Photo caption: Pexcho’s American Dime Museum owner Peter Excho smiles for a photo. Photo provided by Pexcho’s American Dime Museum.
Downtown Augusta’s Pexcho’s American Dime Museum will host a special one night event this weekend on Saturday, April 6, for locals to hear from survivors of a popular cult that committed mass suicide in the late 1990s.
From 6 to 9:30 p.m., at 216 Sixth St., the Dime Museum will allow audience members to ask any and all questions from survivors of Heaven’s Gate – an American religious cult founded in 1974 that later became famous for committing mass suicide after 39 members were found dead.
According to a New York Times article from 1997, Heaven’s Gate cult leaders Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Lu Nettles preached to members that suicide would allow them to leave their “bodily containers” and enter an alien spacecraft, which they believed to be hidden behind the Hale-Bopp comet to avoid earthly detection.
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Convincing members that entering the alien spacecraft would allow them to travel through Heaven’s Gate to achieve a higher existence, participants committed suicide by drinking a lethal mixture of phenobarbital, a class of drug largely utilized to treat seizures and insomnia, and vodka.
By hearing from longtime cult participants, one of whom – known as Sawyer – remained a member for almost 20 years, Dime Museum owner Peter Excho said the event would give attendees great insight into the cult and its inner workings.
“It’s a person I want to hear talk and see what changed [Sawyer’s] mind,” Excho said. “I’m very excited to meet them and hear what they have to say.”
As members stop in Augusta during their national tour, Excho said attendees will be able to ask any questions, including how the cult lived, what they were truly about and why they chose to commit mass suicide in 1997.
“There’s no question they will not answer,” Excho said. “Nothing is off limits. They said they’re not afraid of hiding anything.”
With plenty of tickets still for sale, each selling for $25, Excho is hoping more locals will attend the event to dive into history from another’s point of view.
“Sawyer speaks at colleges and packs out houses,” he said. “… it’s a different religion. We’re in this wonderful country called America and we’re allowed to worship spaghetti if we want … that’s the beautiful part of America.”
Basing plenty of the cult’s beliefs on the Bible, Excho said the survivors’ lecture would showcase how another group chose to form a cult around Christian ideals.
“It is Bible based and that’s kind of the twist on it. They went into the Old Testament and researched that to create Heaven’s Gate,” he said. “I just, personally, really want to hear the story of it.”
According to Excho, the event is an embodiment of the Dime Museum’s goal to gather like minded individuals to enjoy art, oddities, history, poetry and more.
“It’s to give people a place to show their art, play their music and give their lectures,” he said. “It isn’t that I purposely find them – they find me. If you just give someone an outlet, they’ll happily come.”
Inspired by Dick Horne’s late 19th century Dime museums and P.T. Barnum’s American museum, Excho said the Heaven’s Gate lecture directly plays into his business’ intent to host historical and modern figures.
To purchase tickets to the lecture at the Dime Museum, visit: https://www.simpletix.com/e/heavens-gate-tickets-157529?fbclid=IwAR1R3m9mYXdlVbcyNoral1KgohX9eENhwOhkVkUyHBBPXc8wNawfIdLwJlg_aem_AaLHKRw1wsF6Zf6D1I3peps7yChziFRS3iYwzxoJJVV7-LbSDLlOwJYXX4DY8t1FABIAaiTJxk15kYKpGJJC-0NM#description
For future Dime Museum events, visit the business’ Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/americandimemuseum
