Wearing long hair and backpacks, the Garbage Eaters wander the West Coast, rummaging in Dumpsters for supper and spiritual salvation.
Painstakingly they remove all traces of mold before dining on the rotting scraps of the material world they disdain. They blame their stomachaches on Satan.Heaven's Gate did far more than introduce the world to 39 believers who blissfully shed their "earthly containers" to board a spaceship to a beautiful world.
It also cracked open a window on thousands of alternative beliefs and lifestyles around the country, including the garbage-eating Brotherhood, led by Jim Roberts, an ex-Marine and former preacher the group believes is Jesus.
For every such group waiting for a good spaceship, there are others living under a cloud of doom.
From a self-proclaimed shaman called Thunderhorse who roams the Southwest with a few disciples to followers of Rael, a 51-year-old former race car driver from France who believes humans were created in laboratories by aliens, they spread their messages and seek converts.
"It's not a question of what's out there but what isn't out there," says Janja Lalich of Alameda, Calif., a 52-year-old cult expert who "escaped" from a San Francisco-based Marxist commune in the 1970s.
"There are preachers and prophets, shamans and warriors, diet cults and martial arts cults, Bible cults, UFO cults, psychotherapy-based cults and groups that mix them all."
Some are rooted in Christianity, others in Eastern religions. Many seek solace in spirits and the stars.
In a small town outside San Diego, 76-year-old Charles Spiegel eagerly awaits the 1,000 aliens who will descend from "Myton" around the year 2001. They will land in 33 spaceships on the mythical lost continent of Atlantis, which will emerge from the depths of the Caribbean. They will "lift the fog," Spiegel says. They will cure cancer.
"They will look like humans, but there will be an aura that shines through them and we will feel it," says Spiegel, a retired psychology professor who believes he was Cardinal Richelieu in a past life. In his current incarnation, he heads a center called the Unarius Academy of Science, which was founded by a California couple 43 years ago.
Spiegel is upset at all the media attention he is receiving because of Heaven's Gate. The aliens he is in contact with offer nothing but joy, he says. Suicide isn't part of their deal.
He shrugs off the skeptics who note that the Unarius spaceships failed to show up for their last appointment with Earth in 1976.
"We will have the last laugh," Spiegel says. "We just speak the truth and let the truth take care of itself."
Other groups are preaching other brands of truth.
- In Yelm, Wash., a woman called J.Z. Knight has built a highly profitable spiritual empire based on her ability to "channel" Ramtha, a 35,000-year-old warrior from Atlantis.
- In Chicago, a lesser-known channeler called Dorothy Martin developed a following based on messages from the spaceship commander Sananda. Martin changed her name several times and eventually moved to Arizona, where she died. But believers still wait for Sananda to swoop down in his spaceship and save them.
- And in Chanhassen, Minn., worshipers flock to a pyramid-shaped marble temple on a wildflower prairie to chant their love song "Hu" to God.
"Hu is woven into the language of life," says Temple of Eck literature. "It is the wind in the leaves, falling rain, thunder of jets, singing of birds, the awful rumble of a tornado."
Eckankar preaches that, through light and sound, you can touch the heart of God.
Like other groups, its message - though more poetic than some - is a blend of different philosophies and practices. Like others, it has evolved since it started in California 30 years ago.
In fact, many fringe belief groups are constantly refashioning themselves, changing names and locations as their leaders move on.
There still are Branch Davidians practicing quietly in Texas. Disciples of the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, whose free-love movement was run out of Oregon in the 1980s, still run meditation centers around the country under the name Osho.
And on a spectacular 28,000-acre compound in Paradise Valley, Mont., just north of Yellowstone National Park, members of the Church Universal and Triumphant still are waiting patiently for Armageddon.
Led by Elizabeth Clare Prophet, who dictates messages from Ascended Masters, they are convinced they will be saved when the end arrives.
While her disciples prepare to hunker down in elaborate underground bunkers, nomads like The Christ Family are doggedly traipsing the country in a more private pursuit of redemption.
The ragged band of members, who wear long white robes and adopt the surname Christ, keep guardedly to themselves as they smoke "God's tranquilizer" - marijuana - and beg for food. They shun sex, leather and underwear and follow a leader known as Jesus Christ Lightening Amen.
The locals in the tiny town of Waverly, Iowa, still talk about the night the "family" roared through in a camouflage van. More recently, some were spotted in Santa Barbara, Calif., walking in single file along the beach.
The women walked a few carefully measured steps behind the men.