FantasticLand Read online

  Copyright © 2016 by Mike Bockoven

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Laura Klynstra

  ISBN: 978-1-5107-0944-7

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-0946-1

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Sarah, my companion; for Stephanie, my advisor and friend; and for Chad. Burnt toast Bigfoot.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  INTERVIEW 1: Jessica Landis—FantasticLand Historian

  INTERVIEW 2: Miranda Tots—Former director of the Palm Beach-Treasure Cover Region of the American Red Cross

  INTERVIEW 3: Aaron Hoffman—FantasticLand Visitor, Evacuated from FantasticLand as Hurricane Sadie Hit

  INTERVIEW 4: Phil Mueller—Head of FantasticLand Personnel

  INTERVIEW 5: Sam Garliek—First-Shift Manager

  INTERVIEW 6: Stuart Dietz—FantasticLand Maintenance, Mole Man

  INTERVIEW 7: Jill Van Meveren—FantasticLand Character, Deadpool Soldier

  INTERVIEW 8: Cristobal Abasolo—Concession Manager

  INTERVIEW 9: Elvis Springer—Security Manager, Leader of the Robots

  INTERVIEW 10: Sophie Ruskin—Ride Operator, Unaffiliated

  INTERVIEW 11: Clara Ann Clark—Gift Shop Manager, Leader of the ShopGirls

  INTERVIEW 12: Chase Pounder—Ride Line Supervisor, Pirate

  INTERVIEW 13: Sal McVey—Parade Dance Troup/Guest Relations, Pirate

  INTERVIEW 14: Glenn Guignol—Fire Breather in the World’s Circus, Head of the Freaks

  INTERVIEW 15: Louise Muskgrove—Cashier at Hero Haven Comics, Deadpool

  INTERVIEW 16: Stuart Dietz—FantasticLand Maintenance

  INTERVIEW 17: Anonymous

  INTERVIEW 18: Jason Card—Retail Cashier

  INTERVIEW 19: Gemma Albers—First Aid Station Chief

  LETTER FROM THE FLORIDA NATIONAL GUARD

  INTERVIEW 20: Travis Barnes—Former Lieutenant in the Florida National Guard

  INTERVIEW 21: Emmet R. Kelley—Assistant Prosecutor for Florida’s 15th Judicial Circuit

  INTERVIEW 22: Brock Hockney—Character in Pirate Cove, Leader of the Pirates

  INTERVIEW 23: Ritchie Fresno—Owner of FantasticLand

  AFTERWORD

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  By now the details of what happened in FantasticLand during the thirty-five days dubbed “The Battle of the Tribes” have been dissected, obsessed over, and satirized so thoroughly by the public and the media that returning to what we know to have happened seems simultaneously a waste of time and a refreshingly new take on the story. With the sheer number of images and stories that defy belief and with the story occupying so dominant a place in the public consciousness, I feel it is a vital exercise to establish the facts.

  In the simplest terms I can use, this is what happened.

  On September 15, 2017, a hurricane more powerful than any in history fully broadsided the eastern coast of Florida. The effects of the hurricane, dubbed Hurricane Sadie, were felt along the totality of the Florida shoreline. The wind and subsequent flooding destroyed power grids, battered inland businesses, and left hundreds of thousands homeless. Local authorities were instantly outmatched. The National Guard was dispatched but were in over their heads. The Red Cross could only help so much. By November 1, thousands of people had died, not of drowning or the direct effects of the storm, but of neglect, exposure, and a lack of fresh water. Some smaller communities were not contacted until almost a month after the storm, in most cases far too late to do any good. Before the FantasticLand story broke, the phrase “America’s Shame” had been attached to the response effort and was gaining traction.

  It was only when the situation came under a reasonable amount of control and billions in federal government aid had been disbursed that the story of FantasticLand hit with a crash that shattered all other news stories about the disaster. It sounded like an urban legend at first—far too “out there” to be real. Only after the ruins of the once mighty amusement park appeared in online video footage did it become clear that the worst stories were true. Shockingly true, unbelievably true, but undeniable.

  Of the 326 employees who stayed behind in the park, 207 were eventually evacuated. The fate of the 119 missing souls may never be known, but evidence of death and slaughter was immediately apparent. Photos soon emerged: heads on spikes outside of rides, corpses floating in detention cells, and viscera decaying in the humid Florida sun. FantasticLand, where “Fun Is Guaranteed!”, was covered in blood. There were human bones littering the gift shops. It was all the country could talk about. The coverage crossed all media, breaking records for hits, views, likes, clicks, and shares.

  The most indelible image, the one most of the public saw first, is among the most haunting photos of the past fifty years. Snapped on a cell phone camera by Sgt. Richard Hammell of the Florida State Patrol, who was among the first thirty members of law enforcement through the gate after the site was cleared by the National Guard, the photo shows the seventy-five-foot-tall FantasticLand logo, a bright red Exclamation Point at the center of the 2,200-acre amusement park, shattered into thousands of jagged pieces on the ground. In its place, a crude yardarm stretches between support towers that once held the Exclamation Point in place. Hanging from the plank are five bodies, strung by their necks. Two nooses are empty, the bodies visible on the ground. One has simply fallen. The other has been decapitated. Behind the bodies, a sign boasts in bright red letters, FUN IS GUARANTEED!

