Part 5: Liberty Square

The Stocks

Surrounding the embarkation area for the Liberty Belle is Liberty Square, a celebration of America’s revolutionary era. The stocks located in the middle of the plaza could not restrain anyone, nor were they designed to do so. They are purely for play, a reference to the harsher punishments of a bygone era transformed into a photographic opportunity for guests. Like the vast majority of objects in the Magic Kingdom, they were not created with the region’s deeper forces in mind. In our initial surveys of the park, my former assistant and I had not detected anything out of the ordinary about them.

Mel on the other hand, was tracking down rumors about the stocks long before he joined our research team. For his Disney fan blog (recently hacked and erased by unknown cyber-assailants), Mel wrote about rumors he’d heard of cast members using the stocks to haze new members of their team. The story went that after hours the “newbie” would be held in the stocks, have their pants pulled down, and be “spanked” with one of the large, padded “Mickey Gloves” that cast members wear when bidding farewell to guests at the park’s gate. Many former cast members Mel spoke with had heard the rumor, but none had first hand experience with it.

A clue to the rumor’s origin appeared when I came into possession of a fragment from a fitness report for a Reedy Creek Esoteric Response agent who had just completed his or her first year of training. The agent had received a 1.364 rating on something referred to as “Lib. Sq. End.” The first two words clearly stand for Liberty Square, a common abbreviation in the RCER paperwork we’ve seen before. “End” was more enigmatic. The geographic “end” of Liberty Square is of course the Haunted Mansion. Mel assumed it had something to do with that key feature. I remained dubious. The period after “End.” indicated it was an abbreviation of some kind. And so it turned out to be. It stands for Endurance. Piecing together other information and testimony from anonymous sources, we have a working hypothesis for how RCER uses the stocks.

While the stocks’ placement next to the Liberty Belle is an accident of fate, RCER has repurposed the spot for its own uses. Although the training of a esoteric response agent remains largely mysterious, we do have numerous reports that it is a grueling process that takes a heavy toll. Trainees are exposed to powerful energies, worldview-shattering facts, and painful psychic experiences. On the last New Moon before their training is complete, they spend a night locked in the stocks, close to but not on the dreaded Tom Sawyer Island.

All non-RCER park personnel are kept out of Frontierland and Liberty Square on these nights (which happen no more than four times a year). The trainee wears a mask over their face, with tubes connected to a pump. Ancient words are spoken by senior staff, and the device activates of its own accord when the stellar and lunar alignments are correct. Over the course of five hours the esoteric toxins accrued in the agent’s cells liquify and are expelled through the mouth and nose. The hot, glowing, lavender liquid is collected in specially prepared glass containers and then disposed of in the nearby Rivers of America, where it disperses back into the ley line nexus.

Trainees supposedly find the experience so painful to endure that some try to quit before it is complete. Thus it is called the “Liberty Square Endurance” test on RCER paperwork. What we first took to be a score, is in fact a measurement: the volume of esoteric toxins expelled. The record we saw indicates 1.364 liters were collected. Our understanding is that anything less than 1.07 liters is considered a failure, and the trainee is marked as “permanently contaminated.” The fates of such individuals remain unknown.

On two occasions, 20 milliliter vials of the so-called “Toxic Condensate” have appeared for sale on the Disney Dark Markets, but Mel has not been able to acquire one for closer study. We assume that the rumors of the condensate causing vivid hallucinations and complete pancreatic shut-down are true. If you visit Liberty Square the morning after a New Moon, avoid any purple, pink, or lavender liquids in the vicinity of the stocks and alert a cast member immediately. Do not try and collect a sample yourself, under any circumstances.

The Liberty Tree

Across from the stocks, you’ll see a replica of Philadelphia’s famous Liberty Bell (the sort that tintinnabulates rather than floats), and beyond that a large oak tree festooned with 18th century style lanterns. Like many of the larger trees in the Magic Kingdom it did not originally grow in this location. The more than 100 year old tree was found on the property and transplanted to its current location. Aside from the rumored reptilian entity dwelling in Bay Lake, it is probably the oldest living thing in any of the parks. The tree’s century plus contact with the Kissimmee Ley Line Mandala’s esoteric fluctuations makes it a conduit back to a time when those energies were still suppressed by natural barriers rather than unleashed by the theme park’s constructs.

