Word: cults
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Suicide notes left by Heaven's Gate cult members may raise new questions about why some committed suicide. A note dated March 19 from a woman who called herself Golden indicates that she believed cult leader Marshall Applewhite was dying: "Once He is gone there is nothing left here on the face of the Earth for me, no reason to stay a moment longer." Some members apparently believe their leader was dying of cancer, but the coroner's office found no evidence of cancer in Applewhite's body. The newly-discovered notes, called "Earth Exit Statements," were on two computer...
RANCHO SANTA FE, California: Seeking to unravel the events leading to the group suicide and to understand the reasons that the members of Heaven's Gate came together, attention has turned to the cult's leader, Marshall Herff Applewhite. The son of a Presbyterian minister, Applewhite was leading an apparently unremarkable life as a highly talented baritone, a husband, father of two, and a professor of music at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. In the early 1970's, Applewhite was granted a leave of absence from the university to deal with emotional problems. According to The Washington Post...
...followed the grim discoveries at Rancho Santa Fe, so-called mind control experts have speculated that the fault somehow lay in the tech world, that something about the Web explained Heaven's Gate and the isolation of its members from the cushioning norms of society. Not true. The cult had been around for 22 years, and had seen better days. Most of its members were Web novices at best. Yet in some ways, the Web was made for groups like this. For it is not the culture of the Internet, but its utility as a two-way means of communication...
...quasi-philosophical blather on the Heaven's Gate website may be, it never got much attention until the networks and Internet publishers (including Pathfinder) sought it out as legitimate news in the wake of the deaths. As far as anyone has been able to determine, the Heaven's Gate cult used the Net mainly to memorialize itself, or to generate freelance income by producing commercial web pages for local firms. But a growing number of other cults and splinter groups use the Net to try to recruit new members, just as advertisers use the Net to sell products to consumers...
RANCHO SANTA FE, California: Seeking to unravel the events leading to the group suicide and to understand the reasons that the members of Heaven's Gate came together, attention has turned to the cult's leader, Marshall Herff Applewhite. The son of a Presbyterian minister, Applewhite was leading an apparently unremarkable life as a highly talented baritone, a husband, father of two, and a professor of music at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. In the early 1970's, Applewhite was granted a leave of absence from the university to deal with emotional problems. According to The Washington Post...