tmisaccidentreportbook

[tmisaccidentreportbook]

MAG040, Human Remains

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MAG039, Infestation

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MAG038, Lost and Found

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MAG037, Burnt Offering

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MAG036, Taken Ill

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MAG035, Old Passages

Case #0020406, Harold Silvana Release date: September 8th, 2016 First listen: 6th November, think it was still the walk home.

Where we see more of my goth son, Smirke’s name joins the blacklist in my mind, and in my messages with dodgylogic, Leitner’s name is autocorrected to all caps for the first time, a feature that endures still. Also that start of my conspiracy theory board entitled ‘WHAT THE FUCK IS UNDER LONDON?’

- Harold Silvana is a name we’ve already heard in passing, back in MAG024 where Sasha was hunting down the police reports for the incident. That was recorded somewhere between mid March and very early April, and it is now mid July. So investigation and research on this case has taken maybe four months, possibly longer, before it is fit for recording and archiving. I don’t know if that can be used as a bench mark for how long the process typically takes, because there is a lot going on in this one. It’s one I like to refer to as a ‘fear goulash’ statement; there’s a lot of flavours up in here.

- The Reform Club, Pall Mall. It’s just north of Westminster, with in spitting distance of Buckingham Palace and No. 10 Downing Street. Looking at the map, there’s an area of London, about 3 miles across, on the north side of the river, that has Pall Mall, Millbank, Chelsea and the seat of British power that just has all sorts of bad vibes rattling about…

- ‘I’m a builder. Sort of… In simple terms it’s not much different to any other sort of construction work, except it takes about three times as long and costs ten times as much.’ First impressions, I like him. He feels like an up front sort of character, and while he has to play the games and use the lingo, he feels like a grounded person.

- ‘…me and my team are worth every penny.’ He’s got a team, acknowledging the team. We love to see it.

- ‘And the sort of people I deal with, or should I say the sort of people whose personal assistants I deal with, can afford it.’ Ah yes, we are talking London money aren’t we. Central London money.

- Release the antique smut poems, V&A Museum! You cowards!

- ‘… so we could only actually come out of the basement when it wasn’t full of people too important to see builders.’ Urgh, God. Can’t believe the ‘below stairs’ mentality persists in today’s society but here we are… Not quite the same, but kinda reminds me of the 2 summers I was interning at a falconry breeding centre and the vast majority of the birds were being bred for the market in the Arab Peninsula. So the emir would send his men over to look at the birds and select the ones they wanted and all the women had be be else where, out of sight. So we all agreed it was fucking stupid and took the paid afternoon off we were given.

- I’m trying to work out how the listing system works and it all looks a bit subjective to me. Grade Is are defined a ‘buildings of exceptional interest’, and structures get ranked on age and rarity, aesthetic merit, selectivity, and national interest amongst other things. Being a Grade I puts you on par with Blackpool Tower, the Cenotaph, York Minster, and the Tower of London to name but a few.

- ‘It was about two in the morning when the kid showed up.’ Ooof… having to completely adjust your sleep schedule for these rich fucks, ugh. Also, my sweet boy.

- ‘I think he must have forgotten to lock the door when he headed out, and that’s how the kid got in.’ Even if that is the case, you know Gerry has a set of lock pick on him and is well practised at using them, even at this age.

- ‘…this was still the first week in March and it was pretty cold’ and Gerry is there in a t-shirt.

- ‘His hair was long and greasy, almost down to his shoulders, and looked to be dyed almost the same black as his clothes.’ The attacks on my son’s hair started early… I am begging someone, anyone at the institute, please take my boy to a salon and let them do it right for him. Let someone pamper him for a brief snippet of time.

- While this instinct was coming from the wrong place the decision ‘to be gentle in my initial enquiries’ may have bought him a little bit of grace. Out right aggression may have made it all much messier.

- We’re getting crumbs of Leitner lore. ‘A businessman from Norway.’ I was still somewhat naive as to who Leitner was, but in my chat’s with dodgylogic, I’d sent something along the lines of ‘part of me hopes Leitner is just a normal weird white guy with far too much money and a perverted sense of curiosity and just doesn’t give a damn about the rest of society, because to be honest I can’t think of anything more scary in this world right now.’ I wrote during the US 2020 election week. I feel the sentiment stands.

- ‘I don’t know what his business was…’ I imagine he was in the business of business.

- ‘Portly, middle-aged, short blond hair in the middle of going grey, well-tailored business suit.’… How small would you say his hands were?

- ‘He smiled an odd little smile as he said it, which put me a bit on edge.’ uncomfortable noises

- Next comes a paragraph of ‘he began to get shifty’, lying about permissions and protocol, got ‘very defensive’, when they’re going to go over his head he ‘started screaming that we didn’t understand what we were talking about, that he didn’t need to explain himself to the likes of us’, and, oh yes, this feels familiar…

- ‘… this teenage burnout turned up’. I legit put my hand over my heart and made an affronted noise. So rude about my goth son.

- ‘‘Can you smell it?’ he said, and for a brief moment, I could smell something.’ Once again, l’eau de creepy shit strikes again. Follow your nose to where nobody goes. Follow that smell to find personal hell. Follow the odour for a mental off-roader… I think I’m out. Nope, wait, follow the scent for a psyche descent.

- ‘…with a swing stronger than I would have thought possible from his age and skinny frame.’ My boy is scrappy. When you are fighting eldritch horrors for your life on the regs, you probably develop some functional strength.

- ‘… listening to his CD player and waiting.’ Ah, the early ‘00s. Though, you would have had to wrestle my Walkman away from me, audio books are one of the few things that kept me sane in my early teens.

- The universe of The Magnus Archives, defined as ‘this stuff’ by one, Gerard Keay.

- ‘…but Alf was always too curious for his own good.’ And that’s all The Entities need. One weak link, one moment of curiosity.

- ‘We had plenty of torches…so we each took one large one and a smaller back-up in case the first had any problems.’ Smart. Smart bunnies.

- Seeing as Gerard was the one to put them on to this, I don’t quite know how they thought they had any real reason to stop him at this stage, even if they could. Gerard was the most clued in person in that room.

- ‘…mid-19th century’ would put us at around the same time The Magnus Institute moved from Edinburgh to London, in 1841 and the Carlton Club, quick look up and it’s a private members club and the original home of, oh God, home of the Conservative Party… That explains a thing or two.

- ‘Alf kept asking Rachel if the corridor was getting narrower, and every time, she would dutifully measure the width and inform him that, no, it was exactly five feet wide.’ A woman of rationality and science, I like her.

- ‘I counted thirteen.’ ROLL CALL!

‘I’ve never had any sort of claustrophobia, but I was finding it hard, at points to catch my breath, to dismiss the feeling that the walls were pressing on me.’ The Buried.

‘There was one that, for all the world, it felt like I was going to fall into it.’ I’m going to say The Vast.

‘Another was so dark that our torches didn’t seem to reach more than a few feet inside.’ The Dark.

 ‘…flashes of a pile of paper, completely covered in cobweb,’ The Web.

‘…a figure stood in the darkness, a stranger I didn’t know but was sure meant me harm,’ The Stranger

- ‘…my skin burning, hot, choking on smoke down there in the dark.’ The Desolation.

- ‘Robert Smirke, 1835. Balance and fear.’ Ok, so that gives us 6 years before The Magnus Archives moves to London. 14 years after Millbank was completed.

- I can’t remember why, but I did vaguely remember the name ‘Robert Smirke’ when I first heard it from Jonathan, I can only assume I’d heard it on a documentary somewhere. I’m one of those folks; I won’t watch a movie, I’ll trawl BBC iPlayer or YouTube for a documentary that takes my fancy.

- ‘…often described as ‘theatrical’. Of course he fucking was, he ran in the same circles as Jonah Magnus, of course he was extra a fuck. And he designed the British Museum and the Carlton Club? All just one big, messy, imperialist, conservative ouroboros that instead of eating its’ own tail, it’s sucking its’ own dick.

- ‘We stood there for some time as I explained this to the others.’ Info dump time, my friend.

- Which tunnel did you pick Gerard? Which one were you seeking?

- Tunnel was damper, and the walls seemed ‘oddly slimy’, when Hoard fell his hand ‘came away faintly tinged with red’, ‘lights up ahead’. I’m not sure which, but I’d put money on either The Slaughter or The Flesh. Oh wait no, ‘lights up ahead’, maybe The End?

- ‘He was only a skinny kid, but he was so strong, and kept his footing.’ When you’re fuelled with knowledge and a will to survive, you’re make of hardy stuff.

- Is this the book that we see Mary Kaey with in MAG004? The one that shed small animal bones?

