The Disneyland Abductions

The Disneyland Abductions

feat. Kyle Harrison, Blair Daniels, Byfelsdisciple

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Chapter One: I Don’t Remember Any of It.

Henry, Judy and Max are standing near Walt Disney’s statue, grinning and laughing like idiots. I’m in the background, an equally impish grin on my face as Ike (I assume) is snapping the pic with that stupid Selfie Stick that Aunt Rachel got him for his birthday in May.

I’ve looked at these pictures for about a week now on Facebook and Instagram.

I’ve commented, liked, tagged and shared just about every picture that we took.

But I don’t remember a single thing.

I want to. I really do. I’ve dreamed of visiting Disneyland since I was a little girl.

My family lives about 9 hours away from the park, so the trip was part of our summer vacation. I do recall dad booking a hotel, checking flights, and even arranging for Uncle Mike to dog sit while we were gone.

For five days we enjoyed Disney and the surrounding attractions. Five days that are completely gone from my memory.

June 11 thru the 15th. The last thing I can firmly say I know that happened is we stopped off at Carbon Canyon for a picnic. Judy insisted that we get a better look at the rocks and hills, and we moved toward the south path.

After that, I found myself waking up in the back of the car while we drove toward home.

“Did you forgot something dad?” I asked tiredly as I rubbed my eyes. It felt like I had been asleep for a long time.

“What? Maxie did you leave something at the hotel?” he asked as we pulled into our driveway.

Max shrugged as he stayed glued to his phone. “Well whatever it is I can buy another one. Come on Renee, help me get the bags in,” dad said.

I walked into the house in confusion. I asked questions about the trip and they all eagerly recounted details that I was not remembering. But despite every single picture and memory they shared, my mind is still a blank slate.

I haven’t told my family yet because of the weird looks they gave me when I first brought it up. Dad even told me that I had wasted so much time on the rides I was probably going to be banned if we ever went back. So how could I forget?

The only person I really have told so far is my best friend Reggie. He confides in me about his problems as a gay teen in our conservative little town. I figure the least he can do is listen to my concerns about my frazzled brain.

“You don’t think something happened do you? Like maybe your family is hiding something from you?” Reggie asked.

I hated to admit it, but it wouldn’t be the first time dad had lied to us. Like when he lost his job and pretended to go into work for another two weeks. He was notorious for being an elaborate liar, and the chance that the trip was canceled because he couldn’t afford it had crossed my mind.

Reggie suggested I check to see if the pictures were photoshopped which I did with Max’s help, although he did ask me several questions as to why I was bothering to edit the photos.

“I’m doing this project for summer school, I have to make an album of my vacation,” I told him. Not my best fib but it was all I could come up with on the spot. Max confirmed that the photos hadn’t been altered in anyway, and that made me even more concerned than before.

Reggie’s next suggestion was a bit more outlandish, he told me there was a forum he frequented online that helped people with suppressed memories.

Apparently they had a particular page to help young people with discovering their sexual identity as well, but the tab he directed me toward was about people who had dealt with trauma in their lives.

Here’s my post I made a few days ago:

Hey everyone, new to the forum but I was told to get some feedback about an experience I had in Anaheim at Disneyland. Well, actually the problem is I had an experience but I don’t remember it. Any advice you can give would be great!

I was surprised when I woke up the next day that I had several replies:

One user, Thinklikeaman34 replied:

Hey there, if you don’t mind me asking what are the dates when you visited the resort?

I typed a quick reply and got a private message from the user a few minutes later. Here’s a transcript of the conversation:

it can’t be a coincidence then, I was too scared to even post about it though.

What do you mean?

I mean I was at Disneyland the same time as your family. But I have the same problem, I don’t remember any of it.

Whoa. That’s fucking weird.

Here let me send you a few pictures.

I looked over the pictures and then realized something. I told him to hold on and I went back to check my own Instagram feed.