The region’s natural flora are well-acclimated to the terroir of Kissimmee. The plants, especially trees, absorb and pass on the esoteric forces through the process of photosynthesis, diffusing it into the air. The Liberty Tree thus serves as a natural filter for a small portion of the esoteric toxins in the surrounding area.

Note the lamps hanging from the tree’s branches. Although meant to remind park guests of Paul Revere and the American Revolution, the specially treated glass in these lamps in fact serves to focus the filtered energy released by the tree. Look closer. You’ll see one lantern has amber-colored panes. We believe that the glass for this lantern came from the now-lost Amber Room in Russia, but cannot confirm that hypothesis without closer study. Closer study for now has been deemed impossible.

The Reedy Creek Esoteric Response unit employs the Amber Lantern in emergency situations. Dr. Tyree has conducted three interviews with eyewitnesses, who only under hypnosis could only recall their experiences with an agent using the lantern. All three interviewees, along with seven other first-hand accounts posted online between 2007 and 2014, align with one another in describing a unique RCER agent that we have dubbed The Esotericist.

Cloaked in a long, dark red capote or poncho made of thick plastic and wearing black rubber gloves and dark glasses, The Esotericist always appears with the Amber Lantern in hand, and always in either Liberty Square or Frontierland along the banks of the Rivers of America. She stands well over six feet in height, and is described alternately as “gaunt and skeletal” or “lithe and graceful.” While in her hands, the Amber Lantern projects a focused beam of yellowish light with the intensity of a high-power flashlight.

The Esotericist moves through the crowds of guests Diogenes-like, shining her lantern on each person she passes. In the moment, guests seem to accept it as just another street performer from some Disney film they don’t remember. After the moment, most of them forget. Attempts to photograph or videotape the agent always show a bright light flooding the camera lens, nothing more. The Esotericist searches for something. What is it?

Diane Cooley of Dublin, Ohio recalled under hypnosis that, “She shined that light on me, and I was blinking and rubbing my eyes. When I could see again, she was shining it on my husband. And it was like an X-ray. It made all his clothes disappear, and there was nothing under. He looked kinda like a mannequin, you know, in a department store? Nothing, down there. I remember screaming or yelling. My husband let go of my hand. He ran. She - the woman in the red poncho - she chased after, shining the light on him. He ran - my husband doesn’t run - he ran and jumped over the fence and into the river there, by Tom Sawyer’s Island. But then I turned around and saw my husband coming out of a shop, with a bag of souvenirs for our niece and nephew. And he was dry and looked tired. He looked worried. But said he was fine. And then there was that light again, and we just went on and watched the fireworks.”

Out from under hypnosis, Mrs. Cooley professed no memory of the event. Even after listening to Dr. Tyree’s recording of it, she could not remember the story, nor even remember listening to the recording seconds after she had heard it.

Dr. Tyree strongly suspects that she has herself also encountered the Esotericist and had her memory erased, but has so far been unable to find a hypnotist of sufficient psychic aptitude to help the doctor recover her own erased experiences. Mel remains skeptical of her claim, and refuses to let her hypnotize him to determine if he has had similar encounters.

Those with more information about the Esotericist are invited to share their stories, with the caveat that doing so will undoubtedly bring perhaps unwanted scrutiny from the Reedy Creek Esoteric Response unit, which clearly prefers that both their agent and the Amber Lantern remain a mystery.

Hall of Presidents

Nearby you’ll see a building that bears a passing resemblance to Liberty Hall in Philadelphia. There’s likely a cast member dressed in faux colonial garb near the entrance. This is The Hall of Presidents, the heart and soul of the park’s studied glorification of American history. Step inside to enjoy the powerful air conditioning, the mini-museum of presidential artifacts, and a 23-minute show featuring some of the most advanced audio animatronics in the park.

Inspired by the older Disneyland attraction Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, the Hall of Presidents is emblematic of the entire Reedy Creek experiment: take something from California’s Disneyland and build a bigger version of it in Florida’s Disney World. And like so much in the Kissimmee Ley Line Mandala, tampering with the veil between reality and illusion with human-like constructs has led to unpredictable results. There have never been any reports of trans-temporal communication in the California park, much less the kind of ludic-mediated phenomena that have recently been reported in connection to Florida’s ersatz Lincoln. As we have seen, in Disney World, esotericism finds a way.