- ‘It makes me feel sick, though, like we’re just abandoning Alf, dishonouring his memory.’ Ooof, buddy. The cover up, the power, the money, the privilege, urgh. I’m sorry, bud.

- I can see why The Reform Club don’t want to talk, but I wonder my Howard Silvana now doesn’t want to discus it? Might go a ways to explain why this investigation has taken a while as Sasha has been trying to speak to people for ‘the last three months.’

- So Jurgen Leitner was ‘one of the premier worldwide dealers in rare and antique books’. Aok, so he did have a career in business that wasn’t only shady shit.

- ‘… I can’t help but wonder whether that was where they were found, or just where they were stored.’ Reminds me of a question that was asked about Leitner books in a Q&A session and Jonny’s answer was along the lines of ‘you’re assuming a Leitner book needs to be written.’

- ‘Architecture is one of his specialist areas,’ Tim has such hidden depths, I love him.

- What the fuck does “A master of subtle stability” even mean? Is it code for ‘unhinged bitch fucking with power you don’t wanna find out’?

- ‘...Smirke’s buildings have higher percentages of reported paranormal sightings than any other architect of similar profile.’ You don’t say…

- Jon calling for Martin like that, like he’s calling a dog to heel…

- And the demon cockney delivery drivers lie in wait… They clock the tape recorder on, can they feel The Web’s influence coming off of it, or is it just that they noticed?

- I love their delivery, like it’s one thought and one breath split across 2 people. They really are a matching set, makes it all the more tragic after season 3.

#the magnus archives #MAG035

[tmisaccidentreportbook]

MAG034, Anatomy Class

Case #161207, Dr. Lionel Elliot Release date: September 1st, 2016 First listen: 6th November, walk home. Definitely remember crossing over the canal bridge.

The Anatomy Students… I love them… I think in the late 20s early 30s episodes, this podcast went from, ‘oh this is interesting, I’m enjoying this’ to ‘… oh this is really good… oh no… this may be a problem…’ And I was right! The Anatomy Class episode was one of those moments that really stands out in my memory.

- Off the bat, we’ve got a live recording, so that helps us with the time frame a bit more. Recording taken on the 12th July, and looking back MAG022 was recorded 12th March… Martin’s been living in the institute for 4 MONTHS?!? The worms have been happening for 4 months!??! How many stomach ulcers are in the making right now? Good grief, no wonder everyone is exhausted, they’re all stressed out of their minds. Wonder how many times Jon has glimpsed Martin in his pants?

- While it’s refreshing to not have someone instantly condemn the tape recorder, and as someone who still uses a filofax I appreciate it, I don’t much care for his tone when talking about the advancements being made in medicine with the use of robotics. It’s well above my understanding but I always enjoy listening to my sister and her fiancee talking about new methods and techniques. These fields are all about saving lives and while this doctor may want to ‘feel that pancreas’, his patient will most definitely want to be alive to use that pancreas, and the body may not survive a full ‘popping of the bonnet’ shall we say. I’m just getting a bit of ‘OK boomer’. ‘Meh, devices, mehmeh.’

- I know there’s a bit of a stereotype with surgeons of jumping immediately to the slicing and dicing… but I don’t think it is unwarranted.

- It’s getting to the stage where the worms are being noticed by visitors, yikes. Also, ‘Bitten? They’re worms.’  Mate, when was the last time you handled an infectious diseases or parasitology case, huh?

- ‘Where, where do you want me to start? The bones? The blood? The… uh… the fruit?’ … Well, that smacks of both divinity and butchery…

- ‘Introduction to Human Anatomy and Physiology… At King’s College, London.’ So I looked up the module course online and it does exist. It may have been different in 2016, when this was releases and presumably written, but this happened to Dr Elliott ‘in early 2016’. The website sates that this module is taught in the autumn semester.

- Now, I’m looking at this 8 year, Christ 8 years?!, in the future and we are in a post-lockdown/continual-Covid world, so teaching methods have changed, but I’m looking at the module summary and I don’t know how Dr Elliot would take it:

‘The use of computer-assisted learning (Anatomy & Physiology Online, Primal Pictures) during tutorial sessions will enable the students to learn using virtual 3D representations taken from the Visible Human data set … There will be 2 lab sessions that will be assessed from the experimental write-ups. Also there will be 2 sessions in the dissection room to facilitate learning about the skeleton and the cardiovascular system.’

Think it’s a little more remote learning then he’d be comfortable with… comfortable with any other year than 2016 that is.

- ‘I get tired of… squeamish students’… These kids want to learn, are putting themselves in financial straits to do so and I will hear no judgement against them. You build a resilience to this sort of thing, heavens knows I did, and it takes time and exposure. Don’t be rude.

- ‘Spillover class’. points at the academic schedule not making sense and then back at this paragraph Ooooh, cool, it’s covered in universe. ‘… the system had accepted more students for the course than there were places’, sooo this kinda happened to me, but with accommodation rather than tuition. So I spent first year in international, post grad halls… That sucked…

- ‘I have a lot of research due shortly and, well, you know academia – never enough hours in the day.’ I can only imagine, what sort of haggard wreck Jon is starting to look like at this stage in the series. He’s not got the iconic scars yet, but I bet he’s not been looking after himself. He possibly felt a little bit of camaraderie with Dr Elliott, clinging to veil of academia the way he does, but knowing how prickly Jon can be, he could just as easily take affront at the over familiarity.

- ‘I wasn’t responsible for any of the lectures…’ I wonder if those lectures were attended, or if they were ever even scheduled…

- ‘… but I don’t remember what they look like.’ mii theme song playing in the background Blank slates all of them.

- ‘…maybe because they were such an international group.’ I. LOVE. THEIR. NAMES. Fucking love this Jonny, you clever sod. - Erika Mustermann – German - Jan Novak – Czech - Piotr and Pavel Petrov – Russian - John Doe – English - Fulan al-Fulani – Arabic - Juan Pérez – Latin American Spanish All place holder names in different cultures, you clever, clever bastard.

- The fact that he says ‘14 eyes’ instead of ‘7 pairs of eyes’ is weird.

- ‘I got the oddest feeling they were judging my walk.’ Must learn from teacher. Observe, learn, imitate.

- I find the whole ‘building the interior as they learn about it’, just, so cool and clever concept. They can observe a person and get the build and the movement but learning how the components fit together and interact and everything? Excellent, brilliant, ugh I love it.

- ‘…their breathing deliberate and almost pointed.’  ‘Look. We have learned. Are we doing it right?’

- ‘How sharp are the knees meant to be?’  They’re babies. Teach and guide these abomination babies.

- ‘I just did my best to stop caring.’ How many statements are going to carry this sentiment? That at some point or another, the subject is just going to ‘nope’ right out and make it through? I’m going to have to start a tally.

- ‘Their faces, normally so neutral, were alive with… what was it I saw? Excitement? Curiosity? Hunger?’ THEY’RE BABIES!

- They are effectively playing ‘dress up’… with skeletal remains… I love them.

- They are such diligent students. There ever tutorial, ready to learn, even if the lecturer isn’t there.

- Hearts… Ooof… let the ‘sinister nonsense’ begin.

- ‘Maybe I thought they’d descend into some sort of feeding frenzy, but they didn’t.’ Well, that is both rude and hurtful. Actually, to be fair, I did once ask about taking pheasants we’d been dissecting in lab home for cooking… There were about 4 of us who were watching about 20 odd bird carcasses just getting discarded going ‘umm… I could curry that… sure I can’t take it? Oh, ok…’  

- ‘… that if I couldn’t see or hear it, I didn’t care.’ Very ‘child hiding behind a curtain, if I can’t see them they can’t see me’ mentality.

- Again, I ask, ‘Where does the blood COME FROM?!’

- I think the whole situation can be described succinctly as ‘horrible miracle’, I think Dr Elliott was right on the money there.

- ‘I asked Elena and, irregular as it was, she gave me the address.’ Well, THAT feels like a safe guarding violation…

- Kingsland Road in Newham. I thought for a moment maybe the Anatomy Students and Sarah Baldwin and the others taken by The Anglerfish all lived together, but Melanie picked Sarah up from Sydenham in MAG028, which is the other side of the river by quite a distance. ‘…and the details have disappeared from the college systems.’ Clean up.

- ‘I was about to reply when a muffled scream of pain came from somewhere deep inside the house.’ Oh God… I’d completely forgotten they’d gone in search of, umm, ‘additional educatioal material’. Oh dear… Bad babies…

- ‘And the apple, did you… eat it? / Do I look like an idiot? Of course not! I cut it in half, first, to check if it was… off.’ I can only hope you are speaking euphemistically and it was your morbid curiosity that prompted you to cut the apple open and that you had exactly zero intentions of actually eating it because GOOD GRIEF MAN!

