In 1997 rumors circulated in the UFO community that an alien spacecraft was hiding in the tail of Comet Hale-Bopp, which had been discovered in 1995 and would reach its closest point to Earth on March 22, 1997—a week prior to Easter. Marshall Applewhite believed that Heaven’s Gate’s cofounder Bonnie Nettles was aboard the supposedly hidden UFO and that the group would be able to join her and transition to the “Next Level” of human evolution. Applewhite and 38 of his followers died by suicide at their compound in Rancho Santa Fe, California, and were found by authorities on March 26, 1997.
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