What It Was Really Like At Jonestown The Day Of The Massacre

Jim Jones started his infamous cult, the Peoples Temple, in Indiana in the 1950s before moving it to San Francisco in the early '70s. While originally preaching progressive ideas, especially racial harmony and equality, it became something very twisted. In 1974, Jones decided his congregation should move to an isolated jungle location in the South American country of Guyana. He called the small compound that his followers carved out Jonestown. On November 18, 1978, it would be the site of the largest mass death of U.S. civilians in a deliberate act until September 11, 2001.

There are a lot of things that don't make sense about the Jonestown massacre, and many questions linger. How could something like this happen? What kind of people would do this to themselves and to others? How can we make sure it never happens again? Thankfully, there were a handful of survivors of the Jonestown massacre who have spent decades telling their stories of joining the group and of what happened that day in the jungle. Here's what it was really like at Jonestown the day of the massacre.

If you or someone you know is dealing with spiritual abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.

Everything came to a head in Jonestown when Congressman Leo Ryan arrived on November 17, 1978, to investigate disturbing reports he had received. At first, Ryan and his retinue of media and concerned family members were shown the best side of the compound. According to one of his aides, the future U.S. Representative Jackie Speier, Ryan was so taken in that he stood on Jim Jones' stage in the central pavilion and said, "From what I've seen, there are a lot of people here who think this is the best thing that happened in their whole life" (via Politico Magazine). 

But then someone slipped a note to one of the reporters with him. It read, "Vernon Gosney and Monica Bagby. Please help us get out of Jonestown." As information spread that, if anyone wanted to leave, Ryan might be able to get them out, more unhappy residents of Jonestown quietly approached the congressman's group.

Ryan waited until the next morning to confront Jim Jones. After realizing that not everyone at Jonestown wanted to be there, Ryan insisted he be allowed to leave with any unhappy defectors who wanted to go back to the United States. Jones did not react to this well, and the mood was noticeably tense. Speier told ABC News, "It was a powder keg of emotions. I mean it was so clear to me that this thing was about to erupt and we needed to get those who wanted to leave out of there as fast as possible."

Between the night of November 17 and the morning of November 18, around 40 of the approximately 950 residents of the Peoples Temple compound asked to leave with Congressman Leo Ryan, but it was more than either he or Jim Jones expected. It was so many people that, before leaving Jonestown, Ryan made sure two planes would be waiting for them on the airstrip rather than the single one that had brought Ryan and his delegation there.

Once it became clear that some individuals really did plan on leaving this place that was supposed to be a utopia protecting the group from the outside world, things went from tense to explosive. Jones was becoming visibly unhinged. Fights broke out as families debated what to do, with husbands and wives fighting over whether to leave or stay. When parents disagreed on what the best course of action was, they fought over who would keep the children. All of this happened very quickly, with life-changing decisions happening in a matter of minutes.

Just as Congressman Ryan was about to leave with his retinue and the defectors, a man attacked him with a knife. "Out walks Congressman Ryan in a bloodied shirt," Ryan aide and future U.S. Representative Jackie Speier told ABC News. "Basically, someone had tried to put a knife to his neck but it wasn't successful." He was only superficially injured that time, but it would not be long until he and so many others were dead on the orders of Jones.

Congressman Leo Ryan's group escorted the defectors to the airstrip where their planes were waiting, piling into trucks to get there. But not everyone with them had good intentions. One of the most chilling details about the murder of Congressman Leo Ryan is that he was ambushed by one of the people he thought needed his help getting out of Jonestown. While almost all of the group's members who fled with Ryan to the airstrip really did want to get out, Jim Jones secretly instructed Larry Layton, one of his most loyal men, to pretend to want to leave and go to the planes. Unknown to those on the trucks, more of Jones' men were following them in a tractor-trailer. 

The group arrived at the airstrip and started hurrying onto the planes. Then they heard a barrage of gunfire. "I saw everyone scurrying, and then I saw Congressman Ryan get shot," Jackie Speier told ABC News. "And I'm running under the plane as well, and he's down and I'm getting down. And just thinking to myself, 'Oh my God, this is it. I'm going to die.'"