- And again, human teeth where there ought not to be human teeth. To be fair to Jonny, teeth are fucking weird.

- ‘The first thing about this statement that makes me dubious is that it comes from a fellow academic.’ HA! Oh Jonathan, my sweet, self aware boy… Oh… Oh, I thought this may be a commentary on the ‘ivory tower of academia’ concept, but actually it’s because they’re so used to getting bullied by other nerds…

- ‘It seems strange to me that Dr. Elliott would fail to take note of this.’ And indeed this could be a point in the ‘the other nerds are being mean to us’ column, but I think it also may be down to how focused and, sometimes insular circles of academia can be, the fact that this was missed by Dr Elliott.

- ‘… but Tim seems to believe her.’ And we believe Tim. Tim is the best.

- ‘… they all seemed like healthy adult teeth, and most of them appeared to come from different people.’ Are they… umm… are they samples taken from the ‘samples’ that the anatomy students were sourcing?

- ‘… early last year, Dr. Rashid Sadana took his own life. There’s no direct connection, except that he taught the Anatomy, Physiology and Pathology for Complementary Therapies course at St. Mary’s University…’ Well, they’re doing their studies, they went and got their pre-requisites…

#MAG034 #The Stranger #the magnus archives

[tmisaccidentreportbook]

MAG033, Boatswain’s Call

Case #0110201, Carlita Sloane Release date: August 18, 2016 First listen: 6th November, walking into work, remember crossing the overflow car park

The Big Boy Man, Oh Lord, He Cometh. Our first look at Peter Lukas, the other Sad Sea Dad of Rusty Quill.

- TIMOTHY STOKER! THE STONKER! MY BOY! MY SWEET CHEESE! MY ROTTEN LIL’ SOLDIER BOY!

- Reasons I love Tim: He gives me ‘bi guy who uses finger guns’ energy, he is not above weaponising his charms, and he’s also concerned about hoW SOME SHIT DOESN’T ADD UP JONNY!

- I’m being overly critical and harsh, and God knows, if I’d been putting a project like this together, I’d need a warehouse for all the wall space my cork boards would need to take up, but I’m grateful that they are addressing some of this in universe.

- I feel sorry for Jon and Jonny both. For Jon, he got yeeted into this position with no warning, he’s trying his best but he doesn’t quite know what he’s doing so he’s clinging to professionalism and academia like his life depends on it. These mistakes must be hugely embarrassing for him, eating away at him. And if these mistakes are just honest writing slips, then I feel for Jonny. It’s a new, big project, the early days were fucking chaos because of a perfect storm of issues, mistakes get made. But I love how it’s handled in universe.

- ‘Oh, and don’t get me started on the other case numbers around the Hill Top hauntings, they’re a mess…’ BIG MOOD.

- Please tell me Josh Cole and Samantha Emery were listeners who heard the inconsistencies and got in touch. Also, what sort of degrees are these guys doing, because I want in on that.

Supplemental: THEY WERE! Oh I love that! Heck yeah!

- Tim’s trying to be so kind about it and making it out to be no big deal, even using it as an opportunity to introduce Jon to some other people around the institute, and Jon is snapping and snarling like a cornered, wounded animal.

- Tim being the audience surrogate to give us a clear explanation of the file numbering system, thank you sweet child. Also possible that he does in fact know the system, and it pitching a soft ball at Jon to rebuild his confidence a little.

- Tim is like the office emotional support golden retriever and I love him but that role can take its toll on a person and my boy’s got hidden depths. I think he can just see Jon struggling and it trying to throw him a line.

- ‘Martin keeps showing me his tongue and asking if it ‘looks infested’.’ You can hear the ‘bi panic’ in that uncomfortable laugh because you KNOW my boy Martin is a snacc.

- Jon just sounds so beaten down and tired. I don’t suppose any of them have been sleeping terribly well of late, between Sasha’s encounter with The Distortion and Martin’s encounter with The Flesh Hive. The Institute probably isn’t the most welcoming or homiest of bolt holds.

- Straight out the gate, needed to google where Porto do Itaqui was because I had next to no idea. Also, Brazil if flipping huge and its’ shore line is a lot wigglier than I gave it credit for.

- The Tundra, what a name for a ship. Ugh, it’s brilliant, I hate it. The world’s Arctic Tundra is estimated to have a population of 4 million. That’s 0.05% of the world’s population for about 10% of the world’s land mass.

- ‘A lot of people don’t think shipping is a job for women. Hell, a lot of people who work on ships don’t think it is.’ The 2021 BIMCO/ICS Seafarer Workforce Report records women making up 1.2% of the global seafarer workforce, and that’s a 45.8% increase compared with the 2015 report. Carlita has has to fight for her place and I bloody respect her for that. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had, indeed, made men bled for it.

- ‘…at that point I was starting to get a bit desperate’, and that’s just how they get you isn’t it. The Entities have a wonderful knack of rolling in when all the other doors are closing and you believe that the alternative for what you reaching for has to be worse. I wasn’t sure what ‘workaway’ meant, as far as I understand it, she’d be working for passage and food.

- Peter Lukas. The Big Boy Man himself. Wonder if the lil bit of pepper Jon is putting on the name is the result of a few jigsaw pieces falling into place?

- ‘He sat there at a small table, completely alone, drinking a cup of black coffee.’ There is zero joy in this man. Just none.

- The way Carlita describes it, with the feeling of a door closing, it almost feels like Lukas is maintaining a little pocket of the lonely in this seedy bar, one that Carlita unwitting steps into, leaving the rest of the world behind.

- ‘We have one space.’ Well… isn’t that fucking convenient.

- The lack of activity and the shipping containers already in situ, I’m trying to remember, does Carlita discover that they’re empty?

- I looked up a boatswain’s call whistle and played a few mp3, shrill little things. Got a lot of different calls to relay different messages over the noise of work and the sea, but my favourite thing I learned is that in Star Trek, the boatswain's call can be heard before anytime Kirk speaks to the crew over the comms.

- Not sure what the pay difference is between ordinary and able seaman, but the ranking system was introduced in1652. I think it is just a case of experience at sea.

- Must have been a quick cast off and she must have been desperate if she didn’t have time to discover the bearing until they were already out of port. One advantage to being OS as opposed to an AS I suppose is a drop in responsibilities. In theory, she just needed to pull her weight and get home.

- ‘Hell, not being too comfortable around people is a damn fine reason to go to sea.’ Big mood. But you can’t really take that with you an apply it to the crew that same way. Not when you’re working on the sea and need to work together for survival in so many instances. As well as the isolation, there’s the added threat of isolation in a hostile environment. Also kudos to her for not going insane, I really like my own company, but I’m not a fan of extended silence. Don’t like the thoughts getting in, so I turn to podcasts, and podcasts lead to these sort of fucking things…

- Kinda feel for Lukas a lil, even on your own boat, you’re hiding from folks.

- What was it about Sean Kelly that made him scared? Had he been a recent addition to the crew? Fresh enough to not be hardened to it but there long enough to know what’s happening? Also, making him a quasi countryman to Carlita, there was a foothold for camaraderie there, but it never happened.

- Containers rusted in place, never moved on or off of the Tundra, only painted and repainted. The cargo isn’t in the containers. There may have been worries about Carlita’s previous ship possibly trafficking people, but I think this vessel is of more concern.

- I appreciate that she’s smart and savvy enough to not go poking around when she first sees something amiss. We’ve had some idiots, and Ms Sloane is not one of them.

- Gotta love a woman with a pair of steelies.

- EMPTY CONTAINERS! CALLED IT!

- The boatswain's call, the ‘old-fashioned boat, with oars and a winch’, there’s something archaic about The Lonely. Something very old, or rather, behind the times.

- Yup, Sean Kelly’s the sacrificial lamb and the whistle is the dinner bell. It’s a little bit of a take on the ‘Appease the Volcano God’ trope, swapping heat and lava for cold and fog.

- ‘…it “hadn’t been an easy choice”.’ Yeah I would have stuck to myself after that too.

- ‘…twenty-five thousand pounds. For barely two weeks work. I don’t mind telling you, it was almost enough to tempt me back. Almost.’ So that’s why folks stay. For the pay. I wonder how many folks on that vessel were desperate enough that they chose to roll the dice and keep sailing?

- ‘…here does not appear to have been anything explicitly supernatural occurring in this statement.’ Jon’s right, from the outside it just appears real weird and probably a murder was committed.

