The Black Tapes S01E12 - Shadow Dancing

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.

Nic Silver: Hey Alex, I just got a really interesting call from Chief Collins! It turns out that they cracked the Sebastian Torres case! And by “cracked” I mean they discovered a man hiding in the Evil Cabin of Evil, his body covered in ancient and terrible sigils, his eyes lit with an infernal madness, and his mouth filled with the blasphemous lies first spoken by Lucifer as he fell from Heaven!

Alex Reagan: Nic that is amazing! I am going to fly directly to California and interview this very reliable source of information!

Nic Silver: Actually, in between prophesying the doom soon to befall all mankind and revealing the secret sins of all the men guarding him, the kidnapper said that he would only speak to Richard Strand. Also, Chief Collins mentioned something about “ordering the state police to arrest you on sight if you so much as stood at the California border and took photographs of the scenery, you justice obstructing, child endangering, irresponsible blemish upon the very concept of journalism,” so maybe it’s better to lay off for a while!

Alex Reagan: That’s bullshit! I am very responsible! I’m responsible for Sebastian’s disappearance, responsible for playing the Unsound for millions of listeners, responsible for alerting Percival Black to the fact that we’re on his trail …

Nic Silver: Anyway, I found some cave paintings of upside down faces in New Mexico, so I’m sending you there. Mostly so the process server can’t find you until this all blows over, but also because there’s apparently a Black Tape connected to this picture of an invading horde of demons.

If an inter-dimensional portal to hell is opened in the woods, and nobody is around to hear it, do the unleashed souls of the eternally damned make a sound? We don’t know for sure, but we do know that Rocket Sound can make a reasonable facsimile of what those horrifying, tormented shrieks must sound like.

The Black Tapes is also brought to you by Stamps.com. Traveling from Seattle to the ancient caves of New Mexico can be prohibitively expensive, which is why Nic wrapped my in a blanket, stuck my in a box, and shipped me via third-class mail. And with Stamps.com, it was super easy! Just put your employee’s cramped, bound body on the scale, print your postage, and drop their shuddering form off at the nearest post office! And if you join now, and use our promo code “Black Tapes”, you’ll get this special bonus offer: a bottle of compressed oxygen, which will keep your underpaid minions breathing on their long, cargo-class flights to oblivion!

And if you’re going to shove yourself into a crate and trust in the Pony Express to get you where you need to go, you’re going to want to stay warm. What better way than with Bombas Socks? Each pair of Bombas socks is hand-made from only the finest materials, and with every pair purchased, Bombas donates a portion of the proceeds to a dark and mysterious organization bent on the final dissolution of society and all its norms. Erm, orphans. Yes, that’s right. They donate socks to orphans, and definitely not some Satanic monastery in the Ukraine.

John Uvella: Hi Alex! I am a forest ranger and Eagle scout, and I have been sent to show you around Urraca Mesa! Today we’ll be seeing beautiful vista, wonderful mountain ranges, ancient gates designed to prevent an invading army of shadow demons from overtaking the world, and a variety of prehistorical homes!

Alex Reagan: Wait, back up a second …

John Uvella: Oh don’t worry, the mountains aren’t that steep, and I have an ATV. You won’t have to go rock climbing or anything!

John Uvella: And here are our world famous petroglyphs! This one looks sort of like a man torn limb from limb and offered as a dark sacrifice to some wicked god, this one shows an unholy army, surrounded by the decapitated corpses of their enemies, and this one shows the Demon King, whose face is … upside down!

PNWS BOOM

John Uvella: And just outside the cave we have the Pillars of Demonic Rebuke, which hold off the Shadow Army’s invasion! There were twelve to begin with, but all but two have fallen, and the legend tells us that when the final pillar falls, so shall human civilization! Isn’t anthropology wacky!

Alex Reagan: Holy shit Nic! You’ll never believe what I’ve uncovered in New Mexico!

Nic Silver: That’s great Alex, but Dr. Strand recorded his interview with the Killer Cleric of California, so I need you to drop everything and come listen to the tape, which I cannot send to you via the internet because of reasons!

John Uvella: Hey Alex, before you leave, I just wanted to let you know that my wife is a huge fan of your show, and she told me that you’re a ghost hunter! And I thought you might be interested in this video tape I took when I was fourteen, six whole months ago!

Alex Regan: With that, John Uvella played an old VHS tape. It was a shitty high school production of an Old West movie, with no discernible plot or talent involved.

But then…

Out of the cavern, a shadow flew. A dark, winged creature that looked like a thing out of a nightmare. The children screamed and fled.

