Guyana Site Reopens Nearly 50 Years After The Mass-Murder Suicide

It’s been almost 50 years since the mass-murder suicide that claimed over 900 lives, and for the first time, the Jonestown site in Guyana has reopened to the public for tours. On my recent trip to Guyana, I flew to Port Kaituma to experience this new tour.

Getting there isn’t easy. There’s only one daily flight connecting Georgetown and Port Kaituma, and it lands atop the exact airstrip where Congressman Leo Ryan was famously murdered on November 18, 1978.

I didn’t make that connection when we landed. Instead, my initial reaction was how hot it was here. Leaving behind the breezes of coastal Georgetown and the open Rupununi savanna, where I had spent my previous days, the air in landlocked Port Kaituma hung heavy and humid with the smell of tropical leaves and wet earth, the unmistakable embrace of the true Guyana jungle.

Later, I’ll wonder how the early members of the Peoples Temple felt when they arrived. Did they welcome the wet heat and aromas as the Eden they were promised? Or if, when handed a machete and told to “make their own paradise” out of the vast, dense jungle, was there a flicker of doubt in their minds?

Feeling the heat of the day on my skin, I quickly applied more bug spray and sunscreen while standing on the airstrip, preparing for a long day outside. Joined by Wanderlust Adventures GY guide Chris Persaud, we jumped in the back of a truck, grabbed some breakfast in Port Kaituma, and started our journey to Jonestown.

Or, rather, the site where it once stood. Between the power of the jungle and local Port Kaituma residents raiding the abandoned commune for supplies, little is left of the actual Jonestown.

“You would see people walking down the road carrying tin roofs on their backs” Persaud explains. Everything from food to generators to the wood beams of buildings were stripped and used by the locals. In an area so remote, nothing could be wasted, even in the wake of tragedy.

Before leaving the outskirts of Port Kaituma, Persaud directed our tour van to a small house, jumped out, and returned a few minutes later with ice packs for our cooler. Freezers are still a rare commodity in this rural jungle town, and those who are fortunate to own one will make and sell ice. I couldn’t help but wonder how many freezers that used to belong to the People’s Temple are sitting in nearby houses this exact moment.

After stocking up on ice, and snatching a cold water bottle to place on my temple to cool off, we swung by the house of Carl Daniels, who was joining our tour as a local expert. He was just 10 when the mass-murder suicide took place. Two years after the events, he visited the abandoned Jonestown site with his family.

Now, decades later, Daniels’ childhood memories have been serving as a crucial cartographic key for our guide, Persaud, in his efforts to reconstruct and map the lost geography of the compound.

All together in a van, air conditioning blasting, we spent about 25 minutes jostling down a bumpy dirt road into the jungle. Suddenly, out of nowhere, our van pulled over. Peering through the window, I finally noticed a “Welcome To Jonestown” sign.

“It’s not the original sign” Persaud noted, as we all hopped out of the van and started walking into the former compound. The original was lost, but this sign was erected to mark the new entrance to the site.

Persaud and Daniels, along with other locals, have been manually clearing out the Jonestown site themselves. “Carl is on a mission to find the basketball court” Persaud laughed “Once we find that, he thinks we can find where the cabins used to stand.”

The walk from the entrance sign to the memorial only took about 10 minutes, but within those minutes, I quickly felt like the jungle was swallowing us. Each step sinking into slick mud from earlier rain, the air getting more and more dense the further we journeyed in.

Carl offhandedly mentioned that when he was here as a child, Jonestown had only knee-high grass. Now, it’s a dense jungle with towering trees and plants, the space entirely reclaimed by nature.

Abruptly, we emerged into a small clearing filled with flowers containing a large stone monument marking the absence of the pavilion. This was the heart of it, the pavilion’s ghost, where 909 souls took their last breath. Those famous aerial images of bodies piled on bodies hung in my mind, adding to the eerie weight of the site.

After giving us a few minutes to reflect, Persaud pulled out some camping chairs and benches, beckoning us over to sit as he gave a presentation.

I’ve listened to the podcasts about Jonestown and read the articles, but nothing compares to sitting in the exact spot as the former pavilion and hearing the stories firsthand. Persaud covers the history of Jonestown, detailing what daily life looked like for members of the Peoples Temple, and explains the slow downward spiral of Jim Jones that eventually led to a mass-murder suicide.

“Notice the flowers” Persaud said, pulling my attention back to the present. He said they grew nowhere else. Whether planted by mourning hands, or sprung from the earth’s own sorrow, no one knew. But hundreds bloomed only here, and I got the intense sense they represented the multitude of lives lost.

The reopening of Jonestown and this tour have been met with criticism. “I think it’s a bad idea. I don’t think it’s appropriate to aggrandize that kind of cult activity,” says Jackie Speier, a member of Ryan’s party who was shot 5 times on the airstrip and miraculously survived.

But others support it. Later that evening, we paid a visit to Clement Adams, a lifetime Port Kaituma resident. Gathering around on his porch with cold Banks beers in hand, we listened as he told his story about visiting Jonestown as a child.