- ‘…the Tundra is a currently-active cargo ship operating for Solus Shipping PLC, a company founded and majority-owned by Nathaniel Lukas.’ Solus… solo… urgh. Also, where in the line of Jonah’s Lukas sugar daddies does Nathaniel fall? Actually, that’s a present tense. Is that Elias’ ex-to-the-power-of-twelve brother-in-law or something?

- ‘It doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to do any further investigations into this.’ Proceeds to list off a shopping list of hinky shit that warrants a lot of digging getting more salty and rabid with each word. Starting to see a little bit of season 2 Jon come through there.

#MAG033 #the magnus archives #The Lonely

[tmisaccidentreportbook]

MAG032, Hive

Case #0142302, Jane Prentiss Release date: August 18, 2016 First listen: 6th November, the walk into work. The previous morning’s walk to work; listening to TAZ:Graduation, Travis McElroy in the break tells me he is proud of me and is holding my hand, and I burst into tears. This morning’s walk into work; listenig to Jonathan Sims read Jane Prentiss’ statement, and I’m in the middle of the road going ‘NOPE’ at the top of my lungs.

So… there was a wasp’s nest in my old landlord’s attic…

- Jane Prentiss gave a statement to the Institute February 23rd, 2014. And MAG006, which I believe is the next beat on her timeline, the event occurs 20th November 2014. So, going by what we’ve currently got, we lose her for 8 months.

- ‘I itch all the time. Deep beneath my skin…’ I look down at the area of effect of my tinea incognito infection… I slowly pull my sleeve down over it.

- That’s an interesting little word choice, ‘I don’t think I want it.’ Jane isn’t convinced that she wants shot of whatever it is trapped in her. She doesn’t think she wants it, but perhaps she can be persuaded. Her state of mind seems so washed out, like she’s exhausted and not far from delirium and it is such an effective writing style. I love it, it’s fluid and disjointed at the same time. I wonder if this was another statement Jonny wrote on not enough sleep. But it’s the sort of writing style I can fall into if I’m not careful, sweeping water colour prose and not so much a focus but a vibe. Heavens preserve my betas.

- You can hear Jane’s loss of self in her opening paragraphs, as she addresses whoever it is that is stuck taking her statement. She’s vague and unfocused, like every thought it having to be made by committee. She’s a part of a greater whole, even at this point, and you can see it in the way she addresses the statement taker. The ‘you’ appears to have weight to it, like she’s referring to the whole of the institute rather than the sole person sat before her.

- ‘…it sings so sweetly, and I need it, but I am afraid.’ Oooo that sounds a mite like addiction… sounds a mite like the descent of the person and the ascent of the Avatar…

- The Entities are an interesting colour wheel of concepts, each with their own set of siblings that compliment and oppose. The Corruption, made of ‘the things that crawl and slither and swarm in the corners and the cracks’ but also a living community, sees its’ anathema in The Beholding, that pins the insect to the cork board, that traps the bacteria on the glass slide under the microscope. Whatever Jane is, she needs it to be seen.

- ‘You can’t see it’. Ms Prentiss, I’ll bet there’s some folks in this building who can.

- This podcast has introduced my to a variety of phobias that I either knew of but didn’t have the word, or I thought I was fine with until Jonny got into it and the inevitable ‘uh oh’ would occur. Trypophobia was one that I did already know of, and I think I still am not susceptible to it. I say ‘think’, because I also thought astrophobia would never be a thing for me, because when am I ever going to go to space, but thems the breaks.  

- ‘… the holes are there too, in your own brain, rotten and hollow and swarming…’ When I was in A2 Biology, I made a terrible mistake. We were looking at the human brains and my teacher ask if any of us had ever had an MRI or a CT scan. I had as a kid, I think I was about 8 and I had a scan, can’t remember which one, think it was an MRI. I’ve had a lazy eye all my life, now we reckon it is down to muscle damage sustained during my ventouse delivery, but for a time doctors were concerned there was a brain tumour pushing where it ought not to. Long story shirt, no tumour, all fine, and I’ve got pictures of my brain. So when the classroom was asked if anyone had a picture of their own brain, I thought nothing of it about bringing the images in. My teacher then proceeded to point out every abnormality and every variation he could see, making me out to be some modern day Phineas Gage. I just remember sitting there, shaking slightly with a clenched jaw as he spoken about me like I was a specimen, only the lad next to me’s hand on my elbow and his concerned face keeping me from bolting out the door. My classmates weren’t impressed with the teacher’s manner. But yeah, they were a rough few days.

- ‘This place of books and learning, of sight and beholding.’ She’s speaking directly to you now, Jonathan, this stronghold of The Eye.

- ‘I… I haven’t slept in some time.’ Is this Jane Prentiss or Jonny speaking now?

- Music comes up again. ‘They always sing that song of flesh.’ With some Entities, I think it’s to carry threat, The Slaughter or The Hunt, or the bewilder and confuse, The Stranger, or to worship, The Dark. The Corruption may fall into the worship action too, but there may just be something about many voices sounding as one. It also invokes the image of crickets and cicadas, amassing and singing.

- ‘There will be great violence done here. And I bleed into that violence.’ Like Cassandra stood in the heart of Troy.

- I wonder who it is that Jane Prentiss is talking to. Fiona Law took statement MAG029 in 1972, and she was a research assistant, so odds are it is a member of the research team. It could have been Sasha, Tim or Jon, as they were all researchers pre-2015. Unlikely to be Martin, as he worked in the library. Could have been Gertrude herself, I can’t imagine anyone else wielding the word ‘dear’ like a weapon.

- In mid 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, my live in landlord went funny on me. Got passive aggressive, or as passive as an ex-military man can get. Got to the point that I would wait until he was out before I tried to cook for myself. If I wasn’t at work, I was holed up in my room. I came to dread coming home. When he handed me an eviction letter, it was a relief, and 3 days later, I had a new place to stay. He kept hold of the deposit, which he had no real right to, but I didn’t fight it because I was spent and I still had bigger storms rolling in. I don’t know why he went funny on me, whether he just wanted to move his girlfriend in or what. But as I left, there was a wasps’ nest growing in the attic…

- ‘It is not the patterns that enthral me, I’m not one of those fools chasing fractals…’ Bit of shade on The Spiral and Ivo Lensik's father of MAG008 there.

- ‘Sings that I am beautiful. Sings that I am a home.’ So much of The Corruption seems to be about love, looking for love, looking for community. It feels like the other side of the coin to The Lonely. The loss of the self to the crowd or to isolation. I wonder is Jane was experiencing a period of isolation at this time and she reached out to what The Corruption was offering. That she will be ‘consumed by what loves (her)’ and never be alone again.

- ‘Some sweaty old man thinks he owns it, taking money for my presence as though it will save him.’ Jonny here just scalping landlords, in the more literal sense, and I am here for it. I’ve got a very complicated relationship with the concept of landlords; I have been subjected to wonderful landlords and terrible landlords, but also, my father’s a landlord. I won’t go into detail, but yeah, this series has had me examining some class and socio-economic guilt and that needed to happen. But I appreciate that housing security will be a big thing for this team, so many of who are creative living in London. Alex was effectively made homeless after asbestos-gate for goodness sake.

- ‘I would spend so long worrying about that money.’ BIG MOOD. Big Cost Of Living Crisis Mood. I wonder if The Flesh Hive could sense that in Martin as it lay siege to his flat, that he had the same worries? I wonder if some residual part that was Jane Prentiss felt a kinship.

- Sometimes, when I’m feeling a bit out of it, I will find myself thinking about the passage of time in a certain place; think about how the spot I’m in may be a building now, but it has been a field, an ancient woodland, an ice flow, a temperate forest, a boulder field, a scrubby waste, an ocean bed and all the creatures, a the ‘thousand truer owners’ of a spot that came before. Then I typically need a cup of tea and a lie down.

- ‘Have you ever heard of the filarial worm?’ I love when the statement givers ask questions directly of the reader, and in this case, specifically the Archivist. I like it as an introductory technique, but I also love that there is going to come a point that whatever the statement giver asks about, he is going to know.

- ‘… showing him what a real parasite can do.’ Oh boysies, I love it when Jonny comes out swinging.

- ‘…not nectar-sweet song.’ Bugs. Bugs bugs bugs. Pollinators, very important, thank you for your service.

- ‘We would sell the stones to smiling young couples with colour in their hair.’ This is a weird detail, why is this so clearly defined? Is it simply to highlight that Jane is alone?

- So we can assume this Oliver is our soft, tired, goth boy Oliver Banks a.k.a. Antonio Blake of MAG011. I wonder what her ‘roots’ looked like, if it was concentrated over the arm that she shoves in the wasps’ nest or if they move and crawl all over her.

- When Jane says she ‘wanted something beyond (herself)’, that’s another indicator that she is ripe for the taking by The Corruption rather than The Lonely. She’s reaching and grasping.

