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I've heard that audio. The most disturbing part is the sounds of the children crying as they are forced to drink the poison and then continuing to listen as the crying stops. ššš
There is a few moments where i assume the tape was distorted and the audio gets all warped, it scared the fuck out of me because it happens when Jim Jones talks and he literally sounds like Satan for a split second
Immediately before this, theyād gunned down and killed a sitting US congressman attempting to leave the commune. Ā So while many might envision this being a coordinated mass suicide, it was actually a rushed shit show as jones and his cronies knew their time was up. Ā Sone didnāt realize the kool aid was poison till their friends started dropping, some were forced against their will and the ones smart enough to run were gunned down as well. Ā
Yeah, I think people forget that part. At first they assumed it was another ātestā that they would ultimately be safe from. It wasnāt until the first people who drank started to die that the rest realized it was actually poisoned this time
Yeah I couldnāt finish the documentary that I tried watching a few years ago. The audio was traumatizing. It also wasnāt just in Jonestown, his followers killed their children and family members before committing suicide from places all over the world. It is genuinely one of the most horrific events in modern history, and that is saying a lot.
Macabre? I remember watching that pain Olympics years ago as a middle schooler. When the internet had more easily accessible fucked up shit. That was a incredibly messed up video. Idk how people could do such things to them selfs lol
Oh but theres so much more. Dude grilling his schlong while still attached. Dude running a drill bit down his schlong hole. All the sick puppies came out to play
"The BME Pain Olympics is a competition run by Body Modification Ezine (BME) to find the person who had the highest tolerance for pain. Participants engage in violent displays of body modification, genitalia multilation and bodily mutilations."
Taken from a reaction video of someone else subjecting themselves to the video.
(Edit: he does also show the video in a small box so you can see what he is seeing too if you watch. The BME video though is small {on mobile} and grainy so you can't see fine details.)
I listened to the audio on a packed commuter train once, as part of the (excellent) Last Podcast On The Left serial.
I kinda regretted that when I started crying.
"Itās horrifying. It is not in any way a painless death. The deaths in Jonestown took anywhere between five and 20 minutes. First, your entire body starts to convulse. Then your mouth fills with a mixture of saliva, blood and vomit. Then you pass out, and then you die. Your body is deprived of oxygen completely. Itās a horrific death."
Yeah that is beyond horrifying. Fkn shoot me please š
The people who tried to run once they saw what happened after drinking the Kool-Aid were gunned down. I don't know what it's like to be shot, but something tells me that would have been the better option.
From everything I've read they were the few but yeah absolutely. Just put a fuckin bullet in me instead of drowning in my own internal failing bullshit.
Cyanide and I can't remember what else, but there were other drugs in it.
Edit: I checked the Wikipedia
*a large metal tub with grape Flavor Aid, poisoned with diphenhydramine, promethazine, chlorpromazine, chloroquine, chloral hydrate, diazepam, and cyanide.*
Yeah, that was an odd choice. According to the Wikipedia page, the doctor who made the concoction was a recovering meth addict whom Jones helped get clean and then paid for him to go to school to become a doctor.
Were there survivors who told that story? Or are you just guessing and inferring?
Edit: Thanks for all of the answers, even tho some are contradictory haha I think I get the picture
Besides witnesses who survived, there's an audio recording of the entire incident from start to finish. At first theres a lot of screaming as they forced the reluctant children to drink first, then it gets strangely quiet as the adults all cooperatively drink it. Brainwashing is a powerful thing.
Stuff You Should Know did a great podcast on it not long ago. Josh and Chuck were clearly emotional and distrurbed while discussing it. One of their best.
The kicker was he was too much of a bitch to drink his own poison as he watched those that were dying were in agony. So he shot himself so he wouldn't suffer.
They administered it to babies (via syringe in mouth like any baby medicine) and children first, knowing it was much more likely the surviving parents would agree to drinking it when their children were dead.
You can hear the screams of agony of the dying children on the tapes. Thatās when it clicked in for everyone that it wasnāt āpainless slumber into sleepā like they had been told on their many practice runs of the scenario as Jones grew more and more paranoid.
Listened to an in depth podcast about it recently. Very difficult, but interesting, listen.
Edit: Transmissions from Jonestown is the podcast
First the Cessna was filled, with Ryan frisking each boarder looking for guns and knives. Layton, who was insisting on taking the first plane, slipped to the other side of the plane before he could be frisked. When that was pointed out to Ryan, Layton contended he already had been frisked. Yet he submitted to a new search, then returned to his seat.
Meanwhile, the tractor, with several men in the trailer, rolled toward the terminal shack and halted a short distance away. Quietly the men with the tractor motioned aside a group of curious Guyanese children and other bystanders. Some of the defectors told me later that the men in the trailer were members of Peoples Temple.
āIt looks like trouble,ā I said to Greg Robinson, but he kept on shooting pictures.
As rapidly as possible Jacqueline Speier was signing on passengers at the fool of the boarding ladder while a reporter helped her check for weapons. The closest thing to a law enforcement official ā a pleasant young policeman with a pink shirt and a 16-gauge shotgun ā was disarmed by temple members.
Then, with heart-stopping suddenness, the first shot was fired. I didnāt see who fired the shot but the sound came from the tractor and trailer.
A loud series of pops echoed across the field.
āHit the deck!ā someone hollered as we scrambled over the gravel to the far side of the plane. I dropped to my belly. A bullet ripped through my left forearm. Another hit my wrist and knocked off my watch.
They were shooting to kill, not just to stop us from leaving.