Sure enough, his face popped up in a few of the hashtag photos.

The pictures he showed me were from different angles but seemed to be taken around the same time.

What do you think it means? Btw I’m Eddie.

I’m Renee, and Idk this is crazy. Do you think there might be other people like us?

Sure enough an hour later four more people commented on my post with the same thing: they had been to the park on the same dates with their own family, but remembered nothing.

By yesterday afternoon I had gotten a total of 7 different users who claimed to have no recollection of their trip to the resort.

All of us decided to create a Discord and share our photos, to compare notes and figure this out. That’s when I noticed something…. disturbing.

7 people, sharing photos on the internet of a similar situation was odd enough. But the same photo again and again from different angles could only mean one thing.

These were taken by the same people in a short period of time.

And worse still, each photo had one thing in common that I had noticed the minute Eddie shared his with me: a tall pale skinned man standing in the background wearing a fedora and a gray suit. He was there in every photo, some were a little more blurry than others, but it was definitely the same guy.

I’m a little scared as to what to do next about all of this, but some in the group have decided to contact the police. I just want to know what happened to me during those five days. If anything else comes of it, I’ll be sure to update everyone. And if any of you have had similar experiences please don’t be afraid to share.

Something tells me that whoever is doing this, chose us for a reason.

UPDATE: I’ve noticed that several comments are mentioning that selfie sticks have been banned at Disney for quite some time. (This was my first trip so honestly didn’t know that.) it has me wondering if there might be some kind of illusion at play cause I talked to Ike about it and he recalled taking the picture a different way with a regular camera).

Chapter Two: I Remember All of It.

It is unfortunate that the next words I say could be taken as untrue. Maybe it’s better that way. Nobody fucking listens, to me, anyway. Nobody believes half of the awful shit that I have been through.

But, after the recent post… This feels like the right forum to finally say this next line aloud.

My family was abducted by aliens in Disneyland.

You would be amazed by how quickly people have turned away from that concept. Like its crazy. Like I am crazy. And yet… there are approximately ten trillion planets in our galaxy. Three weeks ago, a twelve mile wide lake was discovered on Mars. Enceladus has a subsurface ocean, Europa is covered in ice, and Kepler-186f has been called an alien Earth; even without the advantage of sight. It just seems absurd that some would doubt the existence of extra-terrestrial life.

I have seen them. I remember them.

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It rained the whole drive down to Disneyland. Dad drove. Mom sat in the front. Me and my six-year-old sister crammed in the back with a couple stale burgers and melted sodas. It was one of many miserable family road-trips. We had to keep the windows up to avoid dripping water… and the AC was broken. The stifling heat of the backseat joined forces with the nervous energy of my mother to create combustible arguments that erupted every, fucking, five minutes.

“That’s the exit! Shit, we missed it again! Turn down the music, Mark!”

Maybe that was the reason the trip took eleven hours instead of eight.

My father had this old Springsteen CD from the eighties. On each and every road trip; he bumped the bass well past the speaker capacity of our wood-paneled station wagon. He said the songs reminded him of home. When Dad was behind the wheel, with his CDs… he was in the zone. It was like the music gave him immunity to the constant bickering back and forth. I can still hear the track Born to Run imprinted on my wretched memory of what comes next.

By the time we got to the park in Anaheim, it was dark and close to closing time.

There were a few other families milling around the concession stands and water-logged benches. But, not many. I suspect that some of them may be the folks that have already come forward.

The windy weather and late hour was not on our side. At that time, most of the games and stations had already shut their gates. The dimmed lights and pounding rain gave the black streets of the park an ominous and depressing vibe. But Sidney insisted on one ride before we went back to the hotel for the night.

“Please, Mom. Please, Dad. Just one.”

They caved, as they always did, to her demands. It was easier that way. Better to avoid a tantrum whenever possible. We scoured the park for about fifteen minutes, looking for something that was open. Eventually, Sid settled on a partially indoor ‘ride’ to hide from the growing downpour and concerning flashes of heat lightning. The queue was completely empty.

