o a shocking number of contemporary Americans, the onset of the year 2000 is a significant point in the history of the human race. For many biblical literalists, fundamentalists, new-age devotees, and other apocalypticists, it is a time replete with eschatological significance. It is more than just the gateway to a century; it marks the onset of a new millennium as well.

Atheists don’t accept the growing wave of nonsense and irrationality associated with the new millennium, of course. We will not be giving away our houses and abandoning jobs and families in anticipation of the return of Jesus, or the landing of the Mother Ship, or some great tidal wave or other calamity that is prophesied to destroy the West Coast (or East Coast, if that is your particular apocalyptic bent.) But it is the anticipation of prophetic events, both wondrous and terrible, which may well produce the millennialist Angst already being observed by historians and social scientists. As I discussed in a series of articles in the Winter 1996-97 issue of American Atheist, we can look forward to a frenzy of religious, mystical outbursts in anticipation of the year 2000.

Frank Zindler, the editor of this magazine, suggested that I do a regular column dealing with millennial madness, beginning with this issue. I eagerly accepted his offer, since the irrationality and Angst associated with the year 2000 can give us some valuable insight into human behavior and social processes at work. It’s also just plain fascinating – at times amusing. What will they think of next?

Apocalypse Chronicle will be an effort to give you an overview of activities and developments related to the emergent fin de siècle madness. Get ready for a romp through some pop-culture backwater territory. The Chronicle installments will be discussing UFO abductions, mystical apparitions, miracles, cameo appearances by Mary and Jesus, doomsday cults, crazed Internet prophets, the fever swamps of religious fundamentalism, and more. All of this is leading up to the ultimate News Year’s Eve bash.

Pass the bubbly, please!

There were claims on the Internet that Jesus Christ had spoken to a number of people, and warned that Hale-Bopp would suddenly change course and crash into the earth. Comets enjoy a long historical association in the human imagination with dire warnings of catastrophe, of course, and today they are part of a diffuse millennialist Angst which includes asteroid impacts, social upheaval, volcano eruptions, earthquakes, and ecological havoc all conspiring as harbingers of the “Final Days” prophesied in the Book of Revelation.

The Heaven’s Gate folks had been wandering the country for over a decade, offering their peculiar blend of Christianity and new age mysticism to college campus audiences and to anyone else who might listen. Comet Hale-Bopp – admittedly a spectacular interloper in our solar system neighborhood that truly lived up to its reputation as “the best all-around comet of the century” – became the equivalent of Rapture. Millions of Christians believe that the “elect” will be physically lifted up into heaven (even bodies reconstituted from the grave), and we may legitimately ask if that notion makes any more sense than committing suicide, abandoning one’s body (or “container” as the Heaven’s Gate enthusiasts liked to say), and hitch-hiking a ride on a passing comet.

Meanwhile, there was the Internet and fringe-culture buzz that something really was tailing behind Comet Hale Bopp.

There were other examples of comet madness. Leave it to major television network NBC to brush off the plot of an old Irwin Allen movie (Meteor) and plug in the usual “made-for-television movie” elements such as a love interest, lost child and fashion-model scientists, along with a stable of special effects and – voila! – “Asteroid” came crashing through our TV sets and Neilson ratings.

Meanwhile, there was the Internet and fringe-culture buzz that something really was tailing behind Comet Hale Bopp.

One website posting claimed that the discovery of the comet was under most unusual circumstances, that its orbital path was “peculiar,” and on November 15, Chuck Shramek of Houston posted a photograph he claimed to have taken which supposedly depicted a Saturn-like image to the right of Comet Hale-Bopp. Despite claims that the “object and event (were) verified by legitimate astronomers worldwide,” astronomers – including Alan Hale, one of the co-discoverers of the comet – said no such thing. Hale later told a press conference he called following the Heaven’s Gate suicides: “After explaining that the ‘object’ was nothing more than a bright star, I wrote: ‘There are many “fringe” people who are trying to attach apocalyptic significance to Comet Hale-Bopp, and incidents like this one... are sure to increase as we get closer to the comet’s perihelion. I ask readers to treat all these irresponsible reports with the disdain they deserve, and instead enjoy the beauty of the comet for its own sake’. ”

But if friendly aliens weren’t headed our way to pick up enlightened cosmic hitchhikers, then maybe the bad kind were. One self-proclaimed American Indian prophet and “researcher” said that Comet Hale-Bopp would herald in a wave of colonization by aliens who have supposedly been tampering with human DNA to create a race of telepathic hybrids. But another variation of the invasion motif also circulated, with claimed that the comet was really an enormous spaceship with 300 million invading “grays,” just like those alien beings supposedly recovered from the Roswell crash and now in deep-freeze in the mysterious Area 51 in Nevada. The swarm of gray aliens would decimate the planet, then harvest the remaining humans for food. Somebody appears to have unearthed yet another made-for-TV movie script, the old series V where reptilian aliens cross the galaxy – only to disguise themselves as attractive and often buxom humans (anyone remember Jane Badler as the evil Diana?) and turn people into corpsicles for hungry relatives back home. 

