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I believe park was her last happy memory with Callum, hence why she keeps referencing it, I also don't believe that anything that happened was real. I think that when they went to "The Park" she was actually taking her meds and that dark figure was what she became when she wasn't in control. This makes sense when she says he had bruises but shes didn't know where they came and that she noticed he kept looking at her strangely. In my opinion this was about her slow decent into madness and the constant abuse which led to her child's death.
At about the half way mark she starts talking about how Callum took everything from her and how he deserved to be abandoned. I can think of two meanings to this 1. He went missing in the park on their firs trip there and she left him, she then later came to here sense's but forgot she had abandoned her child 2. At some point whilst taking her meds she abandoned her love for him, leading to a string of hatred and abuse towards her child.
I will admit I haven't played The Secret World so I don't know if the lore carries over to this game, but this is how I felt the stories was being presented.
The lore does indeed 'carry over'. There's a few things known for sure about her and Callum. The first is that Callum died. Next is that she had a psychotic break and was hospitalized because of it. The third is that Winters is somehow involved. And possibly Deputy Andy's dad, aka the chipmonk killer. We know that Steve (the chipmonk killer) went crazy and killed several students of the Innsmouth Academy after one of them spit at him. It's suspected he'd already been influanced by Winters and the park. Possibly by even more sinister forces. And there's conjecture that he killed the unknown boy found behind the cotten candy stand.
Winters created Atlantic Island Park using mystic plans he won in an auction (TSW investigation mission). He then chose Solomon Island specifically because of it's dark mystical energies. He'd had to outbid one of the Secret World factions to get the land. (learned in a TSW investigation). This land had been previously been used by a resident of the island who turned himself into Lantern Jack (TSW investigations and The Park). The park is in fact a mystical generator that funnels all the gathered power into Winters. This turned him into a Boogieman. (TSW mission and The Park).
The park's centeral character mentions that her son had been changing after visits to the park. This is in line with lore learned about Winters, his end goal, and the results there of. All the documents you find throughout The Park detail events that did actually happen. Things that she has no way of knowing about. It isn't until the events in Dawning of an Endless Night (first major story mission in TSW) that the true nature of the park is revealed to anyone. This hints that she actually did explore the park looking for her lost son. it also indicates that she did in fact find these reports and hand written notes.
What isn't clear is if she explored the park and discovered this information before or after the park was closed down. Although there's indications this happened after the park gets closed permenantly. The entire place looks rusted and disused. Also, one of the documents she finds is a note written by Winters mentioning that he has moved into the haunted house after the park got closed. Which could explain why there is no haunted house in the park as of the time TSW takes place some 30 years later. There is a place the haunted house probably once stood. And when you confront the boogieman there you see a ruined building that isn't there normally. So it's possible that as the park gathered more and more power and Winters became the boogieman we know today the haunted house was shunted out of the material plane.
The unknown boy might have been Callum. There's no proof one way or the other. Her dialog near the end of The park indicates that Callum vanished in Atlantic Island Park before the park's closing though. There'd have been no reason to take her son there after the park had been shut down.
All this in mind, and having ran the investigation missions again to refresh my memory, here's a possible theory for series of events.
1. Winters abducts Callum while he and his mother are at Atlantic Island Park. One of the notes indicates that while it was still in operation he had captured a child and 'tickled' them to elicite "laughs and screams". This may well have caused Callum's death, and he was left behind the cotten candy stand.
2. When the body is found it's unrecognizable. This was before DNA testing so that method was unavailable. With her son missing and a new psychotic break on the way the park gets shut down. Still convinced that Callum is in the park somewhere, she sneaks in. Or maybe she got let in by a Council of Venice agent who'd been investigating the park. They had been one of the groups WInters outbid for the mystic plans after all.
3. As she explores the park looking for her son Winters, now fully a boogieman, begins to prey upon her unbalanced mind. As she falls deeper and deeper into madness she eventually enters the haunted house, which may no longer exist in the physical world. Here he messes with her still further, until she eventually finds where the spirit of her son is laying on a slab of stone. At which point Winters forces her to stab Callum in the chest.
