An early example of online journalism was the 1997 Heaven’s Gate mass suicide story.
“….For several days, it was the biggest news story in the world.
It began unfolding the afternoon of Wednesday, March 26, 1997, during a period when the Hale-Bopp comet could be seen in the night sky.
Inside a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult lay dead. Convinced that a spaceship was traveling behind the comet and that they would be transported to the vessel to begin a new life ‘beyond human,’ they had poisoned themselves. Twenty-one women and 18 men died by eating pudding and applesauce laced with phenobarbital and other drugs – the largest mass suicide on U.S. soil.”
— “Heaven’s Gate revisited”
San Diego Union-Tribune, March 2007
Screenshot of Heaven’s Gate website. Internet Archive image.
A website, which the cult and their website design company built, helped journalists reconstruct the story of the Heaven’s Gate group.
The Internet Archive has preserved a copy of the Heaven’s Gate website.
“For centuries, people have viewed the approach of comets with reverence, suspicion and some fear. And now, with Hale-Bopp in full view in the northern sky, the Internet has been crackling with chatter about whether a UFO is shadowing the comet.
….On a Web site reportedly designed by a member of Higher Source, the group saw Hale-Bopp’s arrival as the ‘key’ that opens Heaven’s Gate. ‘Hale-Bopp’s approach is the marker we’ve been waiting for — the time for the arrival of the spacecraft…to take us home to ‘Their World’ in the literal heavens,’ the Heaven’s Gate Web site says.”
— Seattle Times
March 27, 1997
Screenshot of CNN website. Internet Archive image.
“But the site known as Heaven’s Gate — How and When It May Be Entered, offers disturbing insight into the group. The site’s home page makes apocalyptic references to the Hale-Bopp comet. ‘Red Alert … HALE-BOPP Brings Closure,’ the site says in flashing red letters.
Heaven’s Gate describes the comet as heralding a spacecraft coming to ‘take us home to Their World — in the literal Heavens.’ Hale-Bopp is the brightest comet visible from Earth in decades.
‘We are happily prepared to leave this world and go with Ti’s crew,’ says the cryptic message on the Web site. The message does not explain who Ti is, but it is believed to be the name of one of the cult’s founders.”
— “Web sites swamped amid rush for clues to suicides”
(Archive of stories about Heaven’s Gate)
CNN, March 28, 1997