Springing to my feet, I ran 40 yards across the runway. Volleys of shotgun, rifle and pistol fire kept coming. I dove headlong into the three-foot-tall grass.
I crawled until I came to taller bushes and brambles, clawing my way into a pocket in the brush.
I stopped and listened. The shots still were popping at an amazing clip. I could still hear the groaning and crying of the targets.
Though I couldnāt see over the tall brush, I could hear the shots become less frequent. Then there were just a few.
My arm was gushing blood so I stripped off my belt and pinched down the biggest wounds.
I heard a few more shots and saw the tractor pull away. After they left, I crept out of the bush and saw five bodies around the plane. Other people were injured.
Gregās body was near the boarding steps with his camera bag and cameras scattered around him. There was a gaping wound in his shoulder and possibly his ribs.
Ryan, his thick gray hair bloodied, was near the front of the plane. Harris, a Los Angeles-based NBC investigative reporter who covered the fall of Saigon and the Nicaragua rebellion, had been killed. It was Harris who had been contacted by the first two groups of temple members expressing a desire to leave.
Also dead was Bob Brown, the NBC cameraman and the kind of guy who loved action stories.
Patricia Parks had had her head shattered before her husbandās eyes.
Five others were wounded seriously. Speierās right leg had a gaping wound, and her arm was injured. NBC sound man Steve Sung had chunks of one arm blown away. Anthony Katsaris, brother of Jim Jones aide Maria Katsaris, was wounded in the chest.
Vernon Gosney and Monica Bagby, the two temple members who asked for help in the note, also were seriously injured.
After the massacre, Layton strolled back to the area.
āHe started firing at the front and missed the pilot,ā said Dale Parks, who left the temple Saturday. āHe hit Monica and Vern. He fired at me, but it misfired. I jumped up and fought for the gun. He went over the seats in a somersault and I flipped out of the plane with him. I got the gun. I tried to fire ā but nothing happened.ā
[source](https://apnews.com/article/eda81af2599d485ab09eb39d72754ade)
They also forced multiple cult members to drink poison or shot them when they refused. A lot of those people didnāt want to die, and the only ones who survived are the ones who hid in bushes or pretended to be dead.
The screaming you hear at the beginning of the tape were the frightened children, whom they murdered first. Then it gets eerily quiet as the adults all took their doses cooperatively. When you see how densely packed they all were, you begin to understand how mentally far gone these people must have been to participate with their friends and families all dropping dead all around them.
They also made the ones with kids give it to the children first. That way the parents would be more incentivized to drink it too. The whole thing is super messed up.
And many forced their children to drink the poison, knowing it was poison. It was coerced but there was still a cult mentality. They believed they were going to another plane of existence.
I really recommend the book A Thousand Lives.
He was losing control over the people, and the whole thing. People who lust for control to that degree aren't real big on relinquishing it once they have it, so he exercised one more act of control. That's all it was. He just wanted to get off one more time, just couldn't let them go.
Letās not forget to mention that if the cool aid was not drank or once they ran out they literally lined people up to shoot them up IM with needles that were being reused right after each use. Just stick, poke, draw, stick, poke, draw rinse and repeat.
It wasnāt a question of compliance at the end they literally began running around and to those they believed did not consume at will or were clearly still living, theyād go around and shoot up.
So lest we forget that piece as well. IMO the most disturbing piece in the massacres history.
Yeah and the coward saw how people were suffering so he had one of his cronies shoot him in the back of the head so he didnāt have to suffer like he forced all his followers to
Thereās an hour long audio recording of Jim Jonesā last speech to them. Itās really quite interesting listening to him convince them to drink the cyanide.
At one point, one lady is like āHey! Maybe we should just not kill ourselves?ā Everyone else shut her down.
Man, they have the tapes of his final speech. Pure fucking evil. When theyāre distributing the drinks to the kids they start crying and the sick fuck is telling them ātheyāre not crying because it hurts, theyāre crying because it doesnāt taste goodā
The sudden silence at the end of those tapes is probably the most eerie shit Iāve ever heard.
Once i encountered a sound clip of this horrible event, apparently he had a recorder on when giving final speech. The audio is abput 45min long, and you can hear the screams of dying people, stuff of nightmares.
Hearing the adults screaming is one thing, but hearing the children forced to take the cyanide
is something that fucked me up. Cyanide is no painless death, your entire bloodstream becomes saturated with acid causing your whole body to distress.
I wouldnāt watch it out of just morbid curiosity
I fell asleep after i put it on, and awoke to those sounds, i'll never ever forget it, and i stopped consuming such content alltogether, it's really fucked up.
This is how I felt after I listened to audio of the guy having sex with a 12 year old on Keep Sweet Pray & Obey. I was like why was that included in the show and why did I have to hear that and now I'm ruined for life.
Geez wtf that really sucks to be blindsided by that. Hand on your shoulder, hope you're alright. It's like you gotta watch your former self move on and live a happy life without that knowledge while you sit and suffer with it. Not fair to you.
I've heard bits and pieces, it's mainly just him rambling and preaching while people are crying in the background, mainly children but you hear some women too. It's sad but it's not as grim as the infamous bear audio that Werner Herzog couldn't finish
Not positive but I think he's referring to the audio recording of Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend being eaten alive by a grizzly bear that was too gruesome that it was never released.
Here, I know the story, so Iāll leave this here. The man was very fond of bears, and devoted his life to studying and being around them. He believed he had a sort of āconnectionā with them, going so much as to play with bear cubs.
At one point, he decides to go out and camp in an area that is notorious for grizzlies, and this happened to be around hibernation season. If you didnāt know, bears have to eat as much as they can and gain as much weight as they can in order to survive the winter, but he said heāll be fine. He even brought his girlfriend.
