The hootin’-hollerin’ allure of Knott’s Berry Farm’s Ghost Town Alive!

“Have you ever pickpocketed?”

No, I have not. At Knott’s Berry Farm, it was suggested I give it a try.

Thieving, the man gushed, is freeing, and, by its very nature, comes with a reward — or spoils. But I was in the presence of an unreliable narrator, for I was leading “Honest” Cody Sullivan to theme park prison, that is, a single cell in the middle of the Knott’s historic Old West-themed Ghost Town. Sullivan’s recent crime? Stealing a judge’s gavel.

I have never worked for a sheriff’s department, either, but at Knott’s annual summertime offering Ghost Town Alive! one can roleplay just about whoever they want. As long as it’s silly.

On a recent visit, I started my day as a mail courier, which led to me meeting an elixir specialist, where we wondered about a cure to “duck pox,” but before any fictional diseases were tackled I was conspiring with a local hotelier, imagining ways to conceal a mice problem. This transpired in less than an hour, as narratives in Ghost Town Alive! come quick and spiral into lunacy. You may encounter someone who is quacking — the aforementioned duck pox — or be pulled aside and handed a sack of play money, a stolen good one Ghost Town “resident” was hoping could be used to win the affections of another.

Come ready to contribute. But if you don’t, participation will find you. I was standing idly when approached to arrest Sullivan, portrayed by actor Josh Williams.

There is nothing at any theme park quite like Ghost Town Alive! Part live-action roleplaying game and part the work of improvisational theater, Ghost Town Alive! brings with it daily storylines, including multiple editions of a newspaper, and a cadre of wacky characters. A Knott’s staple since 2016 — Ghost Town Alive! has its roots and influences in Disneyland’s beloved but fleeting Legends of Frontierland — the experience has matured into one of the most unique and creative theme park offerings in Southern California.

The key to its long-term success? Ghost Town Alive! understands the heart and soul of what makes a great theme park experience: It’s the people, and our ability to connect and play with them.

“People’s lives are deeply impacted by the work that we do here,” says actor Rachel Roman, who plays postmaster Shelly Melson. Before Roman broke character to chat, her Melson had been gossiping about her co-worker, Buttons, noting the latter had been littering. Apparently Buttons had been dropping, well, buttons, throughout the fictional town of Calico.

“There’s a range of guests, and ones that you will cherish, like this little kid who comes in,” Roman says. “She’s my little best friend. We each get our own little besties. Her parents just go on about how she won’t stop talking about Shelly. She’s so sweet and fun to play with. I was on the other side of this as a kid. I grew up going to theme parks with my dad and was that passholder kid who all the performers knew.”

Ghost Town Alive! treats the theme park as a stage, allowing guests to become actors. It’s a nod to the roots of Knott’s, when the park lacked thrill rides and specialized in Wild West stagecraft. A song-and-dance-style revue runs concurrently with Ghost Town Alive!, all of it lending Calico a lived-in, heavily populated feel. Rovin Jay, show director, says the park employs 45 actors for the performances.

This summer, I got my name printed in the Calico Gazette, learned about misguided experiments that inspired theme park trickery — one involved electricity, a potato and resulted in a late afternoon explosion — and was a jury member in the case of a stolen 100 pound catfish. I was sworn in as a resident of Calico, took a journalistic oath for the town’s newspaper — I promised to tell the truth, except “when gossip will do” — and earned my first Calico wooden coin. “You can’t spend it on much, but it’s priceless in sentimental value,” I was told.

Another day I walked into Ghost Town and was asked, almost immediately, if I wanted a bucket of water dumped on me (I did not). I also took part in a plot to use melted cheese to free a prisoner. It made sense in the moment. Theories in Ghost Town Alive! need not be plausible. This is a space where imagination is not just off the leash but untamed.

“It’s the thing we used to do when we were 6 or 7 and in the playground,” Jay says. “Friends come up and you just create. We’re able to do that here on a daily basis.”

Some of these events happen everyday, but each afternoon — Ghost Town Alive! runs on select days through Sept. 2 from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. — is also full of off-the-cuff narratives. Perhaps you’ll be asked to act in a moving-picture show, participate in a mustache contest, take a drawing class, help a gang rob a bank or inspire a bashful Calico resident to ask a lady to the afternoon hoedown. Guests, Roman says, “get very invested in our love lives.”

To describe the appeal of the show, Jay asks me to visualize a stereotypical theme park advertisement — say of a known character holding the hand of a young child.

“It’s a promise that you are going to have an unique and personal interaction with a character,” Jay says. “We’re able to deliver that, and we’re able to deliver that organically. It’s so funny to me how often we’ll have guests come in and say, ‘When is the show going to start?’ Meanwhile, the bank is getting robbed. These are characters you learn to exist with. You’re seen automatically. The moment you step into Ghost Town Alive!, it’s, ‘Hi! It’s nice to see you.’”

To make a theme park feel personal is no easy feat. In fact, designers have long been trying to solve this problem, whether by creating interactive attractions that feel responsive to the guest, or short-lived experiments such as the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, colloquially known as the Star Wars hotel.

The antecedent to Ghost Town Alive!, Disney’s Legends of Frontierland (both shared some of the same creative team), lasted a few months. And prior to the opening of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland in 2019, Disney creatives talked heavily of a land filled with actors and live shows, a reality that has never fully materialized.

“I’ve gone through Galaxy’s Edge several times, and have often wondered what it would take to people that town,” Jay says. “It would be five or 10 times as many people on the roster. Daily, you’d have to have a couple hundred people just to make it feel alive and organic. There’s so many nooks and crannies there. We just have a couple streets that were part of our original design. The scalability is a challenge.”

And to guests, it’s an investment that’s worth it.

Janey Ellis, 36, of Anaheim, is a Ghost Town Alive! regular. Ellis recently made the Calico Gazette with a tale of a fence that sprouted legs and walked off its property. Ellis comes to Knott’s to experience that sort of “B-plot chaos.” “I’m here to see what you can create out of nothing,” she says.

“I think this is the future of theme park entertainment,” Ellis says. “This is so unique and personal. You’re able to drive something for hours on end. This is a real-life video game, or a real-life [‘Dungeons & Dragons’] game.”

And a reminder that one not need the latest technology. Sometimes a playground, a bit of imagination and the joy of performance will do. Just be careful who you pickpocket.