Dad had to knock on some door three times just to get someone’s attention. After five minutes, he finally yelled,

“Hello!“

And a man in an official Disney uniform opened up immediately. After some hesitation, he stepped aside, and let us pass. He offered one line over his shoulder, before leaving the same way we came in.

“Need to lock up behind you. Exit will be on the other side,”

The line extended through hollow corridors and open courtyards. Eventually, we landed in an exotic pet cemetery with several detailed and decorated graves. Of course, Sid was infatuated. She ducked beneath the small guardrails to examine each of them. One at a time.

It was pouring rain. I begged the kid to hurry it up… but my parents were no help. They seemed to be stuck inside of the romanticism of the dark night. I caught them kissing in a corner just as a massive vibration shook the siding.

At first, that noise sounded like a plane.

I asked my dad if there was an airport nearby. He nodded and shook his head at the same time. He seemed confused. The noise, and the vibration that came with it, only grew louder. Soon, it was so goddamn obnoxious that the headstones started to shake in the ground itself.

I looked up. Perfectly placed above the gap in the roofing, something metallic was hovering above us.

Then, the night erupted with a blinding light.

The pulsing vibration that followed that was so strong that it knocked me to my feet. The combination of the two was enough to blur to my senses altogether. I could see not anything. Everyone’s voice sounded hollow.

But, unfortunately, I heard some things.

I could hear my sister cry. I could hear my father rousing himself, yelling nonsense to the background of the vibrations. It was an empty, shocked, begging type of threat.

I could hear something massive tossing him to the side.

I could hear my mother scream, and beg the open air for her life. But something silenced her. The last sound she made was a loud, exasperated sigh.

Then, all of a sudden… I felt alone inside the ride.

Hundreds of small, pattering feet filled the room. I tried to speak to them, but I couldn’t breath. My mouth opened and shut like a trout. Suddenly, I was completely paralyzed, and every limb in my body was covered in pain. My instincts screamed that I needed to get out.

The owners of the feet started to click to one another.

They seemed excited. Or they were arguing… I couldn’t tell the difference. The noises they made was rhythmic. Each ‘sentence’ rose up and down like a language, with cadence and emphasis… but none of it made any sense.

One of them scratched the floor oddly as he shook his weight in my direction. Then, there was a soft, suckling sound of wet body parts slithering alongside each other. My shirt was lifted. Without warning, I could feel a small metallic object slide inside the ring of my belly button. A moment later, I felt the pressure of a thousand pins falling inwards on my forehead.

And then, suddenly, I was somewhere else.

I woke up in the parking lot outside a WaWa in New Jersey two weeks later with a family of five shouting in my face.

It felt like a moment.

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Due diligence has been done, by the police, to find my parents and Sidney. They have been unsuccessful. The cameras operating at the park were out that night, due to the storm. The toll plazas on the highways, suspiciously, suffered the problem. There is no record, anywhere, that we ever even made it to the theme park.

As far as they know, we could have been home all weekend.

But, we were not alone that night. There were other families in the park, with children and lives of their own. I have heard they have been affected as well. The date of my trip was August 1st, 2018. If there is anyone else… in the interest of gathering information, please come forward.

Chapter Three: I Got Pregnant at Disneyland

I didn’t plan to tell anyone about this.

Much less anonymous users on an internet forum.

But I’ve seen the other posts… and I have to come forward.

I got pregnant at Disneyland.

And gave birth there – 2 days later.

***

“Splash Mountain,” Kenny said, pointing up to the sign. “You really liked it yesterday. Want to ride it again?”

“Yesterday? We didn’t go on that yesterday.”

“Uh, yeah, we did.”

I shrugged. “Okay, sure.” I didn’t want to get into an argument with Kenny. It was our honeymoon, after all.

