Ash Kelley

Which is similar to the letter and the video that Richard received.

In almost every case, the members of Heaven's Gate were excited about what they believed to be the next phase of their lives, too.

According to Benjamin Zeller, members understood their actions not as deaths, but as graduations, cutting aside the decaying matter of Earth so as to free their true selves to journey to the next level in the heavens.

Wow.

As far as they were concerned, to reject what Marshall believed was the final phase actually would have been the real tragedy.

Wow.

Which is just... That's unthinkable.

That's exactly what I was just going to say.

In a video message on Heaven's Gate website, Marshall Applewhite insisted that those left behind shouldn't feel sad for the members of the group.

He said that they were excited to be shedding their containers and leaving this planet for a more evolved existence elsewhere.

Which, like, gives me a womb.

Goosebumps.

Now, obviously, members of Heaven's Gate throughout the years were pretty frequently dismissed as being crazy or having been brainwashed by Marshall and Bonnie.

But Benjamin Zeller said that's honestly far too simplistic of a reaction.

He wrote, it's just too easy to dismiss them as nuts.

Members joined not because of some sort of magical, psychological, or spiritual truth that the leaders conjured, but because they were looking for something and believed they found it in Heaven's Gate, which is exactly what you've been pointing out this whole time.

In his recollection of his time with the group in 1975, Robert Balk wrote, Which is so fucking sad.

Ugh.

And that aligns with the statements that Richard Ford gave in the wake of the tragedy.

He said, Wow.