Re: psychoceramics: San Diego suicide cult?

["Nikolai Kingsley" <nikolai @ very.net>]

> i think it's www.highersource.com


Web ties to mass suicide probed 
By Janet Kornblum
March 27, 1997, 4 p.m. PT 

The last time Heather Chronert spoke to her Web designers at Higher Source,
they told her they'd be "involved with monastery activities" and asked her
not to call until after Easter. 

Chronert didn't think too much of it at the time. They were quiet, gentle
people, and she wanted to respect their privacy. But today, as the pieces
started coming together in the apparent suicide of the 39 people involved
in the company that designed her Web site, the comment seemed ominous. 

Law enforcement officials are still investigating the suicide of the
residents of the rented San Diego mansion. 

But for those who knew them--and their writings on the Net and their Web
page--what happened is clear: The employees of Higher Source believed that
the arrival of the Hale-Bopp comet signified the "marker" to leave this
world and go to the next. 

"The joy is that our Older Member in the Evolutionary Level Above Human
(the 'Kingdom of Heaven') has made it clear to us that Hale-Bopp's approach
is the 'marker' we've been waiting for--the time for the arrival of the
spacecraft from the Level Above Human to take us home to 'Their World'--in
the literal Heavens," read the group's other Web page at Heavens Gate.
Today, the page was nearly impossible to access. 

"Our 22 years of classroom here on planet Earth is finally coming to
conclusion--'graduation' from the Human Evolutionary Level. We are happily
prepared to leave 'this world' and go with Ti's crew. If you study the
material on this Web site, you will hopefully understand our joy and what
our purpose here on Earth has been. You may even find your 'boarding pass'
to leave with us during this brief 'window,'" the site read. 

Chronert, the office manager at the Polo Club, said the business chose
Higher Source after some members came in and dropped of their card. They
were planning to do a Web site, and they liked what they saw. The price
also was very reasonable, Chronert said. 

"They were professional--did a great job for us," she said. She did notice
the men and women--who ranged in age from about 35 to 50, seemed unusually
quiet and soft-spoken. They all wore their hair very short and the women
wore no make-up or jewelry. They wore blousy, loose clothes. "They were
real reserved and shy--nice, nice people," she said. "They were very
gentle." 

She said they seemed almost embarrassed to ask for payment. In at least one
case, the were paid in baseball hats. "They would want hats and things that
we have at the polo club. They really didn't care about money." 

Clearly, they were more concerned about spiritual matters. 

While many crimes have been linked to the Internet, this is almost
assuredly the first mass suicide that seems to have been so thoroughly
related to the power of the Net. 

Hale-Bopp has been a topic of discussion among conspiracy and UFO theorists
almost since it was discovered, according to the comet's codiscoverer Alan
Hale on the The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the
Paranormal page. And most of those theories have taken place on the Net,
which lends itself to rumor dissemination, said Barry Karr, executive
director of CSICOP. 

"It's instantaneous information," Karr said. "You put something on the Net
and it's all over instantaneously. It's hard to catch up with it once it's
gone out." 

Karr added that people also tend to believe what they read on the Net a lot
more than they would on television or a newspaper. 

Hale had tried to reason with people who were convinced that the comet was
linked with the millennium, with UFOs, or a prediction by Nostradamus. 

A search through the Web or through newsgroups with the right keywords
proves his point. 

"Much of the 'comet madness' associated with comet Hale-Bopp focuses on the
fact that its appearance coincides rather closely with the end of the
second millennium, which, despite the fact that this is an arbitrary point
in time, is being viewed by a disturbingly large segment of the public as
an omen of significant upheaval," Hale wrote. 

"Another source of the 'comet madness' around Hale-Bopp is tied to the
ongoing belief among a significant fraction of the public that Earth is
being visited in large numbers by extraterrestrial aliens," he wrote. 

Many Netizens today logged on in a frantic search for more information
about the suicides. Some blamed each other in chat rooms for spreading the
news about the aliens. Press reports have given a huge amount of play to
the group's link to the Net. 

But whether the group got their information from the Internet is unclear. 

What is clear is that they thought they were going to a better place. 

According to Danielle Forlano, publicist for one of the Web pages designed
by the group, the members sent videotapes to a man only identified as Rio,
who had left the group a few months earlier to work for a company for which
his group had designed a page. 

The tapes were a goodbye. Rio immediately went to the mansion upon
receiving the tapes where he found the bodies, Forlano said. 

According to their Web page, Higher Source designed Web pages for
Pre-Madonna Live CD samples; Keep The Faith online CD sales catalog, audio
samples, shopping cart, discussion forums, and 3D chat rooms; Kushner-Locke
Film production industry; the corporate portfolio at the San Diego Polo
Club; 1800 Harmony Audio, an online ordering and animation site; British
Masters, a site for online sales of British Cars and accessories; and Samia
Rose Topiary, which offers custom and tabletop topiaries. Many of the sites
were down today or nearly impossible to access due to overwhelming traffic.


Copyright © 1995-97 CNET, Inc. All rights reserved.