As we entered, nothing looked familiar to me: not the path through the cave, not the hollowed-out tree trunk. And waiting in line wasn’t exactly fun. I heard a father shouting “Renee! Get over here!” a few times, breaking the mood. And this tall man, wearing a fedora, kept staring at me.

He kind of creeped me out.

We finally hit the front of the line. The water lapped around the sides of the boat; a thin drizzle of rain fell through the openings of the fake cave. Thunder rumbled in the background, distant and eerie. I didn’t think it was supposed to storm, I thought. I checked the weather and it said sunny, 82\F…*

“How many?” the cast member asked. But then his dark eyes lit with recognition. “Oh, it’s you guys again! Enjoying your honeymoon?”

I just stood there, at a loss for words.

If we didn’t go on this ride yesterday…

How come he remembers us?

We climbed into the boat. “Front row this time,” Kenny said excitedly, looking around at the water. But his voice sounded muffled, far away. The thunder rumbled again – closer, this time. The pattering rain drummed in my ears, like the throbbing of my heart.

Chink-chink-chink. The boats climbed the hill, entering a cave tunnel. The sounds faded into the distance.

As we sped down the other side, I felt a wave of nausea.

“Cara? Are you okay?”

I nodded. But as we twisted around the curve, I felt it again. I took in a deep breath of fresh air. Just motion sickness, I bet. We slowly floated around a fake briar patch. I stared at it, trying to swallow the urge to vomit.

The thick brown vines curled around each other. Thorns and leaves ran their length, adding realistic detail.

Except for one.

No. One was just a plain, brown vine, tangled up with all the rest. As I stared at it, wondering why the Disney artists had neglected that one vine –

I saw it move.

It wriggled in the water. Almost wormlike; almost snakelike. I couldn’t make out a head or a tail – a beginning or an end.

The briar patch was swept out of view, and the boat careened through another fake cave. “Are you okay?” Kenny asked, but his voice sounded so far away.

My eyes fell on more of the briars, poking through the cave’s ceiling.

One didn’t have thorns.

As I felt the vomit rise in my throat, the world faded to black.

***

“You’re pregnant.”

I half-expected the doctor to give me a tiny set of Mickey Mouse ears. Or one of those big plastic buttons they give out for birthdays and anniversaries, saying I’M PREGNANT! He was a doctor for Disneyland guests, after all.

But he didn’t. He just smiled. “You’re about two months along, I’d say.”

“Two months?” I glanced over at Kenny. “Uh, that’s not possible.” I’d had my period. I’d drunk alcohol. And, most importantly… Kenny and I had only been married 3 days.

“We’d need to order a full ultrasound to get the exact due date, but that’s my guess.” He tucked the ultrasound probe away. “Now, is there anything else I can do for you?”

“No.”

As we left, he didn’t even tell me to have a magical day. He instead hurried over to the phone, and began frantically dialing a number on his phone. Must be a busy life, being a Disneyland doctor.

When we got to the car, the fight erupted.

“Explain this to me, Cara,” Kenny said. His voice was biting. Hurt. Angry. “You’re pregnant. You’ve been pregnant for months. But we just got married three days ago.”

“What are you implying?!”

“Do I need to say it?” He turned into the hotel parking lot. The silence hung in the air, thick and heavy.

This has always been a sore point with Kenny. He’d saved himself for marriage. I didn’t; I’d slept with a few boyfriends in college. But I agreed to his little shtick. Agreed not to have sex with him until our wedding night.

Apparently, that was a mistake.

“Clearly the doctor’s just wrong,” I said. I swung the car door open; the warm night air blew over my face, through my hair. “There’s no other way.”

I didn’t cheat on him. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted to – cutting out all sex for a year and a half is a hell of a thing – but I didn’t do it.

Kenny was silent.

We went to bed without so much as a kiss. Kenny fell asleep in fifteen minutes; I tossed and turned for an hour. At about 3 AM, I woke up in the middle of the night to pee.

