Halloween: 10 Terrifying Things From The 90s
2. Jesus Christ, Starship Captain
For a lot of people, the 90s was all about the year 2000. This was to be the dawn of a new millennium, bringing with it the promise of flying boats, robot chimps and holograms that you could eat. 2000 also held particular significance for religious types, especially Christians of all denominations. It was to be the beginning of a new age of renewal, when Jesus would return to establish his kingdom on Earth. That is, if he wasn't already piloting a spaceship hidden behind a comet. This was the revelation that came to Marshall Applewhite, founder of the religious cult Heaven's Gate. Running it with his wife Ann (although they called themselves silly things like Do and Ti), their philosophy was a mess of New Age jargon and UFO geekery, essentially positing that Earth was about to be 'recycled' and that the only way to survive the impeding Armageddon was to ascend to 'the Next Level', leaving their bodies (which followers described as vehicles) behind. Heaven's Gate cannily used the internet as a means of recruiting members, most of whom came to live in the cult's San Diego compound. Presumably frustrated by the lack of an actual proper doomsday (and possibly also because male followers were expected to undergo castration), Applewhite decided that the close passage of comet Hale-Bopp to Earth in 1997 was the sign he'd been straining for. Obscured in the wake of the comet was a spacecraft, piloted by Jesus, who was actually an alien (to be fair, there's nothing in The Bible to contradict that...) The only way to reach Jessie's magic space bus was by committing mass suicide and so, sometime between the 19th and 26th March 1997, Applewhite and 38 acolytes (or Applytes, if you will) downed a cocktail of pineapple juice, cyanide and vodka, before snuggling down with plastic bags over their heads. When the police found the bodies, the media went into overdrive, replaying Applewhite's final video message as well as eerie footage of the silent, empty compound. Amidst the lurid details, however, the real story was the tragedy of 38 credulous people killing themselves in the name of togetherness. The year 2000 tended to do funny things to a person. And I don't just mean religious cultists...