After six months of secret renovations and “upgrades,” the Hall of Presidents re-opened on July 1, 2009. Like the upgraded Enchanted Tiki Room, the venerable attraction’s refurbishment seems to have resulted in a new or stronger connection to esoteric forces. Although the public-facing upgrades were obvious to park guests (Mr. Lincoln moved with more artificial liveliness than ever before), there was no sign of any esoteric consequences. Then we were forwarded an email to all cast members announcing an internal chess tournament and free chess lessons for anyone interested.

Although there are many cast member sport and social activities, the hasty arrangement of a company-wide chess tournament just seventeen days after the Hall of Presidents resumed operation struck us as strange. At the time, I did not have the resources to investigate it directly, but kept a watchful eye on connections between chess and the hall over the following years. Every lead was stymied by interference from those who I presume are Reedy Creek Esoteric Response agents, although I have no proof. It was Mel, following up on a lead left in the files of my former assistant, who tracked down a witness. She was a chess grand master on the Disney corporate payroll who worked as a costumed Hall of Presidents cast member by day, played chess at night, and drew a six figure salary until she grew so unsettled that she fled into hiding in South America. It is based on her testimony and additional research that we assert the following facts:

The audio animatronic Abe Lincoln plays chess. It only plays between 1:12 a.m. and 2:03 a.m. when the temperature is below 25 degrees celsius, and only with a limited edition Walt Disney chess set from a run of 1000 that was manufactured before 1986. It always plays black. The board must be set on a table exactly 95 centimeters high. It will only play one game per 24 hour period, and only against opponents who have worked within the Magic Kingdom as cast members for more than three years. If beaten, it will answer a single question using a deep, booming voice that does not emanate from any discernable source (such as the attractions speakers).

We believe this phenomenon was discovered sometime in late 2009 by RCER, but that it took until at least fall of 2012 for the entire process to be understood. The chess tournaments were an attempt to recruit players talented enough to defeat Lincoln, who is by all accounts a formidable player. In the end, RCER was forced to hire grandmasters and pay them exorbitant sums to work the rides as cast members long enough for the president-bot to play a game with them.

“It knows if you’re trying to cheat,” our source told Mel. “If you use a computer, have help from someone in the room, even look at a book, it knows. It sweeps the board clean of pieces and shuts down. I once asked for a glass of water and it shut down. Anything but playing chess, it somehow knows.”

The opponents were told it was a test of a new park artificial intelligence system. They were told to memorize a question to ask if they won the game, but to not speak otherwise. “The questions were always in a language we didn’t know. Of course, that’s curious. Makes you curious. It sounded African to me. I started trying to look it up, remember it and look it up when I got home. It was hard, because it turned out to be several different tongues. Jalaa, Hadza, Sandawe.”

After winning seventeen out of nineteen games with Lincoln, our informant was able to accurately remember and then use online resources to translate the question. “Who will win Sunday between the lions and the thieves?” Lincoln responded, “the thieves.” That Sunday, November 24th, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defeated the Detroit Lions in American Professional Football. It was a feet of fortune telling as banal as it was astonishing.

At this time in 2013, we believe RCER was still testing the accuracy of Lincoln’s abilities to see into the future, by asking it very definite, easy to check facts. There may also have been some gambling bye personnel, judging by late movement in the Las Vegas betting line for that game.

Unfortunately, our source could not resist temptation. After her next victory over Lincoln, which came eleven nights later, she ignored her orders and asked a question of her own in her native tongue. She refuses to share the question or the answer, and so we must assume it was of a personal nature related to her own fate. She was taken in for questioning by RCER agents and held in a cell -- possibly in The Blue Room -- for several days. Their plans for her remain a mystery. She awoke to find the cell door open and keys to a 2003 Ford Focus in her pocket. She escaped the park, fled the country, and remains in hiding to this day.

To the best of our knowledge, the late night chess games continue. Dr. Tyree believes that the Lincoln audio-animatronic is a conduit for psychic messages from outside the park, possibly outside of time and space. Mel suggests it is the front interface for a self-aware AI that makes predictions based on world-scale data mining. Supporters of our research with strong chess skills and a desire to live in the Orlando area should contact us if interested.

