There isn't much about the absolutely horrific tragedy at Jonestown that hasn't already been said. The deaths of over 900 people in an orgy of religiously stoked suicide and murder in the jungles of Guyana initiated at the demonically warped whim of a cult leader named Jim Jones on November 17, 1978 have long ago become a cautionary epic in our cultural mindset about how twisted human nature can be.Allusions and references to the utterly mind shattering atrocity of the deeds of that dark day are now just another part of the lore and language we use to describe the indescribable power of spiritual deception. But no matter how familiar the horrors of death by cultism may ever seem to be, one thing that never ceases to profoundly arrest me .. or any other human being with a heart and soul .. is the power of the account of a personal testimony about it. It pulls away the blunted edge of the social cancer it describes and reveals how razor sharp it's foul appendages actually can be. The sting of the scorpion becomes once again a strike into naked, unshielded human flesh and spirit that cannot be defended against.
Such is this long forgotten account of one family's descent into the hell that Jim Jones' deviancy prepared for them. You will not easily be able to read this - but you will learn again how the Pied Pipers of our time dance to their tune.