- I’m going to try and word this delicately, and I stress I am more than likely stepping out of my lane and definitely talking outside of my sphere of knowledge, but I wanted to look at Jane Prentiss with regards of practising Wicca and calling herself a witch. At first, unkind glance, Wicca could be seen as something rather complementarity to The Corruption; a fairly young religion, with roots in Paganism, strongly connected to the earth. An unkind link could be drawn between the colonising effect of cults and the earthy, wild aspects of practises. But as I think about it, and I’m coming for them again, I think Christianity has more in common with the aims of The Corruption. Especially when you consider the missionary bent that so many denominations are infamous for. There’s a reason that roughly 1/3 of the globe’s population is considered Christian.

- ‘Or if it is then it is a dead god…’ The notion of a god dying only when there is no one left to worship them, what if that were not true? Has that been explored somewhere? The idea of deities having a natural life span, but the adoration of followers won’t let die. They’re sustained by worship, but in a terrible twist on necromancy. I would read that book, has anyone written it yet?

- Jane being called by the singing is rather reminiscent of the old idea of a siren song, specially considering the danger that she encounters once she’s close enough. But we’ve seen it before, music beckoning and guiding, from both The Piper in MAG007 and The Calliope in MAG024. But where before it had been pipes calling, here it’s many, many voices as one.

- A few of Annabelle’s agents at the edge of things. Was The Web pulling strings to get this all in motion, turning Jane to the Flesh Hive to turn on the Institute and further the Archivist’s journey?

- ‘I used to pick at my skin...’ Yup, please excuse me while I go and find a clearasil pad or something and scrub like hell. I’ve always be fairly lucky with my skin; I get the occasional outbreak but I’ve never really worn make-up and so avoided the terrible feedback loop that so many teens fall into when they’re trying to figure it out as they go along just exacerbate the problem. These days I just have a fine layer of muck all over me at all times…

- ‘… that hides the sick squirming reality of what I am… the pretence that there is more to a person than a warm, wet habitat for the billion crawling things that need a home. That love us in their way.’ Very evocative, very powerful, but wretch… Well, it’s getting the reaction it was after I suppose.

- I think a lot of why I like this episode so much is that it served as a little bit of a slap for me. As you may be able to tell, I was ‘going through it’ a little bit, we all were. But as I was walking along, on the way to a job that I loved and dreaded in near equal measure, I was listening to Jane’s wandering stream of consciousness and going ‘oh, yeah, no I get it’, and then realising what I was thinking and standing bolt upright and saying ‘NOPE’ out loud to no one before lengthening my stride. Because, damn it Jonny, you’ve made this walking corpse compelling. Also made me acutely aware that I was in a vulnerable state of mind at that point and that I needed to watch it. Something I’m still doing. At this stage we were, what, 9 months into COVID 19 lock downs? I was in a new living arrangement after about 5 months of my previous one slowly getting worse, I was missing my friends and family, while I saw some at work, we were a skeleton crew, the winter was rolling in and making everything harder, there was a storm coming on the horizon which hadn’t quiet broken yet, work itself was doing its’ damnedest to break me, and then I hear ‘Was I swayed and drawn simply by the prospect of being genuinely loved? Not loved as you would understand it. A deeper, more primal love. A need as much as a feeling. Love that consumes you in all ways.’ And it was all I could do not to run.

- ‘You rob it of its fear even though your weak words have no right to do so.’ If that line doesn’t just encapsulate everything I hate about Jonah Magnus…

- So we’ve got a little more information on her and Oliver’s place of work, Good Energies in Archway. Her flat was on Prospero Road, so of course my mind jumps to Shakespeare. But Jane doesn’t feel like a Prospero or Miranda figure, she feels like a Caliban. ‘Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises, sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices.’

- ‘… there was a fire that completely destroyed the flat, and killed the landlord, Arthur Nolan.’ That name rings a bell, that’s an agent of The Desolation if memory serves. ‘No signs of trying to escape’ means he did it himself, didn’t he. We haven’t got a date yet for when exactly that happened, unless Jane Prentiss gave this statement and then went immediately home and stuck her arm in the wasps’ nest that same day.

- Ooof, medical staffers, I’m so sorry.

- ‘The Institute was consulted … she had claimed that she was being possessed … decided the situation was medical in nature and our involvement was dropped in favour of, what I can only describe, as a cover-up’. Who made that call? Was it the hospital? Elias? Annabelle?

- ‘It could just be an unknown, aggressive parasite. There are weird things out there that are perfectly natural. It’s not, though. I know it’s not natural.’ Thank you. Thank you Jon, you agree the fact that your work place being besieged by worms is not natural. We’re making progress.

- ‘I’m… I’m going to go lie down.’ Me too babe.

#MAG032 #the magnus archives #The Corruption #The Desolation

[tmisaccidentreportbook]

MAG031, First Hunt

Case #0100912, Lawrence Mortimer Release date: August 11, 2016 First listen: 5th November, the walk home. Remember passing the diary farm yard gates at ‘a-hunting we will go’.

Ok, so. I’ve had a thought. If we exclude The Extinction, and just stick with the original 13, The Hunt is the last Entity to get a dedicated statement of its own. It’s at the very back at the pack… Feels appropriate.

Supplemental: No, you absolute donut, you forgot Trevor Herbert’s statement, MAG010! Ok, we’re gonna work this out, hang on. Ok, I think it’s between The Eye, not getting a solo shout until MAG023 but hinting at in MAG012 or The Spiral that does a lot of heavy lifting in MAG019 but doesn’t get a solo until MAG026.  

- I have limited knowledge and understanding of America, so quick google of Blue Ridge, Virginia and the geography and ecology. Blue Ridge, Virginia is a bit of a vague description but the vibe is deciduous forest, snow caped mountain ranges, and big ol’ wildlife.

- ‘I always wanted to go hunting. It always seemed such a manly sort of pursuit.’ sigh Oh no… I’m not going to have much patience with this guy am I? There is merit to being able to sustain yourself in a wildlife survival situation but this feels like a bit of a fantasy fulfilment lads on tour. I don’t like it.

- I am mollified by the knowledge that he intends to be ‘cooking and eating what (he) kill(s)’, so at least it wasn’t big game trophy hunting.

- ‘…shooting pheasants with shotguns and riding down foxes all seemed too much the domain of, uh, nitwits in tweed.’ I am having so many feelings and none of them are favourable to this man. The fact that he feels he can throw this sort of judgement around is fucking baffling. Considering he’s got the money to travel to the other side of the world to play at being a ranger. I mean, don’t get me wrong, a lot of them are nitwits in tweed, but he’s got a lot of stones and that glass house looks awful delicate. Yup, so, full disclosure, yes, I’ve been fox hunting. When I was young and saw it as a big hack out with my friends rather than, y’know, hunting. But yeah, now I avoid meets and I’m the one standing between the hounds and the gosling field gate when the local hunt rolls over the estate. But this guy gets to retirement, with all his life experience and knowledge, and ths is what he does.

- ‘…where they had a few animals worth going after.’ I wanna slap this guy. You know what’s a fantastic alternative to trophy hunting? Photography. You’re still out in the sticks, you’re roughing it, you’ve got to look after your equipment, you need to track your quarry, you need to blend into the environment like a flipping sniper. And you can track anything and everything. And when you pull the trigger, everyone walks away.

- ‘…I thought, ‘dash it all,…’  I want to punch this man.

- ‘We’d met on a sceptics message board and got on like a house on fire.’ What sort of ‘sceptics message board’ exactly? I don’t think my lip has uncurled since I hit play on this episode.

- ‘I wasn’t exactly expecting the Grim Reaper to come knocking in the intervening months…’Oliver Banks? Babe? Do you take requests?

- ‘…see if we could find a deer or an elk for me to shoot. Nature, seclusion and guns – to my ears it sounded just perfect.’ I actively hate this guy. This isn’t about survival or adventure, this is a power fantasy.

- ‘I normally live in Torquay.’… This mother fucker’s got a second home, hasn’t he? He’s got two homes and one of them is in a coastal area that is famous for the fact that locals are being priced out of their own communities by people buying second holiday homes and hiking property prices.

- I find the fact that he finds Arden a bit too much hilarious, considering that Arden goes on to lose his life. So either Lawrence feels guilt for any unkind thoughts he may have had about the man, or he feels nothing and shows himself an arsehole.

- ‘Still, all was forgiven when he showed me his gun cabinet … To see a dozen, well-cared for weapons displayed proudly, well, it was just lovely.’ wretch

- Crabtree Falls gives us a start point on the Blue Ridge Parkway, Marion.