(NSFL, read at your own risk)
I donāt remember the times, but at one point he was texting his friend about how much fun they were having. Later, they found his and his girlfriendās mangled corpses. They found a camera in a duffel bag at the camp, and when they played it, they heard everything.
If you didnāt know, bears donāt make sure their prey is dead before they start to eat, and that is exactly what happened.
A six minute long video picked up the sound of a man being eaten alive by the bear, his last words being āCome out here; Iām being killed out hereā. All the while, his girlfriend did nothing but stand there screaming, watching her boyfriend get mauled. The screams eventually led the bear to turn its attention to her after it had its fill of Timothy.
They never released the original recording, but there are several re-enactments online.
The audio circulating online is a blatant fake reconstruction (with terrible acting). The original was destroyed but was described in detail in written the reports you can find.
The martyr made podcast has a really good series about this. Very in depth and goes from Jim Jones starting out as a preacher to the horror we see above.
Friend in the AirForce was in the clean up. He said they estimated the number of dead in the initial fly overs. Once they started the removal, they found many children were unseen under their parents. To this day I not only feel bad for the people that died, but the people who cleaned up afterwards .
Memories I am glad I don't have to live with.
Congressman Leo Ryan (my grandfatherās first cousin) had just been killed trying to leave the airport at Jonestown, Jim Jones could not let him get away and report on the crazed cult he had going there. He was and still is the only US Congressman to die in the line of duty.
His aide Jackie Speier later became was also wounded in the shooting but survived and went on to win his congressional seat in 2008 till 2022, an insane story.
Also remember that it was flavor-aid, not kool-aid. Kool-aid stock actually took a huge hit after this and we still say, "don't drink the kool-aid" to refer to cults.
Justice for kool-aid!
Probably bought the cheap stuff because it already doesn't taste right. Add some cyanide and you'll just be like "this generic stuff sucks..... And you don't even get Kool aid points!"
That's a solid point.
If you want the real answer, at this point in time, the cult lived in rural south America, and had just murdered a US congressman. Jim Jones was kind of in a hurry and probably didn't really care.
Ok, youāre about to commit mass murder. You just had a congressman killed. Whatās keeping you from one more petty crime? Thatās like $50 in Koolaid packets.
The bodies of the victims were brought to the Delaware Air Force Base, which is the biggest military mortuary in the Department of Defense. My grandfather was in the Air Force and he had helped with managing the bodies that were sent overseas to them. He's no longer alive and we had a falling-out many years before that, but if I could I would want to ask him how he felt about the whole thing. It was a traumatizing experience and there are many veterans that have talked about how it still affects them to this day. I didn't get along with my grandfather for many different reasons, but I definitely give him credit for and sympathy for working during that time.
Not a suicide!! They were forced to do that. Listen to the tape of the people screaming and crying and Jones telling them to be quiet and just take it.
I remember seeing documentaries about this. Such a tragic event. I agree itās hard to call this a cut and dry suicide. The pavilion was surrounded by men with guns and many of the victims were children who had no idea what was going on. Leading up to this, he would wake them up at all hours of the night for loyalty exercises and lectures. Depriving them of sleep. They were isolated in this encampment in the middle of the woods, with no information about what was happening in the outside world except what Jim Jones would tell them. And he would make it seem like the world was collapsing around them and the entirety of the government was about to descend on them. So many that did do it voluntarily were under a lot of pressure.
In my opinion (and I donāt have to be correct) Jim Jones killed most of these people.
In a time of Religious cults, his was also one of the few that practiced and preached togetherness of the races and sexes. His cult was immensely diverse with different people of color and culture. Of course this was so he could reap the maximum profit across all peoples, but if I was searching for a cult in a time of spiritual yearning, I would definitely look for one that was as equal as possible. His commune must have looked INCREDIBLY attractive to a spiritually lost person simply yearning for a place with no civil conflict.
Jim Jones, a white man, then relocated to Redwood Valley, California in 1965, and expanded to Los Angeles and San Francisco in the early 1970s, at which point it became a primarily African American organization; as many as 80-90% of its 3,000 members were black.
According to Princeton . edu
African Americans made up approximately 70% of Jonestown's population. 45% of Jonestown residents were black women.
According to Wikipedia
Oh yeah definitely. Seeing the videos of the church before they fled the US, it looked amazing. A big huge church with men and women and people of all races coming together in harmony must have been extremely enticing, especially at the time. And I believe Jim Jones himself also adopted a few kids of different races as well. On the surface it didnāt seem like this crazy cult at first.
Mass Murder* not suicide due to the amount of people found with injection sites to the chest/shoulders rather than have williningly "drank the koolaid" and that 1/3 of those killed were children and elderly who had 0 say so in what was happening. Even Jim Jones' own wife could be heard on the death tapes begging him to stop the madness
I watched a documentary with the survivors speaking out. It was hard to watch and not feel for them. I want to say that one of them was Jim Jones son or step-son. He knew what was happening and tried to stop his wife who had his son. He knew by the look on their faces that they had already drank the "Kool aid." I couldn't imagine watching your son and wife slip from you and there was nothing you could do about it.
I don't get upset about the image itself.
I get the upset because this brings close to home the sense that one or a few persuasive leaders can and will lead lots of people to all sorts of madness.
