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.

Richard Strand: Several things lead me to question the authenticity of these tapes. One, the paperwork associated with E. Hausdorff is dated to the seventies, but the psychiatrist uses the term “dissociative personality disorder,” a term that didn’t make it into the DSM until version IV, in the mid-nineties. Second, magnetic tape simply would not remain viable for such a long time in such inclement conditions. Third, and perhaps most importantly, exorcism is not a treatment recognized by any body of psychiatric medicine, and there is approximately zero percent chance that any real doctor would prescribe such an antiquated and barbaric sham as a treatment for one of their patients.

Alex Reagan: Um, Richard? Read this.

Richard Strand: …Son. Of. A. Bitch.

Sheriff Pat Packard: Hi Alex! I’m super excited to dredge up old, solved cases for your podcast thingie! Anyway, the Boy by the River is a kid named Bobby Maims, who was kidnapped and murdered in the late 70s!

Alex Reagan: Sheriff Packard, this is such a huge break! Did they ever catch the person responsible?

Sheriff Pat Packard: Oh sure! There was a gas station attendant named Gary Bishop. Locals called him Old Grabby Gary. You know, always playing grab-ass in the station bathrooms, if you know what I mean. Anyhow, after the police arrested Gary and beat him with a rubber hose for thirteen hours, Gary confessed to Bobby’s murder, three other unsolved cases in the area, the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and, I’m quoting from the transcript of the confession here, “anything, I’ll say anything, Jesus, please, just make the pain stop! What do you want from me? Ow, ow, ow! I’m a devil worshipper, okay? Is that what you want to hear? I murder little boys because I love Satan! Just please stop beating me!”

Alex Reagan: Sounds like an open and shut case, Sheriff! But is there any chance I could talk to Gary Bishop myself?

Sheriff Pat Packard: Haha, oh, no. After his true, honest, and in no way coerced confession, the locals dragged him out to the forest and gave him a Pennsylvania Necktie. That’s what we call a lynchin’ round these parts.

Richard Strand: I’ve been investigating the Palori, or as they are more commonly called, the Watchers. It turns out that the legends describe them as a sort of fairy folk, similar to pixies.

Alex Reagan: Finally, something that isn’t so utterly terrifying that it threatens to break my fragile grip on reality! I am done with demons and over the occult, but I can handle a fairy!

Richard Strand: Ah, you seem to have been confused by the more modern adaptation of traditional fairy legend: Cinderella’s fairy godmother and Tinkerbell and the like. In reality, the Pixie was an evil entity, a truly malevolent spirit, who would frequently capture and cook alive the children of those who offended them.

Alex Reagan: Of course they were.

Richard Strand: My father was obsessed with these creatures. He had an entire archive of information about the rituals, names, and sigils necessary to summon, bind, and control these entites. As an interesting and unrelated aside, my wife, Coralee, also wore a ring with one of these sigils inscribed on the inside.

Alex Reagan: Oh my God, Richard! D you know the name of the creature they were trying to summon?

Richard Strand: Yes. It was … Rumpelstiltskin.

[PNWS Boom]

Richard Strand: No, wait, wrong page. They were actually trying to summon Tiamat, an ancient Mesopotamian goddess of primordial chaos, the creative power of the feminine, and ruining my goddamned life.

[PNWS Boom Boom Boom]

Sammy: Hi Alex! Thanks for broadcasting my name, age, sex, and location, as well as a comprehensive list of all my tattoos and distinguishing features, to the entire world! An evil cult of evil has tracked me down and is about to murder me, but don’t worry! I have helpfully encoded everything you need to know in the form of fax machine noises, which I will now expertly reproduce using just my vocal cords and a jar full of gravel. Bet you wish you hadn’t rescheduled my interview now, don’t you?

Sammy’s Encoded Message: Dear Board of Directors: Yes, I know DavaCorp is technically an “energy” company, and we’re interested in “philanthropy” and “making the world a better place” and stuff, but I think the investors are gonna love my new proposal, which involves harnessing the power of demonic sounds and occult symbols, in conjunction with a very special alignment of the planets and stars, and also the ritual murder of several dozen children and their nannies, to bring about the apocalypse. Looking forward to Tuesday’s meeting! -Thomas Warren, The Shadowy Figure Who Holds The Key To All of This

Alex Reagan: Bombas Socks are the bomb!