4. Traumatized by what she's experienced, she staggers back to the parking lot. Here she's confronted by the CoV agent who senses she has psychic potential. He pretends to be a police officer and takes her to an office to be interviewed before making her accept one of gaia's bees. it's here that The Park picks up as she's trying to tell him what happened.
If this theory is correct, Callum had already been dead for months, hinted at by the fact that he keeps vanishing while you're chasing him. He was a ghost already. But the Council of Venice wouldn't know this. They would think she'd been influanced to kill her own son. But the fact she'd experienced the supernatural and returned to tell about it made her an attractive field agent. That, and how easy it would be to control her.
Another thing to consider is the disconnect between the layout of Atlantic Island Park in TSW vs the layout of the same place in The Park. Mostly the layout is the same, but there's differences. Among them are the escelators at the park's enterance, the boat ride, and the previously mentioned haunted house. But think about what her thoughts are while first entering Atlantic Island Park. She reflects that the enterance to a theme park is like the gateway between reality and dreams. It's quite possible that the boat ride only exists in the 'other' park that Winters inhabits. It's also possible that the escelator at the beginning never existed, but was the transition from her passing from the real world into the creapy as hell version that Winters lives in.
I find many of your ideas pretty convincing to be honest. In the end it means that Lorraine was a forced bee since the events of The Park until shortly before Samhain 2015 when she finally completed her removal of the buzzing, which she began in the 90s, and join her child in death.
Some things to add maybe:
Don and Lorraine met late in 1976/early in 1977 and Don died three months into the relationship in 1977.
This evidently triggered a depression, treated with electroshock therapy and Zolift. As her mental health and pill addiction intensified, Lorraine continued to go to the Park with Callum, which made the process worse due to the anima capacitor built into the park by Winter, making her sadder and crazier.
From birth, Lorraine had difficulty accepting her own child. She evidently feels like a stepmother, possibly due to her hatred of her own mother who rejected her due to her dad abducting her. On the other hand, she wears the woodcutter's necklace. The book cover texts and her dialogue suggest that she has a multiple personality, the witch/stepmother and the woodcutter, with the witch winning in the end.
The Park's starting sequence is a blend of the interview situation with a council of venice agent and a memory of a visit to the park when it was operating. The main events seem to take place in the park significantly after it closed in 1980. The mention of Carrie Killian on the first sign you pass as Satan's ♥♥♥♥♥ suggests that it's rather close to 1987 when she was burned for being a witch (Black House quest TSW).
One of the torn notes at the end suggests that when already transformed into the Bogeyman, Nathaniel Winter took a child, a pupil of the academy, who broke into the park, whom he electrocuted to fuel his machines. I doubt Callum was an academy pupil, nothing suggests that he was. This is then a separate murder.
The book cover changes suggests that there is an actual interview going on all the time and that it's subject is Steve Gardiner, the chipmunk killer, who is already in prison and that it is long after 1980 when Nathaniel Winter vanished. The chipmunk killer and the bogeyman are both present in the final video sequence.
Some things I am still not clear on then are:
Who killed Callum when and why? Was it Steve, driven insane by the park, and was Callum's murder the murder witnessed by Norma Creed? If so, what happened in the years between the park closing down and the events of the game? Was it the Bogeyman on his slab in the phased realm, i.e. in the Haunted House? Was Callum the academy pupil (unlikely, it's a school of magic and Callum seems too young)? Was it Lorraine? All three incidents, Lorraine's witch identity, the Bogeyman's abductions and Steve's murders with the ice pick seem to be rolled into one in the final sequence.
The newspaper you find after taking the pills in the sideshow alley is basically a summary of the events of TSW in Kingsmouth, explained cryptically by the illuminati. Due to her instable sanity, Lorraine can evidently see the secret world without being a bee, even the future? The slits on her wrists that appear in the same sequence also seem to be the marks of the suicide attempts she made later in 2010 (TSW 7 silence mission) similarly hinting that that sequence conflates time.
How does the cannibalism fit in? Both the Hansel and Gretel story hints at cannibalism and the park employee's report regarding Steve's (the chipmunk's) reeking suit and behaviour hint at cannibalism.
Who is Laura on the foto of Don and a woman in the deteriorating flat episode in the haunted house? It says they're Lorraine's (?) best friends.
It's a polaroid of Callum and Lorraine on a bench by the Octotron.