The Ghost Mountain Experiment

Documentary filmmaker John McDonald explores the curious lifestyle of the clan who went back to nature in 1932 and quickly found their outwardly idealistic lives deteriorating into chaos. It was during the Great Depression that Australian native Marshal South and one-time Wall Street secretary Tanya decided to leave the hustle and bustle of the big city behind. Frustrated by the constant clamor of contemporary living, the pair and their three children determined to relocate to a location that would allow them become completely self-sufficient. Though Marshal would pen a series of freelance articles championing his family’s simplistic Native American lifestyle during their stay on Ghost Mountain, such modern luxuries as the family automobile and the factory-tin roof that sat atop their modest adobe were carefully excised from his popular dispatches. Eventually displaced to a nearby ranch when the military began using Ghost Mountain as a WWII bombing test site, the family gradually began to grow apart as Tanya began to resent Marshal for imposing his lifestyle on the family and the family patriarch entered into a torrid affair with a woman living in the nearby town of Julian. Now, interviews conducted with South children Rider and Victoria combine with the recollections of Julian residents who were mere children at the time to offer unprecedented insight into the lives of the family who boldly left society behind in hopes of forming a true connection with nature.