Have you ever entered a party so strange that you begin to question how you arrived? It’s as though you’ve stepped into a zone where time moves differently, where the things around you can only exist in that foggy moment you’ve entered. And once you leave you find yourself questioning whether the house or the people will continue to exist at all. This is a zone of horror and fiction: the Northern Virginia party scene.

Thursday, October 15th, 9 PM. LaGuardia Airport. I was sitting there anxiously waiting for my flight back to DC, the last flight of the night, watching the delays stack up and the chances of takeoff shrink by the minute. I needed to be in DC early the next morning to pick up my girlfriend from the airport. She was visiting for the weekend.

I sat there eating an airport BLT with bacon so undercooked it looked white, when a text came through from one of my roommates asking if anyone would like to join his friend Lilli for a punk house show/costume party? Most of the house declined, as they were scattering to various places for the long weekend American University calls fall break. But I saw an opportunity. Emma and I had been lamenting that we wouldn’t get to do a couple’s costume this year, since we’d be away for the weekends near the holiday. And now there was a costume party on the exact weekend she was visiting.

I pitched it to her. She’s not a punk fan the way I am, but the costume angle, plus the fact that we had no other plans for Saturday night, got her on board fast. I figured: throw on a costume, listen to a punk band in someone’s garage with a bunch of college kids, have a few drinks. But little did I know this party would be something much stranger and more sinister.

Saturday, October 17th, 6:50 PM. Night of the party. The plan was for Lilli to pick us up at my house and drive us all to Northern Virginia. Emma and I had bought our costumes the night before, Perry the Platypus and Doctor Doofenshmirtz, and after spending longer than expected getting ready, we were on the back porch trying to fit our pregame into the ten-minute window before our ride arrived.

Once Lilli showed up I asked who she knew at the party, she said she’d found it on a hardcore page online, and there’d probably be some people from the scene there she knew. At the time that didn’t seem strange. Looking back, it was my first hint.

7:30 PM. We were cruising and chatting when Emma pointed out the window at a giant mansion on our right. Not just a big house, private road, giant hedges, personal castle-type McMansion. I hadn’t been watching our location closely, so I figured we still had some drive left and must be passing through the wealthy part of town. But the mansions kept coming, one after another, and we started joking that this punk show would be inside one of them.

7:40 PM. You guessed it, the punk show was inside one of them.

We parked on a road with no lines that could’ve fit six lanes if not for being in a residential area. We crossed the street and walked up the long drive toward the sound of the party. The driveway was filled with costumed people in line for what appeared to be a local taco stand, paid to set up shop in the driveway and serve food to the attendees. The band was not in the garage as I expected. Instead, it was set up in a conversation pit furnished with some of the nicest modern furniture I have ever laid eyes on, including a giant beanbag chair that could fill a room in most small homes.

Walking through, I started to get a sense of the crowd. Plenty of fun, eccentric costumes, but the average age caught me off guard. People in their late twenties mixed in with older Gen Xers in the forty-to-fifty range. Strange.

We passed through the garage into the main house, where a band was already playing in the living room, extremely loudly I might add but actually mixed very well. The band played to a room of maybe thirty people, all standing around in this mansion, nodding their heads to punk music, a few dancing, no one daring to mosh. Two opposite worlds colliding, a hardcore band in a home that looked like it belonged in Beverly Hills.

Lilli and I tried to start a mosh pit. No other participants, aside from a few who turned and gave us disgruntled looks. And after a few songs, we decided to go back and hang in the driveway.

8:20 PM. We’d been in the driveway a few minutes, trying to unpack what we’d just walked into, when someone approached. A short man, mid-forties. “You all are first-timers, I assume.”

We told the truth. He responded: “Well, thank you for coming to your first Lugopalooza. We throw this event twice a year. Four bands playing tonight, fire pit in the backyard. I just have one rule: talk to someone new.”

Once he left, we realized we weren’t just at a party, we were at a private punk festival run out of the house of an extremely wealthy man. Somehow it made more and less sense at the same time. We all agreed it was too interesting to leave, and that we needed to honor the host’s one rule.

Moments later, someone near us stepped out of his circle to light a cigarette. Late twenties, and he and his whole group came in no costume, which made them the odd ones out.. Lilli complimented his cig choice, and we were quickly introduced to all his friends.

When I revealed we were college students, he began to look and talk to us like we were aliens from another planet. Everything he said had the tonality of a question even when it wasn’t. He seemed confused on what to talk to us about, and we once again realized we were remarkably out of place. I watched him slowly revert to his college years, asking about my major and school. Friendly guy, but after this strugglesome conversation, I realized we might not be the best chatting pair, so Emma and I backed off.

A few seconds later, a man carrying a keg came by and offered us beers. I accepted. As he poured, I asked what it was. An IPA. I was unaware IPAs were something you could get kegs of, but not surprised that, now knowing they exist, it would be this party’s drink of choice. I took a sip of my drink, which had far too many hops, and said thank you.

A minute or two later the next group approached us. Two women in their late twenties to early thirties wearing witch costumes. One had plenty of wristbands around her arms—one side all yellow, one side all red. They asked if we would like wristbands: red for single, yellow if we were just looking for friends.

We all stared silently for a second too long, because one of the women broke our gaze by looking at me and my girlfriend and saying, “You guys look like yellow banders.” We accepted. I put the yellow one on my wrist, but Emma was thrown off by the whole idea and stuck hers in a pocket. I looked at Lilli and joked, “You’re single, right? You should take a red one,” to which she told the woman she was okay without a wristband, and so they moved on to the next group.

8:50 PM. Through a small garden, we reached the backyard. A back porch full of people, a large fire, a few smaller circles of chairs scattered around. Lilli instantly started heading into the dark abyss of their lawn, bypassing all the people. Emma and I shared a confused look but followed so we could stick together.

Lilli went down behind the shed to a large tree in the back where no one was, and yelled back that there were animals. She turned on her flashlight. Three very large dogs, two huskies and one other, tied off to a tree. We all shared confused and concerned expressions. Lilli started getting closer to the dogs, shining her light in their faces, and Emma and I yelled for her to stop before she worked them up and alerted the rest of the party. We decided whatever we saw was not for us to question and headed back up to the fire, forming a circle of chairs.

This scene was as strange as the other. People in the back had brought their kids, while people right next to them smoked and drank. I overheard one NoVa yuppie explain to a whole group the complexities of a three-hour David Bowie space movie from the ’70s.

We sat around for a while, had a few more strange conversations. Emma and I made a bathroom run and in the basement we found cats roaming while punk music continued to play through the walls. Someone outside told me the band playing at that point was led by the wife of the host we’d met earlier. In the bathroom, cat wallpaper lined the walls, Emma took photos.

When we reunited with Lilli outside, she said she’d also seen the cat wallpaper in the bathroom. But when Emma showed her the picture, she said it was different. Turns out Lilli had used the upstairs bathroom, which of course also happens to have cat wallpaper.

At this point it felt like we’d been at this party for days. We went inside, listened to the last band for a moment, then took stickers and candy cigarettes from the free merch table. We left, got back to the car, and checked the time.

10 PM. It was only 10. We couldn’t believe it.