Epcult

A guide to the occult secrets of the Disney World theme parks.

Entrance to the Magic Kingdom

There is only one way in and out of the Magic Kingdom. Unless you are a cast member of course. Then there are many hidden passages and locked doors through which you can travel. Or if something terrible were to happen to you. In an emergency, the normal rules don’t apply. This is especially true in the case of an esoteric emergency, when even the rules of reality can bend towards the breaking point. But for almost all Guests arriving here, there is but one path forward. You have no choice but to step into the shadows beneath the elevated train tracks and move forward towards the light. 

The Magic Kingdom, like all the Disney-owned attractions in the Kissimmee Ley Line Mandala, consciously deceives the eye and fools the brain. As you emerge from the purposefully dark and relatively narrow tunnels below the train station, the grand plaza of a town square opens before you. You are brought from the darkness and into the light. The long Main Street is not truly as long as it seems. Forced perspective, the narrowing street, the slight rise, the changing scales of the building facades, all trick you into inflating the distance to be traveled. The enormous castle sparkles in the distance, calling you forward to unseen wonders. 

Visitors with unusually high psychic sensitivity sometimes suffer attacks of vertigo at this moment, especially on dates of esoteric convergence, like the equinoxes or Walpurgisnacht. On those dates, the upbeat Disney background music that floods town square from hidden speakers carries an extra, sub-audible tone pattern. This subliminal soundscape calms the nerves and only distorts a guest’s psychic perspective for a period of nine minutes, just long enough for the overly sensitive to grow accustomed to the altered reality of the Magic Kingdom. 

Located beneath the streets, Disney has hidden scent emitters which were originally used to fill the area with the smell of fresh-baked cookies. Now they are most commonly activated to to add a bit of christmas pine and cinnamon scent into the air during the holiday season. But during highly unstable times, such as unpredictable surges along the ley line nexus, they can release a variety of different chemicals designed to calm, excite, or induce brief amnesia, depending on the nature of the crisis. 

As with customer service, ride-line management, and facilities maintenance, Disney is highly skilled at managing esoteric phenomena. But their track record is far from perfect, as we shall see on this tour.

The Walt Disney World Railroad Station

There would be no Disney World without trains. Walt Disney was always enchanted by them, particularly the large-scale model railroad one of his animators, Ollie Johnson, operated in his backyard. In 1950, Walt had to have one of his own. The earliest inklings of what would become Disneyland in California came from Walt’s vision for an expanded version of his working 1/8th scale steam railroad that he built in his own backyard. A play train set you could actually ride. A false reality that gave the sensation of a real one, but within precisely controlled limits.

The Walt Disney World Railroad train station sits above the orphic entrance to the park, and the train itself is much like Walt’s original: it exists only in the Magic Kingdom, this enormous backyard attraction where everything is controlled. You cannot take the train to Disney World, you can only ride it once you have passed through to the other side, the other reality. 

Inside the station, you’ll find a number of late 19th-century accoutrements, including penny arcade devices of the sort that used to inhabit the Penny Arcade attraction of Main Street, closed since 1995 and replaced by shopping facilities. Most of the machines are mutoscopes, 19th century proto-movies that displayed brief stories in a manner similar to a flip book. These particular mutoscopes have theme-appropriate titles like “Rider Untrained” and “Play Cowboy.”

But the bright pink “Car Train Gag” mutoscope stands out from the others, its pink patina brighter and less worn-looking than the other machines. To any guests visiting the park, it behaves no differently from the other mutoscopes in the train station. It is not meant for them. It is a communications device for undercover agents of the Reedy Creek Esoteric Response unit. These agents, sometimes called Covert Guests, pose as regular visitors to the park. Similar to Air Marshals who fly incognito on passenger jets, these Covert Guests patrol the park as a security precaution. 

RCER agents wear passkey fobs that work very much like the magic band technology guests wear. For guests, the devices open hotel room doors, link to Fast Pass reservations, and allow cashless purchases. In addition to granting RCER undercover agents Fast Pass access to any ride at any time, the fob syncs with the Car Train Gag mutoscope to provide a hypno-psychic instant briefing about potential trouble spots or suspicious individuals currently active in the Magic Kingdom. 