Nic Silver: Alex, just … no.

Alex Reagan: Okay, how about … Bombas Socks have philanthropy as a core value, just like the mysterious company that may have murdered my new hacker friend, and are probably plotting to end the world! Are Bombas Socks a tool of the Devil, meant to usher in the end of days? You can’t prove that they aren’t!

Nic Silver: …Alright, let’s just cut a promo for Stamps.com.

Alex Reagan: Great! Stamps.com … did you know that intricate occult references can be found throughout the US Postal System? From the Zionist messages hidden in ZIP codes to the sigils woven into their uniforms and the mind-altering substances added to the glue on the back of each stamp, the US postal service is committed to getting your mail to its destination on time and before the apocalypse, which they are hastening to bring about. But when you use Stamps.com, you’re helping to bankrupt this vile organization, which is both an American institution and a harbinger of the Great Devourer.

Stamps.com … save time, save money, and save the world from those who would sacrifice countless innocent souls for a mere glimpse of their beloved demonic overlord.

Nic Silver: I’m starting to think we should script the ad segments, Alex.

Amalia: Hallo Alexandra! Am glad you are forgetting the demonic shenanigans surrounding our relationship! Please be saying hallo to Nic for me! Also, have been learning that certain friend of yours, Keith Dabic, has unfortunately thrown himself off top of monastery tower, and was then trampled by horse, and was then shot, and was then stabbed, and was then drowned! But you know old saying, in Russia, sometimes perfectly normal suicide is looking like KGB murder! Laughing out loud! This is funnier in Russian tongue.

Alex Reagan: This news shook me to my very core. Each turn of this investigation seemed to lead to someplace darker, and each revelation seemed to cost another innocent their life. If I continued, would anyone be safe? Was I risking my own life, or the life of Nic or Amalia or Richard, just to satisfy my curiosity? Was it time to step back, time to let the police or people who “graduated” from “journalism school” handle this case? Was it time to-

Detective Kerry Stanner: Hi Ms. Reagan! Edward Lewis, you know, that crazy monk guy who kidnapped Sebastian Torres and made all kinds of dark threats toward Richard Strand back in season one? We kinda sorta found him dead in his cell, and every square inch of his prison and his flesh was covered in symbols and numbers that made one of our deputies throw up, one of them gouge his eyes out, and another one convert to Satanism before throwing himself in front of a train. Anyhoo, if you could give us a hand deciphering these forbidden glyphs, we sure would appreciate it. Thanks!

Alex Reagan: -Nic! Road trip!

Alex Reagan: If there’s one thing I love, it’s learning. Not learning from my mistakes, of course, but learning about photography, or chemistry, or the black alchemy necessary to summon and bind an imp-like creature with a penchant for mischievous pranks and a taste for the flesh of children.

That’s why we’re excited to be sponsored by The Great Courses. The Great Courses offer hundreds of hours of material from the world’s greatest teachers, allowing you to relax in the comfort of your home while you learn about science, history, and the forbidden mathematics that will rip apart the walls guarding our reality from the unfathomable evil lurking in the dark beyond.

The Great Courses. There is no knowledge which is not power. Terrible, terrible power.

Nic Silver: Okay, let’s take a look at the video surveillance of the death of Edward Lewis!

Alex Reagan: All right, he appears to be reading from a bible, but the pages are human flesh, and the ink is blood, and the text is actually a collection of blasphemous utterances from a goat-headed demon seeking freedom from its eternal prison … now the screen is black … black … still black … yep, waiting for something to happen … still nothing … and okay, Edward Lewis is dead, his stomach has been torn open, and his intestines woven into the noose used to hang him.

Richard: If you look at the tape carefully, you can see a shadow lurking in the corner of Lewis’ cell.

Alex Reagan: Oh my god, a shadow! You know what this means, right? Tall Paul manifested in that cell, caused the recording equipment to fail, and then murdered Edward Lewis, turning his flesh into a prophane mockery of the human form, all to warn us not to interfere with his terrible plans and dread designs!

