, but for all she spoke to me in that time... I think I just dislike poetry as an art form. Are you saying my disdain for the work could make me good at it? I somehow expect that other self-loathing poets have already trodden that path to muck. But yeah, I realize that I could reformat the above and call it a poem. Oh noem.

Re: Left Alive And Unchanged: The Heaven’s Gate Website

#125
post #75

I absolutely archived this site onto a 100MB Zip Disk back when this first happened. So I guess now I need to find an ancient SCSI card and unearth that archive.

Maybe the Internet Archive still has Zip Drive readers! Send it to them! Would be interesting to see a diff

Re: Left Alive And Unchanged: The Heaven’s Gate Website

#126
post #4

Not all members, one specifically stayed behind to maintain the website. In an interview played on the Heavens Gate podcast (which is excellent) he expressed regret he wasn’t able to teleport to the comet with the rest of the group.

I corresponded with one of them for a bit about fifteen years ago, but it petered out as we ran out of things to say.

They were extremely polite if reserved.

Re: Left Alive And Unchanged: The Heaven’s Gate Website

#127
post #18

Fun fact, back in 2017 when I was a junior in highschool, I would meet this friend of mine often at her house. She lived pretty far into this gated community that was right on the edge of where Rancho Santa Fe ends. I really don’t remember how the topic came up, but she told me that the mansion where the Heavens gate cult had killed themselves was literally a 5 min walk. I knew about the cult, but I never knew it all…

I witnessed two police and retired police shootings in California. I also knew the 16 year old that axe murdered his entire family in vista, ca. I chose to leave the state, and now the worst I see is a dead deer 3 times a year. Chances are something unsettling has happened within 500' of you, some time in history. Don't let that weigh you down, in thoughts or body.

Nah, it didn’t way me down or bother me like that. It was more of a “what the shit, you’re kidding?” moment.

Re: Left Alive And Unchanged: The Heaven’s Gate Website

#129
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Chances are something unsettling has happened within 500' of you, some time in history. Meanwhile in Europe…

> Chances are something unsettling has happened within 150m of you, some time in history. Better?

A building located vis a vis the post-Prussian farm I grew up on was destroyed when Soviets' 3rd/13th/33rd divisions were conquering the remains of the third Reich, Feb 1945.

Re: Left Alive And Unchanged: The Heaven’s Gate Website

#130

I'm curious to know which 90's software was used for the graphics in https://www.heavensgate.com/

Me too. It's probably just my weird taste, but think it still looks pretty cool. I wondered what kind of look "cults" were going for these days on the "modern" web so checked out scientology.org. Way boring compared to Heaven's Gate, though the background image is fairly spacey.
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