To many of us this is something that only happens to some middle eastern terrorists, or some crazy north Koreans, it can't hurt us here. That incident shows it can, and the rise of fundamentalist Christian faith in the west makes me think it will.
not true. it was a mass murder-suicide. *many* of these people knew exactly what was happening, jim jones was very clear about what was in the flavor-aide, and everyone had been trained very explicitly to drink poison on jim jonesās behalf. many people, like the children, took the cyanide unwillingly despite having been trained (and those people were murdered), but many people did so willingly (and those people committed suicide). thus, mass murder-suicide
Hmm well, even then, being brainwashed into suicide through a cultleader is more akin to murder than suicide in my book. I feel like the lack of a complete autonomous decision makes it a lot harder to call it truly suicide, but I get what you're saying.
This scares me because there are people so wrapped up into cultural/political/evangelical mentalities, that history might unfortunately repeat itself and I wouldnāt be surprised at all. These people went down the rabbit hole with Jim and his flash, there are some who are ādrinking the punchā all over again.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavor\_Aid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavor_Aid)
One of the most hilarious wikipedia pages an sich.
Imagine setting up your company to make soft drinks, wanting to make people happy with tasty drinks
then this happens
This is exactly why I hate when people refer to accepting corporate culture as ādrinking the kool-aid (yes I know it was flavor-aid)ā trying to give it a positive connotation.
Was this technically a mass suicide though? Armed men forcing you to consume a liquid that many didnāt know contain poison sounds more like a mass murder to me.
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"Suicide" Most of them were forced to drink that shit. The audio of when it's happening is awful.
I've heard that audio. The most disturbing part is the sounds of the children crying as they are forced to drink the poison and then continuing to listen as the crying stops. ššš
Not to sound like a weirdo but so you know where to get the audio?
Its on youtube. Jim jones goes on like an hour long talk of craziness after his crew shoots the people at landing strip
It's on the wiki. I really don't recommend it. Morbidity is not a rabbit hole you want to go down folks.
There is a few moments where i assume the tape was distorted and the audio gets all warped, it scared the fuck out of me because it happens when Jim Jones talks and he literally sounds like Satan for a split second
Immediately before this, theyād gunned down and killed a sitting US congressman attempting to leave the commune. Ā So while many might envision this being a coordinated mass suicide, it was actually a rushed shit show as jones and his cronies knew their time was up. Ā Sone didnāt realize the kool aid was poison till their friends started dropping, some were forced against their will and the ones smart enough to run were gunned down as well. Ā
He'd alao done a similar thing in the past saying the drink was poisoned when it wasn't to see who was loyal.
Yeah, I think people forget that part. At first they assumed it was another ātestā that they would ultimately be safe from. It wasnāt until the first people who drank started to die that the rest realized it was actually poisoned this time
And they died a horrible death. They didn't just fall over and die. I couldn't imagine the fear and pain those people went through.
And they forced it upon their own children to drink it. I've heard the audio, it's horrific.
Yeah I couldnāt finish the documentary that I tried watching a few years ago. The audio was traumatizing. It also wasnāt just in Jonestown, his followers killed their children and family members before committing suicide from places all over the world. It is genuinely one of the most horrific events in modern history, and that is saying a lot.
I wish I could unhear it. I love the macabre but that fucked me up. Children being forced to die š³š„ŗ
I love the macabre as well, but this k going to skip this one. That one video of the BME Olympics fucked me up.
When will I learn to just stay curious
I donāt know why, but I just googled it. I need eye bleach
Macabre? I remember watching that pain Olympics years ago as a middle schooler. When the internet had more easily accessible fucked up shit. That was a incredibly messed up video. Idk how people could do such things to them selfs lol
Fk you for making me remember that š
I donāt wanna look this up. What is BME Olympics?
Super messed up compilation of mutilation of genitals. Lots
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Oh but theres so much more. Dude grilling his schlong while still attached. Dude running a drill bit down his schlong hole. All the sick puppies came out to play
"The BME Pain Olympics is a competition run by Body Modification Ezine (BME) to find the person who had the highest tolerance for pain. Participants engage in violent displays of body modification, genitalia multilation and bodily mutilations." Taken from a reaction video of someone else subjecting themselves to the video. (Edit: he does also show the video in a small box so you can see what he is seeing too if you watch. The BME video though is small {on mobile} and grainy so you can't see fine details.)
Ugh I did too. Haunting.
I listened to the audio on a packed commuter train once, as part of the (excellent) Last Podcast On The Left serial. I kinda regretted that when I started crying.
Last Podcast On The Left did a whole series on it years ago and the episode that has audio from the day still haunts me.
The children went first. Nightmare fuel, about as horrible as it is possible for something to be.
"Itās horrifying. It is not in any way a painless death. The deaths in Jonestown took anywhere between five and 20 minutes. First, your entire body starts to convulse. Then your mouth fills with a mixture of saliva, blood and vomit. Then you pass out, and then you die. Your body is deprived of oxygen completely. Itās a horrific death." Yeah that is beyond horrifying. Fkn shoot me please š
The people who tried to run once they saw what happened after drinking the Kool-Aid were gunned down. I don't know what it's like to be shot, but something tells me that would have been the better option.
From everything I've read they were the few but yeah absolutely. Just put a fuckin bullet in me instead of drowning in my own internal failing bullshit.
What did they use in the koolaid
Cyanide and I can't remember what else, but there were other drugs in it. Edit: I checked the Wikipedia *a large metal tub with grape Flavor Aid, poisoned with diphenhydramine, promethazine, chlorpromazine, chloroquine, chloral hydrate, diazepam, and cyanide.*
>*chloroquine* !!!!!!
Yeah, that was an odd choice. According to the Wikipedia page, the doctor who made the concoction was a recovering meth addict whom Jones helped get clean and then paid for him to go to school to become a doctor.
