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Protagonists
Lorraine Maillard
- Voiced by: Fryda Wolff
Single mother, waitress at Susie's Diner, and lone protagonist of The Park. As a resident of Solomon Island, Lorraine is well-acquainted with Atlantic Island Park, and even fell in love with one of the many workers employed over the course of its construction; however, when her son Callum goes missing during a family visit to the troubled amusement park, Lorraine is forced to venture into the park to search for him - after closing time...
- Abusive Parents: Letters found throughout the climax of The Park suggest that Lorraine's father was physically abusive towards both his wife and his daughter, apparently going so far as to kidnap the latter over the course of a messy custody battle. Worse still, if Lorraine is to be believed, he covered his tracks so well that the rest of the family believed that Lorraine had simply run away from home. Lorraine herself, already a little bit on the neglectful side, becomes increasingly abusive towards Callum as the Park begins to distort her emotions.
- Aimlessly Seeking Happiness: Having grown up in a dysfunctional family, she had no idea what she wanted out of life and no advice on what to do with it. Having found some small happiness with a boyfriend, she lost what little she had when he was killed in a workplace accident, and tried to draw some degree of contentment in raising their son, Callum - admitting that they were "always looking for our own house of candy." Thanks to Lorraine's depression, it was uphill work disrupted by alcoholism, poverty and the possible arrival of real ghosts. Following the death of Callum, Loraine gives up on seeking happiness altogether; by the events of The Secret World, all she wants is to end her enforced immortality and die permanently.
- The Alcoholic: Heavily implied by the presence of numerous empty wine bottles littering Lorraine's house when the Bogeyman recreates it in the House of Horrors; how much of this is real or simply another part of the Bogeyman's attempt to gaslight her is unknown.
- All Men Are Perverts: Lorraine was likely on the receiving end of this trope, as her internal monologue reveals that she was subject to frequent sexual harassment by nearly all the construction workers walking in after their shift. This may lead to the disturbing implication that the only reason she became attracted to her Don was because he was the only one who didn't harass her - and even he spent most of his off-hours staring at her before finally introducing himself. Worse still, it's likely that Don and the other workers were under the influence of the park's mind-warping power, just as Lorraine herself is over the course of this monologue.
- Ambiguous Situation: The Park in a nutshell. We have little to no way of knowing which of Lorraine's experiences are real and which are just figments of her guilty imagination. The fact that she's also an Unreliable Narrator doesn't help matters either. Even the Buzzing aren't up to elaborating on what happened: they acknowledge that there was something dangerous about Atlantic Island Park's nature, and that they tried to warn Lorraine about it (and failed), and that's about it.
- Anti-Hero / Anti-Villain: Lorraine isn't a classical hero by any means. She has little desire to help others and even less interest in actually saving the world, but she isn't a villain either; she was forcibly recruited into one of the secret societies, and presumably only commits morally questionable acts like our player character because she doesn't have a choice in the matter. The only 'evil' act she does is try to kill the player in the final dream of "The Seven Silences," which is partially justifiable because all she wanted was to be left alone. She is only driven by her desire to commit suicide in the hope of reuniting with Callum and Don.
- Apocalyptic Log: Keeps a dream journal charting her search for a means of committing suicide; in "The Seven Silences," this becomes the player's means of tracking her down. For good measure, the narrative becomes more and more garbled the closer she gets to disabling her Bee and ending her life.
- Black Bug Room: While exploring Atlantic Island Park's haunted house, Lorraine finds herself unexpectedly imprisoned in one of these by the Bogeyman; it takes the form of her own house, complete with depressing reminders of her ongoing misfortune - ranging from disconnection notices to letters of rejection from her own mother. Worse still, when Lorraine attempts to leave, she finds herself repeating her path through the house over and over again... and on each circuit, the house becomes progressively more disturbing, with previously innocuous notes becoming mockeries of Lorraine and her difficulties in life, whilst the scenery slowly degenerates into scenes of hanged corpses and burning dolls.
- Boxed Crook: After handing herself over to the police for the apparent murder of Callum, Lorraine quickly found herself an unwilling recruit of the Council of Venice - and then bonded with one of the Bees. As "The Seven Silences" reveals, Lorraine found this bargain nothing short of hellish, and spent the next thirty years attempting suicide between missions.