Five people died on the Port Kaituma airstrip: Ryan, newspaper photographer Greg Robinson, NBC cameraman Bob Brown, NBC reporter Don Harris, and one of the defectors who had been fleeing for their lives, Patricia Parks. Others were gravely injured, while some managed to get away with more minor injuries. The assassins fled back into the jungle, leaving the bodies and wounded on the airstrip.

Jonestown was equipped with loudspeakers, which Jim Jones often used to give long, rambling sermons to his captive audience. After Congressman Leo Ryan's group left the compound, there was an announcement over the loudspeaker that everyone should gather in the central pavilion. This was unexpected, and it was clear something was very wrong. 

Survivor Tim Carter remembers the eerie quiet in Jonestown as virtually everyone followed the order. The pavilion was surrounded by armed guards. On the face of it, this was not completely unprecedented. Survivors have varying stories of Jones' previous calls to gather, known as "White Nights," where they might be subjected to anything from all-night diatribes by Jones to preparations for an attack by the military to one person after another declaring they were willing to die.

Hyacinth Thrash had been a member of the Peoples Temple for decades and had moved from Indiana to California to Guyana at Jones' instruction. She believed he had used his miraculous powers to cure her breast cancer. But this time, she refused to do what he said. She chose not to follow the instructions over the loudspeaker and instead stayed in her room, hiding under her bed. Her sister Zippy, another longtime and loyal member, left for the pavilion. Thrash later said that she was unconscious during the massacre, although she was not sure if she passed out or simply fell asleep. When she woke up, everyone was dead, including her sister.

By the end of November 18, 1978, Jim Jones would be dead along with almost all of his followers in Guyana, but based on one order he gave that day, it's possible that the cult leader might not have originally planned to die. Jones had a contingency plan to flee to the Soviet Union, and he tried to put it in motion right before the massacre began.

Tim Carter survived the massacre because after arriving at the pavilion, he was approached to go on an errand for Jones. Carter was to take money to the Soviet embassy in Georgetown, Guyana's capital. Jones knew that Congressman Leo Ryan was dead on his orders and that the U.S. government would come searching for him as a result. The cult leader was hoping that once word got back to the U.S. about Ryan's death, he could flee to the USSR. Carter was essentially being sent to bribe them, with no idea what was about to happen. "I can honestly say that never once in my mind did it occur we're all going to die," Carter told ABC News. "Because 24 hours after that dinner and show [for Ryan and his delegation], literally 24 hours later, everybody was dead."

Carter didn't manage to get far into the jungle before the massacre started. Hearing screams, he turned back to Jonestown, where he found his wife and son dying. "I was shocked with everything, I was shocked," he said. "I was completely overwhelmed with the death that was around me."

Once everyone was gathered in the pavilion, Jim Jones took to the stage and began speaking. Thanks to tape recordings of the event — commonly known as the "Death Tape" and now in the possession of the FBI — we know what Jones said to his followers at the meeting. He informed them of the murders he orchestrated on the airstrip and tried to convince all of them to end it: "The congressman's dead, the congressman is dead. Many of our traitors are dead. They're all laying out there dead ... Do you think they're going to ... allow us to get by with this? ... There's no way, no way we can survive ... it's not worth living like this" (via ABC News).

This was more serious and immediate than other "White Night" gatherings. When Jones told his followers that everything was over, some stood up to argue with him. It was clear that not everyone was prepared to die. Longtime follower Christine Miller, a Black woman from Los Angeles, can be heard on the tape confronting Jones, saying, "As long as there is life, there's hope. That's my faith" (via Time).

But Jones would not be deterred. He ordered some of his followers to mix cyanide with Flavor Aid and then bring forward the "vat with the green c." He gave instructions dictating the order in which different age groups were to be killed. Meanwhile, his armed guards loomed over the congregation.

While the mass deaths at Jonestown were originally considered a mass suicide, it was not that simple. The main reason the Jonestown massacre was worse than you think was that hundreds of the victims either fought to survive or had no choice at all. When the vats of Flavor Aid and cyanide were brought out, some people cheered and drank willingly, but many — including children — had to have the poison injected into them or forced down their throats. Others were shot and stabbed. A total of 918 people died that day. 