He says he would “pitch marbles and domino and cards and stuff” with the children of Jonestown. Just regular American kids keeping up with their favorite pastimes, even in the jungle.

Adams also explains how “the tourist sector in Guyana never exists in this part of the country.” and while dark tourism isn’t anyone’s first choice of attraction, it can provide support for the local community in ways it hasn’t seen before. The opening of this tour means revenue from the flight to Port Kaituma, tourists have to book hotels, spend money on meals and in the local markets. They buy beer, and even ice to fill coolers.

Beyond stimulating the small jungle town, Adams believes it’s important to remember the story of the Peoples Temple. “So do we want to forget their story? Do we want to forget the lessons learned from this story or do we want to learn from it?” Adams says “We can spread awareness that this can’t continue happening.”

There’s arguments about the danger in erasing history of any kind, especailly when it comes to cults like Jonestown. It’s easy to write off these events as just “crazy cult things” that can’t happen to you.

But, as Deborah Layton, a Jonestown survivor, points out in her book Seductive Poison, “People do not knowingly join “cults””.

The narrative surrounding Jonestown frequently struggles with the concept of victimhood, as the misunderstanding of cult indoctrination and brainwashing sometimes leads to the argument that the deceased were not true victims, having enacted their own demise.

“Why didn’t they fight back or run?” one Reddit user posted on a forum about Jonestown. “It’s hard to understand how so many people could become so broken by a single man”.

When I got home, I wanted to hear more from Temple members directly, so I went into research mode. I heavily leaned on San Diego State University’s vault of interviews and collections from Peoples Temple survivors and members to piece together clarity on what compels a person to join a cult like this.

While reading the numerous accounts, an overarching theme stood out: the deep, human desire to belong and to do good. Hue Fortson, Jr., a former member, recalled that he and his then-girlfriend joined because “we felt like we could help people within the organization.”

Jim Jones’s focus on social issues and his promises to uplift the less fortunate made the Temple feel like a beacon of hope for many who lacked traditional resources and support. The organization was viewed as a safe haven from the harsh realities of American life, and it was one of the few churches in America that truly dared to open its doors to absolutely everyone.

It wasn’t all just talk. The Peoples Temple in San Francisco operated food banks, provided free meals, offered housing assistance, and ran an addiction recovery program.

Jones often suggested that poor Black and White people pooling their resources could build a new society without racism, hunger, or lack of housing. This message eventually manifested in the building of Jonestown in Guyana, then just referred to as the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project.

Herbert Newell, survivor, shared that his mother’s specific reason for migrating to Guyana was to provide a better life. “She thought it was best to get her children away from the trouble she could see every day in the neighborhood.”

It’s easy to see how that was a tempting offer.

And the early days of Jonestown were all about doing good. The Jonestown community had medical facilities, including a doctor and locals could access these facilities when needed. Clement Adams needed a tooth extraction as a child and was able to get the procedure done in Jonestown, which was helpful as the closest alternative was 62 miles away.

Peoples Temple members gave back to the locals in other ways, too.

“Jonestown, they had good agriculture.” Adam mused between sips of beer. “They bring out produce and sell out here in the community.” In dense jungle land that can be hard to farm, access to fresh produce was more than helpful. Jonestown also organized cultural shows in Port Kaituma, showcasing dancing and art. They even held feasts to feed everyone in Port Kaituma, and by all accounts, were good neighbors.

On the outside, it looked great. “You know, you never really see them as a threat.” Adam noted.

Mike Touchette, one of the early pioneers of Jonestown, wrote about how joyful he found building the commune to be. “I loved building and living in Jonestown, in the years before Jim and the mass of people came down.”

He explained how in just over three years, a small group of 50 Americans and around 200 Guyanese built a small farming community. “From pure raw jungle emerged 1500 acres under cultivation.”

But, like many cults and intentional communities, things aren’t always as they seem behind closed doors. In the case of Jonestown, things started to go south once Jim Jones moved to Guyana full-time.

“My memories from 1974 till the beginning of ‘78 are many and full of love, and to this day they still bring tears to my eyes” Touchette wrote. “Not only the memories of building of Jonestown, but the friendships and camaraderie we had before 1978 is beyond words.”

Jim Jones’ permanent move to Guyana marked the beginning of the end, the rapid descent from harmonious living to a doomed cult with an expiration date.

Some Temple members’ intuition back home was strong. Newel, who’s mother was eager to move to Guyana, said his father did not have the same feelings. “My father was not pleased when my mother decided to move to Guyana. He warned that Jim Jones was going to take us over there and kill us”

But for most, the red flags were easy to ignore in the face of hope. The Peoples Temple stood as a beacon of possibility, a symbol of equality, and a better future. In reality, it was a means for Jim Jones to accomplish status and power. He lured followers in with promises of utopia and equality, but slowly replaced hope with fear and control.

While in Guyana, as our tour group was standing next to the port in Port Kaituma, guide Persaud explained to us that most members are assumed to have arrived to Jonestown via boat. It wasn’t a grand welcoming, but more of a quiet, smuggled arrival.

