Cults

The congressmen and some of the citizens of the People’s Temple were getting on board the plane to leave, when a group of men suddenly came from behind a tractor and opened gunfire on them. When the men with guns left, there were 5 people, including Congressman Ryan, dead. There were 5 others, including Deborah Layton, injured. According to Rick Ross, a short while later there was an announcement in Jonestown by Jim Jones that said all people should hurry and meet in the center of Jonestown. He said that Jonestown was no longer a place of peace and that they must go to the peace by drinking the “Kool-aid,” which was cyanide-laced poison. They first started with the children. He claimed that they weren’t crying because of the pain of death, but only crying because of the bitter taste. There was a “security squad” whose job had been to force the others to drink the poison by aiming a gun at them.

Those who didn’t drink were shot. Some attempted to hold the poison in their mouths until everyone was dead but the poison was too strong and would dissolve on their tongue and would still kill them. After the deaths Jim Jones either shot himself or another person shot him at point-blank range. Stephan Jones, one of Jim Jones’s sons, survived because he was playing basketball against the Guyanese nation team in Georgetown at the time. Stephan Jones stated, “If the members of the temple had a choice, maybe 20 would’ve chosen to take their lives.” There government stated that “Jim Jones very professionally manipulated his followers.” Around 120 people survived Jonestown. Some of them acted like they were dead and stayed on the ground until everyone else was dead. A couple others ran into the jungle and made it out alive.

Another destructive cult was called Heaven’s Gate, where 39 people killed themselves on March 26, 1997. The leader of the Heaven’s Gate Cult was Marshall Applewhite. The followers of the Heaven’s Gate believed that they were shedding their earthly “Containers” to catch a ride on a spaceship trailing the Hale-Bopp Comet. They all killed themselves on free will.

In my opinion, cults should be watched for and should be taken seriously and not just be put aside. There probably will be more cases like this in the future. There are very good manipulators out there in the world. It only takes one to kill many. Jim Jones was very smart, and found out about many specific problems and needs that people had, and he used that information to convince them to join the cult, making them believe that they’d live a better life there. At the time, many black people joined because he promised them a land free of racism, which was a major problem at the time. Hopefully, next time something like this happen we will be ready t take action.