  Reinforcements were called immediately. By the time employees broke their silence and began telling their stories, the media were scrambling and desperate to get on the scene. Unfortunately for FantasticFun Inc., the legal owner of the park, an uploaded video showed National Guard troops entering the park the very day a press conference downplaying the carnage was held. The footage aired side by side on most networks. Details began to emerge, bringing with them a flood of unanswerable, terrible questions.

  How could a group of survivors, mostly children, commit such terrible acts? How could survivors with the best possible circumstances in which to weather the storm and its aftermath produce the worst possible result? What does this say about our children? Ourselves? Is every American teenager just a few short steps away from bloodthirsty savagery? How do we prevent this in the future? Was an American institution that had provided joy to children since the 1970s fatally harmed by this incident, or is redemption possible?

  Many of these questions are answered in the following interviews, but I will warn you—many questions remain, and the answers I found only led to more questions. I was able to speak with almost all of
the key players, from FantasticFun Inc. representatives to evacuated employees to rescue crew. And, as you’ve probably heard in the publicity run-up to the release of this book, there are multiple interviews with employees inside the park, as well as interviews with five of the seven members of the infamous “Council of Pieces.” If there are answers, these are the people who would have them.

  Yet as I turned this book over to my editor, I felt I understood the events either only as well or slightly less well than I did after the initial news articles had been written and all the trial dates had been set. I knew facts. I knew locations. I knew the players, and I looked into their eyes. With one notable exception, none of these (some very young) adults are monsters. I’m convinced of that. I know now what I suspected then—that a cocktail of immense fear, absolute freedom, rising uncertainty, boredom, and raging hormones turned an amusement park into a tribal battle ground. I’ve read dozens of think pieces that have dissected every aspect of this story, from academics giving thoughtful criticism, to “take away their phones, and kids turn into killers” hysteria. I’ve heard the players describe what they were thinking, and I still can’t answer the most awful question everyone has asked themselves.

  What would I have done?

  What if I were a scared twentysomething, just getting my feet under me, more concerned with my Instagram account than my 401(k)? What if I had the entirety of human knowledge and experience at my fingertips and were suddenly plunged into the Dark Ages? What if I were cold and wet and scared and sick and bored to the point of losing my mind? Would I have followed someone? What if that someone asked me to kill?

  Most of us want to believe that we would have acted more reasonably if trapped in FantasticLand. You would like to believe that you would have hidden, or you would have calmed things, or you would have found some nonviolent way to ride out the events that led to so many dead bodies. On some level, we all need to think that about ourselves. So allow me to share one story before we dive into the interviews.

  There are many reasons I was unable to interview nineteen-year-old Alice Barlow, who, my sources tell me, was an archer for the ShopGirls Tribe, one of seven tribes that formed over the time FantasticLand was cut off from humanity. There were only four archers in the entire park, two of whom were ShopGirls. Of the ninety-two bodies recovered, an incredible thirty-four were killed by arrows. It is possible, albeit unlikely, that Alice didn’t fire any of the killing shots. More likely that there were moments, perched on roofs of confectionaries and clothing stores and year-round Christmas shops, when Alice shot arrow after arrow after arrow into the heads, necks, chests, and legs of her coworkers as they bled and screamed and died below. It’s not a stretch to speculate that it became somewhat normal for her, and that she was rewarded every time she spilled blood.

  Alice was a good student (3.7 GPA in high school) and had a promising future in veterinary medicine. Beyond that, her digital trail paints the story of an all-American sweetheart. She loved movies and music, but her Facebook page (now deleted) had over two hundred photos of her with animals. One photo shows Alice holding a baby duck, gingerly, as if to protect it, on a stormy, windy day. If I were to interview Alice Barlow and ask her how the girl who protected a soft yellow duckling with only her hands could turn around and kill with impunity after only a few days cut off from civilization, what would she say? What could she say? I don’t know that she knows the answer herself or that we would know the answer if it were staring us in the face.

  It is my hope that this book not only sets the record straight on some pretty irresponsible reporting but also that for every arrow shot and every corpse viewed, you remember Alice and Joy and Alan and Tamera and Reggie and the other human beings who were in a situation most of us cannot fathom. There are many, many facts about the events at FantasticLand found in these pages, but there are also stories of human beings who started off as something else and were sometimes led, sometimes forced, sometimes coerced into acts of unspeakable savagery. Remember the victims. Remember those who are left alive. Most of all, remember the children they used to be. Because while many of them are still children, for a few weeks they were monsters. Most likely, you would have been, too.

  A quick note on the format of this book: I have removed my questions from the conversations, streamlined the stories, and made a few editorial tweaks and edits to keep the subjects on point and their narratives flowing. In some cases, large parts of the interviews were cut for relevance or clarity, but at no point do I believe I have misrepresented anything said by the subjects. In many cases, I have preserved the conversational flow by keeping transitions and other verbal tics as markers left for the ease of the readers. A few chapters are presented in their original, uncut form, and the original audio of the interviews are available at my website. I encourage you to listen to them for yourselves.

