Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - Her Birthday Party Destroyed This Town - The Project X Haren story

Episode Date: June 28, 2025

Project X Haren unfolded on September 21, 2012, in Haren, a small town in northern Netherlands, when a 16‑year‑old girl accidentally set her birthday party invitation to "public" on Facebook—sparking viral spread to over 24,000 invited and 6,000 RSVPs within days

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And it all starts in 2008 in Melbourne, Australia, when this 16 year old throws a party at his house while his parents are away. His name is Corey. And Corey's little house party ends up turning into a big house party as the invites get way out of control. And soon enough, over 500 people show up and it turns into an impromptu. block party. Now eventually police show up and this whole ordeal makes the news for some reason and when they interview Corey he doesn't really give a damn. Corey thanks for joining us. The only question that I can think to ask is what were you thinking? Um I wasn't really. And it's this interview where Corey gives us this 2008

viral moment. Why don't you make a grown-up decision now and accept responsibility, Take off those glasses and apologize to everybody that you frightened. Take a few glasses and apologize to us. I'll say sorry, but I'm not taking on my glasses. Why not? Because they're famous. Because your glasses are famous. Yeah.

And so clips of Corey's interview blow up because people think it's hilarious and they're sharing it all over. Well, allegedly, this video inspires the 2012 movie Project X. It's that movie where a bunch of teens throw a massive house party that ends up getting out of control. And at the end of the movie, there's even a news interview similar to Corey's real one. I was thinking more along the lines of an apology. Would you like to apologize? I got a better idea. How about I invite you to my next party? What?

And that brings us to the Netherlands, 2012, in a little town called Harin. And living in Harin is this girl, Merta. And Merta's 15 during this time, and she's a normal Dutch kid, and she's got a birthday coming up. She's going to be 16. And so she wants to throw herself a little birthday party at her house. Just her and some of her friends. No big deal. So she gets on Facebook and she creates a public event page for her 16th birthday party celebration. And a few hours go by and around 80 people have accepted her invitation. That's a lot of people to cram into her little house. But it's doubtful that all of them will actually show up. Here's the thing though. Some of these, friends forward this invitation to their friends. And those people forward it to their friends and they do it again and again and again. And from there, it quickly snowballs. And in two days,

16,000 people have been invited to this 15 year old girl's birthday party. And so Marita's like, what the fuck? And she goes and she tells her parents, thousands of people are supposedly coming to my party. What do I do? And her parents are like, Shut it down! Delete the page! And so, Marita deletes the entire Facebook event, and, you know, nothing to worry about. Everything is fixed, and that is the end of the party. Oh, but it's not.

Because other people, just like random trolls on the internet, they think it would be funny to recreate the Facebook event page and continue sharing it around and inviting people. Because the movie, Project X, came out that same year, and these trolls think it'll be a music. to create a massive Project X type party at this random Dutch girl's house. In fact, they don't just recreate her deleted invite page. Several pages are made, but the big one is actually called Project X Haren.

And they share this event page everywhere, even off of Facebook, Twitter, on YouTube, on random blogs, and people not in on the joke, they start taking it seriously. They think this is some kind of like festival for Merta's birthday. and people start making event flyers and posting them on social media. They're making video trailers for this party. And so it gets more and more traction. And within a week, 24,000 people have been invited to Merta's party and 2,400 people have accepted. Now, keep in mind, Merta's not throwing a party at all now.

Like, it's been canceled. But these people don't know that, so they keep sharing. Some people are even putting up actual physical flyers. advertising the event. And so by this time, Merita's parents, they're kind of freaking out. I mean, are 24,000 people really going to show up to their house?

That's more than the population of the entire town. And so they try and do what they can. They warn the neighbors. They distribute a letter throughout the neighborhood to all their neighbors. Like, I think thousands of people are about to show up to our town for a party that doesn't actually exist. And then, four days later,

the invitation count is now up to 50. 55,000 people and 6,000 people have accepted. This means the invite count has gotten so big that the local news media is now talking about it. And this inadvertently advertises the party even more because now it's on TV. And so a few days after that, around 30,000 people have accepted the invitation and marked that they are coming to this party in Harin. And by this point, people online have made actual fest. Mastival maps of this place. This one here, I mean you can see there appears to be a main stage right in front of Merta's house And so now people in the town are worried like city officials got to get involved because they know this is about to be big and they don't want all these strangers taking over the town and the mayor has to come out and make a public statement

Calling for people not to come to Haran. They apparently shut down a bunch of streets and they temporarily ban the sale of alcohol in the area but none of that seems to matter because random people are still determined to make this party happen. They go way out of their way to advertise it. And so finally, the big day arrives. Merita's birthday. And poor Merita and her family, they leave their house. Like they go somewhere private to stay for a while because they don't want to be involved in all this. And as the day goes on, sure enough, thousands of people show up to Haran.

And they start pouring in, not just people from the Netherlands, but people from all over Europe. And they start partying right there in the open street. And they're like drinking and having a good time. They're singing happy birthday to Marita, a girl they've never even met. And so yeah, it's a big party and it's loud and annoying for the residents. But, you know, no big deal. At least it didn't get out of control. Until.

By the time the sun goes down. the thousands of people there are all pretty drunk. And some of them start getting a little rowdy and tearing shit up. I mean, they're breaking things down. They're destroying whatever they can find. They're pulling down traffic signs. They're lighting benches on fire. They're lighting cars on fire.

They're breaking into local businesses and then like a mob of them will just rush in and grab whatever they can. I mean, here's some footage of them breaking into another local shop, like tearing it up too. And so of course police, they have to call in riot control because they're trying to keep this thing from getting out of hand. And so the riot control shows up and people start getting aggressive and like throwing things at them. And so police have to call in more officers from outside provinces to help control the crowd. But these party goers, they don't give a shit. They start throwing things at them too.

In fact, they get into a whole standoff with them and ultimately it looks like police lose as they are quickly over. by the amount of people there and they have to back away. And at the end of all this madness, this town is trashed. Dozens of partygoers are injured and bam, 34 people get arrested. And like the mayor's all pissed off and he has to come out and he calls the partygoers scum. Let's be clear, last night scum wreaked havoc in our community. Meanwhile, poor Merta, she's probably just sitting there. there, wherever she and her family are hiding, look at all sad like, happy birthday to me.