Heaven’s Gate was a small but tightly controlled religious group founded by Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles, who preached that followers could ascend to a higher evolutionary level by shedding their human bodies. After Nettles’ death, Applewhite became increasingly apocalyptic, convinced that a spacecraft trailing the approaching Hale Bopp comet would carry their souls to a new cosmic existence. In their secluded mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, 39 members carried out a carefully orchestrated mass suicide, each dressed identically and prepared with ritual precision. The event shocked the world and remains one of the most infamous examples of cult devotion and manipulation in modern history.