- Bungled Suicide: As the pages of her dream journal show, Lorraine never really ended her attempts at suicide, even though the Bee bonded to her ensured that she would never stay dead. Even though the string of failed suicides continued throughout the buildup to "The Seven Silences," she was encouraged by the fact that for every nightmare she inflicted upon herself, it took a little longer for her to revive.
- Child Hater: During one of her many mood-swings displayed in The Park, Lorraine narrates her hatred towards children and the adults that idolize them, referring to children as "little life-sucking monsters" with no goal except to ruin their parents' lives. She even lumps Callum into this definition, and loudly contemplates abandoning him in the Park. However, her next bit of narration features her expressing fear and concern for Callum's safety; so, it's likely that she only felt that way as a result of the Bogeyman's emotional distortion.
- Despair Event Horizon: The aftermath of The Park leave Lorraine a guilt-ridden shell of a human being with nothing left to live for and no help to speak of; having apparently been arrested for murdering Callum, it's likely that she would have gladly stayed that way and killed herself in her cell had the Council of Venice not recruited her. Sadly, the events of Samhain 2015 make it painfully clear that Lorraine never recovered from her experiences at the Park, and the process of being forcibly grafted to a Bee only made things worse: when next you meet Lorraine, she's become the only Bee that's ever successfully committed suicide... for a time.
- Destructive Romance: Despite Lorraine's nostalgia, it's eventually made apparent that her relationship with Don was anything but harmonious. The specifics aren't precisely known, but things were so bad by the end that Don couldn't even apologise to her in person, but only explain himself in a letter. Even the letter freely admitted that he was having emotional problems and that he didn't want to see Lorraine until he was "in my right mind." This is actually because Don was being affected by the park's emotion-siphoning influence, along with most of the other workers at the park.
- Driven to Suicide: From the moment the Bogeyman drove her to murder Callum, Lorraine has been on a near-constant quest to end her own life. Of course, since she was bonded with a Bee soon after, it's been an uphill journey broken by many failed attempts; but after about a decade of failures and onerous service to the Council, she eventually discovered a means of destroying her Bee and making herself mortal once again: it took almost twenty years to complete, but in the Halloween mission "The Seven Silences," she emerges as the very first of Gaia's Children to successfully commit suicide.
- Evil Matriarch: As a result of the Park's corruption, Lorraine begins to slip into this role as her narration continues, growing increasingly abusive towards Callum and children in general. The enforced performance is so unpleasant that Lorraine actually compares herself to the Woodcutter's Wife in Hansel & Gretel once she manages to recover herself.
- Heel Realization: The climax of The Park features Lorraine suffering a breakdown as she realizes that Callum's plight is entirely her fault, the result of her neglectful parenting - and that after spending most of the game in search of the witch that supposedly captured Callum, she comes to the awful realization that she is the Witch that the Bogeyman has been referring to. For good measure, if the player continues calling out through the remainder of the game, Lorraine can be heard tearfully cursing herself for being an awful mother.
- Ironic Nursery Rhyme: Lorraine and Callum have a thing for Five Little Ducks; quite apart from the haltingly fearful rendition performed by Lorraine during the trailer to the game, she can occasionally be heard singing it to Callum in her attempts to call out to him - and sometimes, Callum responds. Terrifyingly enough, the Bogeyman decides to join in towards the end of the game. Sadly, it's no surprise that Callum - the "little duck," as Lorraine likes to call him - never returns from Atlantic Island Park.
- Junkie Prophet: After taking the pills during The Park, Lorraine can actually find several accurate predictions of the future during her hallucinatory walk through Sideshow Alley; among other things, the garbled newspaper article now predicts Beaumont's attack on Solomon Island during The Secret World, the counterattacks arranged by the townsfolk and the players, even Cassie stealing Excalibur and the potential apocalypse looming on the horizon. It's possible that this another instance of Lorraine's latent psychic powers in action, having been awoken by the drugs. Rather tellingly, her time at Sideshow Alley ends with her wrists spontaneously slitting themselves, causing her to seemingly die of blood loss, only to wake up unharmed.
