The real Lord of the Flies. I'm Jason Horton. I'm Rebecca Leib. And this is Ghost Town.

English schoolmaster William Golding started writing Lord of the Flies in 1951,

a fictional adventure tale of survival that quickly became a bestseller and a classic,

something that's still read today, which makes sense because the themes are truly universal,

darkness and light, innocence and experience, absolute power corrupts absolutely, you get it,

it's timeless. But the book is fiction, projection and speculation. If you want to know what really

happens when schoolchildren get stranded on a desert island, look no further than the 16-age

schoolboys who are horrifically shipwrecked on the remote island of Atta, hundreds of miles

from civilization and what became of them before, after and during their experience. Today,

we're talking about the Tongan Lost Boys, the real story of the Lord of the Flies. I first read

Lord of the Flies as probably a seventh grader and it has always haunted me. If you haven't read it,

I'm going to spend a minute telling you about it, so if you intend on reading it in the future,

I guess skip ahead. I mean, it was written in like 1950 fucking four, so it's hardly a spoiler,

but again, fast forward if you don't want to hear about it. Lord of the Flies begins when a

plane crashes on a desert island somewhere in the Pacific. The only survivors are a bunch of very

pale British schoolboys who at first love their new lives. No rules, no parents, it's just them

in tropical paradise. On the very first day, the boys create their own kind of democracy. Ralph,

the athletic, charismatic, and handsome kid of the bunch, is naturally chosen as the leader,

but not unanimously. Some of the choir boys don't know and like Ralph. They're led by this

kiddie asshole named Jack and wanted to rule the island. And yet Ralph, helped by his best friend

Piggy, who wears glasses, maintains order and leadership. We'll get to the glasses part later.

Ralph's regime is simple. Have fun, stay alive, make smoke signals with a fire so that the group

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