My former assistant managed to clone a Covert Guest’s fob and use its signal to unlock the mutoscope’s hidden content. The resulting flash of light left a painful headache and prevented my former assistant from using any words that began with the letters “B” or “P” for the next seventy-seven minutes, even words like “pneumatic” where the “P” is silent. None of our researchers have ever successfully repeated the experiment. 

Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom

To your left as you enter Main Street you will see a firehouse door over which hangs a banner calling for volunteers to serve as Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom. Added to the park in 2012, this interactive game is advertised as a fun diversion for guests of all ages that leverages the rich catalog of Disney intellectual property, takes advantage of the detailed set-design of the park, and doesn’t require standing in long lines. Guests receive packs of “Spell Cards” that they use to interact with hidden video displays around the park. 

Of course the guests are aware they’re not performing any real sorcery. What they don’t know is that they are in fact helping the park defend itself against mystical outbreaks that are a constant threat inside the Kissimmee Ley Line Mandala. The Spell Cards work like radiation detection badges worn by workers in nuclear power plants. They react to the otherwise undetectable esoteric energies that leak through the park’s defenses. When a card is brought within ten feet of one of the Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom video displays, it safely and quietly discharges any collected errant energy.

My former assistant acquired hundreds of these spell cards for testing and found no evidence of danger to guests carrying them. But, we have compiled numerous accounts of strange after-effects if a guest fails to discharge their cards at a Sorcerers video display. Standard six-sided dice made from bone, horn, or ivory will not roll the number four for one week. Instances of wrong numbers and phone calls with no one on the other end of the line increased by 417%. In rare instances, a person casts no shadow during a full moon when walking or running at greater than 4.2 mph. 

Recent changes to the Magic Band technology have incorporated a capacitor feature that discharges the energy into the band where it can then be collected the next time a guest uses that band for any reason. There are rumors that a faulty Magic Band worn by an avid player of Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom resulted in the player’s left arm developing “transparent skin” for more than an hour, but we have yet to acquire independent confirmation of this phenomenon. 

Main Street USA Windows

Look up at the windows on Main Street. Notice that every window has at least one name on it, along with the name of some fictional business. It’s a well known “secret” to Disney-fans and insiders that these are the names of distinguished former Disney employees and business partners. Having your name inscribed as the purveyor of an imaginary business is one of the company’s highest honors.

What is less well known is that the placement, font, and kerning of the names are precisely arranged to create a graphomantic lattice of esoteric wards that protects Main Street USA against mystical mayhem.

In 2008 a puckish window cleaner changed the lettering for the name “Dan Dingman - Reckoning,” from the windows above the Main Street Confectionery store. The cleaner added the letter “I” to the name “Dan” so that it spelled “Dani,” his fiance’s nickname. Subsequent investigations indicate that this change was part of a complex marriage proposal which never took place due to the window cleaner’s eventual mental state.

Eleven days after the “I” was added, when the first full moon rose over the park, all of the crystal figurines sold in the Crystal Arts store began whispering in an unknown language during the Main Street Electrical Parade. The store was immediately closed and sealed by a Reedy Creek Esoteric Response team. They discovered the added letter after the park closed and RCER’s graphomantic experts removed the troublesome “I.”

Every crystal figurine of the character “Pluto” that was sold during those eleven days disappeared that night from the homes of those who’d purchased them. The window cleaner was fired.

According to “Dani,” who was at the window cleaner’s home three nights later, they heard a scratching at the door around midnight. He opened the door to find seventy-seven Pluto figurines arrayed on the doorstep. Accounts differ as to what happened next. The window cleaner smashed them all, leaving glass shards spread throughout his house and covering himself in scratches and cuts. He claims that the figurines attacked him, and in her initial statement to hospital personnel, Dani corroborated that account. She has since recanted that statement, while the window cleaner remains in psychiatric care.

All subsequent Pluto figurines have included a special flaw in their design to prevent such esoteric outbreaks in the future.