- ‘I was very excited to don my hunters orange, and to take up my rifle.’ He’s a kid… playing dress up…

- The Winchester Model 70 is a bolt-action sporting rifle, worth upward of £900 new. The Remington Model 673 was a bolt-action rifle that only was in production for a year before it was discontinued in 2004, again worth about £900 used.

- ‘I was something of a blundering presence … I was sure that it was my own crashing footsteps scaring away the creatures.’ All the gear, no idea. It really feels like he’s come into this, expecting the environment to bend around him.

- Having someone wondering around with no tools and no resources and nonchalantly reject assistance would be highly unnerving. It suggests to a skill set, an unusual skill set.  

- ‘We answered as vaguely as we could without being rude, since neither of us felt comfortable near this man.’ Welcome to the female experience mother fucker.

- ‘Sniffing us,’ ‘Tomorrow will be a good day for a run’, let the dog see the rabbits.

- ‘Around two o’clock in the morning I could have sworn that I heard someone laugh, slow and softly, outside my tent.’ Like a beater worrying the undergrowth, sending the spaniels in, setting the birds on edge.

- ‘…I felt ten times better with the weight of the gun in my arms…’ distressed noises

- ‘… when I saw my elk.’ Oh heck, I’ve worked out what the vibe is that’s so wretched. It’s a Gaston energy and I’m breaking out in hives.

- ‘I could have sworn it looked me in the eye as I prepared to pull the trigger.’ There’s something powerful about a wild animal making eye contact with you. And deer species have culturally been so intrinsic to the mysticism of an ancient forests; the Great Forest Spirit of Princess Mononoke, the black hart and white doe in The Hobbit, the stag that grants wishes when caught in The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, in Celtic and Arthurian legend. There’s part of me that hopes this forest weighs and measures him and finds him wanting.

- ‘…there was a messy hole in the centre of his throat, as though it had been torn out entirely. His rifle lay next to him on the ground…’ The shot that he heard was possibly fired in self defence rather than being what killed him, fired from a third weapon. The throat looking ‘torn out’ suggests that whatever was used, wasn’t a sharp edged instrument.

- ‘Then I heard that whistling. That infernal whistling…’ Who needs a hunting horn or the baying of hounds when a whistled child’s tune will do the job just as well.

- The zigzag running is a little odd. It could be that he’s moving to avoid any attempts to shoot him, but you tend to see zigzag running patterns in prey species, trying to out run predators.

- ‘I know I should have picked up my gun, but you can’t understand just how frightening it is to have something like that, a true predator, running at you full pelt.’ Enjoying that power dynamic flip, you enjoying it? But what if you were simply his human the same way that elk was your elk? It’s it all part of this manly pursuit?

- ‘You can’t understand what it is to be prey.’ … Ask anyone who isn’t male, white, cis/het and able bodied. Ask anyone…

- ‘I think he did it deliberately, you know. To let me know he was still there.’ It’s the chase, not the catch. It’s the chase.

- The psychology of sending him in a circle, it’s a chase but Lawrence may as well be in a snare.

- ‘…everything about him was sharper. His fingers, his teeth, his face, his eyes. His skin.’

- Never seen or read The Duchess of Malfi so giving it a quick google. Premiered 1613, written by John Webster, it’s… it’s a bit messy. Like ‘Twelfth Night levels of misidentification plus MacNope levels of murder’ messy. Incredible description though, ‘a wolf’s skin is hairy on the outside, his on the inside.’

- ‘I forget, did I mention my military background? Well, I used to be an officer in the Air Force.’ Oh my fucking god, that explains so much… Oh fuck, what ‘sceptics message boards’ were you on!??

- ‘I know the thrill of power that comes with the ability to end the life of something weaker than you-’ HISS, TEAR, REND, KILL, BITE, NO, NO, NO.

- No Jon, you’re not being hunted. You’re being besieged.

#The Hunt #the magnus archives #MAG031

[tmisaccidentreportbook]

MAG030, Killing Floor

Case #0130111, David Laylow Release date: August 3rd, 2016 First listen: 5th November, on the walk home. I remember walking past the Rushy Lake wall as the statement was starting.

In which I sat down to start writing, pulled up the episode, saw the title, and walked away to go make dinner early… I’m also going over my messages with dodgylogic at the time of the first listen and this one is in her Top 3 episodes.

- So I’ve done a little looking and I was somewhat shocked to see that Dalston is actually in London. Now, disclaimer, country bumpkin here, but it’s within the A406 ring road so as far as I’m concerned, it’s London. And the fact that I’m shocked, is exactly what I think this statement is going for; the fact that this sort of work is going on so close to major populations. Ok, now, I’m probably going to fumble this, but I don’t think it had computed in my brain, I’ve just always envisioned abattoirs out in the countryside, close to farms and with plenty of room. Or alternatively, the whole process handled by a butcher, because, yes, I grew up in a the sort of village you’d expect to see on the front of a biscuit tin and we have a traditional family butchers. They did damn good work during the pandemic, chased out folks who’d driven in to buy up their stock when they have an ageing an immobile population that depend on them. Taylor's Family Butchers, big respect. Anyway, I’m examining this now because historically, yeah, the animals would be driven into town to be butchered and processed in the community they were going to be sold. Makes sense. So I think it may be quiet telling that my brain had just glossed the concept over. Bit embarrassing and stupid really, my university town had an abattoir site until it was torn down in 2014. I think it’s a Premier Inn now.

- ‘I won’t say which one.’ I get that fear. There’s been so much I want to write about, about my work. Exciting things, entertaining things, things that need to be muttered into the ears of law makers with all the threat of King Claudius’ poison. But I haven’t and when I do, I keep it vague, although the discerning could probably work it out. Because my employer hasn’t the clearest guide lines on social media use and such and it became a whole lot easier just to not. Which made it all the more galling when the social media teams did put up stuff and got it wrong. It’s not like they had the experts to ask a few offices away, or failing that, the internet to ask, but I will leave that rant for the foot soldiers being kept from saying their piece for another time. But yeah, saw folk higher up the chain posting whatever they want and I was there in the knowledge if I put anything up, it would come down on me like a tonne of bricks, so forget it. Also, my industry is pretty niche and fairly incestuous, and I’ve seen stuff come round to bite folks in the arse.

- ‘I never did (get a weird vibe)… Maybe that says something about me, though.’ I work with animals. Have done for near a decade now. And people always ask me how I take the deaths, because there are a lot of them. I’m not sure if I’ve hardened or if my mentality of ‘Every day is a knife fight with God’ has solidified, but in most cases, it elicits a sigh and a small swear before I start the process of preparing for our vets to perform a post mortem. Not often does an animal’s death impact me to the point I where I grieve, it has happened, but not often. These aren’t pets of mine, they’re more like strange little work colleagues, that have a natural life expectancy much shorter than my own.

- ‘…every damn animal in that place knew exactly why they were there.’ I can believe. It doesn’t matter how well it’s cleaned, but cattle alarm pheromones will stick around and induce fear and stress to other cows. You spook one, you spook the herd. And the herd that comes after that. And the one after that. That’s before we even talk about the stress of a new environment, noise, travel etc.

- Hearing David talk about the ‘casual human brutality’ is difficult. Really difficult. Because you know it happens, not just the abuse itself, but the fact that the observer can become so numb to it. Can disassociate what is happening given time and practise. I’m thankful to say I’ve never witness what I’d consider ‘human brutality’ to animals, but I have seen ‘unnecessary carelessness’ which has often had me gritting my teeth and saying something. It’s typically down to a difference in husbandry practises. And I try and be civil. And if I couldn’t be civil I’d go get our vet, who is a woman who takes exactly zero shit and has no problem telling the collection manager exactly where he can stick it if he refuses to wear gloves despite me asking him, twice.

- ‘… just noisy meat.’ prolonged pained conflicted noises

- ‘…you start to kind of see people as meat too.’ I wonder if that’s the case in other professions too. Probably not to such a severe level of disassociation maybe, but do morticians look at people and measure them for a coffin? Do forensic pathologists try and see what would be cited as the cause of death? Do surgeons think about how much pressure they’d need to apply for the first incision?

- ‘…it’s hard to believe in any special spark that makes us humans any different.’ Mood. The only thing that makes us special is that we figured out agriculture and domestication of other species. All goes down hill from there.

- ‘…we could turn into a lifeless carcass just as easily.’ The human body is so fucking ridiculous. I am saying this as someone with a first aid level of medical training, I am very much a layman here, but the fact that we can lose limbs, multiple limbs, and pull through is incredible and wild. But you roll over funny and you can say good bye to walking or you hit you head just wrong and it’s lights out. Humans are so squishy. We make no sense.

