Strange Arrivals is a production of I-Heart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey.

For the best experience, listen with headphones. This is a bonus episode of Season 3 of Strange Arrivals.

Bonus episodes feature interviews that I conducted during my research, but that I either didn't use or use sparingly in the main episodes.

They were great conversations that for one reason or another didn't make the cut,

but I think they add valuable perspective to the ideas we explored this season.

I had originally planned to do a couple of episodes during season 3 on the Heaven's Gate Group that committed mass suicide in 1997.

But as my research continued and the season took shape, I realized that Heaven's Gate didn't quite fit into the larger narrative.

In the meantime, though, I had conducted two interviews with leading Heavens Gate Scholars.

So this week and next, we'll present those interviews.

There are plenty of podcasts and documentaries on Heavens Gate, so if you've seen or listened to one or more of those, I think this will give you some great insight.

If you aren't familiar with Heaven's Gate, this will introduce you to some of the issues surrounding the group and what they believed.

In this episode, I talk with George Christidas, who is an honorary research fellow in contemporary

religion at York St John University in England.

Okay, I'm George Crusaders and I'm currently an honorary research fellow at Yorkshire

University in England.

I used to be head of religious studies

at the University of Wolverhampton

until I retired in 2008 and since then I've been doing

quite a bit of writing mainly on new religious movements and I've published quite a bit

on Heaven's Gate, as well as other Yufo religions.

Can you talk a little bit about the formation of Heaven's Gate and what the two founders sort of brought to it at the beginning?

Yeah, well the two founders were a man and a woman, Marshall Hearth Applewhite, known variously as Doe or as, well, the two of them assumed various

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