- Mind Rape: Subjected to a ton of this over the course of the game as the Bogeyman continues toying with her. Apart from playing with her emotions and inflicting violent hallucinations on her senses, he also imprisons her in her Black Bug Room for a while. Not that she has any better luck after she escapes: The Bees actually inflicted this on her when they found one of their number unwillingly bonded to Lorraine by the Council of Venice; even the Buzzing admits that they were pretty harsh on her.
- Missing Mom: From Lorraine's initial recollection, it looked like her mother Karen walked out on the family just because. While exploring her increasingly decaying apartment within the park's haunted house, it is revealed that Karen had divorced her husband and actually tried to take custody of young Lorraine. When Lorraine vanished, her mother was left convinced that she willingly ran off with her father, partially justifying this by claiming that even in their final days together, Lorraine was beginning to behave too much like him. This was what made her give up looking for her daughter, and holding a big grudge against her that she took to her grave.
- If Lorraine's mood swing dialogue near the roller coaster is of any indication, she would have gladly became this trope. Of course, the park's negative energy is strongly implied to have made her feel this way.
Lorraine: (in angry tone) It would serve the little fuck right if I just abandoned him! - Monster Clown: Lorraine really doesn't like clowns. A pity that her ongoing suicide attempt requires her to experience a prolonged nightmare about them. Plus, she actually had to return to the Park for this ghastly ordeal.
- Mood-Swinger: Over the course of The Park, Lorraine swings wildly between fear, nostalgia, grief, anger, resentment, concern, and guilt without much in the way of connection; in one particularly jarring scene, she expresses utter contempt for Callum and seriously contemplates just leaving him at the mercy of the forces loose in the Park... and yet, a few minutes later, she's almost sick with worry over Callum and promising that she'll save him no matter what. Of course, this is at least partly due to the malign influence of the amusement park, Lorraine becoming much more stable once she escapes.
- Muggles: Possesses no magical powers, no supernatural heritage, and no prior knowledge of the Secret World; for good measure, she's not even a Badass Normal or an Action Survivor - she's just an unlucky bystander forced into a situation she cannot control and never will. However, "The Seven Silences" and lore entries attached reveal that Lorraine actually has latent supernatural powers, one of the reasons why the Council selected her for recruitment and bonding.
- Mushroom Samba: Halfway through The Park, Lorraine finds a bottle of pills that supposedly belong to her and takes some - possibly in an attempt to recover from the ongoing mental collapse. Instead, the pills trigger a series of hallucinations: the formerly-empty displays come to life, prizes stack themselves around her, and newspaper articles are rearranged into Word-Salad Horror. This little trip ultimately conclude with Lorraine's wrists appearing to slit themselves, causing her to pass out.
- My God, What Have I Done?: While under the Bogeyman's mental control, Lorraine murders Callum. As soon as Winter releases her, she's immediately aghast at what she's done, and though she remains (completely silent during the epilogue), the expression of horror and guilt on her face says it all.
- Parental Neglect: Though Lorraine undoubtedly loves Callum when she isn't suffering one of her mood-swings, she often finds herself out of her depth when it comes to parenting, resulting in her leaving her son unattended in situations when he really shouldn't be left alone. Part of her Heel Realization involves her facing the awful truth that Callum would never have ended up trapped in the Park if it hadn't been for her neglect.
- Perpetual Poverty: With only her job as a waitress to support the family, Lorraine and Callum have been dirt-poor for several years, with electricity being only intermittently available in the Mailard household.
- Press-Ganged: At once a victim and an unwitting inflictor of this, having been forcibly recruited by the Council of Venice and bonded to one of the Bees - against said Bee's will.
- Punch-Clock Hero / Punch-Clock Villain: As the Bee-imbued agent of a secret society, she'd likely have had to do exactly the same kinds of things the player does over the course of the game - profit-oriented heroism mixed with morally-ambiguous activities. To add insult to injury, the Council of Venice doesn't seem to have benefited from any of it, being still mired in corruption and incompetence by the start of the game... which might make sense if Lorraine was literally the only Bee=imbued agent the Council tried to create.
- Offing the Offspring: After spending the entire game trying to find and rescue him, Lorraine is psychically guided into murdering Callum.
- Resentful Guardian: The crux of her argument against children during her Child Hater phase, claiming that they essentially turn parents into their slaves.
