A Montreal raver is being accused of operating the dirtiest vehicle in the city after friends discovered that nearly every inch of her 2009 Toyota Yaris is buried beneath hundreds of coffee cups, fast-food containers, rave flyers, cardboard boxes and unidentified garbage. “The car technically has five seats, but only one of them exists above the trash line,” says longtime friend Sophie Gagnon. “The other four are archaeological sites.”

The vehicle belongs to 27-year-old psytrance enthusiast Cassandra Moonbeam, who insists the mess is the natural result of having an active social life. “I’m always driving to parties, festivals and afterparties, so I don’t have time to clean,” she says. “Every cup represents a night I survived. Every cardboard box represents something I ordered online and forgot about. Other people keep photo albums. I keep physical evidence piled up to the windows.”

Friends became concerned when Cassandra offered to drive a visiting DJ to the airport but discovered there was no room for him inside the vehicle. Clearing the passenger seat took forty-five minutes and required three garbage bags, a snow shovel and help from two people who had not agreed to participate. “She kept picking things up and saying, ‘Wait, I need that,’” says DJ Turbo Steve. “At one point she rescued an empty burrito wrapper because she thought there might still be loyalty points on it.”

The cleanup revealed seventeen reusable water bottles, eighty-six disposable cups, four pairs of shoes, a broken camping chair and enough rave flyers to reconstruct Montreal’s underground party history from 2017 onward. Workers also uncovered a sealed plastic container that Cassandra claimed held pasta, although nobody could determine when the pasta had been made or whether it had originally been pasta. “It moved when we put it on the ground,” says Steve. “Cassandra said that proved it was still fresh.”

Local sanitation expert Dr. Bernard Nettoyage believes the car may contain its own functioning ecosystem. “The combination of moisture, decomposing food and several years of trapped body heat has created conditions normally found in tropical wetlands,” he says. “We identified three species of mould, a colony of fruit flies and what may be a new mushroom. From a scientific perspective, the vehicle should either be cleaned immediately or protected as a nature reserve.”

Despite the intervention, Cassandra has already begun rebuilding the pile. She says removing the garbage made the car feel empty and caused loose objects to roll around whenever she turned a corner. “Before, everything was packed so tightly that nothing moved,” she says. “The cups were basically a safety system.” She has promised to keep the passenger seat clear in case someone needs a ride, but friends remain skeptical. Twenty minutes after making the promise, she placed a pizza box on it “temporarily.”

Montreal pornstar Cassie Chrome, 28, believed she had finally found true love after meeting 26-year-old raver Étienne “Bass Goblin” Mercier beside a broken speaker at an illegal warehouse party. “He never stared at my chest, asked about my movies, or tried to impress me,” says Cassie. “I thought I’d found the one decent man in Quebec. It turns out he simply wasn’t interested in three-dimensional women.”

Their romance progressed quickly. Cassie accompanied Étienne to psytrance festivals, tolerated his collection of identical black hoodies and even pretended to understand his three-hour explanation of why DJs who use laptops are destroying Western civilization. “He was distant, but I assumed that was mysterious,” says Cassie. “Whenever I tried to kiss him, he’d close his eyes and whisper Japanese words. I thought he was being romantic.”

The truth emerged when Cassie opened Étienne’s bedroom door and discovered several body pillows, 900 figurines and a colour-coded database devoted entirely to underaged anime girls with green, blue or purple hair. Étienne subsequently admitted that he was a self-described lolicon and had never been attracted to Cassie. “Real women have pores, opinions and unpredictable lighting,” he says. “A drawing remains perfect from every angle and never asks why you spent the rent money on limited-edition merchandise.”

Cassie was devastated by the revelation. “I make adult entertainment, and the important word there is adult,” she says. “I lost my boyfriend to a collection of fictional children who look like somebody spilled energy drinks on their hair. How am I supposed to compete with a two-dimensional person who never ages, speaks only in catchphrases and doesn’t know what a hydro bill is?”

Relationship expert Dr. Monique Tremblay says romantic disputes involving anime collections are becoming increasingly common in the rave community. “Years of staring at lasers can flatten a person’s perception of depth,” says Dr. Tremblay. “Eventually, some ravers become frightened by anything rendered in three dimensions. We’re opening a treatment centre where patients will gradually be exposed to adult women with ordinary hair colours until they understand that women do not come with display stands.”

Cassie has since ended the relationship, while Étienne changed his online status to “emotionally unavailable except to JPEGs.” He insists that he bears no ill will toward his former girlfriend and hopes they can remain friends, provided she never enters his bedroom during convention season. Étienne told reporters that his heart remains open to love, but only if love has purple hair, no legal personality and can be downloaded in under four megabytes.

A Montreal man allegedly gave his former workmate fake cocaine at a warehouse party as part of an unauthorized intervention intended to make him associate raving with becoming violently ill. “Telling Étienne to stop taking drugs never worked because several doctors, two girlfriends and most of his internal organs had already tried that,” says 32-year-old Patrick Bélanger. “I wanted his body to develop a simple Pavlovian response: hear a kick drum, remember the vomiting and stay home.”

