A UFO religious group led by Marshall Applewhite, whose 39 members died by mass suicide in 1997 believing they would reach a spacecraft trailing the Hale-Bopp comet.
Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles founded what became Heaven’s Gate in the early 1970s, teaching that Earth was about to be “recycled” and that the only way to survive was to shed the human body and ascend to a higher evolutionary level via UFO. The group lived communally, largely isolated from outside contact, moving between rented houses over two decades.
In March 1997, as the Hale-Bopp comet passed near Earth, Applewhite and 38 followers died in a coordinated mass suicide at a rented mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, California, believing a spacecraft trailing the comet would carry their souls onward.