Alex Reagan: When you’re crawling up the blood-slicked precipice of some dark mountain, clawing at the very earth with your fingertips in the vain hope that you might one day see your loved ones again, any distraction could spell your doom. That’s why the staff and PNWS wear Bombas Socks. Visiting the shrine of some evil cabal of world-ending, child-stealing minstrels is bad enough, but having an annoying seam rubbing on the tops of your toes is just too much to bear.

Bombas Socks: cling tightly to the last vestiges of comfort while all you know and love is stripped away by the encroaching darkness.

Alex Reagan: For days, maybe even weeks, sleep evaded me. I would lay awake at night, staring at the ceiling, begging and for any solution to my exhaustion, praying for a respite from my waking nightmares, but no answer came.

I fled to a secluded cabin far from my daily worries, hoping to escape the terrors hidden in the back of my own mind, but even there, even so far from home, so far from friends and family and foes, I found no relief.

That night, the terrors came again. Whispers in the darkness, hunting accusations of failure and warnings of certain, looming doom. And so I ran from my cabin and out into the forest, the roots reaching up to grab my ankles, the tree branches clawing at me like the gnarled fingers of a withered old woman.

And I heard them.

Black hounds chased me, fearsome not-quite-wolves with coats as black as pitch, slavering fangs as sharp as knives, and eyes are red as the fires of hell. Though I could not see them, I knew.

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Nic Silver: Alex! Great news! My super-clever hacker girlfriend taught me about this amazing new technology called a “web browser,” and I was able to use it to access something called a “Google,” and they helped me track down Thomas Warren!

Alex Reagan: That’s amazing, Nic! Is he hiding in a monastery in Russia? Holed up in a cave in New Mexico? Performing blasphemous rituals in a day care in Seattle?

Nic Silver: Worse! He’s giving a speech to the World Trade Organization in Vancouver! Oh, and the Googles also said that The Advocate is recruiting an army, a collection of the best and brightest minds, whose genius he will corrupt in order to bring about the end of days! And do you know who he’s targeting? Oprah Winfrey, Elon Musk, and … Richard Strand!

Alex Reagan: Holy shit, Nic! Strand knows Elon Musk! Do you think he’d let me test drive a Tesla?

Nic Silver: Um … there’s also this mysterious hacker in Maine that has a photograph of the General of the Armies of the Faceless Damned, but he only accepts visitors in person on Tuesdays at 11:15am.

Alex Reagan: So we’re going to Maine?

Nic Silver: Looks like!

Alex Reagan: Can we drive a Tesla?

Nic Silver: Damn it Alex, we already blew our entire budget installing hidden recording devices in Strand’s house. There’s no money for a Tesla!

Nic Silver: Okay, so there are few possibilities. One, Keith Dabic is a confused, scared, mentally unstable boy who has created an elaborate conspiracy around an urban legend that we just happened to feature on our show. Two, Keith is being held prisoner in an evil Russian monastery, captive to a dark and secretive group of demon worshiping monks who plan to use evil music to usher in the end of days, and are sending us cryptic emails in order to lure us onto their turf so they can murder us as tribute to their fell lord.

Alex Reagan: Holy shit Nic, you’re right!

Nic Silver: Good, I’m glad you can see how silly …

Alex Reagan: So I’m going to need a plane ticket to Bulgaria, a black catsuit, a climbing rope and grappling hook, a translator with special forces training, and a fake passport.

Nic Silver: [sigh] I’ll go set up a Patreon.

Nic Silver: Hi Alex! So I have a couple of concerns. Your insomnia is only getting worse, you’re apparently trying to summon the Fell King of the Goats in your sleep, and this afternoon Paul Bae found you in the breakroom, clutching a butcher knife and slathered in thick, red liquid, the words “RED RUM” scrawled on the wall behind you. Now, my friend at the coroner’s office tells me that the liquid was just tomato soup, but this still raises a few important questions.

Alex Reagan: Please, like you didn’t disappear into the Seattle forests for a week, only to emerge from a cabin that’s masquerading as a TARDIS, covered in very real blood, none of which was your own, and missing all of your companions, except for the crazy lady you went looking for, who had chopped off her own arm and offered it to you as an evening repast?

Nic Silver: Alex, we talked about this. What happened inside the Breach stays inside the Breach. Because if it doesn’t, SuperGlobalEvilCorp LLC will send a goon to my house and cut off my foot.

“I … can’t do this.”

Alex hit the wall at the exact same time I did. I was this close to writing the episode off. I’m glad the opening was just a joke.

“The coroner ruled it a suicide!” “What about the buckets of blood sprayed liberally across the south-facing wall, as if painted by a demon-possessed Lowes Home Improvement Specialist using a brush formed from the pelvic bone of a virgin and the fine hair of twice-murdered children?” “That sometimes happens in suicides!”

“What about the missing family, who reported feelings of looming dread, had video tape showing their home might have been invaded, and had documented evidence that the nanny was going to sacrifice their child to Marad Al Marad, known to his friends as”He Who Slays Innocents Whilst They Slumber!" “Probably just on vacation!”

“I’m still having trouble sleeping! Mostly because I keep waking up and finding Amalia standing over my bed, clutching a butcher knife, her eyes glowing with the dull fires of some long lost hell dimension!”

“The … Song of the Oompa Loomps?” “Close enough. Here’s an excerpt: Oompa Loompa doopity do! I’ve got another demon for you! If you are wise, you’ll listen to me! Do not repeat his name times three!”

“Hi Alex! Richard Strand here. Would it be cool if I dropped by the office and throttled Amalia until she revealed where my wife is? Thanks!”

“Squarespace dot com! You should! Sell your soul to Malkezidek!”

“Knock once for yes, twice for no, there is no hope of escape and I should just consign myself to the sure and certain doom set to befall me!”

“Hi, is this Tannis?” “Yes!” “NICK! HOLY SHIT NICK! I FOUND TANNIS! ALL OF YOUR QUESTIONS WILL BE ANSWERED!” “No, Alex, that’s Tanis with one ‘n’. I’m looking for Tannis with two ’n’s. I know, right? What are the odds? A mysterious, oddly capable prophet and the mysterious, oddly cloudy prophecy share a startlingly similar name?”

“Hi Alex! Richard Strand here. Fuck this whole Scully routine. Let’s go find some demon-worshipping, wife-kidnapping, baby-eating, and most importantly, spooky-recording-on-your-cell-phone-leaving, devil-cult monks!”

“Hey Alex, I think you might have a small typo on page fifteen of your–” “GO FUCK YOURSELF NICK YOU LECHEROUS DEMON POSSESSED RUSSIAN SPY FUCKING ASSHOLE.” “–script.”

“Um, Amalia? Why are you standing over my bed chanting while I sleep again?” “Not to be worrying, Alexandra! Am certainly not whispering incantations selling soul to devil! Back to sleep now!”

“Hey Richard? About this tape labelled”Cheryl?" “WHO TOLD YOU ABOUT MY PORN COLLECTION? I mean …”

Alex Reagan: Last season, we discovered that Coralee Strand, Richard Strand’s long-lost and presumed-dead wife, was alive, well, and living in Tahoe, and that Sexy James Bond, the mysterious stranger who stole Richard’s DNA and forced me to change my underwear, is actually a mysterious billionaire named Thomas Warren. My producer, good friend, and unhinged lunatic Nic Sliver helped me think all of this through:

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.