dr_pretentious | What Could Possibly Go Wrong At A Festival?

The festival organizers provide 2 Sani-cans for the entire 4-day, 300 person event. By the end of day one, they are overflowing.

A 6 y.o. child gets bitten by a spider, has an allergic reaction and everyone is so stoned, no one can drive him to a hospital, so they give him Benadryl and hope for the best.

The next year, the same child uses the palm of his hand to push down the cover of a metal & glass candle lantern and the part he pushes is the top, where all the heat had risen from the flame -- again too stoned to drive, so ice and again hoping for the best.

A big windstorm, so all power to the site is cut off in the middle of cooking for the feast. Food served anyhow. Many cases of food poisoning.

Organizer's dad dies at the event, from natural causes. On her birthday.

Big Name Person decides that someone is sleeping with her husband behind her back -- organizes search parties that scour the snake-infested 1000 acres of the site all night and into the dawn.

I have many more.

Oh, wait - this one's good:

A HP, well-known in the community for being deathly allergic to onions, walks across a field--a hundred yards away from but downwind of the outdoor kitchen (where they are chopping onions for the feast) and falls immediately onto the ground, clutching her throat and thrashing her limbs.

Standing in line for the meal, the man in front of you asks if you've read the latest book by Big Name Person -- you say no, you think of that author as an oathbreaker and scam artist -- and the man turns out to be the author.

The entire population of the festival is in a series of underground tunnels (the festival is happening in an old WWII army base) and during the reinactment of the Persephone story, an elderly woman has a heart attack. You are a mile from the nearest vehicle and 40 miles from the nearest hospital. There are no phones. And the gate to the festival site is a big metal one, which is closed and locked for the night.

Everyone makes little boats out of driftwood and flowers and then they put a candle on them, light them and set them out to sea on the outgoing tide -- the entire flotilla drifts about a hundred yards upshore to a wooden dock, which is immediately ignited.

A young woman decides it would be fun to take her dad's new seaplane to the event (the dad is out of town) -- she ties it to a buoy next to the dock and then next morning when she goes to show it off to the festival-goers, another boat had been tied up to the same buoy and through the night the impact of its slamming up against the floats of the seaplane has caused the seaplane to sink. The seaplane was not yet insured and was worth 1.5 million dollars.

21st birthday celebratory drunk leads to 21st birthday celebratory frak in a patch of poison ivy. (I was the medic who caught that one.)
Tiki torches are not meant to be carried when lit. Lit, super-heated lamp oil spill leads to 3rd degree burns over 30% body. (I was, thank the Gods, not the medic who caught that one.)
Dangerous: Rohypnol in drinks leads to several women awakening in places they don't remember going with signs of non-con sexual activity.
Ugly: Several cases of domestic violence escalating to point of state police being called. (I was the medic who caught that one.)
I don't think this is what you're looking for...

A couple of these are things I was not physically present for but heard after the fact from reliable sources.

The culmination of the festival involves a wooden sculpture, which has fireworks inside, being burnt to the ground. Someone decides to bring a romantic partner into the sculpture, where the fireworks are stored, for some nooky. They fall asleep afterwards and wake up to find the trap door has been locked from the outside, and the burning is about to begin... (yes, they made it out OK.)

No one remembered to tie down the porta-potties. They're all knocked over in a windstorm. And yes, people are inside. (Also, tents being picked up by kites and flying off at 50MPH! The carports made with steel also flying off at 50MPH are potentially dangerous.)

A festivalgoer has created a big metal contraption that actually walks, at slow speeds (about 2 mph). They walk it about two miles away from the festival. And then it breaks down. It weighs three tons.

A wooden sculpture has a two-story wooden slide - people climb a ladder up one side to see the inside of the sculpture, and slide down the other. Unfortunately, no one has properly sanded the slide. And the first few people down were naked. EMTs had to deal with a lot of "anal splinters" that year.

There is a beautiful metal sculpture of a coyote, about two stories high. The head spins around. People sit on the head and spin it faster and faster for that Tilt-a-Whirl effect, forgetting the most important part of a Tilt-a-Whirl: centrifugal force exists! Several people break limbs after being flung off at high speed. (You'd think after it happened once people would learn their lesson, but noooooo...)

I have heard a MILLION stories about "we brought our tent but the tent poles are still at home!" It's worse when the tent poles are 3 states away.

Someone hangs themselves, committing suicide in the middle of the night, in the middle of an art exhibit. For several days people assume the corpse is a really well-done mannequin. (That one may be too grim - but it is an actual documented occurrence.)

