The editors of the jonestown report continue to upload transcripts and summaries from the hundreds of audiotapes which the FBI recovered from Jonestown following the deaths in 1978. More than 40 are currently available on the “Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple” website, which may be found here. We plan to upload an additional dozen by November 18.
The transcripts and summaries include a complete White Night, recorded in Jonestown in April 1978 (Q 635-639). We have also assigned a priority to transcribing the sermons of Jim Jones and the recorded services of Peoples Temple in California, in an effort to put the mass migration of Temple members to Guyana in the context of the events of the day and the voices they were hearing (e.g., Q 612 & Q 612a, Q 929, Q 932, Q 955, Q 1016 and Q 1059 (Part 1)).
The website also includes two versions of Q 42, which has been referred to as “the death tape.” The hour-long tape was made as people died in Jonestown on 18 November 1978. The two versions – which vary only slightly – were transcribed by the FBI and by Dr. Mary Maaga for her book, Hearing the Voices of Jonestown (Syracuse University Press, 1998).