Does anyone remember what this event was?

Question

I remember reading in my school library about 3 years ago about this real evil kind of magcian/hynotiser guy who did this thing about 10-50 years ago where he hypnotised thousands of people in a desert kind of place and told them all in their trance to kill themselves. I don't know if he's still alive but this is definately true becasue I read about it in a fact book about magic and hypnosis. I think the story is related to the word black. Maybe this happend in a Black Desert or his surname was black or I don't know. Does anyome remeber something like this happening? I think it happened in America or Eygyt or Saudi Arabia or something. Sorry this is a bit vague but it's all I can remember!

Answer 1

I don't remember off hand. I will think about it.

Answer 2

1978: Mass suicide leaves 900 dead
The bodies of 914 people, including 276 children, have been found in Guyana in South America.

Most of the dead - members of the People's Temple Christian Church - had consumed a soft drink laced with cyanide and sedatives.

However, the body of the People's Temple charismatic leader, Jim Jones, was said to have a bullet wound in the right temple, believed to be self-inflicted.

The deaths are being linked to the earlier killings of five people, including US Congressman Leo Ryan, on a nearby airstrip.

Mr Ryan had led a fact-finding mission to the church's jungle settlement - Jonestown - after allegations by relatives in the US of human rights abuses.

Last year Jim Jones and most of the 1,000 members of the People's Temple moved to Guyana from San Francisco after an investigation began into the church for tax evasion.

People who had left the organisation told the authorities of brutal beatings, murders and a mass suicide plan but were not believed.

In spite of the tax evasion allegations, Jim Jones was still widely respected for setting up a racially-mixed church which helped the disadvantaged.

Five dead at airport

Leo Ryan's delegation arrived in Jonestown on 14 November and spent three days interviewing residents.

They left hurriedly earlier on Saturday after an attempt on Mr Ryan's life, taking with them about 20 People's Temple members who wished to leave.

Delegation members told police as they were boarding planes at the airstrip a truckload of Jim Jones' guards arrived and began to shoot.

When the gunmen left five people were dead: Congressman Ryan, a reporter and cameraman from NBC, a newspaper photographer and one "defector" from the People's Temple.

A producer for NBC News, Bob Flick, survived the attack.

Mr Flick said: "Every time someone fell down wounded they would walk over and shoot them in the head with a shotgun."

Answer 3

I think the answer you are looking for is the self styled Reverend Jim Jones, and the event was dubbed The Guyana Tragedy. You can check it out on the internet, glad to help.

Answer 4

I have been alive 10-50 years ago and never have I heard of anything like this. Are you thinking of Jonestown in French Guyana?

Answer 5

Sounds like the Waco thing. Look up David Koresh.

Answer 6

You mean to say someone over the course of 40 years convinced some other people to kill themselves? I can only think of at least half a dozen instances.

Answer 7

10-50 years ago? That's precise. Maybe Waco or Jonestown

Answer 8

In November 1978, 914 American followers of Jim Jones (formerly a church in the mainstream Christian denomination Disciples of Christ) died in a mass murder/suicide in Jonestown, Guyana. The dead included 274 children. Conspiracy theories allege that most of the victims were unwillingly injected with the poison, and some even allege involvement of the CIA. In an affidavit by former member Deborah Layton days before the massacre, however, she testified that there were suicide drills called white nights in which members practiced mass suicide by ingesting poison. And in Jones' final speech, recorded on cassette tape, he states, "So my opinion is that you be kind to children and be kind to seniors and take the potion like they used to take in ancient Greece..." stating the intention that the group kill themselves while casting it as a political act: "We didn't commit suicide, we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world."

I think this one you are talking about - i recognise it because we studied it on psychology- he brainwashed them all.
i gave you link with all mass cult killings -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_suicide#Peoples_Temple_.28Jim_Jones.29

Answer 9

I've never heard about it, but these people must have been suicidal to begin with. You cannot hypnotise someone to do something that is against their nature.

Answer 10

I think you mean the Waco thing.
Happened in the 90s I think.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/19/newsid_2489000/2489769.stm