The festival is known for temperatures that exceed 100 degrees. This year, there's a giant rainstorm just as the festival is opening...and temperatures drop down to 40 degrees Fahrenheit overnight (not "by" 40 degrees, but down to just above freezing). Festivalgoers wrap themselves in every piece of cloth they can find to stay warm!

Speaking of rain: it turns the festival surface to mud. Some bright young things decide that if they just spin the wheels of their cars hard enough they'll be able to get out of the mud. As you can imagine, this goes poorly. Once the wheels are in up to the center line they give it up as a bad job, figuring they'll get the car out of the mud tomorrow once it dries. Of course, once it dries it becomes...concrete, essentially. (This happened to pioneers crossing the Nevada desert in the 1800s, too, so it's not limited to modern machinery - a heavily loaded wagon will do.)

The quiet camp is sited directly next to the amplified-music camp. This goes about as well as you can expect.

Put all of the food in identical opaque unlabeled containers that can't be resealed after they're opened. Breakfast Roulette is an every-morning occurrence. Will it be oatmeal, or Beef Stroganoff?

Only bring one pair of shoes...and the sole falls off one shoe on the first day. Barefooting is not an option due to harsh conditions.

Someone decides to walk around naked. At noon. Without sunblock. I have never seen a penis that red and I cringed just looking at them.

At the end of the festival there's still one lonely tent set up in the middle of the festival grounds, with a car beside it and all the stuff still intact. People start worrying that someone died and it was unreported. A mass search ensues. Turns out the guy got drunk, couldn't find his tent and car, decided someone must have stolen it, and hitched a ride back to The World with someone he knew.

Edited 2014-07-13 21:18 (UTC)

There are always interesting ways that people can break interesting body parts - scooters, golf carts, walking through fields or down hills, damage to ankles, legs, heads and penises.

I saw someone's tent tumbling around a field once - she wasn't in it. :-)

Mishaps with fire poi could easily happen if we had less responsible people running that program.

When I was pregnant with #1, we were tenting and it rained a LOT. The medics let us stay in the healer's hut. That was very nice of them and appreciated when our stuff got soaked!

A girl could get her first period at festival.

My tattoo session was delayed b/c the artist's SO was very sick. Like instead of 3pm it was after 10pm. But then I was under the needle at the same time a friend was in labor with her solstice babe.

Big bonfire in middle of festival, with smaller fires at the quarters. Much naked dancing. Someone decides to firewalk -- not on embers or coals, but on the fire itself. Medics -- while caring for burns and awaiting helicopter medevac -- send helpful bystanders to fetch clothes for patient & medics, so they will not need to meet medevac crew naked.
--
Hurricane strikes autumn lakeside festival. Fire warden canoes through fire circle site.
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"Con crud" a familiar post-festival malady --- until the year the main rit is organized using separate cups for each participant, rather than having 80+ share common cup.

One year at PSG (back when it was in WI), some locals breached the property fence, actually damaging the fence in the process. The local police had to come into camp to see the damage, so people were going around to all the vendors advising them to hide anything illegal (raptor feathers, paraphernalia, etc), and to put on clothing. A bunch of us were at the Druid (Henge of Keltria) camp, I was judging the porter/stout homebrew category. Someone asked "What's the current status?" and Tony Taylor and I both replied at the same time, "We're at DefCon 3."

Honey dipper truck drove off the road and got stuck upon first encounter with nekkid pagan women. That was fun.

There's a great story about "wolf boy" one year at Heartland. Dude was convinced he was a wolf, and was yapping and snapping. Medic/Security guard held a hot dog over dude's head and lead him away from the populated area until he calmed down.

Oh my -- you should get in touch with Eve on this. Some of my favorites:

There was the first year a certain festival invoked the fae during main ritual; a couple's child (pre-teen) went missing for over a day. She was finally found, but not until much, much panicking had been had.

The next time the same festival invoked the fae during main ritual someone coded in the dining room, among other things (it was a very eventful festival, not in a good way).

Someone's already mentioned the words "scooter" and "penis" in the same sentence. Enough said.

I'm blanking on the details, but there was a group of hipsters (4 I think, all wearing very ... unique clothing) who crashed the festival, leading to several golf carts filled with security people patrolling camp and giving occasional radio updates about the search.

Someone retired from the Army being on security and taking part in that (and other searches), leading to radio communications such as, "subject located and closing at 100 yards."

I wish I could remember more -- there are so many!

Some of these comments make me very thankful that the worst things I can remember from various festivals/retreats/lodges/etc. are things like migraine headaches, air mattresses with holes in them, watching the collapse of a massage table because someone over the weight limit of the table insisted that they weren't too heavy (I felt sorry for the massage therapist who had to repair/replace a fancy portable table), heat exhaustion, sunburns, angst-filled lover's quarrels overheard after some married person found the instructor of the workshop swoon-worthy (the supposedly highly ethical/honorable instructor encouraged it).