There’s no reports of Temple members actually arriving to Port Kaituma from locals, but Adams and his family did recall seeing plenty of trucks with crates. “What we would see is the tractors or whatever transportation available is the shape crates like containers they fetch in. So we would assume that the people was in there”.

He also recalls a large suitcase of American passports being found after the mass-murder suicide, implying that members had their passports confiscated upon arrival.

Over the course of the day, talking to locals and learning about the site, the picture of why someone would want to join the Peoples Temple and why they didn’t leave came into clear focus for me.

Jones targeted underprivileged people who desperately needed shelter, food, education, and community. He positioned Guyana as a paradise haven to live in harmony. “We worked hard to build what we thought was going to be a better way of life for the family members back here in the States.” Touchette recalls.

Filled with optimism, new members flew to Guyana to join up with the project and build a better life for themselves.

The unraveling was probably slow. Upon arrival in Guyana, they had their passport confiscated, were put on a boat for days, and perhaps were even smuggled inside crates in the dead of night. When they finally stepped foot in Jonestown, they were greeted by armed guards, assigned manual labor jobs that kept them working easily over 16 hours a day, and housed in shared cabins with other families, resulting in little privacy or room to themselves.

They also quickly learned they had to maintain the compound with minimal tools and fewer comforts. Their days were long, and their nights offered no relief. They had to grow their own food and with more and more new members arriving by 1978, food and resources were starting to dwindle.

Leslie Wagner-Wilson, survivor, writes in one thought piece “Why were we not being fed properly when there was so much money in banks? Why was it not used for food?”.

Sleep deprivation also became routine, especially during the terrifying “White Nights,” emergency drills where Jim Jones tested their loyalty by simulating mass suicide scenarios at the wee hours of the morning.

The sense of indoctrination and paranoia seeped into every aspect of the culture there. One story I read recounted how two members were tasked with picking up chickens in another village, which required a train ride to get there. They missed the train and were so afraid of coming back to Jonestown empty-handed, they walked over 30 miles in the dead of night on train tracks in the jungle, fearing death by tiger.

Wagner-Wilson sheds light on how hard it was for members to leave even if they wanted to. “My thoughts turned to ways of escaping daily, the problem was how?” she writes. She eventually hatched a plan to hide her glasses and be sent to Georgetown to get a new pair. It was “the only way to reach the U.S. Embassy and tell them what was really happening in Jonestown.”

She was never able to reach the Embassy. “Jim has spies everywhere”.

The ending of this story is well known. Deborah Layton, an Inner Circle member, had escaped at this point and was publicly speaking out against Jim Jones. Family members back in California became increasingly concerned about what was really happening in Guyana and demanded that something be done for their loved ones.

This prompted Congressman Leo Ryan and his crew to pay a visit to Guyana to see for themselves. Their visit would end with 9 people being murdered on the Port Kaituma airstrip, including Ryan, and 909 dying in Jonestown.

By this point, Jim Jones was consistently on drugs, consumed by paranoia, and had lost much of the influence he once held back in San Francisco. He chose to push forward with his mass-suicide plans rather than face the reality of his failure.

Most Temple members were murdered by a grape Flavor Aid drink that was laced with cyanide, painkillers, and sleeping medications. “No, it wasn’t actually Kool-aid” Persaud remarks. Large vats of the Flavor Aid were brought out and everyone was instructed to drink.

He then goes on to explain how if members didn’t want to drink, they were forced to. Some resistant members were shot, or tied to chairs so others could force poison down their throats. Knowing how indoctrinated and physically and mentally drained the community had become at this point, I now understood why most members “drank the Kool-aid”.

It was fast. It was painless. Better than being shot. They could put on a brave face for their kids. They gave up all their money to be here, so there was nothing to return with, even if they could escape. Life had become exhausting, this was a way out.

A few days after landing back home in San Francisco, Guyana bug bites still itchy on my arms and legs, I drove over to Oakland to visit Evergreen Cemetery, which houses the memorial and final resting place of 412 unclaimed bodies from Jonestown.

It’s a nice spot tucked to the side of the cemetery. I had to walk through some grass filled with tiny purple flowers to get to the memorial, and was struck by how similar this felt to the Jonestown site in Guyana. Both places, separated by thousands of miles, both covered in flowers.

Standing there, sun on my face and a cool Bay breeze through my hair, I couldn’t help but reflect on the lives of those buried beneath my feet. These were ordinary people who had sought hope, community, and purpose, only to be betrayed in the most unimaginable way.

I see their story as a cautionary tale about what happens when you leave a charismatic, power-hungry person unchecked. And, as an important lesson in recognizing the warning signs of cult-like behavior, whether in organizations, communities, or governments.

As I left the cemetery, driving back into the fog of San Francisco, I felt the weight of their stories settle over me once again. It’s a weight I don’t think I’ll ever fully shake, and that’s the point of the tour I took in Guyana. These lives, these lessons, deserve to be remembered, carried forward, and honored. Even if it’s uncomfortable.