Alex Reagan: Okay Dr. Strand, let’s have it out once and for all! You can’t seriously be telling me that all of these black tapes are unconnected!

Richard Strand: Sorry, going through a tunnel, can’t hear you!

Alex Reagan: FUCK YOU!!!

Alex Reagan: Okay, let’s have it out for real this time! How can you possibly contend that the Black Tapes are just a bunch of standalone mysteries, when they all seem to be connected by the intersection of shadow people, upside-down faces, Devil’s Doors, sacred geometry, the Unsound, and percocious little boys who can leave their bodies and murderstab anybody that makes them angry?

Richard Strand: Okay Alex, let’s take this one step at a time. First, you have been publishing these podcast episodes in more or less real time, which clearly gave whoever kidnapped Sebastian Torres enough time to learn the secret things of Sacred Geometry, develop an obsession with the Torres family, teach himself After Effects, break into the Torres’ family home, steal their wedding video, add in the Shadow Demon using CGI, place that VHS back in the family home, wait in the closet for the Torres family to return home, drug them, hypnotize them into remembering the Shadow Demon as being at the wedding, then following Sebastian to school, kidnapping him, dragging him to his uncle’s abandoned cabin in the woods, brainwashing Sebastian into forgetting his face but remembering the dark and terrible purpose for which he has been called, and then phoning in a tip to the local police department so that his wicked narrative might play out live on your radio show!

Alex Reagan: Oh, well when you put it like that it sounds like you’re absolutely full of shit!

Richard Strand: Alex, all of these so-called connections are just an over-performance of the pattern-finding areas of your brain, a phenomena widely known as–

Alex Reagan: Richard, I swear to whatever dark gods may be listening, if you say the word “apophenia” to me I will remove your testicles with a melon baller and give them over to C’Thulhu as a burnt offering.

Richard Strand: Look Alex, all I’m saying is that two dots and a line does not an ancient, globe-spanning conspiracy to create a race of children who can walk in the astral plane in order to unleash their shadowy, inverted-face wearing demon masters make.

Alex Reagan: The Black Tapes is brought to you by Rocket Sound. Not everyone has blackmailed a structural acoustician into being a part of their podcast – we still know what you did, Dr. Pullman, and if you don’t play ball everyone else will, too – but sometimes you still need an audio engineer to rip apart the secrets in an MP3 sent from beyond the grave. In times like those, it’s essential to contact RocketSound. Creating a new video game? Authoring a new animation? Crafting a digital ritual that will open the final Gate and unleash the apocalypse? RocketSound is there for you.

The Black Tapes is also sponsored by Stamps.com. Did you know that plotting the locations of the five largest post offices in America results in a perfect pentagram? And that connecting lines between the next seven largest mimic the sigil of Ral’esh the Ever Hungry? Don’t risk your eternal soul by walking the ley lines of the Outer Blackness. Instead, use Stamps.com and print postage right from your non-Satanic desk.

And this week we’re please to announce our newest sponsor, Bombas Socks. Each pair of Bombas socks is lovingly woven by the gnarled hands of a monk that blinded themselves after receiving their vision of Molech the Great and Unmerciful, using nothing but the finest wool shorn from a blackened sheep born under the sign of the Blood Moon. When you wear Bombas, you’re wearing the best.

Alex Reagan: The Black Tapes is brought to you by Rocket Sound. Not everyone has blackmailed a structural acoustician into being a part of their podcast – we still know what you did, Dr. Pullman, and if you don’t play ball everyone else will, too – but sometimes you still need an audio engineer to rip apart the secrets in an MP3 sent from beyond the grave. In times like those, it’s essential to contact RocketSound. Creating a new video game? Authoring a new animation? Crafting a digital ritual that will open the final Gate and unleash the apocalypse? RocketSound is there for you.

The Black Tapes is also sponsored by Stamps.com. Did you know that plotting the locations of the five largest post offices in America results in a perfect pentagram? And that connecting lines between the next seven largest mimic the sigil of Ral’esh the Ever Hungry? Don’t risk your eternal soul by walking the ley lines of the Outer Blackness. Instead, use Stamps.com and print postage right from your non-Satanic desk.

Alex Reagan: The Black Tapes is brought to you by Rocket Sound. Who better to sponsor an episode about a terrible song that will usher in the end of days, an aria proclaimed by the forsaken, a chorus cried out by damned angels as their blood-splattered feathers fall from blackened wings, than the world’s leading provider of audio engineering services? Nobody, that’s who.

