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: Last week, the fictitious Seattle School of Supernatural Shenanigans offered Dr. Strand a research grant to study mass hysteria and a supposedly-haunted video tape, as well as a convenient excuse for him to be in the same city as me. Since the vast majority of this research will actually be carried out by unpaid interns, I plan to harass Dr. Strands into appearing on this podcast as much as possible.

Alex: Hey Richard, did you see anyone messing with my phone? Because there’s a video of the ceiling of the coffee shop we visited, and a lot of background noise which, if you play it backwards while standing in a darkened room gazing into a shadowy mirror almost sorta sounds like someone saying “he’s not what you think.”

Richard: I think it’s far more likely that this is a flawed attempt at viral marketing, and that the Coca Cola company, the world’s largest vendor of sugar-based beverages, loaded a video onto your phone insisting that “you want a drink,” but the file was corrupted during transmission.

Alex: You know, for a skeptic you sure are setting world records in conclusion jumping.

Richard Strand: All right, here’s the video tape we’ve been asked to investigate. It’s actually security footage from an ATM. As you can see, we have a black-robed figure stalking behind an innocent woman. When the woman notices her, pure terror overtakes her face, and the video flickers with static. The woman drops to the ground, dead, and the robed figure silently walks away.

Alex: Oh my god, that’s terrifying!

Richard Strand: And now for the actual reason we’re investigating this tape. As you can see, immediately after the woman drops dead, and just before the robed figure walks off-screen, a Red Billed Whipper Tail takes flight … a species of bird that is native to the Northeast, not the Pacific Northwest.

Alex: … I think our audience might be a little more interested in the whole murdered by a wraith aspect, personally.

Richard Strand: Alex, the complex migratory patterns imposed upon aves populations by anthropogenic global climate change is a fascinating field, and ornithologists are starting to believe that …

[twenty minutes later]

Alex: So we’re gonna investigate the murder wraith.

Richard Strand: Fine, we can investigate the murder wraith.

Richard Strand: In 1957, a young girl named Sarah Benning, tired of her classmates’ constant mockery, decided to take a stand against bullying by cutting off the face of homecoming queen Katherine Williams, and then sewing it back on upside down. The town naturally celebrates this brave rebuke of childhood social stratifications with an annual commemorative carnival, the Festival of the Upside Down face, which includes such attractions as a parade, a costume party with prizes for Best Inverted Features, a smattering of grave robbings, and a series of murders carried out by the vengeful spirit of a girl who died too young.

Alex: That’s so morbid!

Richard Strand: Not nearly as morbid as the rate hikes for local hotels. If the School of Shenanigans had contacted me about this tape a few months ago, I could have gotten an early bird discount, but now I’ll end up paying more than twice the average rate.

Alex: I have a great idea! How about we share a room and split the cost! You know, purely for economic reasons and not in any way because your deep voice and brash confidence is at all causing me to skirt the line between my professional and personal lives.

Richard Strand: Since I am utterly incapable of reading social cues, I agree to your money-saving suggestion.

Alex: Charlesworth is an old fashioned small town, but less in a Norman Rockwell way and more in a Steven King, Deep Secrets and Hidden Evil Lurking Just Beneath the Surface way. And like any quaint town with a terrible past, Charlesworth has a cursed family, the DeNevers. I spoke with Crystal DeNevers, sister of the murder wraith’s victim.

Richard Strand: Thanks for meeting with us, Crystal! So, are you going to waste our time by lying about the supposedly supernatural nature of your sister’s death, or are you going to tell the truth and admit that this whole affair is a fabrication by a money-grubbing hotel magnate and a mass of easily-suggestible, superstitious rubes?

Crystal DeNevers: Before we get started, I just want to make sure all of your listeners know that even though my grandmother was friends with the people who bullied Sarah Benning into going into the DIY plastic surgery field, she did not actually bully Sarah Benning herself, and there is just no way that the vengeful spirit of Sarah is stalking my grandmother’s family down through the generations, murdering the eldest daughter of each descendant, demanding blood for the emotional trauma inflicted upon her by her adolescent tormentors.

Richard Strand: See! I told you there was absolutely nothing supernatural about this.