According to Millennial Prophecy Report, a publication devoted to tracking such reports, Christian publications like PropheZine, put their own spin on the Hale-Bopp hysteria. One compared the comet to the Seventh Seal mentioned in Book of Revelation; another “sign,” and Final Judgment was imminent.

We cannot close the story of Comet Hale-Bopp without mention of Art Bell, whose nationwide radio talk show showcases the most outrageous and fascinating examples of modern pseudoscience. Bell’s website is a jumping-off point for those wishing to explore fringe belief cultures with the click of their mouse; and the Art Bell Show became a platform for many of the bizarre claims associated with the comet. Guests included horror novelist Whitley Streiber, who stepped up to the microphone to claim that “hundreds” of photos existed which showed an enormous spacecraft (larger than planet earth, in fact) trailing behind the comet. One guest noted that the photographs could not be released to the media for public scrutiny, though, since their source would be revealed. Others claimed that psychics and “remote viewers” – the type allegedly working deep in the bowels of the CIA and the Pentagon – were already sensing the object. Still others, in keeping with the pseudoscience paradigm, mixed a veritable word salad of new-age phraseology and scientific terms. One “remote viewer” claimed that the metallic craft was “releasing powerful, ominous, and centrifugal” (sic).

Often, reports of these apparitions are linked to prophecies of apocalypse. The Bayside Movement publicizes the alleged Virgin sightings of Long Island housewife Veronica Lueken, who died in 1995 after leaving behind a collection of prophetic warnings. Lueken’s prognostications included “roaming bands of homosexuals” intent on seducing the young, conspiracies involving Freemasons and other dark forces, and apocalyptic punishments to be visited on a sinful humanity because of homosexuality, birth control, abortions and other transgressions. The Bayside prophesies are now promoted on the Internet, and off the information superhighway on the nation’s major traffic arteries. Future environmental historians may consider “Billboard Mary” as an icon of our times, joining Bob’s Big Boy, garish advertisements for South of the Border, the Sinclair Oil dinosaur, and other artifacts of the American road culture.

Virgin Mary and Jesus apparitions are on the increase, there’s no doubt about that. Sociologist Stjepan Mestrovic discusses the significance of the Virgin of Medjugore in former Yugoslavia as a manifestation of the fin de siècle impulse. Closer to home, Mary is said to have recently appeared before jubilant and awed followers in California and Florida. In Clearwater, a resort community along the Gulf Coast, a shimmering outline many claimed depicted the Virgin appeared in the plate glass of an office building. Some insisted they could make out the shimmering Mary as far back as 1994, but it took the arrival of the local television News Cam on December 17 to kick off the festivities.

Crowds began flocking to witness the Plate Glass Virgin, and soon as many as 5000 or more persons were gawking at the office building, and camped out on its lawn. Some significance was attached to the fact that the building happened to be an the intersection of roads which have the highest number of traffic wrecks in the region. Clearwater officials formed a “Miracle Management Team,” and the local constabulary managed to accumulate $40,000 in overtime expenses in the first month of the apparition. Hallelujah! 

It has been estimated that over 1.5 million persons have flocked to see the Plate Glass Virgin, but few seem to have listened to the explanation of skeptics and engineers – or the landscape crew – who say that the image is a combination of human imagination and residue on the large panes of glass deposited by the sprinkler system. News reports, including a lead piece on CNN, showed the faithful depositing candles, photos of children and screeds at the site. Nuns and priests were interviewed, and while established church officials hedged their statements about the apparition, many in the crowds told media that this was a “sign” from above.

Somewhat less popular was a strange phenomenon in Sunnyside, Washington, where the Virgin chose to appear on the back of a traffic sign located on state road 241 and the Yakima Valley Highway. Local florists were probably most grateful for Her magnanimous cameo appearance. Film footage on local TV and photos in the Yakima Herald-Republic showed rows of newly-ordered flowers, along with those more traditional icons of Christian kitsch, the Mary devotional votive candles. The Herald appeared skeptical in its coverage, though. One article quoted a professor of American Religion from Notre Dame who warned “The supernatural can turn into a tourist trap, something out of a Fellini film.” Less complicated was the explanation offered by highway engineers, who said that the rainbow-hued image of Mary was not the result of divine intervention, but a more prosaic process of light reflecting from the anti-oxidant coatings used to protect the traffic signs.

Expect more sightings of the Virgin and Jesus as we barrel down the apocalypse road to the year 2000 and the new millennium. Final Judgment, rapture, and the Messiah await us – that is, if those aliens don’t get here first. 

Conrad Goeringer  is an antiquarian bookseller and freelance writer who lives on the cape of New Jersey. A frequent speaker at American Atheists national conventions, he is director of American Atheists On-line Services and a contributing editor of American Atheist.