- Resurrection/Death Loop: Following the events of The Park, Lorraine is forcibly implanted with one of the Bees, and unlike the player characters, the experience is anything but pleasant: quite apart from the Mind Rape of having an unwilling Bee bonded to her, the process of being killed and resurrected "chips away at you," until Lorraine believes that the process is taking something vital from her. Worse still, given that she's in the same line of work as the players, she is doomed to spend most of her time dying horribly. Already having hit the Despair Event Horizon post-The Park, the resurrections leave her even worse off - to the point that she embarks on a thirty-year quest to disable her Bee and stay dead. Then, of course, you screw the whole thing up and reactivate her Bee, bringing her back to life against her will.
- Sanity Slippage: Exploring Atlantic Island Amusement Park does not do Lorraine's mind any favours, to say the least.
- Struggling Single Mother: Lorraine has had to endure a great deal of hardship as a result of single parenthood, in no small part due to the fact that it began with her lover being killed in a workplace accident; following Callum's birth, Lorraine suffered chronic depression, struggled to provide for her son with a barely minimum-wage job, had the electricity to her home cut off, and was forced to turn to her family for financial report - and both her mother and her "in-laws" turned her down. Plus, her house looks pretty squalid even before it begins degenerating into a Black Bug Room.
- Tuneless Song of Madness: Occasionally lapses into halting recitations of "Five Little Ducks" as she delves deeper into Atlantic Island Park and her sanity slowly bleeds away.
- Unreliable Narrator: It eventually becomes apparent that Lorraine's perception of events doesn't quite match reality: for one thing, her claim that Atlantic Island Park is Callum's favourite place in the world is undercut by a photograph in which a terrified Callum is clearly dragging Lorraine away from the park gates. Also, the place was shut down barely two years after it was opened, meaning that Lorraine logically can't be travelling through the park in its heyday. Even the authenticity of said photograph comes into question, as Lorraine said that Callum was born the same day the park opened, yet in the picture, he's clearly several years older. On top of that, had he really been two years old at the time, not only would he not be able to go on most of the rides, he wouldn't be able to remember most of his visits to the park. And in a final note, Atlantic Island Park looks suspiciously dark and derelict in the photo; visible in the background is the silhouette of the Bogeyman - a character that only came into existence well after the park was shut down.
- Unwanted Revival: After all the trouble she went to in order to make her death permanent, Lorraine's soul takes a very dim view of the player's attempts to reassemble her Bee, and actually goes so far as to attack you. Ultimately, it doesn't work, and the last thing players see is a vision of Lorraine's dead body getting up again.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: The notion of immortality doesn't sit well with Lorraine, to say the least, having been contemplating suicide in the aftermath of The Park, - long before being subjected to a Mind Rape from the Bees; as she puts it, "they gave me eternity when I didn't want another second." Needless to say, this proves the impetus for a twenty-year quest for suicide concluding in the events of "The Seven Silences," when Lorraine finally ends her life... right up until you come along and reassemble her Bee, of course.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Lorraine, aside from abhorring clowns, hates mascots. This most certainly came from when she heard about the park's mascot, Chad the Chipmuck's murderous rampage against a couple of teenagers. She even expresses disdain for them in her dream journal in "The Seven Silences". Unfortunately for her, in a nightmare meant to destroy her Bee, she is forced to confront Chad at the very decrepit park where she killed her son.
- Your Worst Memory: The fateful visit to Atlantic Island Park, which Lorraine will continuously relive in her nightmares.
Antagonists
The Bogeyman
- See here
Chad the Chipmunk
The infamous mascot of Atlantic Island Park, "Chad" was once more commonly known as Steve Gardener, a violent alcoholic and dropout ridiculed throughout Solomon Island. However, upon taking up the Chad the Chipmunk costume, Steve changed dramatically - ending in a fatal assault on a group of teenagers, guaranteeing his place in Solomon Island's folklore.
- The Alcoholic: Prior to becoming Chad, Steve was the town drunk of Kingsmouth, and could usually be found drinking, fighting, or upchucking. Everything changed once he took up the costume, though...
- Ax-Crazy: Chad wasn't a stable man by the end, and once it became evident that he was violently insane, he was summarily arrested and hauled off to a mental hospital.
