And what happened to Eventide? Let's discuss!

Also adding onto this the town doesn't have to be a ghost town, just an idea for the moment (think of it like a hurricane evacuation maybe)

If you all come to an agreement on an idea we can definitely make it canon!

Well, I do think you have a point there skele, but what stops cultmembers from swarming out and re-capturing the people that fled from ground zero? I mean, the Forest is wast, and I'm not even sure when they would reach the next village on foot, if they don't get lost in the ever changing forest that is. And then we could delete their memories. A town only for magical creatures is, I think, not really lucrative. Cult Lore states that in our universe, Magical creatures are driven to the brink of extinction if I remember correctly. And Cultmembers already do have shops in eventide, they life alongside humans there.

I personally agree with Skele, its more realistic to have the Eventide citizens warn others of the cult and its powers, however I also think that not all Eventideans would leave. Leaving something like your home and entire life behind is painful, and not easy to do unless you have a plan, so some stubborn individuals would stay behind and try to maintain the faltering town. Those who are friends with some cultists would also likely stay.

I actually like the idea that the cult can expand and "take over" the town, since it seems like a natural thing to do now. A lot of cultists lost their homes and livelihoods, and it would be a waste not to take over the mostly empty homes of the Eventideans, don't you think?

This situation reminds me of the movie The World's End, where the aliens simply want a merger with Earth, not to destroy everything. They accomplish this by asking if the residents of Earth want to join them, and those that agree peacefully remain as they are, but those who deny it or outright go against the aliens get replaced with robots that are more or less exactly the same.

With the "experiment" of putting Ty's soul in a lantern body, maybe we could give the remaining Eventideans the option of a gentle merger where they can live out the rest of their lives in peace but those who deny it or oppose us will be "lantered" so to speak.

Alternatively we could pull a page from Gravity Falls and barrier the whole town but instead of not letting weirdness out it doesn't let normal, mundane humans out instead. It would require exceptionally powerful magic though, and would likely take dozens of cultists to put up and then maintain.

I get the feeling the vibes didn't just stop with houses. Those who tried to fight back probably were killed or at least harmed in some way. Also keep in mind that while Eventide is small, it isn't the most rural place ever. I always saw it as a small town, but that still means it's a town. That means it probably had some sort of police/leader be it a mayor or just some person, since Eventide isn't just 4 houses with crazy farmers screaming about magical monsters and ancient curses, it's a community that can for the most part sustain itself.

However there's also a chance that others will simply not believe them, depending on how many people decide to blab. Also: If the Eventideans were stubborn enough to stay at a place where magical beasts lurk in the forest, they gotta be pretty stubborn for that. I don't think the vines would cause more than half to flee.

Also the thing that proves Eventide has cellphone reception above all else?

The pizza place.

That pizza place does deliveries, yeah? So they must have cellphone reception to call the pizza place! I seriously doubt everyone uses landline to call a pizza place. (then again how canon is the pizza place? and who knew pizza would be an important canon detail)

they would assume it was us, although we could try to convince them otherwise. we could even use this to our advantage to gain some sympathy points with them, maybe even make a deal to protect them? we wouldn't actually have to protect them, just make it look like we are? a fake but realistic-looking defense mechanism would work, like fake wards and fake enchantments that the townspeople think will defend them?

i like this! so we basically tell the people of eventide it wasn't us, really, we had nuthing to do with this, i mean, look at what is left of where we life! But we can't let this happen again, let us help you protect yourself! And in reality, we just protect ourselfs. I am also for the idea of fake talismans, but they aren't really fake, they just don't do exactly what we told them they'd do - they basically work like those spells from harry potter against muggles, where they just kinda forget they wanted to go check out that ruin of a castle and then they turn around. But those amulets make people kinda forget to talk about the cult every time they attempt to. So they know - but they just forget to talk to anyone about it. Also, I really want something coming our way because of the eventideans that managed to get away.

Looking over everything, here is a solution I propose:

You get signals on your cell phones alerting you to natural disasters. I believe that someone could have easily tapped in and declared "a storm" would require evacuation of the citizens during this event. Basically, when you move into Eventide you sign up for special alerts specifically for that town and those alerts are sent out by the people who KNOW WEIRD SHIT HAPPENS BUT the need for revenue requires you keep it low profile so "Guess what, there's a hurricane coming" and very, very few would ever guess that that hurricane was actually Famosity and/or Tapi.

So some people would evacuate. Those who stay are probably the elders who also KNOW WEIRD SHIT HAPPENS and just don't give a fuck anymore. Basically, people evacuate, people come back, deal with this as any natural disaster is dealt with in Ye Ole Murica. Cult maintenance helps the cult owned buildings and even loan out services to help fix the rest of town primarily because THIS IS OUR REVENUE PLEASE TAKE CARE OF THE DUMB HUMANS.

What do you guys think?

EDIT: I like the idea of a repair event, but at this point the story has progressed a bit.