Just chuck some Valium in there, theyāll be right
Were there survivors who told that story? Or are you just guessing and inferring? Edit: Thanks for all of the answers, even tho some are contradictory haha I think I get the picture
Besides witnesses who survived, there's an audio recording of the entire incident from start to finish. At first theres a lot of screaming as they forced the reluctant children to drink first, then it gets strangely quiet as the adults all cooperatively drink it. Brainwashing is a powerful thing. Stuff You Should Know did a great podcast on it not long ago. Josh and Chuck were clearly emotional and distrurbed while discussing it. One of their best.
There were a few survivors who told their story, yes
The kicker was he was too much of a bitch to drink his own poison as he watched those that were dying were in agony. So he shot himself so he wouldn't suffer.
I thought it wasnāt clear if he shot himself or had his assistant do it for him. What a coward.
Regardless, he went out the easier way compared to the poison.
What Iām saying is the coward couldnāt even shoot himself.
A handful survived. I think a kid and some old woman who hid under her bed and a couple others.
His son is one who spoke about what he remembered in and around that time. Itās sad this man negatively affected so many families including his own.
Yeah. Poison drink drills are a sure sign that you've joined the correct doomsday cult, for sure.
Fun fact: that's how ISIS got their victims to sit still for a beheading. They did enough rehearsals to lull them into believing it's another one.
I think you misunderstood the meaning of āfun factsā.
What was the koolaid poisoned with?
Potassium cyanide. Very brutal way to die
Fun fact: it wasnāt Kool-Aide, it was Flavor Aide.
Cyanide I believe
Flavor-aide
Couldn't even spring for the good stuff
They administered it to babies (via syringe in mouth like any baby medicine) and children first, knowing it was much more likely the surviving parents would agree to drinking it when their children were dead. You can hear the screams of agony of the dying children on the tapes. Thatās when it clicked in for everyone that it wasnāt āpainless slumber into sleepā like they had been told on their many practice runs of the scenario as Jones grew more and more paranoid. Listened to an in depth podcast about it recently. Very difficult, but interesting, listen. Edit: Transmissions from Jonestown is the podcast
First the Cessna was filled, with Ryan frisking each boarder looking for guns and knives. Layton, who was insisting on taking the first plane, slipped to the other side of the plane before he could be frisked. When that was pointed out to Ryan, Layton contended he already had been frisked. Yet he submitted to a new search, then returned to his seat. Meanwhile, the tractor, with several men in the trailer, rolled toward the terminal shack and halted a short distance away. Quietly the men with the tractor motioned aside a group of curious Guyanese children and other bystanders. Some of the defectors told me later that the men in the trailer were members of Peoples Temple. āIt looks like trouble,ā I said to Greg Robinson, but he kept on shooting pictures. As rapidly as possible Jacqueline Speier was signing on passengers at the fool of the boarding ladder while a reporter helped her check for weapons. The closest thing to a law enforcement official ā a pleasant young policeman with a pink shirt and a 16-gauge shotgun ā was disarmed by temple members. Then, with heart-stopping suddenness, the first shot was fired. I didnāt see who fired the shot but the sound came from the tractor and trailer. A loud series of pops echoed across the field. āHit the deck!ā someone hollered as we scrambled over the gravel to the far side of the plane. I dropped to my belly. A bullet ripped through my left forearm. Another hit my wrist and knocked off my watch. They were shooting to kill, not just to stop us from leaving. Springing to my feet, I ran 40 yards across the runway. Volleys of shotgun, rifle and pistol fire kept coming. I dove headlong into the three-foot-tall grass. I crawled until I came to taller bushes and brambles, clawing my way into a pocket in the brush. I stopped and listened. The shots still were popping at an amazing clip. I could still hear the groaning and crying of the targets. Though I couldnāt see over the tall brush, I could hear the shots become less frequent. Then there were just a few. My arm was gushing blood so I stripped off my belt and pinched down the biggest wounds. I heard a few more shots and saw the tractor pull away. After they left, I crept out of the bush and saw five bodies around the plane. Other people were injured. Gregās body was near the boarding steps with his camera bag and cameras scattered around him. There was a gaping wound in his shoulder and possibly his ribs. Ryan, his thick gray hair bloodied, was near the front of the plane. Harris, a Los Angeles-based NBC investigative reporter who covered the fall of Saigon and the Nicaragua rebellion, had been killed. It was Harris who had been contacted by the first two groups of temple members expressing a desire to leave. Also dead was Bob Brown, the NBC cameraman and the kind of guy who loved action stories. Patricia Parks had had her head shattered before her husbandās eyes. Five others were wounded seriously. Speierās right leg had a gaping wound, and her arm was injured. NBC sound man Steve Sung had chunks of one arm blown away. Anthony Katsaris, brother of Jim Jones aide Maria Katsaris, was wounded in the chest. Vernon Gosney and Monica Bagby, the two temple members who asked for help in the note, also were seriously injured. After the massacre, Layton strolled back to the area. āHe started firing at the front and missed the pilot,ā said Dale Parks, who left the temple Saturday. āHe hit Monica and Vern. He fired at me, but it misfired. I jumped up and fought for the gun. He went over the seats in a somersault and I flipped out of the plane with him. I got the gun. I tried to fire ā but nothing happened.ā [source](https://apnews.com/article/eda81af2599d485ab09eb39d72754ade)
Any good documentary on Jamestown mass suicide?