Richard Strand: I was going to say that the very human killer was in the room with Lewis right before the video feed cut out, but I guess your idea is plausible, too.

The Unnamed PNWS Intern: Hi Guys! I just found a news article that says the Brothers of the Mount all committed ritualistic suicide at the exact same moment Edward Lewis was found dead in his cell!

Alex Reagan: And look! They’re laying around a pentagram inside of a double circle! The same sigil Simon Reese drew on the wall of the insane asylum from which he just escaped! That can only mean one thing!

Richard Strand: You’re not about to suggest that Simon Reese used his supposed powers of bilocation to simultaneously strangle five grown men and eviscerate another locked in a maximum security cell five hours away, are you?

Alex Reagan: …no?

[PNWS Boom]

Alex Reagan: Detective Stanner? I might have some information for you on the death-slash-supernatural-murder of Edward Lewis, but first I’d like to ask a few questions. Did Edward Lewis have a fascination with sacred geometry?

Detective Kerry Stanner: Sacred whosawhat now?

Alex Reagan: Did he create many complicated drawings, drawings that hint at the horrifying insignificance of human life and the dreadful nothingness that awaits us in the inky void?

Detective Kerry Stanner: Drawings of whatchamacallit?

Alex Reagan: And was the focal point of these drawings perhaps a pentagram inscribed inside a double circle?

Detective Kerry Stanner: Look, Miss Reagan, I’m gonna be honest with you. I’m not super good at my job, and I’m just kinda hoping the coroner rules this death by natural causes so I don’t have to fill out a bunch of paperwork.

Alex Reagan: But Detective Stanner, this man was torn open by an unseen assailant, his entrails ripped from his body and used to form a hangman’s noose, and the life was strangled from him, all inside of a supposedly secure police building, and all in the two seconds for which the video feed was cut!

Detective Kerry Stanner: I’m not saying it’s a likely outcome, Miss Reagan, just the one I’m hoping for.

Alex Reagan: I received a mysterious text message, directing me to call a certain phone number one hour after the full moon peaked in the nighttime sky. I turned on my voice recorder and had the following conversation:

Alex Reagan: Hi Simon! I was just wondering, did you use the dark supernatural powers, given to you by your parents in an attempt to transform you into the child that would end the world, to instead wreak bloody vengeance upon those who wronged you, tearing the life from their fragile bodies using nothing but the powers of your mind, fueled by your seething hatred?

Simon Reese: What? Oh, yeah, totally. BTW, Thomas Warren has constructed an engine of unfathomable destructive power, and you should use the equally limitless power of podcasting to foil his dark designs!

Richard Strand: Hello Alex. The Strand Institute received the following sound file, from a person identifying themselves as “Hastur,” from a computer located in Bulgaria.

Alex Reagan: Well, the Unsound didn’t murder our millions of listeners, so I’m gonna go ahead and play it real quick without any warning hope you’re not listening to this while walking down a dark and probably empty alleyway in the middle of the night okay here we go click!

Richard Strand: …Right. Also, I believe I have tracked down E. Hausdorff to an institution for the criminally insane in Vancouver, British Columbia. Records indicate that a patient named E. H. was transferred there after murdering his parents with a butcher knife, cutting off their faces, sewing them on upside-down, scrawling a pentagram onto the wall using their blood, and performing an impromptu rendition of Scriabin’s Mysterium.

Alex Reagan: …

Richard Strand: …

Alex Reagan: …

Richard Strand: …What, no freak out? No bold proclamation that this time we finally have evidence of the supernatural? No hastily drafted plan to rush out to Vancouver, dress up as a nurse, secret yourself into the hospital, and surreptitiously record a physician that you have conned into revealing private patient information?

Alex Reagan: No, I kinda just want a bagel. A bagel … with everything.

[PNWS Boom]

Alex Reagan: Join us next time, when I investigate the ties between an electrical company with an obsession for the paranormal, the Tiamat cult that somehow wound its grip around Coralee Strand, the apparent death of Keith Dabic, the murder-suicide of the entire Brotherhood of the Mount, and the hellish monster that burned my Everything Bagel with Cream Cheese. I’m Alex Reagan, and its The Black Tapes Podcast. We’ll be back in two weeks.