Crystal DeNevers: I mean, sure my grandmother did see Sarah Benning’s ghost in the back yard, wearing Katherine’s face as an upside down mask, and she watched in horrible fascination as Sarah peeled off that wretched flesh-mash, revealing the grisly, blood-stained visage of a spectral avenger beneath, and yes, my grandmother did run screaming through the city streets, screaming for help and begging for forgiveness, and perhaps she did throw herself off the tallest building in the county, and maybe witnesses did see a black-clad terror standing there, looking down at her broken form from on high, and it’s possible that phantom had vanished by the time anyone made it to the roof, but that doesn’t mean I’m in any danger, right? Right?

Richard Strand: … This is why I don’t talk to people.

Alex: I spoke with Rosemary Wilkons, official Charlesworth librarian and unofficial Charlesworth historian, about the mysterious events in her hometown.

Rosemary Wilkons: First, I think we all need to understand that this was a real-life tragedy, and not some made-up story. Two families lost their daughters! Also, this was the only murder in Charlesworth in sixty years! It shook this small community to its core! And finally, I want to make it clear that neither Sarah Benning nor Katherine Williams have returned as ghosts to haunt the descendants of this awful affair.

Richard Strand: Finally, a voice of reason!

Rosemary Wilkons: Sarah Benning is actually a zombie.

Richard Strand: God dammit.

Alex: The Black Tapes Podcast is brought to you by Audible.com. Sign up now and enjoy a free audiobook. This week, we recommend Tobin’s Field Guide to Revenants: Ghosts, Ghouls, Zombies, and You.

Boyd Osenga: Charlesworth is the safest town in America, Miss Regan. No murders, to robberies, we don’t even have jaywalkers. Aside from that one terrible day in 1957, nothing untoward has ever happened in this city.

Alex: So you’re saying that there are no ghosts or zombies terrorizing the children of the Class of 1957?

Boyd Osenga: Well, sure someone did dig up the grave of Sarah Benning, making it look as if a vengeful specter had clawed its way out of the fetid earth in order to exact terrible revenge on the bloodlines of those who had wronged her, and maybe someone also dug up the grave of Katherine Williams and made a mockery of her once-human form, but did you know that I haven’t even written a traffic ticket in the past five years?

Richard Strand: …I hate you so much.

Alex: Would you mind digging up the memories of you long-vanished wife and airing them for our listeners to hear?

Richard Strand: Of course not! I’d love to revisit how I went inside to pay for gas, only to emerge and find my wife missing! I’d love to relive the sheer panic that flooded my body, the unbearable fear that gripped my mind! I’d enjoy conjuring up the memories of how I was the primary suspect, and the police spent all of their resources investigating me rather than looking for the man who really stole her! And it’s a lot of fun to imagine what the real culprit, infamous serial killer the Ben Sur Basher, did to my wife’s tiny, fragile frame!

Alex: Great! So if we could start at the beginning …

Alex: I also spoke with Lawrence and June Jacobson, parents of Coralee Strand, and asked them what they believed happened to their daughter.

Lawrence Jacobson: Richard Strand is an atheist, an asshole, an abusive son of a bitch, and the man the murdered my daughter. Even his own child sued for emancipation and came to live with us when Coralee vanished.

June Jacobson: That’s all a lot of horseshit! See, we got this postcard in the mail, and it had the words “thinking of you” printed on the back in nondescript handwriting, and an image of a mountain and some trees on the front. Coralee loved mountains and trees, and she was always thinking of us, and this is proof positive that she is alive and well and staying away from Richard and Charlie and Lawrence and me for some mysterious purpose, for some greater good!

Lawrence Jacobson: The letter wasn’t even addressed to us, June!

June Jacobson: That’s because she didn’t want her enemies to know where we live!

Lawrence Jacobson: Strand vanished for five days when Coralee went missing!

June Jacobson: That’s because he was looking for her!

Lawrence Jacobson: That’s because he was hiding her body!

Alex: The Black Tapes Podcast is a production of Pacific Northwest Stories, in association with the National Radio Alliance and Minnow Beats Whale. Join us next time, when we dig deeper into the mysterious past of Richard Strand, and we investigate a young contortionist with a surprising vocal range. I’m Alex Regan, and we’ll be back in two weeks.