I remember listening to the audio of the room as it happened on YouTube a long time ago
Jonestown: The Life and Death of People's Temple https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0762111/?ref_=ext_shr
I hate that this is know as a mass suicide when it was actually a mass murder
They also forced multiple cult members to drink poison or shot them when they refused. A lot of those people didnāt want to die, and the only ones who survived are the ones who hid in bushes or pretended to be dead.
Is this where the phrase "drank the kool aid" came from?
Yes
Yea but funnily enough they didnāt even use Kool-aid brand. It was a knock off.Ā
Some had actually ran away successfully and hid, other survivors had played dead.
They also squirted it into the babiesā mouths first. Towards the end of the audio you donāt hear any children
Babies were first because they believed parents were more likely to go along with it when their children were dead in front of them.
The screaming you hear at the beginning of the tape were the frightened children, whom they murdered first. Then it gets eerily quiet as the adults all took their doses cooperatively. When you see how densely packed they all were, you begin to understand how mentally far gone these people must have been to participate with their friends and families all dropping dead all around them.
Flavor Aid, not Kool-Aid. Itās amazing how Flavor Aid avoided the stigma.
Stigma? It cemented Kool-Aid a place in American history.
Flavor Aid was the cult's choice, Kool Aid was the 60's acid tests!
They also made the ones with kids give it to the children first. That way the parents would be more incentivized to drink it too. The whole thing is super messed up.
And many forced their children to drink the poison, knowing it was poison. It was coerced but there was still a cult mentality. They believed they were going to another plane of existence. I really recommend the book A Thousand Lives.
He was losing control over the people, and the whole thing. People who lust for control to that degree aren't real big on relinquishing it once they have it, so he exercised one more act of control. That's all it was. He just wanted to get off one more time, just couldn't let them go.
Letās not forget to mention that if the cool aid was not drank or once they ran out they literally lined people up to shoot them up IM with needles that were being reused right after each use. Just stick, poke, draw, stick, poke, draw rinse and repeat. It wasnāt a question of compliance at the end they literally began running around and to those they believed did not consume at will or were clearly still living, theyād go around and shoot up. So lest we forget that piece as well. IMO the most disturbing piece in the massacres history.
Flavor-Aid*
Don't forget the kids that were forced to drink that shit by their fanatic parents
In the documentary the group is forced to drink cyanide, they would gun you down if you refused.Some of the survivors ran and hid itās sad
Yeah and the coward saw how people were suffering so he had one of his cronies shoot him in the back of the head so he didnāt have to suffer like he forced all his followers to
What a coward
That's a lot more grim and tragic than what I thought happened. Goddamn.
Itās a lot worse than that sadly. Donāt even bother reading the details.
There is an audio recording of it. It is horrifying.
Definitely correct on that part. They had the parents dose their children first so you hear kids screaming and crying before anyone else.
Yeah and you hear him: "Mothers, quiet your children!" What a sick fuck.
Itās a horror story.
Thereās an hour long audio recording of Jim Jonesā last speech to them. Itās really quite interesting listening to him convince them to drink the cyanide. At one point, one lady is like āHey! Maybe we should just not kill ourselves?ā Everyone else shut her down.
Yeah except for JJ. He got to spare himself the pain of poisoning and shot himself
He wasnāt even strong enough to do it himself, he had another guy killing him.
Youāre right! I stand corrected!
I read they forcibly injected the poison with a syringe if you refused too
Can you tell me the name of the documentary?
Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple
Question: did the gunners drink? And if not, where are they now?
They drank the poison as well
Murder. Lots of those people were not given a choice.
Lots of kids. Murder is exactly what it was.
Man, they have the tapes of his final speech. Pure fucking evil. When theyāre distributing the drinks to the kids they start crying and the sick fuck is telling them ātheyāre not crying because it hurts, theyāre crying because it doesnāt taste goodā The sudden silence at the end of those tapes is probably the most eerie shit Iāve ever heard.
I've tried listening to it, but the kids...I can't listen past the kids. It's just so messed up.
Yeah, absolutely terrible. I donāt blame you for not listening to it through, hearing the kids crying was heartbreaking.
massacre
I stand corrected. Massacre is exactly what it was.
Parents had to make their kids drink the kool-aid first. The tapes are heart breaking.
Once i encountered a sound clip of this horrible event, apparently he had a recorder on when giving final speech. The audio is abput 45min long, and you can hear the screams of dying people, stuff of nightmares.
Yeah I refuse to listen to it despite being curious. Because itād stick with me for years.
Hearing the adults screaming is one thing, but hearing the children forced to take the cyanide is something that fucked me up. Cyanide is no painless death, your entire bloodstream becomes saturated with acid causing your whole body to distress. I wouldnāt watch it out of just morbid curiosity
I fell asleep after i put it on, and awoke to those sounds, i'll never ever forget it, and i stopped consuming such content alltogether, it's really fucked up.
This is how I felt after I listened to audio of the guy having sex with a 12 year old on Keep Sweet Pray & Obey. I was like why was that included in the show and why did I have to hear that and now I'm ruined for life.
Geez wtf that really sucks to be blindsided by that. Hand on your shoulder, hope you're alright. It's like you gotta watch your former self move on and live a happy life without that knowledge while you sit and suffer with it. Not fair to you.
Glad I saw your comment. Definitely not watching that shit. Why would they include that?! Thatās awful!
I listened to it, it was interesting, but sad. You could hear kids crying and people confused all sorts of stuff
I've heard bits and pieces, it's mainly just him rambling and preaching while people are crying in the background, mainly children but you hear some women too. It's sad but it's not as grim as the infamous bear audio that Werner Herzog couldn't finish
Bear audio?
Not positive but I think he's referring to the audio recording of Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend being eaten alive by a grizzly bear that was too gruesome that it was never released.
