Jon Ronson recounts a bizarre experience involving his son at a Connecticut castle party, revealing insights into masculinity and the eccentric lifestyle of its owner.
London, United Kingdom Aug 21, 2026 ALN: I awoke one morning in the summer of 2023 to discover that, while I’d slept, my son Joel had been texting my wife and me a series of unnerving messages about a perilous situation he had found himself in, in Connecticut.
From what I could tell, as I frantically tried to piece together the night’s events, one of Joel’s friends had been invited to a party being held by a stranger she’d met that week on Tinder. So Joel and two others went along for the ride. But when they arrived, they found the man’s home so bizarre that Joel did something he’d never done before – he sent me the coordinates of his location and a photograph, just in case.
The photograph was of a vast medieval castle with a drawbridge, gargoyles and many – I couldn’t shake the sense that there were too many – spires, towers and turrets, reaching like skeletal fingers to the looming clouds above.
“I honestly have no clue what is going on,” read Joel’s second text. “This is very weird.” Then: “You drive down a road in the middle of a forest and then there’s this gate and it’s just a huge, massive castle.”
It was a few days later and Joel and his friends were sitting in my office, recounting for me the disquieting events that had occurred that night. It began with an invitation to one of Joel’s female friends: “Castle party Saturday! 3:00pm to whenever. Dress code: Formal. Tell your friends. 18+ to come, 21+ to drink.”
It was a three-hour drive from New York City to the pleasant town of Woodstock, Connecticut (160 miles from the more famous Woodstock, New York, of festival fame). Then their GPS took them out of town, on to a winding forest road, and finally to a set of imposing iron gates. They stared at the menacing castle that loomed beyond, urgently discussed turning around, but then the gates swung open and they found themselves entering.
Standing on the drawbridge were a man, a woman and a large black dog. The man was the castle’s owner, Chris Mark. He was in his early 60s.
“He had sharp blue eyes,” Joel’s friend Delaney said, “but glazed over.”
“And he had a cut above one of his eyes,” said Joel.
The dog was called Cerberus, named after the multi‑headed hound that guards the gates of Hades. The woman was blond and much younger.
Mark beckoned them inside. They crossed the drawbridge and entered the grand banqueting hall to discover … there was no party. The room was completely empty, all except for a small number of equally bewildered young people standing around awkwardly.
“I’m sorry, but where’s the party?” someone asked.
“Oh no,” Mark replied. “I’ve invited you here for a different reason.” The room fell silent.
“Which is?” someone asked.
“I’d like you all to take part in my reality show,” Mark replied.
“What’s the name of your reality show?” Joel asked.
“101 Princesses,” he replied.
“What’s the core concept?” Joel asked.
“I’m the lord,” Mark replied. “I’m looking for my queen and I’ve got 101 princesses to choose from.”
He turned to Joel’s female friends. “Are you ready to get into your princess costumes? Come downstairs to my costume room.”
Which they did.
I found this part of their story especially melancholy, that these young people were prepared to follow him to the bowels of his castle to dress as princesses.
Mark’s costume room was located near his hot tub grotto room, which doubled as his botanical gardens. Whirlpool baths nestled among subterranean plants illuminated by purple lamps. In the next room was his pole-dancing nightclub. There were mannequins and, one of Joel’s female friends said, “a whole collection of extravagant princess attire, racks of medieval gowns and a glass display case of tiaras. He told me to choose a dress and pick a tiara to match.”
Mark seemed far more interested in the young women than in Joel and his male friend Cement, but he gave them tuxedos to change into all the same.
After the women re-emerged, wearing princess outfits and tiaras, a videographer appeared. They were assured that while 101 Princesses hadn’t yet been set up with a network, it would end up on Netflix. Then filming began. Mark walked in and a woman who apparently lived at the castle curtseyed and said: “Yes, my lord?”
Yet Mark seemed increasingly on edge, irritated that Joel and his friends were observing rather than participating in 101 Princesses.
(It isn’t entirely clear what participating would have entailed. But they were told it was “a collaborative project” and the makers would be open to ideas. Joel later surmised that along with dance skits and other castle-themed vignettes, the princesses would have been encouraged to make out with each other on camera, while Joel and Cement would have appeared in scenes in which they were rejected by the princesses in favour of Mark.)
Finally, seemingly exasperated by their lack of interest, Mark sent his videographer to inform them that: “Chris wants everyone to leave. Everyone has to leave now.” And that was the end of their story. I stood up to thank them for telling it to me, then I let out a scream.
In terms of them finding themselves in unsettling situations with older men, Joel and his friends were, I have to admit, somewhat out of the frying pan and into the fire. Six days earlier, I had been in surgery, having a foot of my colon removed due to diverticulitis. I was still in pain, which was causing me to let out sudden, unexpected shrieks.
I’d been recuperating partly by sitting on park benches, staring out at nothing, trying to think up ideas for stories. But after about 10 minutes, I’d invariably find myself overwhelmed by a dreadful thought: I’m just a man sitting on a bench. It’s a terrible feeling, that sense of purposelessness, which is why I spent the following days not sensibly convalescing but instead learning whatever I could about Mark and his castle.
The castle, although you’d never know it from the photographs, is newly built. Construction began in 2003 and was completed in 2010. Mark’s money was inherited. His great-grandfather Clayton had been a gilded age steel tycoon, and it seems that Chris Mark has taken the family wealth and invested it in his own peculiar vision of a castle, complete with bizarre parties and reality shows.
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