Haunted Mansion Exterior

The Haunted Mansion. One of the most popular attractions in every Disney park, and the one with the clearest occult and esoteric thematic associations. Developed in tandem with the very similar ride of the same name in Disneyland, the Haunted Mansion was a long time coming, promised by Walt Disney himself years before construction began. Its presence in Liberty Square, across the Rivers of America from the menace of Tom Sawyer Island is no accident. This playfully creepy macabre manse is a key bulwark in the park’s defenses against esoteric intrusions and a refuge from the true terrors that lurk beyond its grounds.

As you enter the queue for the attraction, you’ll see a number of humorous tombstones and other features that invite you to literally laugh in the face of death. These elements were enhanced in 2011 after a particularly notable esoteric occurrence.

September 27th, 2010 was a typical hot, humid, and very crowded day in the Magic Kingdom. There were long lines everywhere, but cast members reported that the line at the Haunted Mansion was growing longer and longer. The Haunted Mansion is one of the highest capacity rides in the park, with the ability to handle between 2800 and 3200 guests per hour and over 40,000 per day. It is rare to see wait times over an hour, even on crowded days. By 3:00 pm that afternoon, the wait was 150 minutes and climbing, with the line stretching far into Liberty Square.

According to cast members who worked there at the time, more than half of the guests who finished the ride immediately went to the end of the line and waited to ride it again. Witnesses also report that the guests waiting in line were unusually docile. Descriptors include “sheep-like” and “super creepily quiet.” Even small children stood silently, eyes forward, patiently waiting their turn.

It seems that Reedy Creek Esoteric Response agents came onto the scene sometime after 5:30 pm, when the line had grown so long that it blocked the entrance to the Liberty Belle and circled around the Liberty Tree. Guests remained polite, but rejected any suggestion that they might enjoy another ride. When pressed by RCER agents to explain their firm commitment to riding the Haunted Mansion again, everyone eventually responded with the words, “Hurry back,” said in a sing-song whisper. Once a guest uttered those words, they kept repeating them.

At 6:38 pm, the entire line was whispering “Hurry Back” in unison. This is an iconic line from the ride’s concluding moments, spoken by a tiny ghostly figure known as Little Leota. Guests who hadn’t ridden the ride became noticeably upset by the scene, and began to complain. One panicked man started yelling at a teenage girl, believed to be his daughter, shaking her and shouting, “Snap out of it!” at the top of his lungs.

The ride was shut down, possibly on the orders of RCER or possibly because the entire situation was clearly out of control. As soon as the last guests exited and the ride ceased operations, the entire crowd of thousands began to disband. There was no attendant amnesia; everyone interviewed remembered standing in line because they wanted to ride it again. In retrospect some seemed to find this strange, according to cast members, but none of them were upset or disturbed.

As a test, the ride re-opened several hours later, just before closing time. RCER operatives stationed around the resort reported that guests suddenly started to make their way back towards the Haunted Mansion, even leaving their hotel rooms. It is unknown if anyone staying outside the resort reacted similarly. The ride was shut down ten minutes later, and did not open again for three days. Not long after that, it shut down for a long “enhancement” period and did not reopen until the following year.

When the enhanced line features were revealed in March, 2011, the new path into the Haunted Mansion was filled with added layers of whimsy, from cartoonish busts to water-squirting tombs. The delightful ghostly effects you see today serve two purposes: they entertain guests as they wait, and they bolster the attraction’s defenses against future attacks. Make no mistake, the so-called “Hurry Back” manifestation of September 2010 was almost certainly an attack.

Esoteric adversarial forces have launched minor assaults against the Haunted Mansion ever since it opened, according to leaked RCER files. These mostly resulted in crying children, dissatisfied guests, random ride shutdowns, statistically unusual numbers of snakes and centipedes found in handbags, and thirty proven instances of sudden onset color blindness in cast members.

Who is responsible for this sustained attack? It is an important question, one we seek to answer definitively in our investigations. Hypotheses abound, but conclusive evidence remains elusive. Why attack the Haunted Mansion? We shall discuss that inside the ride.

Haunted Mansion Interior

“Welcome, foolish mortal, to the Haunted Mansion.” The dulcet voice of Paul Frees playing the Ghost Host character utters these famous words as the ride begins. He will go on to soothingly narrate the entire experience, filling your ears with playful puns and an easy eeriness meant to evoke smiles instead of shivers of fright. The Haunted Mansion is not frightening but rather cathartic, a mechanized group therapy experience that laughs in the face of the esoteric and assures us that haunts are happy and everyone gets out alive.