My favorite was an entire yurt being blown across a field by a 50mph gust of wind as 10 women still a bit woozy from sweat lodge chased it down wearing nothing but towels and flip-flops. That one was actually hysterically funny! Thankfully we caught the yurt before it went into the ravine since it had our clothes in it!

Also, someone not having made their prayer-tie circle large enough and having to spend their entire 4-day vision quest sitting against a tree in order to fit inside of the space … luckily they had a tree to lean against!

Oh, I have a LOT of these. Drawing from various real life events, or from the rumor mill surrounding real life events:

Faeries invoked for ritual and not appeased properly wreak havoc throughout the camp. (I will pay you money if you pick this one and work it in somehow. >:-)

Failure to put the usual ritual protections in place leads to a much higher than usual incidence of disasters of various sorts. (I know that sounds the same as the first one, but it was a different event.)

Intuition about an impending physical disaster doesn't come quickly enough to prevent it. (That was the maypole, this year. Let me know if you want details.)

People being unknowingly dosed with LSD from a horn of mead being passed around at the fire circle.

People under ill-advised invocation going running out into the darkness, and having to be fetched back and managed.

Memorial ritual for a beloved community figure who turned out not to be dead.

Giving inappropriate or inadequate answers to a deity's questions during a ritual leads to a pissed off deity, leading to a rainstorm that floods the camp and sends everyone home -- almost not making it out before the creek rose to cover the bridge.

Portajohn employee who comes in to suck the contents out of the toilets loses control of his truck while rubbernecking at naked tits and puts the whole poop truck into the ditch. Which led to the rule that everyone had to put their clothes back on when the portajohn company came to do the toilets.

While very talented weatherworkers very impressively deflect an impending tornado, festival participants skip through the street singing songs from The Wizard of Oz -- because, as one storyteller noted, in times of great stress, everyone reverts to the Old Religion. >:-)

Woman blissed out of her mind on how much fun she's had wishes aloud, on the last day, that she didn't have to leave; gets her wish when her car won't start, and has to be rescued. (This happened three times to the woman in question before she figured out to stop saying that out loud. I was there all three times. :-)

A ritual involving every participant having a candle, and then coming up and putting their candle with all the other candles, clustered into a metal tray with low sides. . . which soon became an overflowing well of molten, flaming wax, due to the candles all melting one another at high speed, which slopped over the edges and started to set the entire altar on fire. One priestess, alarmed and a bit desperate, did the only thing she could think of: she dumped the big bowl of water that had been used to bless the circle on the middle of the flaming, overflowing pool of wax. Yes, water on a wax fire. The resulting fireball shooting straight up about fifteen feet was impressive, and the fire did go out, and conveniently the whole thing timed excellently with the peak of the power raising, but the entire altar and everything on it was covered with a thin coat of wax, and cleanup was a stone bitch.

more below . . .

I worked a music festival, and heard, later, about the stark-naked, drugged-out dude who blissfully wandered up and hugged one of my female coworkers. She was rightly appalled.

And the police were nowhere to be found. They wanted nothing to do with anything that was going on short of actual murder, rape, arson, mayhem or catastrophe.

I had to pat down a half-naked, smelly, sweaty, dirty, fat dude to make sure he wasn't smuggling in alcohol... and he patted me down in return. I'm pretty sure that's where I caught the plague which has ailed me to some degree for the 9 months since.

There were stories of people having sex under the VIP platforms (simply platforms where VIPs could go up and hang out with a slightly better view of the stage than the non-VIP rabble... I think they may have had canopies. But people would sneak underneath and....

The drugs in the air meant that when I walked through the crowd, I could smell colors and see sound.

We had to inspect vehicles coming in and confiscate weapons, glass, drugs... with varying degrees of efficiency. One coworker confiscated a guy's rubber mallet... which he of course needed to pound tent pegs into the ground. Some of us didn't have the heart to confiscate jars of pickles, drinking glasses, and so on. Your mileage may vary.

I worked backstage at a country music festival and one of the bands, composed of younger dudes, literally collected cute girls like stray kittens and gave the girls their performer IDs to try and get them backstage to show it off. As if I'd A) know who the performers were without their credentials, and B) believe that these barely-dressed girls were musicians, given that only one woman was headlining and I'd seen her already.

Ah, fun times.

Let me know if you'd like the more-accurate details of the Red Bull Man story. That one's priceless. Will try to cull together more of them.

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