I went to the research library at the California Historical Society today and yesterday. They have a mind-boggling amount of stuff on Peoples Temple and Jonestown. Hundreds of boxes filled with papers. It’s incredible…and overwhelming!

It would take forever to talk about everything I looked at and read so I’ll just stick to one thing they have—a package of the Fla-Vor-Aid that was used to mix with the poison that they drank at Jonestown. I took digital pictures of it so that I would be able to write an accurate description in the book. Unfortunately I can’t post them online because right now I only have permission to use them for personal use. But I’ve been thinking that it would make an amazing cover of a book…particularly because it’s just so bizarre and creepy looking.

The bottom of the packet is torn off and dirty. The picture on the packet is a very late seventies drawing. It has two children on it. A little boy with red or brown hair and a little girl with blond hair in pigtails with a flower in it. They both look absurdly happy as they sip a huge glass of Fla-Vor-Aid through two striped straws.

The back of the packet says (among other things) “Fla-Vor-Aid is so easy and economical to use. It comes in eight delicious flavors.” You know, flavors like poisonous…

The letters were also rather eery, particular the ones written to “Dad” (Jim Jones) that were “confessions”. Reading through a huge chunk of letters it was clear to me that at least a large number of members were ready and willing to die for “the cause”. They were victims only in the sense that Jones purposely manipulated them and lied to them to lead them to see the world only through his eyes, but they saw truth in what he preached and they believed in it. Then again one could argue that Jones himself was a victim of his own eventual insanity.