- Bait-and-Switch: Given that he's on most of the promotional material and advertised by the park's management very early in the film, players might be under the impression that Chad the Chipmunk is the Big Bad of The Park. However, a note at the end of the game reveals that Chad/Steve was arrested immediately after the icepick rampage and has been locked up in an asylum ever since then, meaning that the Chad you meet over the course of the game is just an illusion created by the real villain of the story, Nathaniel Winter AKA the Bogeyman.
- Book Dumb: A rhyme poem found on a gold plaque on Chad's statue near the park escalator strongly implies that Steve was doing quite poorly academically. His foolery as the park's perpetally drunk mascot merely fueled this opinion of him.
- Clingy Costume: Voluntary example; once Steve put on the Chad suit, he became increasingly reluctant to go without it. First, he simply started taking it home with him, then wearing it at all hours of the day, and eventually he refused to remove it at all. The suit eventually became increasingly filthy as time went on as a result, and the visions of Chad encountered throughout The Park are covered in old stains.
- Evil Smells Bad: According to one witness, Chad began to stink like a carcass as his insanity reached terminal levels - hardly a surprise, given that he hadn't removed his suit for several days and had likely murdered people while still dressed in it.
- Eye Scream: Concluding his tenure at the park by stabbing a teenager's eye out with an icepick. For added creepiness, the eye landed right atop one of the ice sculptures he'd been carving a moment ago, making it look "more or less alive."
- Goofy Suit: His apparel. The costume itself looks creepy enough, but it only became more disturbing once Chad developed an obsession with it.
- Mocky Mouse: As an anthropomorphic rodent serving as a theme park mascot that was created by Nathaniel Winter, there are some clear parallels with Mickey Mouse.
- Sanity Slippage: Steve Gardener wasn't exactly a paragon of stability when he became the park mascot, but spending time in Atlantic Island Park's brain-warping atmosphere drove him completely 'round the bend. Among other things, he began taking the suit home, wearing it at all hours of the day and refusing to take it off, and even stalking other park employees; also, he developed a curious talent for ice-carving. It's not confirmed if he was responsible for all the deaths at the completed park, but his journey to insanity was most definitely completed when he lost composure and stabbed two teenagers to death with an icepick. All of this can ultimately be attributed to the park's emotion-siphoning machines driving him insane.
- Serial Killer: Heavily implied; assuming that the various murders and disappearances at Atlantic Island Park weren't due to negatively-effected visitors, they would have probably been committed by Chad. The fact that his costume had started to smell like rotting meat by the end would seem to implicate Chad. One of the earlier jumpscares in the game also implies that Chad may have even murdered one of the female employees he was constantly stalking.
- Would Hurt a Child: On top of murdering teenagers with an icepick, there's a distinct chance he was responsible for the murder of the kid found behind the cotton candy stand, and the disappearances of the children who went missing in the House of Horrors.
Secondary Protagonists
Callum Maillard
- Voiced by: Nathan Newlander
Lorraine Maillard's son; born on the very same day that Atlantic Island Park opened and raised exclusively by Lorraine following the death of his father, the park is apparently his favourite place in the world. Ultimately, the action of The Park kicks off when Callum runs inside the amusement park after closing time in an attempt to retrieve his lost teddy bear...
- Ambiguous Situation: What did exactly happen to Callum? Was his sudden change in behaviour due to parental abuse, or was he being warped by exposure to Atlantic Island Park? Did he vanish, never to be seen again? And if so, why? Did he get lost by accident or was he lured into the park? Did he die, as the game heavily implies, and if so, how? Did he fall victim to Chad the Chipmunk's rampage during a visit? Did Nathaniel Winter use him as fuel for his immortality machines, as he has done to other children? Was he fed upon by the Bogeyman? Or was he, in fact, killed by Lorraine? And if so, why? Was she directly mind-controlled into doing it by Winter as shown, or did the park turn her violent and murderous? The fact that even the all-knowing Buzzing doesn't know precisely what happened almost thirty years later leaves his final fate a total mystery: all they can indicate is that something horrible happened to Lorraine and Callum at Atlantic Island Park, and that it had something to do with the park's intrinsic nature...