Vintage Mailboxes

Near the end of Main Street, you’ll see two olive-green U.S. mailboxes affixed to lampposts, one on either side of the street. An informational sign informs guests that these are antiques from the turn of the twentieth century, but they are still in service. Cast members can use them to send letters and postcards.

Thinking it strange that there were two boxes so close to one another, I asked my former assistant to investigate further. With typical diligence, my assistant performed a long and varied series of tests and discovered nothing. My curiosity satisfied, I requested more time be spent on the curious case of the Castle Stage compass rose. But my former assistant knew better and, acting on a tip from a well-known Disney philately enthusiast, acquired several sheets of thirty-seven cent Art of Disney Stamps. 

Multiple tests now confirm the true nature of the Main Street mailboxes, although it remains a mystery as to whether they are the work of a Disney-allied organization or some other esoteric force. If a pair of three by five inch postcards with identical thirty-seven cent stamps from the same Art of Disney sheet affixed to them are placed in the mailboxes simultaneously, one of the postcards will vanish entirely while the other one will instantly appear in the target mailbox as long as it is within the United States and south of the 37 degrees north circle of latitude.

This instantaneous transmission is miraculous, but not particularly useful in an era of email and even fax machines. The more intriguing question is, what happens to the missing postcard? There is some evidence that it travels to its chosen location, but to a moment thirty-seven years into the future. While the mailboxes have not been installed in their current location that long, they were used in the Kissimmee area by the US Postal Service. My former assistant uncovered several instances of their exhibiting unusual temporal behavior, including postal employees opening the box to find letters from the mid-19th century inside. 

These mailboxes suggest a tunnel through space and time, but it remains uncertain as to who benefits from the phenomenon. How are these letters to the future being received, and by whom? If postcards can travel forward in time, is it possible to send information back?

It should be noted that there is a third matching vintage mailbox in the Epcot theme park, and we are still investigating its connection to this pair and will report our findings in due time.

Gateway to Adventureland

Avoid the hub area and Cinderella Castle for the moment. We’ll return to them at the end of the tour. For now, head to the left, towards Adventureland. 

The bridge to Adventureland crosses over an artificial river, which is also the moat around Cinderella Castle. This river actually sits on top of the tunnels beneath the park (officially termed Utilidors by Disney). Controlling the flow of water and how it interacts with the flow of esoteric energy in the Kissimmee Mandala is vital to maintaining the Magic Kingdom’s safe environment, and any time you cross over water in the park, it’s worth taking note of your surroundings.

Here, signs of death and danger surround you. Note the skulls on the sign “welcoming” you to Adventureland. Human skulls are a popular theme in this part of the park, and we shall return to them at our next stop. 

To your right is what was once one of the park’s few sanctioned smoking areas, decorated with ominous-looking statues. There has been some suggestion that Disney is conducting secret cancer scans at these smoking areas, but our investigation has not turned up any evidence of such activity.  

My former assistant was meant to meet with a source at this smoking area on April 30, 2015. Although I suggested that an evening meeting on Walpurgisnacht was inadvisable anywhere within the Reedy Creek area, he or she refused my advice. The source, supposedly a former member of the Reedy Creek Esoteric Response, insisted on this time and place. 

Careful study of my records and correspondence indicates that this is the moment when my former assistant vanished from memory. I do not remember anything about him or her, no names or descriptions, or other details. I have ample proof that such an assistant existed, since I have hundreds of pages of notes and summaries of his or her research, as well as my own notes and additions to those findings. Such a person clearly existed, of that there can be almost no doubt. 

With the help of my colleague, Dr. Tyree, I thoroughly investigated the possibility that my former assistant was a figment of my imagination or perhaps another personality. Pictorial, IP address, and cellphone data all show that my former assistant and I were provably in different states at the same time on scores of occasions. 

The identity and disappearance of my former assistant remains a pressing area of research for us, and there are multiple theories as to who he or she might have been and where they might have gone. Seven different individuals have come forward claiming to be my former assistant, but all of them proved to be charlatans except for one, who it was revealed was an artificially intelligent chatbot. If you have any information about my former assistant, please contact us. 

Now we shall move onto the next themed section of the Magic Kingdom; the morbid jungles, deserts, and seas of Adventureland await.