A topless raver scales a speaker tower and from there, leaps onto the roof of Ozora festival’s main stage, peering out at more than 10,000 people who’ve gathered in rural Hungary for a pounding, punishing afternoon of psytrance.Losing energy rapidly, the 45-year-old American-Israeli clambers slowly to the top of a flower-patterned net more than 25 feet above the ground. For a moment, he gazes across the dusty bowl of festivalgoers baking in 38-degree heat, his eyes rolling into the back of his head.Turning away from the crowd, he clings to the net as his muscles contort. By now, the security personnel, who’d tried and failed to grab the climber at the start of his ascent, have cut the sound of DJ Astrix’s set, making the boos and shouts of the ravers—“Stop, stop!”; “No!”; “Come down!”—all the more audible. Security continues to look on, attempting neither to pursue him nor establish precautions for a fall. Some of the revelers turn their backs on the situation, unable to stomach what is unfolding. Around 90 seconds pass as he climbs the net. For eyewitnesses, it feels like an eternity.“It was just left for everyone to watch,” says a DJ who performed at the festival but did not wish to be named for fear of reputational damage. “Security should have been running up and dragging him down. They had time to save that situation. We were literally watching someone either trying to make a fool of himself, or trying to take his own life in slow-motion.” The man behind the festival says his employees were left in an unwinnable situation: “The circulating videos only show the final moments before the fall,” says Zimanyi Arpad, the landowner and chief organizer of Ozora. “Security staff attempted to stop the man as he was climbing by grabbing his feet, but he moved too quickly and slipped free. Chasing or climbing after him at that point could have created an even greater risk, including causing either him or a security staff member to fall.”Eventually, the man lets go of the netting and plunges backwards to the floor, landing near-headfirst between the barriers and the stage. Video footage shows attendees screaming and breaking down in tears. Many are on psychedelics. Security guards rush towards him, followed by paramedics (although their ambulance knocks a woman to the ground as it moves through the crowd, blue lights flashing—she was, organizers say, unhurt). The medics move the man and attempt resuscitation. Some of the ravers chant for the music to restart.“After maybe 20 minutes, somebody went onstage and said he’s still alive,” recalls Karim, a German attendee of Ozora who didn’t wish to give his surname. Then DJ Astrix resumed his set and thousands of people were dancing once more beneath the same stage from which the man had fallen. But others could not bear to stay. “It didn’t feel right to start partying again immediately afterwards,” says Karim. “I couldn’t continue so I walked away.” It is good to talk and verbally process this, he tells me by the festival’s swimming lake, “because you are the first person I have spoken to about it all, as I’m here by myself.”He and others say they remain deeply disturbed by witnessing the man’s death. “The whole spectacle [of his summiting the stage] went on for several minutes,” says an Austrian attendee who also did not wish to be named. “It was absolutely traumatizing and we left the festival with a heavy heart,” says another anonymous attendee. Sat beneath a canopy at the festival on Sunday afternoon, the DJ I’d spoken to told me that he and his friends “were fucking rattled” and that it was “heartbreaking” to watch. “It took us four or five hours to begin coming back to ourselves after that.”This year’s event took place as Hungary was under its highest heat alert (picture by Maciej Miąsik/wikimedia)The fatal fall came after 18 hours of ceaseless psytrance on the main stage. Following this was a scheduled “time out,” which lasted longer than planned. An announcer appeared to inform the crowd that a coroner was en route, the first official indication that the man had died. Thousands turned on their heels to head to another stage with little fanfare. A Hungarian witness in his fifties, who also did not want to be named, told me at the time: “Some crazy people fuck up thousands of people’s party.” He believes, however, that security staff could not have done anything more to avert the disaster. It is a view shared by other witnesses. “The staff did everything they could,” says Jason, a psychedelics vlogger running the account Vee3rdEye. “There wasn’t anything they could do once he reached the roof.” However, he adds: “It seems each year now the energy is so intense it makes people have psychotic breaks. The sound his body made when it hit everything was the most disturbing part.”Ozora is an 11-day “psychedelic tribal gathering” (a week of music with two days either side) of around 30,000 people, all of whom passed through an entrance to the sprawling grounds beneath the words, “Welcome to Paradise.” Psychedelics use was overt and a free-spirited, convivial atmosphere flowed through the site, which included a nude bathing lake. A merry time appeared to be had by the majority. A few festivalgoers carried handwritten signs soliciting LSD, while the earthy-metallic smell of vaporized DMT was near-ubiquitous. Of all electronic music subgenres, psytrance—with its high tempo rhythms, repetitive layered synth riffs, and relentlessly driving bass lines—is the most uniquely intertwined with tripping. That may place an onus on organizers to anticipate drug use and plan appropriately to reduce harms, especially during marathon sessions in temperatures that had Hungary under its highest heat alert.Organizers received a stark warning on Thursday night. Video footage shows a German raver climbing a tree next to the main stage and dangling dangerously from colorful decorations as psytrance continues to blare out. In the clip, he loses his balance, and falls around 20 feet. He survived with six broken ribs, a broken collarbone, and a collapsed lung.Content warning: Some readers may find the following video distressingOk Ozora, do you have security at all? pic.twitter.com/3ycnDo7njf— 𝕵𝖆𝖓 𝕷𝖔𝖒𝖊𝖓 (@romanbold) August 2, 2026“Why did I do it? I don’t know. It felt right in the moment,” says the man, a 22-year-old electrician named Kevin, on