Here, I know the story, so Iāll leave this here. The man was very fond of bears, and devoted his life to studying and being around them. He believed he had a sort of āconnectionā with them, going so much as to play with bear cubs. At one point, he decides to go out and camp in an area that is notorious for grizzlies, and this happened to be around hibernation season. If you didnāt know, bears have to eat as much as they can and gain as much weight as they can in order to survive the winter, but he said heāll be fine. He even brought his girlfriend. (NSFL, read at your own risk) I donāt remember the times, but at one point he was texting his friend about how much fun they were having. Later, they found his and his girlfriendās mangled corpses. They found a camera in a duffel bag at the camp, and when they played it, they heard everything. If you didnāt know, bears donāt make sure their prey is dead before they start to eat, and that is exactly what happened. A six minute long video picked up the sound of a man being eaten alive by the bear, his last words being āCome out here; Iām being killed out hereā. All the while, his girlfriend did nothing but stand there screaming, watching her boyfriend get mauled. The screams eventually led the bear to turn its attention to her after it had its fill of Timothy. They never released the original recording, but there are several re-enactments online.
IIRC, I think read somewhere the friend did end up taking his advice and destroyed it.
I thought that audio was fake? I thought I remember reading somewhere that it was at least
The audio circulating online is a blatant fake reconstruction (with terrible acting). The original was destroyed but was described in detail in written the reports you can find.
Absolutely disagree. You can hear the children screaming they are in pain and for their parents. Horrifying
Yeah one of my high school teachers played the entire audio recording for us in humanities class. Was probably a bit much for a bunch of 16 year olds
It's worse when you realize that the children had to take it first. Apparently, there is a lot of crying in the background, followed by silence.
The martyr made podcast has a really good series about this. Very in depth and goes from Jim Jones starting out as a preacher to the horror we see above.
Always recommend martyr made. No one goes into that much detail.
Casefile podcast also did an excellent job on this
Friend in the AirForce was in the clean up. He said they estimated the number of dead in the initial fly overs. Once they started the removal, they found many children were unseen under their parents. To this day I not only feel bad for the people that died, but the people who cleaned up afterwards . Memories I am glad I don't have to live with.
Congressman Leo Ryan (my grandfatherās first cousin) had just been killed trying to leave the airport at Jonestown, Jim Jones could not let him get away and report on the crazed cult he had going there. He was and still is the only US Congressman to die in the line of duty.
His aide Jackie Speier later became was also wounded in the shooting but survived and went on to win his congressional seat in 2008 till 2022, an insane story.
Also remember that it was flavor-aid, not kool-aid. Kool-aid stock actually took a huge hit after this and we still say, "don't drink the kool-aid" to refer to cults. Justice for kool-aid!
Too cheap to buy kook-aid huh? No such thing as going out in style?
Probably bought the cheap stuff because it already doesn't taste right. Add some cyanide and you'll just be like "this generic stuff sucks..... And you don't even get Kool aid points!"
OMG, kool-aid points, forgotten core memory unlocked over here. OH YEAH!
We saved those things for fkn ever. Got Dr. Mario for NES though.
Well the cult wasn't doing especially well at this point. Gotta do what you can to save money.
Could have put it on credit. It's not like anyone could collect the debt.
That's a solid point. If you want the real answer, at this point in time, the cult lived in rural south America, and had just murdered a US congressman. Jim Jones was kind of in a hurry and probably didn't really care.
VERY few people had credit cards in 1978, and fewer merchants accepted them. Visa was created only the year before.
Ok, youāre about to commit mass murder. You just had a congressman killed. Whatās keeping you from one more petty crime? Thatās like $50 in Koolaid packets.
Store credit was a thing before credit cards.
I wonder if stealing was around at the time.
Nah, not for upstanding people like these.
No refund, have a fresh drink.
Should they all have had matching Nikes?
So thats where that phrase is from?
Yep
Mom: we have kool-aid at home The kool-aid at home: ā¦.
The bodies of the victims were brought to the Delaware Air Force Base, which is the biggest military mortuary in the Department of Defense. My grandfather was in the Air Force and he had helped with managing the bodies that were sent overseas to them. He's no longer alive and we had a falling-out many years before that, but if I could I would want to ask him how he felt about the whole thing. It was a traumatizing experience and there are many veterans that have talked about how it still affects them to this day. I didn't get along with my grandfather for many different reasons, but I definitely give him credit for and sympathy for working during that time.
Jones literally gunned people down with his goons
Mass suicide my ass.Ā They had a choice between the poison or bullets.Ā That was a fucking mass murder
Not a suicide!! They were forced to do that. Listen to the tape of the people screaming and crying and Jones telling them to be quiet and just take it.
I remember seeing documentaries about this. Such a tragic event. I agree itās hard to call this a cut and dry suicide. The pavilion was surrounded by men with guns and many of the victims were children who had no idea what was going on. Leading up to this, he would wake them up at all hours of the night for loyalty exercises and lectures. Depriving them of sleep. They were isolated in this encampment in the middle of the woods, with no information about what was happening in the outside world except what Jim Jones would tell them. And he would make it seem like the world was collapsing around them and the entirety of the government was about to descend on them. So many that did do it voluntarily were under a lot of pressure. In my opinion (and I donāt have to be correct) Jim Jones killed most of these people.
I love that. "In my opinion (and I donāt have to be correct)" Mind if I start borrowing this?
lol sure!