"The reality is that it was not some giant, 'Let's get together and die for Jim Jones' moment," survivor Tim Carter told ABC News. "It was exactly the opposite. That was my experience. What happened in Jonestown was murder." Jackie Speier agrees with Carter, explaining in the docuseries "Cult Massacre: One Day in Jonestown" (via The Guardian), "I hate the references that somehow they did this voluntarily, that there was suicide — it wasn't. They were murdered."

Cyanide poisoning is not a fun way to go, and the cult's leader decided not to put himself through the painful death he forced on his followers: Jim Jones instead died of a gunshot wound to the head. "Obviously, he didn't have the guts to drink the poison that he made everybody else drink, so he was shot, which I think is just a chicken's way out," former Peoples Temple member Laura Johnston Kohl told ABC News.

A handful of people survived the Jonestown massacre. Two or three (reports vary) were at the compound but did not go to the pavilion, and Tim Carter had been sent on an errand. Others managed to escape into the jungle, both earlier in the day in the confusion caused by the ambush on Congressman Leo Ryan's group and later, once it became clear a massacre was happening. 

Tracy Parks was only 12 years old when she accompanied Ryan to the airstrip with her family, who had decided to defect. After Ryan and four others, including Parks' mother, were slaughtered, her father screamed at her and her sister to hide in the jungle. "I felt like I wasn't in my body. We were so scared, we just kept running," Parks recalled in an episode of "People Magazine Investigates: Cults" (via People). It took them three days to find help.

Leslie Wagner-Wilson and a few others ran into the jungle before the massacre and walked 30 miles to safety. "I was so scared," Wilson (pictured with her son) told ABC News. "We exchanged phone numbers in case we died. I was prepared to die. I never thought I would see my 21st birthday." She emerged from the jungle to learn about the tragedy and that among those who died in the massacre were several members of her family. Once he realized what was about to happen at Jonestown, Odell Rhodes, a Vietnam veteran, also escaped through the jungle.

While Jonestown was the main location for the Peoples Temple in Guyana, the group also maintained an outpost at a house in the country's capital of Georgetown, a plane ride away from the compound in the jungle. There were several people staying in this house on the day of the massacre, who were there for various reasons, including playing in a basketball tournament. 

Information came through about the massacre that was happening. While some, including two of Jim Jones' own sons, didn't take it seriously and told others to ignore the message, one woman followed orders as if she had been on site. "Jim Jones' secretary, Sharon Amos, received a message on the radio sent to Georgetown, San Francisco, and Redwood Valley," survivor Laura Johnston Kohl told BBC News. "It said: 'Everybody in Jonestown is dying or dead. Everybody else needs to commit revolutionary suicide right now. We are all doing it right now.'" Amos killed her three children and then herself.

As news started getting to the members in Georgetown and the authorities, people began showing up at the house. For the one-year anniversary of the massacre, one of the survivors in Georgetown spoke to The New York Times, using a pseudonym. "A lot of our people were standing outside in the cold, in their bathrobes, like they were being searched. The radio was cut off to Jonestown. We weren't told what was happening for hours, hours, hours." Eventually, they were informed about the murder-suicide.

For those who were with Congressman Leo Ryan and survived the massacre at the airstrip, the horrific day turned into a long, terrifying night. Because of the isolated location of Jonestown, it was 22 hours before help managed to get to them. So it was down to those who were only slightly wounded on November 18 to keep the seriously wounded alive.

Jackie Speier (pictured) was one of the wounded in the worst shape. She had been shot five times. "My whole leg is blown up. There's a bone coming out of my right arm," she told ABC News. "There was no reason why I survived, except it wasn't my time." Tim Reiterman, one of several NBC employees who accompanied the congressman to Jonestown, had been shot twice in the arm but was well enough to take turns with others who could at least stand to try to care for those who could not. The seriously injured were moved to a tent, while other survivors spent the night in a small shop. They expected the gunmen to return at any time to finish the job.

Everyone on the airstrip besides the first five casualties survived, along with a few at the Jonestown compound, those who escaped through the jungle, and most of the Peoples Temple members in Georgetown. As for what happened to the Jonestown massacre survivors, they would all grapple with the event for the rest of their lives.