- ‘I only worked it for a few months, and now I can’t work on any killing floor anywhere.’ Very sensible, good working practise and all, but this is a terrible jump for my brain to make and I can’t decide if it’s terribly disrespectful or poignant or both, but I recently learnt about the Sonderkommandos that worked the crematoria of Nazi death camps and how teams were liquidated at random intervals and… yeah.

- Yeah, I need a mug of tea now.

- ‘Of the people who’d worked the killing floor for over ten years, do you know what percentage went on to commit murder? One hundred percent.’ I’d like a citation of this study please. I would like to read it. But I’ve also done a quick search of more recent studies, and I realise that it’s too long since I’ve needed to read any scientific paper with anything more than surface level understanding. And while study David references would have been carried out in the 50s, there are still concerns to this day. A 2021 study, drawing data from U.S., Australia, South Africa, Turkey, Brazil, Denmark, and Ireland, found that there is a higher prevalence rate of mental health issues, depression and anxiety in particular, those affected tended to employ a variety of both adaptive and maladaptive strategies to cope, and there is some evidence that slaughterhouse work is associated with increased crime levels. Worrying, as the U.K. slaughterhouse industry has a 70% migrant workforce, people already vulnerable.

- ‘They call it “stunning”, but that’s never sat quite right with me.’ Yeah, that’s… that’s just lobotomising. more concerned distressed noises

- ‘The Bleed Crew’ is at once a horrifying concept and a baller band name.

- Tom Haan. Interesting, complicated one. The fact that he is from China and doesn’t appear to speak much English is a good representation of how the U.K.’s slaughterhouse industry relies on an immigrant work force who may otherwise be short on options for employment and are, unfortunately, easy to take advantage of. On the other hand… yikes. I have ague memories of this being discussed and Jonny unintentionally feeding back into some unfortunate stereotypes. I don’t know what prompted him to make Tom Haan Chinese, whether it was an honest desire to have more cultural variation in his characters, but he accidentality walked face first into the wall of racist stereotypes.

- ‘…but in practice no-one asks to be moved (from the killing floor). It shows a weakness that most of the people working there aren’t comfortable with.’ Iiiiii’m gonna go out on a limb here and say ‘most of the people working there’ are under the influence of toxic masculinity and a protestant work ethic amongst other things.

- ‘My feelings weren’t really working back then.’ (Hears this.) Concerned noises. (Remembers my darker days of late 2020.) Concerned noises at half an octave higher.

- ‘… in perfect English, ‘You cannot stop slaughter by closing the door’.’ Sinister in many ways; the actual words, the supposedly hidden grasp of English, and also, ok he doesn’t specify the accent, but if it IS in perfect BBC English… look, we’re the bad guys in movies for a damn good reason. And considering the British Empire’s historical relationships with mainland Asia… yikes.

- I’ve done some jobs where I was able to just switch my brain onto idle and go through the motions. I would find it therapeutic, especially one volunteer role I had at a foodbank processing stock takes. And it was wonderful because it was like reverse retail therapy, I had some semblance of control over something for 2½hrs on a Monday morning because I put the cans where they went on the shelves, and the background was a lovely group of recent retirees and stay at home dads who were happy to be a listening ear to a twitchy early 30s lass who was just trying to get her bearings. The point is, it worked because that trance like state made me very receptive, and thankfully what I was receiving was good vibes, kind advice, and tea with slightly stale biscuits. David is receptive to a circle of hell in that state.

- ‘It was the silence that finally brought me back to myself.’ The troupe of ‘it’s quiet… too quiet.’ is one of the most unnerving ones for me. Especially when there’s meant to be animal noises about; livestock, bid song etc. Because they’ll know things before we ever could.

- ‘There was no clock in that room.’ Is that typical? Or safe? Or is this just for spooks?

- ‘I surprised myself a bit with how quickly I accepted this situation.’ Another example of someone accepting the situation and dealing and processing it. I wonder if there’s a part of the psyche that realises that realises that what’s being experienced is something eldritch and unknowable and so shuts down logic and reasoning and instead concentrates on survival.

- Ok, so we’ve got a labyrinthine complex, our lone hero, and we’ve had cows coming through… Theseus and the Minotaur anyone? Also, sidebar, did you know the Minotaur of legend actually had a name? Asterius or Asterion, meaning ‘child of stars’.

- ‘These rails would never normally follow the passages of the slaughterhouse like this, and that fact bothered me, though I’m not quite sure why.’ Some little animal part of the brain still screaming ‘WRONG, NOPE, BAD’. I’ll do that, I mean, you’ve seen how I try to make the timelines behave when it can so easily be explained with ‘eldritch fuckery’. But I think I remember getting real bogged down in the delicacies of the heart surgery in Iron Man 3 that the science of the Extremis procedure completely washed on by.

- ‘Meat-bone separators, splitting saws, scald tanks.’ Delightful names.

- ‘… I don’t know how long I wandered. It felt like hours, though.’ Wibbly wobbly ooky spooky timey wimey.

- ‘The sky was a dull pink – the colour of blood being washed into a drain.’ … Yikes.

- ‘… and I began to cry. It was like something numb within me had shattered, and I couldn’t… I just couldn’t.’ I think it’s clear that David had been struggling with his mental well being before the incident took place, struggling and aware as he asked to be removed from the killing floor team. But this emotional and mental self awareness is refreshing in these statements. Especially from a man in an industry as rife with toxic masculine ideals as this.

- ‘(The scent of blood) had a strange sort of comfort to it, as it was the smell of the slaughterhouse as I had known it.’ I think the underlying horror of this other place, this abattoir in waiting is exactly that, it’s waiting. The threat is there and it hasn’t been actioned yet, it’s just waiting.

- ‘Pigs, cattle, sheep, I think I even saw a few humans in the pile, though without heads or limbs it’s hard to tell the difference between them and pigs.’ YUP. There a reason pig carcasses get used in forensic science to demonstrate the changes a cadaver goes through.

- ‘But (Tom Haan) didn’t make me fire it. I did that myself.’ Ooof, buddy.

- ‘I wish I felt bad about his death, but I don’t. I don’t feel anything at all.’ Good grief, please seek professional help.

- It got discussed in one of the Q&As that for an Avatar to… ascend shall we say, that a death was typically involved, or at least a metaphorical death. With some Avatars, the deaths have been of others; Peter Lukas’ with Jon becoming the Archivit, Jude Perry with her banking colleague, Agnes Montague with her own mother. Tom Haan’s death seems to be his own chrysalis, if this is indeed the point at which he ascended from agent to Avatar. Seems fitting, that it should be the case for The Flesh.

- I did a surface level google and couldn’t find an Aver Meats in Dalston, but there’s reason to believe that this London is not Our London, so I might leave it there. It might be Jonny has had to invent a business, it might be that if there is an abattoir in the area, they have a discreet web presence that I’m missing.

- ‘…which I would say are symptoms of PTSD, but he has strongly declined to seek treatment.’ Oh buddy, no, seek help. David was aware that he wasn’t well mentally and he’s emotional state was declining. If anything, he’s well on the way to the mental state that was so often referred to in the studies done on slaughterhouse work and crime.

- ‘… he had been renting a house in Clarence Road for almost a decade, and it was in quite a state of disrepair when he left.’ Between this and MAG018 The Flesh really seem to be murder on property, don’t they? Dread to think what the fridge looked like.

- ‘Immigration authorities are somewhat useless…. No official effort has been made to locate him, and the police were reluctant to open a new case, so we didn’t push it.’ Well… doesn’t that just make you feel fucking warm and fuzzy on the inside. Oh what? That’s rage? Oh no, yeah, that tracks.

- ‘… having trouble retaining builders, four of which have already quit.’ Interesting, considering it’s another male dominated field. I wonder if that was indeed Tom Haan’s ascension and the transformation has left a permanent scar on the site having it ‘already seemed to be way too big’.

- And I think there’s some very important discussion to be had about the industrialised meat industry. It has gotten monstrously big, and faceless, and removed, and wasteful. That image of carcasses just falling off conveyor belts and into a pit for presumably grinding up, is a terrible, wasteful image, of animal and human life and of the meat as a resource itself. I don’t know enough about butchery to know what sort of percentage of an animal goes to waste when processed for meat these days. I don’t know, I know small scale butchers will work differently but small scale and specialist butchers are harder to find and can be more expensive to buy from. I will buy local from suppliers I trust as best I can, but I’ve got the privilege of living in a market town in a rural area. And while I have the resources now, between working for a charity and the cost of living crisis, I’m having to think carefully, And I have the resources, a lot of folks may not. It grinds my gears how, like with fossil fuel burning and global warming, the ethical guilt of meat, egg and diary production is foisted onto the individual consumer who may have limited access and financial freedoms to chose, when really animal welfare and husbandry should be protected and held to a higher standard legislatively and support offered and research done properly. I know they try but I’ve heard some DEFRA horror stories and a few bad apples, whole barrel, you know the drill. Still not over the hell they put us through during the 2020 AI outbreak. Ok, I’m getting off the soap box, it’s gone midnight, I’m ranting with no receipts.