The dark ride begins with the more macabre elements, setting a much creepier tone than it will end with. Flashes of lightning, a shadow playing a funereal dirge on a piano, a desperate victim nailed into a coffin, pleading for help. A winding path along a dark corridor of endless doors suggests countless threats just out of sight. Aside from the early puns about ghostwriters in the library, these are humorless sights. Were you to encounter them in your daily life, you would no doubt be overcome with panic and dread.

The sympathetic psycho-esoteric conditioning has begun. Like a vaccine uses a harmless viral remnant to trigger the immune system, the Haunted Mansion has injected some harmless horror signifiers into your psyche. While most riders feel no conscious fear, their unconscious has begun to gird itself for possible assault.

We enter the séance chamber Madame Leota, a stunning visual effect that invokes mystery and wonder in most guests when they see it. She, a spirit or supernatural entity in her own right, plays the role of medium between the living and the dead, summoning up the spirit world with childish but somberly pronounced rhymes. The ride’s semi-circular course around the séance table completes an esoteric energy circuit, linking the rider to the ride on a psychic level. While the scene exists in the liminal space between spooky and silly, your mental immune system is being tuned to the proper frequency.

We move on to the balcony above the spectacular ballroom sequence, one of the most elaborate stagings of the Pepper’s Ghost illusion in history. Here we see not spooky spirits but rather happy haunts. The imagination sparks at the sight of the transparent figures, clearly mechanical and yet clearly insubstantial. The music swells, and the Ghost Host leaves us to enjoy the show.

The grim sequence of the serial-killing bride makes a switch back to the gruesome, kicking the fear impulse back into action before we descend into the smile-soaked finale of the graveyard sing-along featuring “Grim Grinning Ghosts.” There’s nothing to be afraid of here, a cheerful display that says death be not proud, you have no power here. In the final section the famous hitchhiking ghosts attach themselves to the guests, the original effect now replaced with digital screens. This mental connection puts you in the ride and the ride in you, and results in a protective esoteric caul that cloaks your aura for the next four to five hours.

After my first esoteric encounter in the park (see Case File: The Tom Sawyer Terrors) I found myself in Liberty Square with no recollection of how I got there. Without being conscious of making any decision to do so, I stumbled into the queue for the Haunted Mansion. Given my fragile mental state, moving towards a house of horrors seemed strange even to me. But I stayed in line. Heart racing, sweat collecting in the small of my back and on my brow, I barely managed to keep my feet as I stood through the opening sequences of the attraction.

As the voice of Paul Frees as the Ghost Host washed over and through me, my pulse began to slow. My stomach began to settle. Once seated in my Doom Buggy, the fear fever broke. My muscles relaxed as the ghost lowered the safety bar for me. Over the next seven minutes and twenty-eight seconds I was cleansed of all my worries and esoteric symptoms. I emerged feeling fresh and invigorated, committed to my research instead of ready to abandon it.

The Reedy Creek Esoteric Response unit has transformed the attraction into a powerful detoxification processing facility, but I should note that the ameliorative effects of the Haunted Mansion seem to only be effective against maladies of an esoteric nature. Quotidian depression, anxiety, fear, and doubt are unaffected. There are other side effects as well, although I suspect RCER sees them as features, not bugs. When I compared my recent memories with the notes and recordings I made on Tom Sawyer Island not an hour earlier, I found significant gaps in my recollections. The ride had seemingly edited out some of the most horrible but also noteworthy experiences. Or so it seems to me.

Mel in particular was upset when I told him this. He must choose between one of his favorite attractions and the vital work he is doing for our research program. Dr. Tyree prescribes use of the Haunted Mansion only after dangerous levels of esoteric exposure and always accompanied by detailed journaling and record keeping. Initial tests indicate that Haunted Mansion themed apparel, especially Magic Bands, can extend the benefits of experiencing the ride. It is unclear whether or not they impact memories as well. As a precaution, Mel stopped wearing his limited edition purple Haunted Mansion magic band. As a precaution, casual guests should consider wearing something from the Memento Mori shop for their own safety.

Safely girded against esoteric influence, we move on to the childlike wonder and great esoteric battlefield that is Fantasyland.