Posted on 07/12/2025 11:29:49 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Jonestown is seared into the American psyche as one the darkest tragedies of the modern era, where 918 people “drank the Kool Aid” and ended their lives under the command of cult leader Jim Jones.
Located in the remote Guyanese jungle, the site where the army first discovered the mass of dead bodies of People’s Temple members in 1978 is now opening as a somewhat morbid tourist attraction. It is designed to pay somber tribute in the manner of Auschwitz and the Killing Fields of Cambodia.
The curious can pay $750 to visit the clearing where Jones’ religious cult, mostly US citizens who had traveled with him to Guyana, unraveled in the most gruesome way imaginable.
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Once in the heavily hippie-fied Frisco, Jones began dabbling in illicit drugs and his sense of paranoia is said to have ratcheted up.
The People’s Temple was founded by Jim Jones, a Communist sympathizer, in Indianapolis, in 1955. He put on fake healings to generate income and promoted the idea that all races and ethnicities would be welcome.
In 1961, with the cold war top of mind for most American, Jones claimed to have a vision that Indianapolis would be decimated by nuclear attack. The People’s Temple relocated to California, with its main headquarters in San Francisco.
Jones began proclaiming, “I am come as God Socialist [sic].”
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Jones, who had a particularly magnetic personality, put up a convincing argument for belonging and in 1974, the People’s Temple rented more than 3,800 acres in Guyana, a tropical country which borders Venezuela.
Jones promised to create a “socialist paradise,” and reminded followers how he’d read that in the event of a nuclear war, South America was the safest place to be.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
More people died at the Colosseum than Jonestown and that’s a tourist attraction. The reality is you either turn it into a tourist attraction or let it get eaten by the jungle and forgotten. That’s how historical buildings are, keeping them costs money, not keeping them costs knowledge. Pick one.
Or, you can fly in, find a local, and pay him $20 to ride in the back of his pickup truck, to taxi your dopey ass out there.
Visiting death sites is now in vogue. How about Fauci’s office?
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