- Jonestown was a remote village in Guyana in South America.
- In November 1978, Jonestown was the site where 909 members of a cult, the Peoples Temple, died from cyanide poisoning at the direction of leader Jim Jones.
- Today, the abandoned village is an overgrown jungle.
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On November 18, 1978, the village of Jonestown became the location of a shocking tragedy when 909 members of a cult, the Peoples Temple, died from cyanide poisoning at the direction of their leader, Jim Jones.
This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? Log in.Jones was a preacher who formed the Peoples Temple in Indiana in the 1950s. He later moved his followers to California.
In the 1970s, he led a group to the remote Amazonian village, promising his community that life there would be a utopia of sorts, according to the History Channel. It's believed Jones set up the commune Jonestown to escape growing criticism of his cult in the US.
Jonestown was located in Guyana in South America. Today, its location is considered to be close to the small town of Port Kaituma, on the border of Venezuela.
Keep reading to see photos of the abandoned, swampy village, which is now an overgrown jungle with just a few rusted buildings and vehicle remains.
Jonestown was a commune in Guyana, South America, created by Jim Jones, a preacher and leader of the Peoples Temple cult.
In the 1970s, Jones convinced his followers to leave the US and join him in the remote village, promising a better life.
According to Fielding McGehee III, the research director of at the Jonestown Institute, the Jonestown commune is not an official location on the map, but was close in proximity to the city of Port Kaituma.
McGehee said that in order to travel to the location where the village was once located, people would need to fly to the capital, Georgetown, then take a charter to Port Kaituma.
An aerial photo taken 30 years after the tragedy shows the area near Jonestown.
Jonestown was close to the jungle town of Port Kaituma, which still exists.
In 1979, a year after hundreds of Jones' followers drank cyanide-laced Kool Aid, a photo was taken showing flowers blooming at the abandoned village.
The village has been abandoned since the deadly events that took place in November 1978, according to McGehee.
Empty huts, which were living quarters for members of the Peoples Temple, were still there a year after the deaths.
The photo was taken by McGehee and his wife, Rebecca Moore, who visited Jonestown in 1979. Both McGehee and Moore had relatives who were followers of the Peoples Temple and passed away in the 1978 tragedy.
"We went down a year later to see what the place looked like. We'd heard all kinds of stories about [Jonestown], ranging from it being a prison camp to being paradise, and we found that it was a town in-between — neither paradise nor prison camp," McGehee told Insider.
One of the main structures on the Jonestown property was the pavilion, where leader Jim Jones led services for his followers.
This photo shows overgrown plants and crumbling pews one year after Jones led hundreds of followers to die by a mass suicide on the Jonestown property.
A year after the deaths at Jonestown, Reverend Jim Jones' chair still sat in its place at the front of the eerie, abandoned pavilion.
The sign in the background reads: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Jones' living quarters appeared in disarray a year after the murders.
The empty cottage where Jones lived had open boxes and papers strewn over the floor a year after the tragedy.
Here, an eerie workroom with tools and chains appeared untouched after the November 1978 tragedy.
Decaying wagons, barrels, and other work tools collected dust.
The remains of the Jonestown school, once a spot for young children on the commune, stood out in the abandoned village.
The smiling sunshine design contrasts with the tragedy that took place there.
Reverend Jim Jones had a chimpanzee named Mr. Muggs, which he kept in this wooden cage on the property.
The cage, once occupied by Jones' chimpanzee, was one of many structures in the ghost town.
A photo from 2008 shows a decaying truck at the site of the deserted village.
Thirty years after the tragedy, the former Jonestown commune appeared to be void of any signs of life.
Decades after the deaths, a photo shows the entrance to a deserted Jonestown.
The modest entrance sign was one of the few remains of the village in 2011.
Today, little remains in Jonestown aside from overgrown vegetation and rusted pieces of buildings and vehicles.
In 2008, writer Julia Scheeres traveled to Jonestown for a series of books she was writing about the Peoples Temple and Jonestown incident.
She described the remote, abandoned village on the Jonestown Institute's website, writing:
"All that was left of Jonestown was a tangled jungle garden. I'd heard there was no infrastructure left – 30 years had passed, after all – but I'd spent the past year reading through the daily business of the community, studying photographs of the buildings and fields, and talking to people who lived there, and it was still shocking to see such emptiness."
The emptiness of Jonestown and the knowledge of the atrocities committed on its soil more than 40 years ago continue to haunt those who return to the location.
"As I picked my way through the chest-high bushes growing in the area where the pavilion once stood, what struck me most was the silence. No birds, no bugs, nothing," Julia Scheeres wrote.
Correction: December 14, 2023 — An earlier photo caption in this story misidentified what was in the photo. The aerial photo showed Port Kaituma, Guyana, not Jonestown.
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