So, the idea is that because the shoes match the colors of the suicide victim, the shoe was discontinued? If you'll recall, the web design company/cult known as Heaven's Gate believed that they were going to be taken up by aliens associated with the Hale-Bopp comet, so they timed their suicides to coincide with its arrival. But is there really a connection between these sneakers and the cult? It's true that the Heaven's Gaters were known for all wearing matching black Nikes, but I don't see Nike discontinuing their line of all-black Dunks.

Still, the flimsiness of the rumors haven't stopped eager entrepreneurs from trying to make a ton of cash from selling the prototypes on E-bay. I love the way the E-bay seller pretends that the shoes were actually called "Heaven's Gate." You too could be suckered out of $3,000, so act now! [via E-bay]

First of all, the members of Heaven's Gate were web designers (check out their amazing Web 1.0 designs here), which automatically makes them twenty million times more likely to meet aliens, since we all know aliens live in cyberspace. And they also watched Star Trek religiously, gathering together on the nights it aired and sitting in perfect rows to take in the next installment in the show that apparently confirmed their belief in aliens riding behind the Hale-Bopp comet who would save them.

Though the Heaven's Gate religion had once had thousands of members back in the 1960s and 70s, by the late 1990s it had dwindled to just a couple of dozen. Sadly, they took their beliefs way too seriously. Several of the men in the group voluntarily castrated themselves in order to maintain their monastic lifestyle. And then the group began careening towards suicide. Believing they needed to leave their human bodies to become one with the Hale-Bopp aliens, they took poison together in 1997 and died in their palatial San Diego mansion where their website building business was located. Though their deaths were incredibly sad, it's clear they died believing they would be going to a better world. And they never tried to force anyone else to go with them the way the Scientologists do.

Heaven's Gate via Wikipedia