In October 1996, the group rented a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, California. That year, they recorded two video messages in which they offered their viewers a "last chance to evacuate Earth". Around the same time, they learned of the approach of Comet Hale–Bopp. Applewhite now believed that Nettles was aboard a spaceship trailing the comet, and that she planned to rendezvous with them. He told his followers that the vessel would transport them to an empyrean destination, and that a government conspiracy was attempting to suppress word of the craft. In addition, he stated that his deceased followers would be taken by the vessel, as well, a belief that resembled the Christian pretribulation rapture doctrine. How he learned of the comet or why he believed that it was accompanied by extraterrestrials or why he should have believed the dead Nettles would be with them is not known.