- The Cameo: Is repeatedly mentioned in Lorraine's journal in the 2015 Samhain event, "The Seven Silences." Justified, as Lorraine never forgave herself for killing him, and was in the process of committing suicide for this reason
- Creepy Child: On many occasions, he will only respond to Lorraine's calls to him with childish giggles and snippets of nursery rhymes. Also, Lorraine mentions that he'd taken to suffering weird shifts in behaviour - to the point that he actually tried to bite her at one point. Given his mother's exposure to Atlantic Island Park's brain-warping atmosphere, it's possible that this was just a response to abuse on her part, but given that Callum supposedly visited the park as well, it might also be possible that Callum was being warped in much the same way.
- Improbable Age / Vague Age: At first glance, Callum looks around eight years old at most, and is somehow wandering Atlantic Island Park in its heyday on his own. This would seem to contradict Lorraine's early indication that Callum was born the day the park opened, as it was permanently shut down just two years later and Callum would've been only a toddler at the time; plus, graffiti encountered throughout the game indicates that it's set during the 1980s. It's not certain if this indicates that Lorraine is simply imagining Callum as an older boy, or if Callum went missing long after the park closed.
- And most glaringly, even lampshaded by Youtubers, Callum can apparently outrun his mother.
- Nom de Mom: Takes on his mother's name, Maillard. Somewhat understandable, considering Lorraine never actually married Don, and as such is not legally considered Don's son.
- Someone to Remember Him By: Presumably the reason why Lorraine chose to keep Callum around was because he was the last living reminder of Don.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Callum mostly resembles his father, Don, in appearance, as a photo of him shows.
- Uncertain Doom:
- All available evidence points towards Callum dying in the park.
- After completing the game and passing the end credits, we see an image of Callum and his bear walking into the light.
Park security guard/ Kingsmouth detective
- Voiced by: Andrew Kishino
- Chekhov's Gunman: TSW 2015 Halloween mission reveals that he is a Council of Venice agent tasked with finding a potential candidate to become their first artificial Bee-imbued agent. He picks Lorraine.
- Ironic Echo: When Lorraine experiences her first breakdown near the park entrance, he tries to comfort her, stating that,Guard: "Hey. Lorraine. Lorraine! Don't blame yourself, Lorraine. People lose things all the time. Take a deep breath and think about the last place you saw your son's teddy bear."
- Detective: "Hey. Lorraine. Lorraine! Don't blame yourself, Lorraine. People lose things all the time. Take a deep breath and think about the last place you saw your son."
- Note Lorraine remains silent for both versions of the question.
- Walking Spoiler: Is pretty much this the second time we see him. His presence as two different people hints to the ambiguity of the park, and as a foreshadow towards future events seen in The Secret World.
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You Look Familiar: Players are surprised to say the least that the Kingsmouth detective is the same man at the information booth. This usually tips them off to the fact that Lorraine's trip through the park may have been all in her head.
Minor Characters
Norma Creed
- See here
Donald "Don" Williams
Lorraine's boyfriend and Callum's father.
- Disappeared Dad: Don was killed when his safety harness loosed while he was working atop of the Ferris wheel.
- Driven to Suicide: Depending on your interpretation, and on the fact that many characters are Unreliable Narrator, Don's emotions being warped by the park may have influenced him to kill himself as opposed to dying from a malfunctioning safety harness.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: He was killed just three months after getting together with Lorraine, and three months into Lorraine's pregnancy with his child.
- Lost Lenore: He became this to Lorraine shortly before Callum's birth.
- Love at First Sight: He was instantly beguiled by Lorraine upon laying his eyes on her while she was sweeping at Susie's Diner.
- Nice Guy: Don was the only one from his group of construction workers who didn't try to sexually harass Lorraine during her shift. This was what caught Lorraine's attention, resulting in her becoming instantly attracted to him.
- Posthumous Character: He died a few years before the events of the game. Considering the ambiguous nature of the game, it's almost impossible to tell how much time has passed since his death.
- Strong Family Resemblance: The brief look we get of Callum's face in the beginning, and a Polaroid shot of Don in the haunted house shows that Callum highly resembles his father.
- Surprise Pregnancy: Like Lorraine, Callum's conception after just spending one night with her was certainly a surprise to Don, but was nevertheless a welcomed one. It was Lorraine's pregnancy that made Don decide that they all should move far away from Solomon Island so that they can both raise Callum in a more safe and peaceful place.
