The Heaven's Gate Website

1997

Date: 26 March 1997 · Place: Rancho Santa Fe, California · Figures: Marshall Applewhite, leader · Heaven's Gate (group) · Tags: Cult Artefact, Web 1.0, Time Capsule 01. Red Alert On 26 March 1997, 39 members of the Heaven's Gate group are found dead in a Rancho Santa Fe mansion, having taken phenobarbital and vodka in expectation of being collected by a spacecraft trailing the Hale-Bopp comet. Their website, heavensgate.com, has been online since 1995. On the day of the deaths it carries a flashing RED ALERT banner over an animated starfield. Surviving members commit to keeping the site online in perpetuity. Two of them, Mark and Sarah, answer email from HeavensGate@heavensgate.com for the next 28 years. 02. A Frozen Page The site is preserved exactly as it was on 26 March 1997: tiled cosmic backgrounds, multiple frames, bright-blue Comic Sans, Java applet starfield, autoplaying MIDI. It is the most-visited untouched web 1.0 artefact on Earth, treated as both shrine and forensic document. It also marks the first time mass-suicide-by-cult is staged with the internet as the intended posthumous publishing channel. The pages are part of the message. Sources • The New York Times, 'Web Site Lives On as Mass Suicide's Last Will' (Pam Belluck, 28 March 1997) • heavensgate.com (preserved 1995-present) • Benjamin E. Zeller, 'Heaven's Gate: America's UFO Religion' (NYU Press, 2014)