Copthwaite's Amusement Park

The important thing about Copthwaite's amusement park is that it does not exist.

During the 1980s, the CIA ran a series of experiments on synthetic memory. These were inspired by the Satanic Panic, where various government agencies hunted non-existent cults. Once the CIA had worked out that these cults didn’t exist, it wondered what it could learn from this. The field tests, on American children, involved inducing memories of Copthwaite’s amusement park.

Even years later, after the CIA documents have been shared online, some people’s memories remain tangled. They share recollections on reddit, although some theme park groups ban all such discussions, their moderation rules stating clearly that Copthwaite's never existed. Occasionally, Copthwaite’s-specific groups emerge, but soon disappear. The confusion is not helped by AI-generated images of the park being shared on Facebook, which some people claim are real.

In the early 00’s, a consortium bought a tract of land near the 78 in New Jersey, claiming it would build Copthwaite’s. The plan is unlikely to ever happen, as the ground was toxified by the factories that were there previously. But a small vocal group claims that Copthwaite’s will be built, and that the memories shared of the place are somehow being transmitted from that future. When the park is built then the loop will be closed.

Earlier this year, the first convention for Copthwaite’s fans, known as Coppers, was held in California. People are pooling their knowledge of the park, and these are far more detailed than anything in the CIA’s original prompts. The CIA closely monitors what’s happening, referring to Copthwaite’s as ‘a self-sustaining memetic hyperobject’.

The Coppers, believe the actualisation of the park could change the world for the better. The CIA is once again convinced that false memories can be weaponised.

Slowly the past becomes polluted with the present. There are people obsessed by childhood TV shows that were never broadcast. There is no physical proof of Thorpe Park’s existence prior to 1989. Bootleg forums share recordings of Elvis’s UK tour. And the CIA begins to plant stories of a cold war that never ended, because this time they want to win.

Background

This story was inspired by reading Simon Indelicate’s manifesto for Happy Hauntology. Happy hauntology takes the creepy nostalgia of the so-called haunted generation, and turns it into something positive and joyful. I’d love to write something that qualifies as happy hauntology, but I don’t think I’ve managed it with this piece.

Another inspiration is the psychology experiment where participants had induced memories of seeing Bugs Bunny at Disneyland - impossible, since these are owned by two different companies. This experiment feels spooky and somehow unethical.

Thinking about a ‘happy’ turn to hauntology made me wonder about my own writing. Most of that is influenced by the bleak horror fiction I read as a teenager. It would be good to move beyond the nihilism described by much of the genre, particularly when the news is a constant stream of horror.

Recommendations

I recently read Gretchen Felker-Martin’s second novel Cuckoo. Her first novel, Manhunt, was a post-apocalytic trans novel that became a source of tabloid outrage for a short passage describing the death of a celebrity anti-trans activist.

Cuckoo is about a group of teenagers who are sent to a conversion camp in the desert to cure them of their homosexuality. Like Stephen King’s It, the book describes two time periods, with adults having to face an evil they survived when younger.

Mainstream horror has often been lambasted as a conservative genre, where something intrudes on daily life and the standards of the community are ultimately reinforced. Some writers, such as Clive Barker, have succesfully troubled these conventions. Felker-Martin’s writing is assertively queer, with conversatism an ever-present threat to her characters.

As a straight cis person, I’m not part of the audience that this book is for, but I’m still blown away by its power. For example, how the camp’s dark secret thrives in suburban America; or how dismorphia supplies a constant background of body horror.

The book is not perfect - it’s not long enough for the complexity of the story being told, with the number of characters overwhelming the reader. I also felt it would have been more interesting had Felker-Martin explicitly used the structure of Stephen King’s It. But, these issues aside, this is one of the most interesting horror novels I’ve read in years.