How to Tell a Better Cult Story

On Saturday, November 18th, 1978, Jim Jones stood on a raised platform beneath the tin-roofed pavilion of Jonestown, microphone in hand, and addressed the members of Peoples Temple. About 1,000 members had followed him from Indiana, to central California, and finally to the small country of Guyana in South America. They'd trusted and believed in Jones' socialist utopia and had sacrificed their time, possessions, money, and family in order to move to and build Jonestown, a socialist, agricultural commune. But that day, Jones told them that everything they'd fought for was ruined. The walls were closing in; there was no escape—a visiting congressional delegation, there to investigate reports of abuse, had left with defectors and then been gunned down on an airstrip six miles from the commune: Their utopia was ruined.