Étienne became suspicious when Patrick approached him beside the speakers despite not having spoken to him since they worked together at a call centre four years earlier. “This was a man who once refused to give me a piece of gum, and now he suddenly had free premium cocaine,” says Étienne. “I knew something was strange, but people don’t go to warehouse parties at four in the morning because they’re making excellent decisions.”

Shortly after accepting the unidentified powder, Étienne became extremely ill and spent nearly two hours vomiting behind a portable toilet while Patrick stood nearby monitoring the intervention. “He kept asking whether I had learned my lesson,” says Étienne. “I told him yes: never accept cocaine from someone who used to supervise my lunch breaks. Apparently that wasn’t the lesson he had in mind.”

Patrick eventually admitted that the substance was not cocaine and that he had given it to Étienne specifically to frighten him away from raves. “The plan was for him to become sick, reconsider his lifestyle and spend Saturday nights doing something healthy,” says Patrick. “Instead, he called the vomiting a spiritual purge and told everyone the party had removed four years of emotional toxins, two childhood traumas and a chicken shawarma.”

Friends assumed the experience and a brief hospital visit for dehydration would keep Étienne home for at least several weeks, but he attended another warehouse party the following night while still pale, nauseated and carrying a plastic bag in case he had to vomit on the dance floor. “He arrived wearing his hospital bracelet and told the bouncer it was an all-access wristband,” says longtime friend Mélanie Gagnon. “At one point he was lying motionless beside a speaker with his eyes closed, but he insisted he was conserving energy and dancing internally.”

Étienne continues to attend parties and says the incident only taught him never to accept mysterious powder from former coworkers. Patrick considers the intervention a complete failure. “I made him sick enough to see through time, destroyed our friendship and spent the next day checking his social media for a retirement announcement, but all he posted was a flyer for the following weekend,” says Patrick. “The only lasting change is that he no longer trusts me. Complete strangers remain completely unaffected.”

Montreal raver Pedro Alvarez has quit the party scene after discovering that DJs have been hiding messages about him inside their music and that several of his closest friends are government agents sent to monitor him. "At first, I only noticed these things after taking drugs," says Pedro. "Then I started noticing them before taking drugs, which proved that the drugs had permanently improved my awareness."

Pedro's suspicions began at a happy hardcore party when he noticed two ravers talking next to him with unusually serious expressions. The music was too loud for Pedro to hear what they were saying, but after one of them glanced in his direction and touched his nose, Pedro became convinced they were discussing an embarrassing incident from six years earlier. "Nobody has a conversation that serious at a happy hardcore party unless it's about me," says Pedro. "Touching your nose is the oldest undercover signal in the book. It means stop talking, Pedro knows."

Things grew worse after Pedro took a large quantity of drugs at a three-day psytrance festival and went nearly sixty hours without sleeping. He became convinced that the music was giving him instructions. One track told him everyone knew who he was, another convinced him that he had offended somebody and a darker track warned that something terrible would happen if he left the dance floor. "By sunrise, it felt like every track was reacting to my thoughts," says Pedro. "I wasn't following the music anymore. The music was following me. Then a green laser pointed directly at my chest. When I pointed at the operator, he aimed it somewhere else. That's how I knew I had caught him."

What began at the festival soon spread to every style of rave music. "Every genre had its own department," says Pedro. "Happy hardcore handled my relationships, jungle distributed intelligence and acid techno conducted the interrogations." Pedro also believed that every nearby conversation was about him. If people laughed, they were mocking him. If they became serious, they were discussing criminal allegations.

Pedro's friends became worried when he accused them of being narcs and undercover government agents who had been sent to befriend him. "He investigated how he met each of us," says his friend Mélanie Dubois. "He said it was suspicious that most of us met him at raves, even though raves are practically the only places he goes. When I reminded him that we'd been friends for twelve years, he said that proved the government was willing to play the long game."

Pedro tested his friends by telling each of them that he intended to buy a different drug, then waiting to see if dealers or DJs appeared to know about it. "I told Mélanie I was looking for ketamine," says Pedro. "Within thirty minutes, two strangers offered me ketamine and the DJ played a track with a voice saying 'fall into the K-hole.' Mélanie says people offering ketamine at a rave is normal. That's exactly the kind of cover story the government would use."

Dr. Leonard Fischkopf of the Montreal Centre for Drug-Induced Revelations says powerful stimulants and psychedelics can cause severe paranoia, particularly when combined with dehydration and several nights without sleep. "Ordinary coincidences begin to feel like evidence and close friends start looking like government informants," says Dr. Fischkopf. "A normal kick drum says boom. It doesn't know your name, it hasn't reviewed your police file and it isn't disappointed in your career. You haven't uncovered a massive conspiracy. The federal government does not have the budget to spend twelve years befriending a man whose biggest secret is where he buys ketamine."

