Case file · High strangeness
The Waldport 'disappearance'
In September 1975 Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles, 'the Two', spoke at a motel in Waldport, Oregon; about twenty listeners left with them, and the news reported a mass vanishing.
1975 CE · 44.43, -124.07 · status: explained
The account
The pair promised a ride on a spacecraft to the 'next level' to those who gave up everything. Newspapers and TV across the country covered the 'missing' people. They had in fact joined the wandering group that later became Heaven's Gate, whose members died in a mass suicide near San Diego in 1997.
The sceptical view
Nobody vanished in any strange sense: the people left of their own accord, and many later returned home.