OTTAWA, May 7: Following the screening of a documentary by a French-language television on March 22, flames shot through a two-storeyed house in St Casimir, 80 km west of Quebec city.

Inside the charred home, police found ceremonial paraphernalia, including white, red and gold robes and an engraved sword, not to mention five bodies, which brought to 74 the number of lives claimed by the notorious order of the solar temple and the cult's horrific hold on its followers.

The cult jumped to international notoriety after mass suicide-murders in Morin Heights, Quebec and Switzerland in 1994 claimed the lives of 53 people, including the cult's leader Luc Jouret, a Belgian homoeopath and Joseph di Mambro, a Canadian.

Some other well-known people who fell victim to the fraudulent beliefs inculcated in them included a former mayor of Richelieu, Quebec, a Quebec city journalist and a hydro-Quebec vice-president.

A year later, 16 more people died in a second suicide-murder in France. The victims believed that their `departures' would take them to the Sirius star. Some of the people who studied the cult believed that there were still a lot of people who were rather disappointed that they were not called to undertake the `voyage'.

In California, 21 women and 18 men, members of the Heaven's Gate, have become the latest victims of a growing trend among cult followers that group suicide leads to spiritual rewards.

Experts suggest that delusional preachers are no longer the only hazard lying in ambush to recruit the naive and gullible. The internet has become so godlike to the on line impressionable that they become easy victims to cult recruiters.

While there are innumerable examples of these queer cults and communes on the west coast of America, there is the garbage-eater members, who wearing long hair and backpacks, rummage through the dumpsters for supper and salvation.

Led by Jim Roberts, an ex-marine and former preacher the group believes in Jesus, its members painstakingly remove all traces of mould from the eatable garbage and dine on the rotting scraps of the material world they disdain.

Heaven's Gate member found dead

A former Heaven's Gate member was found dead and another unconscious in a hotel room in Encinitas, California, what appeared to be an attempt to imitate the cult's mass suicide. Sheriff's deputies found the body of Wayne Cooke of Las Vegas and an unconscious Chuck Humphrey of Denver after receiving a call from CBS reporter Lesley Stah.

Found near both men were purple shrouds similar to those on the bodies of 39 Heaven's Gate members discovered on March 26.

The two men also were wearing black running outfits and black nike shoes similar to the ones worn in the mass suicide.``They did have a note similar to the one that was found at Heaven's Gate, suggesting they were going to meet with their leader on the other side of the come.''' Crist said.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.