Episode 18 Where there's smoke

Jim Jones had a gift for recognizing and cultivating a person’s capacity for magical thinking or the belief that unrelated events are connected by invisible, supernatural threads. Those who followed Jim Jones surrendered their will, believing that, whatever Father was planning, he had the power and knowledge to guide them home. Temple members were systematically conditioned to accept the fake healings and miracles as a part of the tapestry their lives were woven into. With a wink and a smile Jim Jones reassured his flock that the chicanery was all a part of God’s plan.   

The paranormal healing ministry drew new members into the movement with Jim Jones’ promises of supernatural support for the cause. The divine gifts physically drained him, he could feel people’s sickness and pain as he healed them. He began using sleight of hand when removing cancers, this seemed to cause a chain reaction and trigger actual healings. It was the catalyst to build faith. As more helpers were recruited, secrets were traded amongst the inner circle like currency, making Jim Jones the richest man in Peoples Temple.

Welcome to the Sunday Service, a 3-part immersive experience exploring Jim Jones’ paranormal ministry and the mystery of the nine gifts of the holy spirit. Your first visit to Peoples Temple will involve a profound, life changing, spiritual experience of the paranormal variety. The blind shall see, the deaf shall hear and the dead shall rise again! Lose yourself in the mystique, as Jim Jones’ creates the illusion that leads to the Temple’s eventual demise.

Denise was three years old when her family first joined the Peoples Temple. Like so many early childhood memories, obscured by the lenses of time or augmented by repeated viewings of the family photo album, Denise’s early recollections of her time in the temple are vivid snapshots of experiences and emotions. She sacrificed her youth to Jim Jones and the cause. As she grew up, she learned that no show of loyalty was ever enough.

Music was often peoples first, and last impression of Peoples Temple. From the moment you walked into a temple service, the music created a certain atmosphere. The voices of the choir lifted the spirits of the congregants, electrifying the audience. In 1973 the temple recorded the gospel funk album “He’s Able”. The altruistic message of equality expressed on the album, the optimism and high energy of the singers juxtaposes what we know will be their eventual fate in Jonestown. Yet in that moment in 1973 now etched on vinyl, the temples future is not yet set, and the dreamers still believe, and you can hear it.  This is the story behind the making of “He’s Able”.

Jim Jones will be remembered  as the notorious cult leader who betrayed his followers trust and orchestrated their deaths. Join us as we examine the fabric of his ideals and beliefs stained by the blood of his flock in search of his true motives and spiritual beliefs.

Irrational fear opens the floodgates of our imaginations unleashing upon ourselves the monsters and demons we let live in our subconscious. In 1962 Jim Jones leaves his church in Indiana behind to travel to Belo Horizonte Brazil under the guise of missionary work. Join us as former members of Peoples Temple remember this mysterious chapter of Jim Jones' life. Did Jim Jones travel to Brazil as part of a clandestine government project? Was Jim Jones searching for a safe haven from nuclear fallout?  

I believe in Jim Jones. Many of you have seen the photograph. An elderly woman dressed in her Sunday best with a resolute, if not revolutionary sparkle in her eye. But what did Jim Jones believe? Jim Jones, the pied piper of lies, will forever be remembered as the self-proclaimed prophet who led his flock to the slaughter. Traditional Churches immediately distanced themselves from the Peoples Temple Christian church after the tragedy in Jonestown claiming that Jim Jones only used religion to introduce people to socialism. To assume that whatever the temple believed cannot be found in the Bible might seem reasonable, even comforting. Surely the foundation of a communist suicide cult could only grow outside of traditional religions and on foreign soil. But this assumption is wrong. Join us as we examine Jim Jones beliefs and his adventures with the Holy Ghost.

Welcome back. All this time I was searching for the truth, I ignored the psychedelic elephant in the room. Former members of the temple, the survivors, have as many questions about what happened in Jonestown as I do. I invite you to forget everything you think you know about Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple and let go of your outsiders perspective. Join me as I stop peering through the temples foggy windows and going through their trash, and cross the threshold to go inside. Was Jim Jones responsible for a series of deaths that occurred in California, years before the tragic mass murder suicide in Guyana? Three automobile accidents, spanning three decades, provide a backdrop for examining this question, and others, about the infamous cult leader and Peoples Temple members. 

41 years ago today the Jonestown massacre claimed the lives of 918 Americans. When the people of Jonestown died, their bodies remained where they fell for 4 days. Sprayed with pesticides and crowded into military body bags, the remains of Jonestown’s dead were shipped to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware for processing. In the end 593 people were identified leaving 320 bodies mostly those of children, unidentified.  As families arranged to recover their love ones, 409 bodies were left unclaimed. This is not a normal episode of the program but rather a memorial to those who died on November 18, 1978 deep in the jungles of Guyana.