One year after two concertgoers were fatally shot at Beyond Wonderland, the Northwest’s premier electronic dance music festival returns to Washington’s Gorge Amphitheatre this weekend. Although security is expected to be heavier, last year’s tragedy still looms large as music lovers debate whether to return. 

Fans who have been to Gorge concerts since the shooting have noticed more thorough security screenings at the venue’s campgrounds, and as a result, organizers are projecting lengthy delays to enter the campgrounds for the roughly 25,000 expected Beyond Wonderland attendees. 

Still, not all fans are certain they’ll return to this weekend’s fest, which is the Gorge’s tentpole electronic dance music event and one of Washington’s biggest music festivals. 

As this tight-knit rave community — which preaches “peace, love, unity, respect” — grapples with the complicated emotions of going back “down the rabbit hole,” we talked to Washington ravers about their memories from last year’s Beyond Wonderland, their expectations for this year and whether they’ll go at all. 

Here’s what they said. 

The shooting and the aftermath 

Last June’s Beyond Wonderland started like any other: Thousands of EDM fans flocked to the Gorge for a weekend of bass, dancing and fun — a festival scene that many have described as an accepting and safe space. It didn’t end that way. 

Around 8:30 p.m. on June 17, 2023, the Grant County Sheriff’s Office received a report of a shooting at the Gorge. The suspect, later identified as James M. Kelly, was shooting “randomly into the crowd,” sheriff spokesperson Kyle Foreman said at the time. An undercover Moses Lake police detective shot Kelly, who was taken into custody. 

Fiancées Brandy Escamilla, 29, and Josilyn Ruiz, 26, were killed in the gunfire, which occurred in an overflow campground adjacent to the standard camping area.

Kelly, who told investigators he was hallucinating on psychedelic mushrooms at the time, faces two first-degree murder charges and three first-degree assault charges in Grant County. The next hearing in his trial is scheduled for next week.

In April, the victims’ families filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against Gorge operator Live Nation, festival organizers Insomniac and the venue’s security contractors, claiming the companies should have been able to prevent the killings. Now, a year after Escamilla’s and Ruiz’s deaths, Beyond Wonderland officials say they have tightened security at the Gorge. 

What that will look like in practice is not entirely clear. 

Beyond Wonderland’s website encourages fans to arrive early this weekend, stating it could take two to three hours to enter the campgrounds “due to increased security measures.” Insomniac and Live Nation, as well as venue security contractors Crowd Management Services, did not respond to requests for comment for this story, including about security. 

The Grant County Sheriff’s Office, which provides law enforcement assistance to the Gorge’s on-site security team, plans to maintain “a heightened level of situational awareness due to last year’s shooting,” per a spokesperson. In 2023, 59 officers worked at the Gorge over the days surrounding Beyond Wonderland. GCSO expects to staff 61 to 66 officers at the festival this year.

While festival organizers haven’t specified exactly how security is being ramped up, Gorge regulars have anecdotally reported an increased screening effort.

Fans who attended last summer’s Bass Canyon EDM festival — just two months after Beyond — and this year’s season-opening shows said car searches leading into the Gorge’s campgrounds have been more thorough since the shooting. One fan who attended both festivals last year estimated that her Beyond car screening was a five-minute exchange, while the process took 10 or 15 minutes at Bass Canyon.

“That definitely helped my mentality a little bit, just seeing the difference off rip of how more seriously they were taking items coming into the campground,” said Mel Rivera, 25, of Puyallup.

Last year’s Beyond Wonderland was Rivera’s first music festival. She remembers brushing off the first “please call me when you can” text that she received on the festival’s first night, when the shooting occurred. Later, when she tried to head to her campsite just outside the venue to grab warm clothes for a friend, security stopped them. There was an active shooter and no one was allowed to leave the venue.

Inside the venue, the throbbing dance beats and flashing stage lights continued temporarily. Word of the shooting started to spread as fans who had cell service received texts and calls from loved ones, as festival organizers posted about the shooting on social media and sent alerts through a Beyond Wonderland app.

Rivera didn’t fully grasp what had happened until the next morning, after the second day of the festival had been canceled, when she awoke to news reports and a half-emptied campground.

“It was like a weird ‘Matrix’ setting where I’m in this reality and then all of a sudden somebody flipped a switch,” Rivera said. “After that it was very somber and heavy, and then you’re mourning for someone you’ve never even met. … They came here to have the same weekend I did and they don’t get to go home.”

How festivalgoers are feeling

Regardless of security changes, sentiment within the community is mixed. Some ravers are taking the year off, while many others feel ready to return to the festival grounds.

Melissa Johnson plans to attend her fourth consecutive Beyond Wonderland this weekend, albeit with a smaller group. The 29-year-old raver has been to each Beyond at the Gorge since it launched in 2021. This year, Johnson and another friend are the only two from their seven-person crew returning, “because the rest of our group’s a little nervous.”

“We’ve talked a lot about it,” Johnson said, and ultimately decided to return. She noted that violence “can happen anywhere at any time. There’s no reason to live your life in fear all the time.”

For the five bowing out, their decision was partially due to “anxieties about what happened” and the logistical headaches of what Johnson expects will be “super intense” security lines entering the festival — something that made her feel better about going.

Dallas, Ore., resident Laurie Smith, 58, said she’s skipping this year’s festival.

In EDM circles, the phrase “rave mom” or “rave dad” is used to describe someone who watches out for the well-being of festivalgoers around them. Smith is a literal rave mom who fell in love with the EDM community after her son convinced her to tag along to the Gorge a few years ago.

“I’m not ready to be a mama bear in that situation,” Smith said of her decision not to attend. “I still have that eeriness feeling about the Gorge.” 

Nevertheless, Smith expects to return in the future to help celebrate her 60th birthday.

“I just didn’t think I was ready to feel the joy that I do,” she said. “But next year I’ll be there with all the outfits I didn’t get to wear last year.”

A year after the flash of gun violence shook this inclusive sanctuary for “alternative people,” as Johnson put it, fans are figuring out for themselves the right way to move forward. For some, a return to Beyond and the community they’ve found is the best medicine. Others need more time.

Nate Gneckow has lived all over the West Coast, bouncing around between Los Angeles and Elwa, where he currently resides. “That’s probably why I identified so much with the rave scene,” Gneckow said, “because it is people from all over, but it’s a strong sense of community, which is something I’ve generally been lacking most of my life.”

The 39-year-old has spent his last two birthday weekends at Beyond, but is skipping this year, partly because he feels “it would be disingenuous to the memory” of Escamilla and Ruiz to “just go back the next year and act like nothing happened.”“They’re going to miss every single one for the rest of time,” Gneckow said. “I can miss one, you know?”

Michael Rietmulder: mrietmulder@seattletimes.com; Michael Rietmulder is The Seattle Times music writer.