I climbed out of bed. It was difficult; my body felt heavier, somehow. Must be sore from all that walking in the park yesterday. I walked into the bathroom, flicked on the light.

I looked in the mirror.

And screamed.

My stomach was round and full, stretching thin the fabric of my tank top. It bumped the countertop, even though I was standing a foot or two away.

I looked six or seven months pregnant.

Muffled thumps came from the other room as Kenny climbed out of bed. “Cara? Cara, what’s wrong?” He found me in a crumpled heap on the floor, sobbing, my arms covering my distended abdomen.

I slowly removed them.

He gasped.

“I don’t – I don’t know what’s happening,” I sobbed.

He lifted me from the floor, his hands on my belly. “We have to get you to the hospital,” he said, still staring.

And then the thing kicked.

My whole belly convulsed. Kenny pulled his hands away immediately, as if I was too hot to touch. Then came the pain – a sharp, intense cramp, starting in my lower back and radiating to my stomach. I screamed again, and Kenny held me tight.

Thump! Thump! Thump!

A knock at the door.

“Thank God.” We hobbled over; Kenny pulled the door open. “Please, call 911 – my wife, she’s –”

He stopped.

On the other side of the door were not fellow hotel guests, checking in if we were okay. No. They were some sort of operatives. Officials. Dressed in black suits, grim expressions on their faces.

They grabbed us before we could blink. Roughly pulled us by the shoulders down the carpeted hallway. I watched the paintings of Mickey Mouse go by, blurred through my tears. “Where are you taking us?” Kenny screamed.

No reply, save for the ding of the elevator.

They pulled us inside.

We rocketed down. 3, 2, 1, B1, B2… the floors raced by on the screen. There weren’t any floors beyond B2, no more buttons… still, the elevator kept going down. My ears popped with the descent.

When the doors finally parted, we were looking into a dark hallway, extending for miles.

“Take them to the park,” the tallest operative commanded.

“We’ve got work to do.”

Chapter Four

Did you know that there’s a second, hidden Disneyland beneath the real one?

In the early years of the park, ol’ Walt himself decided he didn’t like characters traveling through themed areas where they didn’t belong.

He said it broke immersion.

So he had an entire complex built beneath the Magic Kingdom. It mirrored every street, every ride, every land above it. The arrangement was designed to enable masked men to sneak around so well that your children never noticed, leaving you happy to foot the bill.

Disney works very hard to keep its secrets.

Here’s another fun fact: every “cast member” has to be “on stage” whenever they’re in potential sight of park guests.

Even the janitors.

That’s where I come in. For the past twenty years, I’ve been cleaning up every type of mess that park visitors have the ability to make. If you come off of the teacups and paint the ground with the clam chowder you just ate at Royal Street Veranda, I’ll be there.

It’s my job to whisk away the spunk with the precision of a diligent surgeon.

It’s a lot easier that you’d think, given the fact that we’ve been watching you from the very moment your tumbly got rumbly. There are cameras on you from the moment you’re shepherded into a parking spot in the morning until the tram drops you off after the fireworks at night.

Things are fine, if you know your place.

I learned that pretty quickly.

The first lesson sticks out in my mind. I’d been on the job one year, seven months, and thirteen days when a distraught-looking couple came to me and asked where they should go to inquire about a missing child. I was in the zone immediately, leading them straight to the office on Main Street while explaining how park employees would have their daughter escorted through the underground passages directly into their waiting arms.

Upon arriving at the office, I opened the door, turned around, let them inside, then turned back.

They were gone.

I was searching furiously for them when the head of security emerged, looking grim. I had gotten maybe three words out when he cut me off.

“Everything is fine, Sid. The parents have been reunited with their son.”

“It was a daughter-”

“That’s right, their daughter. Why don’t you take some time off? A week’s paid vacation would give you enough time to visit Orlando. Did you know that park associates are entitled to complementary park tickets and travel reimbursements?”

