A severely hungover Coquitlam man awoke last Sunday to discover that his previous night’s drinking companions were, in fact, not attendees of a belated Halloween party, but rather members of a local Ku Klux Klan chapter.

Despite it being well into November, 25-year-old Mark Thompson failed to recognize the red flags around his Saturday night drinking buddies. Prior to the incident, Thompson had been partying at Caprice Nightclub in the Granville Entertainment District, but was kicked out after trying to fight the DJ for “glancing” at him “all funny-like.”

After hailing a cab, Thompson’s night should have ended, but he encountered a minor setback by forgetting where it was exactly that he lived. Attempting to play off the gap in memory, Thompson suggested several fictional addresses (including 123 Fake Street) to the driver, who became increasingly irritated by the clearly phony addresses. When Thompson tried apologizing for his forgetfulness by vomiting in the backseat, the cab driver forced him to leave the vehicle.

“Luckily he kicked me out right in front of another bar,” said Thompson, “so I was able to go in and have a couple of beers while I tried to remember where I lived.”

Once safely inside the bar, Thompson planted himself next to a booth of men dressed in pale white robes, recalling they “looked weird as shit” and “everyone else looked afraid of them.

“I wanted to show them they weren’t the toughest guys in the room, so I tried impressing them by pointing to my Tapout T-shirt,” said Thompson, “but that didn’t work. I thought to myself ‘Which group of people would really make these dudes think I’m a tough guy too?’ and I was like ‘What if I told them I was part of the SFU Clan football team?’”

After explaining that he played on the Clan football team, the robed men immediately warmed up to Thompson and said they were Clan members themselves.

When asked how the robes were not an immediate indicator of their KKK status, Thompson defended his ignorance by claiming he thought they were celebrating Halloween posthumously: “It seemed kind of weird that the football team was celebrating Halloween in November, but hey, YOLO.”

Thompson’s new acquaintances eventually offered to take him back to their clubhouse, where Thompson passed out fairly quickly. It wasn’t until the next morning, when Thompson had called a friend for a ride home, that he became aware of where he’d spent the night.

“When my friend arrived at the clubhouse, he looked really nervous and asked me what I was doing there,” recalled Thompson. He asked what the problem was and Thompson’s friend pointed to the clubhouse sign, which read “Kanadian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan-Lower Mainland Chapter.” They proceeded to flee the clubhouse before any of the KKK members noticed.