  —Adam Jakes

  INTERVIEW 1: JESSICA LANDIS

  FantasticLand Historian, Author of Fun Is Guaranteed! An Authorized History of FantasticLand.

  My daughter told me the only time she ever heard me swear was when I was watching the media coverage of the FantasticLand situation. I told her it was the last time I remember really doing it, too, because nothing, excuse me, nothing pisses off a historian more than seeing context thrown out the window because people were too lazy to ask questions. Also, if they’re too stupid to know to ask those questions to provide that context in the first place, that’s just as bad. Either way, when you look at it, the novelty of this whole thing is that it happened at FantasticLand, but the history is the key. In order to put the whole “tribes” thing in any sort of context, you have to start with Johnny Fresno and the way he did things, and to my mind, nobody in the media bothered to do that.

  That wasn’t his real name, obviously, but a persona he created. You could tell just by looking at him and by his posture that he thought a lot of himself and his place in the world. He was a short man, but he had a strut, for lack of a better term. After talking with Johnny for a few minutes, it was clear that he had the ego, but he could back it up. He was creative, he was enthusiastic, and he was fun. He was every inch the legend, never a disappointment. He was born Mohammad Assad Kassab, and he grew up in several locations across the Middle East. He was privately educated, as his father moved their family around while working in the oil business. Fresno, he insisted on being called Fresno. He never told anyone exactly what his father did and there aren’t great records on the guy, but we do know the Kassab family was known to have lived in Egypt, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia for the first eight years of Johnny’s life, then Canada, and finally the United States.

  All of his family freely admit that little Mohammad was the black sheep from the get-go. He was the youngest of four brothers and the only one not to follow their father into the oil business or to choose a career in the military. The father, Youssef, ran a very strict household and didn’t let the boys consume a lot of media. Mohammad didn’t see his first movie until he was eight, but well before that it was pretty clear he was going to go a different direction than the rest of his family. His mother used to call him “my little dreamer,” while his father didn’t know how to relate to him at all. That meant a lot of yelling and the occasional beating when Mohammad would spend all his time writing or drawing instead of more masculine pursuits.

  So imagine this situation. You’ve got a strong, rich man; his sophisticated jewel of a wife; three older brothers who were built like tanks and whose lives were dedicated to impressing their father; and then you had Mohammad in the corner, playing with dolls he made out of grass and twigs. He was creative in the least fertile environment you can think of for an artist, but what that upbringing accomplished was to make him single-minded and absolutely sure in his vision. When he latched onto something, he didn’t waver until he was done with it. He obviously inherited his father’s sense of pride in his work and his sense of indomitability. He barely got in to UCLA, as he wasn’t a great student, but the second he left the
front stoop of his parents’ home he ceased thinking of himself as Mohammad Assad Kassab and started living his life as Johnny Fresno.

  I asked him about it before he died. Where did that name come from? It’s patently ridiculous. It’s phony as a three-dollar bill, and I don’t want to traffic in stereotypes, but he was obviously of Middle Eastern descent, his accent would come and go, and there aren’t a lot of Fresnos in Jordan or Syria. When you say “Johnny Fresno” I immediately conjure up a blonde surfer type from North Beach, but when I posed the question to him, he answered matter-of-factly, “That’s who I am.” No “I met this girl in Fresno” or “I thought it would appeal to Middle America.” He said he was more Johnny Fresno than he was Mohammad Assad Kassab. In a strange way, you can’t argue with that logic.

  I might be making him out to be a tortured genius type, but he was not an unpleasant guy—just the opposite. He was often described with words like “generous” and “kind.” We also don’t know exactly how much of what Johnny Fresno said was—to put it diplomatically—bullshit, because the guy was first and foremost a talker. That was his skill. When you look at recent historical figures, the main challenge is to figure out what they were good at. Steve Jobs, for example, was the guy who took the foreign language of technology and made it look and act like “the future” in a way everyone could understand, but by all accounts, he was awful to work for. Fresno was the opposite. He would make you feel brilliant, and his employees would take a bullet for him. But for every great idea he had, and he had a few, he had twenty terrible ideas, and if you weren’t careful, he’d start insisting on implementing those bad ideas. That’s where Ollie Tracks came in.

  Tracks was the CFO of FantasticFun Inc. and one of three people in the world who could tell Johnny what was what, the others being his mother and his wife, Cassie. When Johnny Fresno said, “I want to build a giant fantasy land in the middle of New York City,” Trolly—that’s what everyone called him—he steered Fresno to toward cheaper land. When Johnny said, “I want to build in Disney World’s backyard,” Trolly got him to move it a couple hundred miles away. When Johnny said, “I want an actual street made of gold,” Ollie was the one who pointed out that it would cost more money than the GDP of most countries and everyone would try to steal it. They eventually settled on that thin line of gold in the street that goes from the gates to the center of the park. It’s all encased in plexiglass, but everyone still feels special walking the “Golden Road.”