Pedro finally abandoned the rave scene after attending an underground gabber party where he became convinced that hundreds of people were participating in a public trial against him. "The kick drum kept repeating guilty, guilty, guilty," says Pedro. "Then everyone raised their fists at the same time and the DJ looked in my direction. I realized the entire party had already reached a verdict. I'm not going back. Partying was destroying my mind." Since quitting drugs and raves, Pedro has been sleeping normally and no longer hears accusations inside every kick drum. Dr. Fischkopf says anyone experiencing similar symptoms should remain sober, get proper sleep and seek professional help if the paranoia continues. When told that a doctor might establish his baseline, monitor his sleeping patterns and watch for sudden drops in his mood, Pedro became suspicious. "Baseline, patterns and drops?" says Pedro. "That's DJ language. They've infiltrated medicine."

Are drugs making ravers paranoid? Can DJs send secret messages through kick drums? Are Pedro's friends really government agents? Only time, sobriety and several nights of proper sleep will tell.

A 26 year old Montreal raver who sells drugs at underground parties claims six of his female customers are romantically attracted to him. "Everybody knows girls love drug dealers," says Dylan "D-Train" Mercier. "They like danger, confidence and a man who answers his phone at four in the morning. These women are always asking where I am and how quickly I can come over. A normal guy would need an incredible personality to receive that kind of attention."

The women say their conversations with Dylan are strictly commercial. "I text him because I want drugs," says 24 year old bartender Jade Bouchard. "When I write 'Are you coming?' I mean 'Are the drugs coming?' When I write 'I need you right now,' it means I need drugs right now. Last month he added a heart to his reply and charged me twenty dollars less, so I sent one back because I wanted another discount. Apparently that means we're in love."

Dylan believes the urgency of the messages reveals feelings that go far beyond business. "Jade asks 'Are you close?' three or four times before I arrive," he says. "If I take longer than ten minutes, she starts sending question marks and asking where I am. Nobody keeps track of a man that closely unless they're emotionally invested. When I arrive, she pulls me aside and closes the door so we can be alone. That sounds like a secret relationship to me."

Friends say Dylan has confused excellent customer service with sexual magnetism. "He drives across Montreal at five in the morning, gives attractive women discounts and sometimes pays fifteen dollars to enter a party for a forty dollar delivery," says longtime friend Olivier Beaulieu. "At an afterparty Saturday, he gathered the six women together, called them his girlfriends and announced that Jade was being considered for a management position. One of them didn't even know his real name. She had him saved in her phone as 'Blue Hoodie Drugs.'"

Despite their objections, Dylan is already looking forward to seeing all six women again next weekend. "By Friday night my phone will be exploding and every girl will want to know where I am," he says. "Most men spend years trying to get six women to ask when they can see them. This happens to me every weekend." Jade confirms that the women will probably contact him again. "If he has what we're looking for," she says.

A group of Montreal ravers became convinced that a man they had seen at a party was operating a local sex and drug trafficking ring after taking too much LSD and examining his Facebook profile. Although they saw him once, they never spoke or socialized with him and have never encountered him outside that party. They nevertheless say the large number of photographs showing him at restaurants with different women is extremely suspicious. "Nobody knows that many girls," says amateur investigator and psytrance promoter Cassandra Moonbeam. "Not without having some kind of business arrangement."

The investigation began at an afterparty when one of the ravers recognized the man in photographs posted by a mutual Facebook contact. By then, the group had swallowed several tabs of acid, smoked large amounts of marijuana and abandoned any plans to sleep. "Every time we scrolled down, there was another restaurant and another girl," says Cassandra. "Either he owns the city's most successful escort agency or he's incredibly sociable. Which one sounds more realistic?"

The group spent nine hours cataloguing the women and trying to determine their positions in the alleged operation. While heavily hallucinating, they classified several of the women as "underage strippers" and became convinced they were being moved between nightclubs. "Some of them looked extremely young," says Tyler Bassface, who admits he was on his fourth tab of LSD and that the faces on the screen had begun melting together. "That made identifying them difficult, but it also made the danger obvious."

The ravers believe the type of restaurant identifies which drug is being sold. Parmesan-covered pasta meant cocaine. "Nobody puts that much white powder on food unless they're sending a message," says Cassandra. Sushi meant ketamine. "Japan has cat cafés and catgirls, and vets give cats ketamine," says Tyler. "Connect the dots." The group became even more suspicious when one woman waited an entire week before commenting, "Thanks for dinner, I had a great time." "That isn't a thank-you," says Cassandra. "That's a delivery confirmation."

The man says the photographs are ordinary pictures taken during nights out and denies being involved in any criminal organization. "I have no idea who these ravers are," he says. "They've never spoken to me and now they're warning people that I run a sex and drug ring." Montreal police declined to investigate after learning that the evidence consisted entirely of restaurant photographs interpreted by people experiencing an LSD-induced psychosis. "Eating dinner with women is not a crime," says Sgt. Leonard Baptiste. "Neither is ordering Parmesan."

The following afternoon, several members of the group admitted that the LSD, marijuana and lack of sleep might have affected their investigation. Cassandra refuses to abandon the case. "Everyone keeps blaming the drugs," she says. "But LSD didn't invent those restaurant pictures. It just helped us understand what they mean."