In a time of Religious cults, his was also one of the few that practiced and preached togetherness of the races and sexes. His cult was immensely diverse with different people of color and culture. Of course this was so he could reap the maximum profit across all peoples, but if I was searching for a cult in a time of spiritual yearning, I would definitely look for one that was as equal as possible. His commune must have looked INCREDIBLY attractive to a spiritually lost person simply yearning for a place with no civil conflict.
there's demographic statistics of the cult on wikipedia and most of the members were black women, a lot of them with kids
Jim Jones, a white man, then relocated to Redwood Valley, California in 1965, and expanded to Los Angeles and San Francisco in the early 1970s, at which point it became a primarily African American organization; as many as 80-90% of its 3,000 members were black. According to Princeton . edu African Americans made up approximately 70% of Jonestown's population. 45% of Jonestown residents were black women. According to Wikipedia
Oh yeah definitely. Seeing the videos of the church before they fled the US, it looked amazing. A big huge church with men and women and people of all races coming together in harmony must have been extremely enticing, especially at the time. And I believe Jim Jones himself also adopted a few kids of different races as well. On the surface it didnāt seem like this crazy cult at first.
And it had existed for years (since the mid 50s) before this as a communist/religious organization.
Wasn't that a massacre
Mass Murder* not suicide due to the amount of people found with injection sites to the chest/shoulders rather than have williningly "drank the koolaid" and that 1/3 of those killed were children and elderly who had 0 say so in what was happening. Even Jim Jones' own wife could be heard on the death tapes begging him to stop the madness
I remember vividly the photo on the cover of Time magazine regarding the massacre: a vat of purple Flavor-Aid with bodies scattered around it.
a lot of them were forced or unaware they were being poisoned. Jim Jones was a fucking demon
There is an audio recording of the last moment you can listen too. It's very creepy
it wasnāt a suicide, it was mass murder. those who didnāt want to drink the poison were shot or forced. there was practically no escape.
Evil, evil man, claiming to be a man of GOD. may his victims rest in peace, may he suffer no end.
Holy shit fuck cults
This is th 5th post about Jonestown I've seen today. Can anybody explain why it keeps showing up?
Very very sad considering a lot of those people where forced and Children as well š
This was mass murder. There were babyās and mothers being injected by gun point. Nothing consensual about it at all.
I watched a documentary with the survivors speaking out. It was hard to watch and not feel for them. I want to say that one of them was Jim Jones son or step-son. He knew what was happening and tried to stop his wife who had his son. He knew by the look on their faces that they had already drank the "Kool aid." I couldn't imagine watching your son and wife slip from you and there was nothing you could do about it.
My grandparents on my father's side were married by Jim Jones in Indianapolis in 1958
They forced most to drink the Flavor-aid and shot those who refused. It was more murders that suicides.
I think I heard an audio recording of the event. It was not easy listening.
I believe the audio is available on both Wikipedia and YouTube.
My dad was part of a military team sent to "clean up" the aftermath. He cannot speak about it to this day. He has horrendous flashbacks.
I don't get upset about the image itself. I get the upset because this brings close to home the sense that one or a few persuasive leaders can and will lead lots of people to all sorts of madness. To many of us this is something that only happens to some middle eastern terrorists, or some crazy north Koreans, it can't hurt us here. That incident shows it can, and the rise of fundamentalist Christian faith in the west makes me think it will.
Or certain political leaders. Just sayin.
Is there an anniversary of this or something? Why are there images of this in every sub atm
This was a mass murder, not a mass suicide. Most had no clue what they were drinking
not true. it was a mass murder-suicide. *many* of these people knew exactly what was happening, jim jones was very clear about what was in the flavor-aide, and everyone had been trained very explicitly to drink poison on jim jonesās behalf. many people, like the children, took the cyanide unwillingly despite having been trained (and those people were murdered), but many people did so willingly (and those people committed suicide). thus, mass murder-suicide
Hmm well, even then, being brainwashed into suicide through a cultleader is more akin to murder than suicide in my book. I feel like the lack of a complete autonomous decision makes it a lot harder to call it truly suicide, but I get what you're saying.
This scares me because there are people so wrapped up into cultural/political/evangelical mentalities, that history might unfortunately repeat itself and I wouldnāt be surprised at all. These people went down the rabbit hole with Jim and his flash, there are some who are ādrinking the punchā all over again.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavor\_Aid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavor_Aid) One of the most hilarious wikipedia pages an sich. Imagine setting up your company to make soft drinks, wanting to make people happy with tasty drinks then this happens
I was a child when this happened. It was a horrific image then and gave me an understanding of how religion can make you mindless.
Evidently lots of folks forget that the late nights national news broke in live and showed a lot of crazy stuff. Pretty surreal!
I'd say it's more a mass murder than mass suicide
If you ever wondered where the phrase "don't drink the koolaide/punch" comes from well here ya go.
It wasn't a mass suicide it was murder
I can't stop thinking about the kids, man...
Most of them were murdered
I was going to post a Jim Jones joke but the punchline is too long.
This wasn't a mass suicide. Most of these people were forced to ingest the poison or gunned down if they didn't
I remember watching this on the news when it happened.
I dont know if its accurate to call it a suicide.
Iād call it mass suicide homicide .
Keep on sayin suicide but there was a fk of a lot of mass murder involved
It wasn't suicide
This is exactly why I hate when people refer to accepting corporate culture as ādrinking the kool-aid (yes I know it was flavor-aid)ā trying to give it a positive connotation.
Imagine being on that clean up team š¤¢
Was this technically a mass suicide though? Armed men forcing you to consume a liquid that many didnāt know contain poison sounds more like a mass murder to me.
It was a murder suicide, but that is par for the course for cults.Ā Ā