a Telegram call with VICE from the hospital. “It was the most stupid decision of my life. It was like I was in a dream state.” “Following the climber incident on Thursday, security measures around the speaker tower were reinforced,” claims Arpad. “However, despite those additional precautions, they were unfortunately unable to prevent the second incident.”The two falls were not alone in tainting the festival, where men on horseback careened across the grounds during last Monday’s opening ceremony. The next day, an Israeli festivalgoer in his thirties was stabbed, and two suspects were arrested accused of aggravated assault. On Saturday, shortly after the man had thrown himself to his eventual death in front of thousands, a 39-year-old Hungarian woman went into sudden cardiac arrest and died despite paramedics arriving at the scene within minutes. Organizers suggested the heat could’ve been at least partly responsible for her death but the official cause remains unclear. Others told VICE that they often didn’t feel safe while at the event.Death has become an uncomfortable part of Ozora’s recent history. In 2024, a New Zealander in his thirties scaled a 2-meter fence and jumped into the huge fire which acts as the centerpiece of the approach to the main stage, dying of his injuries. (The festival subsequently sealed the fire in a metal Fabergé egg-shaped structure.) In 2023, a 34-year-old Belgian woman was found dead in a wooded area of the festival, having hanged herself. There were no reported fatalities last year, although a 28-year-old Israeli man was left with life-threatening injuries by a 26-year-old compatriot in a stabbing amid a brawl.Arpad defends the festival’s actions but acknowledges changes have to be made. “We have to have kid-safe stuff for grown men,” he says during an interview with VICE, via a translator on the patio of his property on the festival grounds. I note that insurers in Western Europe would never allow the festival to go ahead, given all of the obvious hazards. “It sounds bad but where there is a village, there is also a cemetery,” he adds.Arpad, whose family purchased the vast plot of land 30 years ago for sheep farming and agriculture, says the American-Israeli “wouldn’t have survived even if he was put on an operating table at once,” and that he personally attended all of the incidents and aided in some of the resuscitation efforts. “There are these heated masses of people partying. You have to decide whether to stop the whole party because someone jumped, or let the party continue,” he says. “It’s really difficult to decide what to do with the mass of people, and how they would react. We always go towards the smaller risk.”And so, Astrix resumed his set after watching the man fall past him to his death right in front of his decks. The Israeli DJ and producer was one of the festival headliners and is among the biggest names in psytrance, speaking to his homeland’s outsized influence on the genre. The DJ who prefers to remain nameless told me that the commercialization of psytrance in Israel, where it is played on mainstream radio, has drawn people outside of psychedelic culture to the music, and Astrix has played a key role in that. “Astrix attracts, for lack of a better term, cocaine type of people,” he says. There is also an increasing use of GHB at some psytrance parties. “As a festival, if you’re booking that, you need to prepare.” Israeli producers and DJs have been instrumental in refining and popularizing the psytrance sound, which emerged out of the Goa trance scene in the late 1980s. Israelis have for decades traveled through Goa after completing compulsory military service, carrying the relentless, hypnotic sound back home where it has flourished. “There is no psytrance without Israeli psytrance,” Homsy Harari, a psytrance festival promoter and founder of one of Israel’s first online psytrance magazines, told Red Bull Music Academy in 2016. “People are running from their reality to these parties,” said Barak Argaman, who is part of Israeli psytrance acts X-Noize and Major7. “Israel is a very hot country. The music also represents our hot temper.” The anonymous DJ that VICE spoke to claims that the country’s prolonged conflicts have shaped the atmosphere at psytrance parties across the world.Comparable underground music festivals, however, like Boom in Portugal and Fusion in Germany, have “elite-quality people-care management,” he says, although those countries have far more permissive drug policies than Hungary. At Ozora, he felt the harm reduction was poorly signposted, tucked away and not proactive. “To even find your way back to your campsite is hard,” he says. “There is a lack of dialogue around care and safety and where to go if you’re wigging out. They need to focus on that rather than confiscating more drugs.”“Israelis have for decades traveled through Goa after completing compulsory military service, carrying the relentless, hypnotic sound back home where it has flourished”Asked whether welfare workers from the festival’s on-site harm-reduction and chill-out area the Haven should have a greater presence, Arpad said he did not see that as the solution, and suggested that limiting the availability of drugs could help reduce issues. “Police are working outside and inside to pick up the drug dealers,” he says. “You cannot wipe it out totally from a festival like this. What we can do is try to pay attention to the people. We have party help like the Haven, and we have the ambulance.” But, he adds: “I cannot put a policeman or a party helper beside every 22-year-old who comes here and pops some pills.”No toxicology findings appear to have been released following the man’s death. In an official statement, the festival characterized his actions as being fueled by “suicidal intent.” On Sunday, organizers announced that all music would end at midnight, curtailing the planned program “in light of these tragic events.” Arpad also says the length of future festivals on his land may be shortened.A message on Ozora’s website reads: “A circle closed, a spiral spins. The journey ends, a new begins [sic].” Whether its approach to keeping people safe begins anew may prove more consequential.Follow Mattha on Instagram @matthabusbyThe post Why Do People Keep Dying at This Week-Long Psytrance Festival? appeared first on VICE.