We backed up the tape and went forward frame-by-frame.

And there it was. Undeniable, unmistakable.

It was the goat demon described by Michelle Braid in her Oujia board experiment.

PNWS BOOM

Alex Reagan: Hey John, this tape is incredible and I can’t believe you’ve never shared it with anyone before!

John Uvella: Well I did send it to this guy named Richard Strand, who was offering a million dollars for proof of the supernatural, but he wrote back saying something about the lack of oxygen at our altitude, combined with the inconsistent nature of light given off by a flickering fire bouncing off rocks with a high quarts content, created a prismatic effect in the lens that caused the facial recognition portions of our brain to interpret what was in fact an overweight raccoon as a flying demon from the seventh level of hell, finally freed from its eternal prison by our careless trespass upon once-holy ground.

Alex Reagan: … I’ll be right back.

Richard Strand: Hi Alex! What’s that melon baller for?

Alex Reagan: Richard strand you lying sack of untruthful lies, I cannot believe you didn’t tell me about that time Tall Paul manifested in the very same New Mexican cave that I was sent to to avoid being charged with obstruction of justice, and I am going to perform unnecessary and improper modifications to your person until you finally admit that these Black Tapes are all connected!

Nic Silver: Hey Alex! Before you go ahead and castrate the principle subject of our investigation, I’ve dug up some information on Edward Lewis and the Brothers of the Mount you might be interested in!

Alex Reagan: Nic, unless that information will extract a pained and bloody confession from one Richard Strand, I am not currently interested.

Richard Strand: I, on the other hand, am extremely curious about this no doubt fascinating, and more importantly non-violent, information, and will be boarding a plane immediately.

Nic Silver: Okay, so the Brothers of the Mount were a group of monks living in Colvil National Forest, until the Ranger raided their camp and arrested six of them for trespassing and illegal development. But! Twelve of the monks escaped, and headed toward the Pendaray River Basin, which is where the body of Sarah Benning was found, and this all happened in the first year of the Festival of the Upside Down Face!

Richard Strand: Hi Mr. Lewis! Let’s cut right to the chase: why did you kidnap Sebastian Torres?

Edward Lewis: I am not a Mister, I am a Brother, a Brother of the Mount, and you know why, you know all the reasons why, you know what Sebastian Torres can do, you know what Simon Reese can do, you know what the symbols and signs mean, you know what’s coming, you know what lurks in the darkness, you know what stands behind you when you’re alone, another, no an other, for you are never truly alone, he is always there, always watching, the Advocate sees your life unfolding like a story, he knows that you know, he knows that you have all of the pieces, and he knows the role you must play, the final role in the final song, the song that will end the world!

Richard Strand: …Well that was very useful, thanks. Hey, do you guys validate parking?

Alex Reagan: So …

Richard Strand: I dunno, he’s probably a stalker or an obsessed fan or something, or maybe –

Alex Reagan: Oh no! You are not handwaving this away with “apophenia” this and “wildly implausible yet unrelated coincidence” that! We are going to talk about Edward Lewis until I say that we are done!

Richard Strand: Okay … so Edward Lewis obviously believes that he can open a doorway to Hell, that Sebastian Torres is a key to that ritual, and that my bloodline somehow plays a role.

Alex Reagan: Finally! Thank you!

Richard Strand: But, an please allow me to emphasize this, that is all bullshit, because the Devil is not real, and you can’t actually open a gateway to Hell because Hell isn’t a real place, and your insistence in humoring this jackass madman is only encouraging other crazy people to kidnap and murder children in the mad hope that you’ll put it on your fuckwitted podcast!

Alex Reagan: Hey, I’ll get back to that in a second, but can we check out what’s happening on the TV real quick?

Alex Reagan: And there it was, right on the television: Sexy James Bond, only his name was Thomas … Thomas Warren.

Which is a reference so obscure like 90% of you probably missed it, so let me recap. Warren is the name Coralee Strand said right before her audio tape cut out, and right before she … vanished. PNWS BOOM

Tina Stevenson: Hey Alex, just wanted to let you know that Lisa Graves, or the woman pretending to be Lisa Graves, just stopped in to collect her mail! Hope this is a suitable cliffhanger for the season finale! TTYL!

Alex Reagan: I have a lot of questions. Did Coralee just walk back into our lives? Who is Thomas Warren, and what does he want with Dr. Strand? Is there really an evil conspiracy to unleash Hell upon our fragile world? And is this podcast helping those agents of evil track down to long-lost pieces of that unholy puzzle? Well, there’s only one way to find out. I’m Alex Regan, and we’ll be back … soon.