Heaven's Gate was an American new religious movement known primarily for the mass suicide of its members in 1997. Often described as a cult, it was founded in 1974 and led by Marshall Applewhite (1931–1997) and Bonnie Nettles (1927–1985), known within the movement as Do and Ti, respectively. Nettles and Applewhite first met in 1972 and went on a journey of spiritual discovery, identifying themselves as the two witnesses of the Book of Revelation, attracting a following of several hundred people in the mid-1970s. In 1976, a core group of a few dozen members stopped recruiting and instituted a monastic lifestyle.
Scholars have described the theology of Heaven's Gate as a mixture of Christian millenarianism, New Age, and ufology, and it has been characterized as a UFO religion. The central belief of the group was that followers could transform themselves into immortal extraterrestrial beings by rejecting their human nature, and they would ascend to heaven, referred to as the "Next Level" or "The Evolutionary Level Above Human". The death of Nettles from cancer in 1985 challenged the group's views on ascension; while they originally believed that they would ascend to heaven while alive aboard a UFO, they came to believe that the body was merely a "container" or "vehicle" for the soul and that their consciousness would be transferred to "Next Level bodies" upon death.
On March 26, 1997, deputies of the San Diego County Sheriff's Department discovered the bodies of the 39 active members of the group, including Applewhite, in a house in the San Diego County suburb of Rancho Santa Fe. They had participated in a coordinated series of ritual suicides, coinciding with the closest approach of Comet Hale–Bopp. Just before the mass suicide, the group's website was updated with the message: "Hale–Bopp brings closure to Heaven's Gate ... our 22 years of classroom here on planet Earth is finally coming to conclusion – 'graduation' from the Human Evolutionary Level. We are happily prepared to leave 'this world' and go with Ti's crew."
The son of a Presbyterian minister and a former soldier, Marshall Applewhite began his foray into Biblical prophecy in the early 1970s. In March 1972, he met Bonnie Nettles, a 44-year-old married nurse with an interest in Theosophy and Biblical prophecy. The circumstances of their meeting are unclear. According to Applewhite's writings, the two met in a hospital where she worked as a nurse while he was visiting a sick friend. Applewhite had recently been dismissed from his role as music director at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas, over an alleged relationship with one of his male students, and his wife had previously left him due to his multiple homosexual relationships. These personal and professional setbacks left him feeling depressed. James Lewis suggests that Applewhite was a patient in the facility. Applewhite claimed, however, that he was only visiting the hospital where Nettles worked as a nurse, not receiving treatment himself. Nettles wrote an astrology column for a Houston newspaper, drawing on insights from "Brother Francis", a 19th-century Franciscan friar she believed she was channeling. She was also involved with the Theosophical Society and participated in weekly séances with her local group in Houston. At the time she met Applewhite, her own marriage was falling apart. Applewhite later recalled that he felt that he had known Nettles for a long time and concluded that they had met in a past life. She told him their meeting had been foretold to her by extraterrestrials, persuading him that he had a divine assignment.
Applewhite and Nettles pondered the life of St. Francis of Assisi and read works by Helena Blavatsky, R. D. Laing, and Richard Bach. They kept a King James Bible and studied passages from the New Testament focusing on Christology, asceticism, and eschatology. Applewhite also read science fiction, including works by Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. By June 19, Applewhite and Nettles's beliefs had solidified. They concluded that they had been chosen to fulfill biblical prophecies and been given higher-level minds than other people. They wrote a pamphlet that described Jesus's reincarnation as a Texan, a veiled reference to Applewhite. Furthermore, they concluded that they were the two witnesses described in the Book of Revelation, and occasionally visited churches and spiritual groups to speak of their identities, often referring to themselves as "The Two", or "The UFO Two". They believed they would be killed and then resurrected and, in view of others, transported onto a spaceship. This event, which they referred to as "the Demonstration", was to prove their claims. These ideas were poorly received by other religious groups.
The Two would gain their first follower in May 1974: Sharon Morgan, who abandoned her children to join them. A month later, Morgan left The Two and returned to her family. Nettles and Applewhite were arrested and charged with credit card fraud for using Morgan's cards, although she had consented to their use. The charges were dropped. A routine check revealed that Applewhite had stolen a rental car from St. Louis nine months earlier, which he still possessed. Applewhite spent six months in jail, primarily in Missouri, and was released in early 1975, rejoining Nettles.
Eventually, Applewhite and Nettles resolved to contact extraterrestrials and seek like-minded followers. They published advertisements for meetings, where they recruited disciples, called "the crew". At the events, they purported to represent beings from another planet, the Next Level, who sought participants for an experiment. They said those who agreed to participate in the experiment would be brought to a higher evolutionary level. In April 1975, during a meeting with a group of 80 people in Studio City, Los Angeles, they shared their "simultaneous" revelation that they were the two witnesses in the Bible's story of the end time. According to Benjamin Zeller, while accounts of the meeting differ, all describe it as momentous and agree that Applewhite and Nettles presented themselves as charismatic leaders with an important spiritual message. About 25 individuals joined the group.
In September 1975, Applewhite and Nettles preached at a motel hall in Waldport, Oregon. After selling all "worldly" possessions and saying farewell to loved ones, around 20 people vanished from the public eye and joined the group. Later that year, on CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite reported on the disappearances in one of the first national reports on the developing religious group: "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." In reality, Applewhite and Nettles had arranged for the group to go underground. From that point, "Do" and "Ti" (pronounced "doe" and "tee"), as the two now called themselves, led nearly one hundred members across the country, sleeping in tents and sleeping bags and begging in the streets. Evading detection by the authorities and media enabled the group to focus on Do and Ti's doctrine of helping members of the crew achieve a "higher evolutionary level" above human, which the leaders claimed to have already reached.
Applewhite and Nettles used a variety of aliases over the years, notably "Bo and Peep" and "Do and Ti". The group also had several names prior to the adoption of the name Heaven's Gate. At the time Jacques Vallée studied the group, it was known as Human Individual Metamorphosis (HIM). The group re-invented and renamed itself several times. Applewhite believed he was directly related to Jesus, meaning he was an "Evolutionary Kingdom Level Above Human". His writings, which combined aspects of Millennialism, Gnosticism, and science fiction, suggest he believed himself to be Jesus's successor and the "Present Representative" of Christ on Earth. Do and Ti taught early on that Do's bodily "vehicle" was inhabited by the same alien spirit that belonged to Jesus; Ti was presented as God the Father, Do's "older member".