>I know I shouldn't be amazed by what you can find on the net any more. I know you can get bodies squelching all over the shop if you so desire. But the sheer clarity of recording of such a moment... you feel like you're there.

People forget that the most chilling things about tragedies such as these are the realism. Photos of bodies torn apart or blood splashing everywhere are disgusting...but only the moments of realism...the speeches before the Kool-aid, the justifications for the slaughter...that's the really scary part. Because that's the part that really does happen.

There's also the fact that sound is by its very nature incomplete. You become actively and creatively involved in completing something that comes to you in audio form. I think that's why this stuff is so chilling (I haven't clicked on the link to that mp3, by the way).

>You become actively and creatively involved in completing something that comes to you in audio form.

Oh, definitely. In instances such as this, that holds very true...there's something about already knowing the story...already knowing what happened...already having judged it...and then finding something like this, which doesn't shed new light on anything, but does give a human undertone to what was previously just an assortment of newspaper stories.

Mmm. And you're placed "into" the event in a way that you wouldn't if it was on television, because sound is much the same whether you're listening to an audio recording or being there yourself. Your ears are where the microphone is - it's not a "reported" event anymore.

I wouldn't regard myself as squeamish under normal circumstances but I remember very clearly deciding not to watch those dreadful beheading videos that were doing the rounds about a year or so back on quite respectable webboards. Something about witnessing somebody being killed in that way - I neither wanted to be desensitised to the horror of it nor have nightmares about such horrific incidents. I was also freaked out about the way it would appear on my media player - after playing a video through once, windows media player "stops" by showing the first frame, as though waiting to be played again. Man is killed and then is suddenly alive again in a state of tension. The prospect freaked me out.

Yeah, I had to think long and hard about the Nick Berg thing. I'm a very squeamish person by nature - I don't watch horror films, and even the Dylan Moran bit in Shaun of the Dead was a bit much for me - but I do have that very human nature of being quite morbidly curious about certain things. For example, I'll look at the images marked "disturbing image warning" on snopes.com and then instantly regret doing so.

With the Nick Berg thing, I came close to downloading it, because everyone was talking about it, but ultimately decided not to, and I'm glad I didn't, as I think it would have stuck with me to this day. And it also feels horribly intrusive to sit there and watch someone else die (for the same reason I've never wanted to see any other famous death videos, like that guy who shot himself during a press conference).

I have to admit to not knowing anything about Jonestown and that mass suicide until this. I've just read the wiki article. Profoundly upsetting. I can only dread what the audio recording sounds like. Does anyone know how much is contained in the 45 minute duration? As that would just be one half of a 90 minute tape rather than being anything meaningful in terms of the length of the occurrence.

I'm feeling sick about the babies dying in front of their parents, the paper cups, the forced injections and everything. My god. What do people know about Jones? For the people who have heard that recording or any part of it, how does he come across? Clearly mentally unhinged, or evil in some way? A kind of Hitler? People found him persuasive, so obviously he didn't have inbred texas chainsaw massacre characteristics. I'm sorry to ask but I really want to know but I can't bear the prospect of listening to it myself.

Seb I think there's a point at which squeamishness isn't really the right word - it implies something irrational to me. Feeling squirmy when you hold your hand out as someone dangles a caterpillar over it is squeamishness. The mental and physical reaction you get to something of the nature of this thread (right the way down to feeling repulsion at the thought of knowingly putting your hands into dog shit) is something else.

Agreed 'squeamish' wasn't the right word. I have to say, when I went to bed after posting this article, I was completely freaked out. It was *not* a good idea to listen to it before going to bed. I couldn't get to sleep, and images just kept running through my mind...

There is a transcript of the tape here, if you can't face listening to it - with some excellent footnotes giving details of background and tone.

I never watched the Nick Berg thing either. Never even got close. I would not be able to watch it. It's like the Faces Of Death series - I'm extremely interested in that kind of thing, but I can't stomach it.

I strongly recommend Killing For Culture - a history about real death on screen. Extrodinarily interesting, and something that you can just about stomach reading, even if you couldn't actually watch what they're talking about.

I stumbled across this a few weeks back on the Something Awful message board. I've only ever managed to listen to about 15 minutes of it myself. There are some things you were never meant to hear, and I think this is one of them. The only other thing I've found so profoundly disturbing was a website of plane crash black box recordings, which genuinely made me too afraid to sleep.

Although I've read quite a lot about Jonestown, I still feel like I've only scratched the surface. There's whole levels of unexplained weirdness connected to the People's Temple which could keep conspiracy theorists going for years. Who edited the "death tape", for example. What happened to the mysterious "guards" who supposedly shot down any cult members who tried to escape the massacre, but were not found among the dead? A tape was found among the cult's possessions containing off-air recordings of news bulletins about the suicides, but who recorded it? The list goes on.

I don't know how famous the incident is over in America (Phil?) - but I don't think it's *hugely* widely-known about in Britain.

Perhaps that's because it's just *too* horrible.

>I don't know how famous the incident is over in America (Phil?)

Very famous...and not in the "every school child is terrified" way...more in the way that it's entered the realm of pop-culture trivia and, unfortunately, has lost the horrorific connotations it really should have.

The very first example that comes to mind is that Family Guy episode in which Meg nearly joins a cult (or some such thing, I don't watch the show all that much), but every so often it'll surface in some form or another. "Don't drink the Kool-Aid" is all too often a punchline now...reminiscent, of course, of the Jonestown incident itself, but not of the serious implications it should have.

I mainly know about it from things like Family Guy and the end of Road Trip. Hard to believe that *so many* people died.

Reading the transcript and its accompanying notes - there are some suggestions that the authenticity of the recording might be dubious. What do people know about this? Also, Jones talks about a plane that will crash because somebody on that flight will hijack the plane and kill the pilot. Did this happen, or was it all just Jones hypnotism?

You know, normally I'm not squeamish at all and I don't give a shit about most things like this, and I know that's partly because I'm...how should I put this...a sadistic bastard? Er, no...I mean it's difficult to shock me because I already know way too much about shit that happens in the world that most of us don't care to see and never will unless...I don't know...Judgement Day actually happens or something. But this is really chilling. There's no way I'm gonna listen to all of the recording. Although there is still a chance that the whole thing was fabricated and the people were killed by the American government (it wouldn't be the first or last time...). Most big conspiracy theories frighten me to death. 9/11 for instance. But they get so out of control that the real truth gets buried - in the case of 9/11, literally.

At least in this instance, what the mind conjures up, is far worse than what they eyes may perceive. A profoundly selfish madman, trying to calm his brainwashed followers, in their final moments of absolute suffering, is truly more haunting than anything a Hollywood studio can conjure up. The desperation in his voice cannot be hidden. And the child screams?

My God....