Of UFOs and Hemmorrhoids

Santa Fe Reporter/April 27, 1994
By Josh Kurtz

In case you didn't get over to either of the lectures given by the Total Overcomers last week-end at wild Oats, the Santa Fe Reporter has learned more about the group that was offering people entry into the "Kingdom of Heaven" via UFOs.

In his book, "Messengers of Deception, noted UFO investigator Jacques Vallee writes that the group has been around, with several names and incarnations, since the early 197Os. The messengers" from the higher kingdom, whom the Overcomers visiting Santa Fe referred to as Do and Te, are really people from Texas named M.H. Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles, he says.

According to Vallee, they met in 1970, when Applewhite was a patient in a mental hospital, and Nettles was his nurse. From there, they opened meditation centers and refined their rap about "graduating" to a higher level of understanding. They also, at one time, called themselves Bo and Peep.

"These two people are dangerous," Vallee quotes a former group member as saying. "It is not hypnosis. It is thought transplant."

A local photo archivist and UFO buff who owns the Vallee book confronted the Overcomers with this information at the Wild Oats meetings. At first, he said, they denied any connection to Applewhite and Nettles. Eventually they admitted that those two had been part of their group.

They were adamant about one thing, however: Applewhite never had a nervous breakdown, they said. He met Nettles while he was in the hospital with hemorrhoids.