The Black Tapes is also sponsored by Stamps.com. Enter the promo code “TheBlackTapes” for this special offer: You see them, but they don’t see you, not yet. But they will, oh yes they will, because they know when you can see them, and it’s only a matter of time before their blind eyes open and turn towards you. Yes, due to budget constraints the US Postal Service is now staffed exclusively by blind cannibals who hunt using a rudimentary form of echolocation, and their favorite pray is the hapless fool who wanders too deeply into the Post Office. But with Stamps.com you can avoid this hellish trap and send your packages and letters all around the world without risking life and limb.

Stamps.com: we promise not to cannibalize you.

Alex Reagan: The Black Tapes is brought to you by Rocket Sound, who provide cutting-edge sound services for modern media. Searching for the song that will end the world? Questing after that one perfect note that will destroy all of reality? Too tired to do your own foley work? Let Rocket Sound do the dark acoustic work for you.

Alex Reagan: The Black Tapes is brought to you by Rocket Sound, who provide cutting-edge sound services for modern media. Do you need to record a plausible-sounding structural acoustician using complex techno-babble to explain the haunting melodies at the end of creation? Do you need to fabricate the shattered silence of the fracturing of reality? Rocket Sound has you covered. And if you act now, fans of The Black Tapes can schedule a recording session in Rocket Sound’s state-of-the-art studios without signing over their immortal soul to the fallen minstrel of damned creation. Rocket Sound: the only limit is your tenuous grasp on reality.

Alex: So far, my least favorite aspects of this podcast, which is like radio for the internet, have been the creepy credit union mental hospital and the possibility of demon possession. So of course this week Dr. Strand is dragging me to an asylum to meet with a boy who murdered the ever loving shit out of his parents in a fit of apparent demonomania. I’m starting to think Dr. Strand doesn’t like me very much.

Richard Strand: I don’t know why you could possibly think that. I mean sure, I’m being endlessly harassed by so-called journalists, and I’ve been invited to debate a creationist on CNN, and been overwhelmed by the attention heaped upon me due to your podcast, but why would I ever hold a grudge?

Alex: I thought you wanted publicity?

Richard Strand: I wanted publicity for my acute mental abilities and precise logic, not for the “rumors” that I “murdered” my wife in a fit of “demonic rage!”

Alex: And you don’t see why anyone would be interested in that?

Richard Strand: No I do not, and I resent the implication. Now if you will excuse me, I need to storm off in the first of many huffs.

Alex: I’ve got to admit, this podcast, which is like radio for the internet, is going a lot better than I expected! I can deal with shadowy figures lurking in the background of school photos an creepy sound clips and and prom queens with razor blades and upside down faces! I was just worried that I’d have to deal with demons or something! I hate demons! Can’t even watch The Exorcist without peeing my pants! So Richard, what Black Tape did you bring us this week?

Richard Strand: …it’s a video tape of an exorcism of a little girl.

Alex: I should have seen this coming.

Alex: Thank you for all of the messages, we really love hearing from our fans. However, Dr. Strand has asked me to inform you that “I totally know a guy whose cousin saw a video with a ghost in it” is not sufficient proof to win the Strand Institute’s million dollar prize. He has also stated that while he finds your offers of marriage, and other less wholesome, more lurid activities, flattering, he is currently in a long-term, committed relationship with never ever talking to you, you creepy creeper. Finally, on behalf of PWNS, we are not currently in the market for, nor will we read, any erotic fan fiction.

Alex: Remember how I said we uncovered some interesting information about Dr. Strand, but how it wasn’t relevant to our investigation, and we therefore would not air that material? Well guess what, kids? Alex changed her mind again! Turns out that Dr. Strand was married, his wife mysteriously disappeared in 1997, and the prime suspect in her vanishing … and her presumed murder … was Dr. Strand himself.

But never mind the fact that I am using a possible killer as both the subject and expert in this podcast, which is like radio for the internet! Because Richard Strand has offered to share with me yet another Black Tape, and like a crack addict jonesing for a fix, I need me some of that sweet supernatural mystery.

Nic Silver: Before you go running off, don’t you think it’s kind of odd that this deeply private man, who has called into question both your integrity and your intelligence multiple times in just a few short days, is offering to open up his research to you, when he was at first so fast to hide it from you?

Alex: Nope!

Nic Silver: Isn’t it possible that he has an ulterior motive, that he is planning to use you, and this podcast, which is like radio for the internet, and me, who is like a producer for podcasts, to further his own nefarious goals?

Alex: Of course not! There is absolutely no way that Dr. Strand has any personal connection to the supernatural, or that the disappearance of his wife will factor in to our investigation, or that I will find myself in personal turmoil and danger because of this story.

Nic Silver: All right then! Good talk!