“But-”

“It could be much longer than a week, Sid,” he grumbled with a note of very grave finality.

I took the plane tickets, but went to the beach instead.

I did very well for myself in the ensuing years.

I cleaned things up.

And I didn’t question why our electric meters would occasionally record 10,000 megawatt-hours used between closing at night and opening the next morning.

There was no reason to ask why a dozen staff members frequently spent the night furiously cooking food that none of the night staff ever ate.

I never inquired about why there was a yellow door in the passageway under Adventureland, or why I got vertigo every time I drove by it.

And no one ever questioned the firm policy of distraught families that had been separated:

Get them out of sight.

It breaks immersion.

That reason was always good enough for me.

But the strangest thing ever to happen was just a couple of weeks ago. I was in the underground Disneyland, spending my break by trying to forget the poopy accident I’d had to fix in the Alice in Wonderland ride. A costumed Mickey Mouse came into the lounge, looked at me, then sat on the opposite couch with his legs crossed. I smiled, nodded, and tried to zone out.

Which is hard to do when a cartoon mouse is staring at you.

And why was he still a mouse? The first thing that I do upon stepping “off stage” is to drop my smile, let out a fart, and ease into relaxation mode. Why wouldn’t someone take the first opportunity to doff a ridiculous mouse head?

I stared back.

He didn’t move.

It wasn’t pleasant.

I wondered if he was stuck in the damn thing, and obsessively started looking for seams in the costume.

But I couldn’t find any.

My blood dropped a few degrees while my stomach turned over like a beached whale as I realized there were no openings in the costume. I mean, what the hell? Was this guy sewed directly into the outfit? Was the illusion that good? Could my very dull imagination actually have conjured up the belief in magic?

And why was he just staring at me? That’s weird as shit even without the fused cartoon-mouse skinsuit. There was no getting around the fact that this fucker was an odd duck who wore that fact like a badge of honor.

Then it blinked.

I don’t mean the man inside the costume blinked. I mean those fucking giant mouse eyes rolled over to me, locked onto my face, and the anthropomorphic cartoon rodent blinked its goddamn eyes.

We were alone in the room, and I was about ready to leave a bigger shitstain than that loose-bowelled boy on the Alice ride. I opted, however, to turn and run into the hallway instead. I got a sudden burst of adrenaline-fueled energy when I heard rapid-fire footsteps behind me. I tried to outrun the thing, but my football glory days are a quarter century in the past, so that didn’t work out very well. I think I made it about three hundred yards before my burning lungs forced me to roll onto the ground and await my own untimely demise at the gloved hands of a mouse.

But he didn’t kill me. Through my blurred vision and desperate gasps, I was barely able to make out a very man-sized shape standing above.

It was the head of security. He looked furious. Next to him was a man who looked vaguely familiar. He was tall, pale, and dressed in a gray suit with a fedora. He did not look like he’d been running at all.

“Well, Sid,” the head of security casually shouted, clearly less winded than I was, “How about we send you to Europe for this vacation?”

I’m in Italy now. A few days ago, I started reading about other people who were coming out online about their Disney experiences.

I stopped being able to accept the denial that I had worked so hard to maintain.

I also noticed that a lot of other people on my tour had connections to Disney, despite the fact we had never met before and were not part of a Disney-sanctioned tour. It seemed that we’d been gathered together on purpose, but someone clearly didn’t want us to know what that purpose might be. It was a very odd situation at best.

So I did exactly what I’d been taught to do:

I separated myself from the situation. That’s the best way to keep things clean.

I didn’t show up for the day trip to Genoa. And, in doing so, I stayed away from the bridge collapse a few days back that killed everyone else in my tour group.

I’m the only one left to tell my story.

And that story will end with me making it very, very clear that I won’t be going back home. I think I’ll be much safer living anonymously in Europe.

Disneyland is hiding something big.

And their greatest strength is making you believe the magic isn’t real.