- I’ve done a little bit of butchering in my time. I’ve been part of keeper teams that’s tended tigers and lions. I’ve butchered what I think was horse meat, delivered in blue plastic barrels and thawed overnight. I’ve worn the butcher’s gauntlet, got 2 as curios on my bookcase Mum found at a car boot for me. I’ve plucked more quail and gutted more rats than I care to remember. But I’ve only ever had to kill a handful of animals, and that was always as humane euthanasia after veterinary training. Still fucking sucks.

#the magnus archives #MAG030 #The Flesh

[tmisaccidentreportbook]

MAG029, Cheating Death

Case #9720406, Nathaniel Thorp Release date: July 27, 2016 First listen: Somewhere between the 20th October and the 5th November. On the way into work, definitely remember walking over the canal bridge at the fingers bit.

On a scale of Hob Gadling to Nathaniel Thorp, how badly have you fucked up in gaining immortality?

- ‘Are you interested in folktales at all?’ YES. Yes I am. Please may I hear them? Please may I learn about cultures? Ideally for the peoples who culture it is directly and not for a coloniser or exoticised view point?

- I don’t what literacy levels were like in 1972, and it may be my privileged educated background rearing its head, but when Nathaniel spoke of ‘learning (his) letters’, I was already suspicious that something wasn’t quite right here. Also the phrase to ‘learn one’s letters’, that feels like an American phrase to me, rather than something you’d hear in the British lexicon. I’d expect to hear ‘learn to read and write’ but that is probably just me.

Supplemental: Yeah, it’s probably my privilege talking. In the 1970 British Cohort Study – Adult basic skills, the findings showed that 14% of the 1,650 adults who took part had ‘poor levels of numeracy and literacy’. And actually I’m reading on and 2022 UK levels of literacy are at 99%, which still means 1 in 100 adults are considered illiterate. And I’m going to have to go away and think about that and check the ol’ privilege.

- ‘…the themes are some that dance their way through many of the oldest folklore you can find: death.’  What is it about the intertwining themes of dancing and death? Dance Macabre, the dancing plague, heck as Rosie says in Jojo Rabbit, ‘We have to dance to show God we are grateful to be alive’. I’ve gone off tangent, anyway, yeah. Dancing, thumbing your nose at death a little.

- Games with Death are seen too, but there are a lot of games that get played and lost. The one that typically comes to mind for me is Chess, but that’s hardly a game of chance. The poker game in Terry Pratchett’s Maskerade however is all down to who’s playing, forget what the cards say.

- ‘…yet bold is not the same as brave.’ Say it louder for the folks in the back.

- Battle of Bunker Hill 1775. I’m going to be honest here, pretty much everything I know about the Revolutionary War could be covered in Hamilton, and that starts the year after. Apparently, an important battle in the early stages of the war as it gave the British both a victory and a wake up call in the fact that untrained militia could actually inflict double the casualties they had sustained.

- Apparently, the quote of ‘Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes’ comes from stories of the Battle of Bunker Hill. Or at least, accounts of the battle popularised the phrase, there’s historical evidence to show it had been kicking around prior to then. But as the soldier is alone, surrounded by ‘the roiling fog of war’, it would be something if he saw any eyes to aim at.

- You’d think The Slaughter would have a heavier hand in this statement, with it being set during the Revolutionary War, but it feels like set dressing. I think this statement is a good portrayal of how although The Slaughter and The Corruption may be the instruments of someone’s demise, The End is what they eventually all come to. Terminus is the result for all things. And now I’m thinking of Hades ‘Receiver of Many’ God of The Dead…

- ‘…not towards the enemy or the sea.’ Personally, I’d take my chances with the enemy. But yeah, this took place on the Charlestown Peninsula, across the river from Boston. And the British only took 30 men prisoner, 20 of whom died of their wounds in captivity.

- So, the British had taken control of the peninsula by 5pm, but British troops hadn’t finished landing until about 2pm, so there’s a 3hr window for our soldier to take a shot to the chest, and then run, until dusk. I can’t scroll back to what time sunset was on 17 June 1775 so I’m gonna use this year’s time, which gives us 8:23pm… That’s a long time to run with a sucking chest wound. Providing, of course, hijinks are not ensuing with the space/time continuum.

- I wonder how much of the fear of Death, stems not from the event itself, but the manner or it. If it’s a ‘quick, clean death’, one does not have time to dwell on it. If it’s a drawn out and painful thing, that’s another matter.

- ‘…the concept of eternity is one that the mortal mind recoils from.’ Oh shoot, Jonny, I think you’ve cracked it for me, mate. Yeah that explains a fair amount.

- ‘(Some) who cannot even consider the inevitable termination of life without a deepest panic, and can think of nothing in life that could be worse than its end.’ I don’t think that’s me. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be pissed to leave the party when it’s time, but I am not of the opinion that Death is the worst thing in life. Unfortunately, so many of the worse things seem to speed the soul towards Death all the faster.

- Falling down into the basement, bit of a reprise with The Buried.

- ‘Death waited patiently.’ Raw line.

- When I think of a personification of Death, my mind goes to Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s versions; Discworld, The Sandman, even their combined vision in Good Omens. I’m going to word this weird, but each of those different versions of Death feel as it they are actively engaging with humans. This version of Death feels like it has the same aloofness as The Ghost Of Christmas Yet Too Come from A Christmas Carol. Impassive and watching.

- ‘…a chess knight, a domino and a pair of dice.’ Traditionally, all come in black and white. Clear cut, one or the other. Dead or alive. You introduce a deck of cards and there’s more shades there.

- Quickly looked up Faro as I am not a cards player. Originated in France, so that may give an insight into our soldier’s background, or jut as easily not. ‘Faro was popular due to its fast action, easy-to-learn rules, and better odds than most games of chance. The game of Faro is played with only one deck of cards and admits any number of players.’ Eventually its’ popularity got outpaced by poker.

- Ah and then Jonny explains the play. Thank you sir!

- ‘…if played honestly’, well that’s a caveat and a half isn’t it.

- ‘…the soldier could not have said if they played for hours, for days or for months.’  I don’t know why I insist on pouring time and effort into trying to make timelines comprehensible, when it is clear that Jonny’s just gonna have spooky shit fuck it sideways. But I try.

- ‘…just him and his endless opponent’, Death of The Endless, my beloved. I am dangerous deep in The Sandman fandom mire for someone who has only watched 3 episodes, but that’s more than I’ve seen of The Witcher so if anything, I’m maintaining a streak now.

- ‘Its tone was almost… happy.’ Being relieved of duty.

- ‘Very well,’ it said, ‘and if you win, you shall not die.’ / ‘You said that if I won, then I’d live!’ The monk shook his head. ‘No, I didn’t.’ And that kids, is why you read contracts really carefully.

- Also, when he’s whole again, it’s an old monk. What sort of shit was he involved with to meet Death when it was his time?

- I love the note of ‘in a somewhat shakier hand’, little detail.

- ‘Perhaps I underestimated your curiosity.’ Rude, you just hacked you own finger off.

- 2 centuries as Death.

- ‘I call them victims’ Ooof… ‘Death doesn’t discriminate, between the sinners and the saints. It takes and it takes and it takes.’

- ‘So now I’m here, and I cannot die.’ I am very much hearing Barbossa’s speech from the first Pirates of the Caribbean film.

- ‘… I’ve only been flesh again for a few years.’ Ok, so the statement was given 1972, so we’re looking around the end of the 60s, start if the 70s. Part of me wants to look up what events or famous persons it may be tied to but Nathaniel himself was just a bloke. Whoever Death is now, probably wasn’t important in life. The End is the great equaliser.

- ‘I have often wondered about whether I’m the only one like me in the world.’ I wonder if the old monk is still kicking around somewhere?

- ‘... residence, occupation, et cetera’ How do you even integrate into society after that? What do you do with yourself?

- Fiona Law, research assistant, died 2003. From ‘complications following a liver transplant’… That feels a mite specific, feels like that’s a bit of a cover. I know Institute staff have a habit of not going peacefully, but I can’t remember what happened to her.

- 1972, Elias is still Elias and working as a filing clerk. Secretarial twink. 

#The End #the magnus archives #MAG029

[tmisaccidentreportbook]

MAG028, Skintight

Case #0161704, Melanie King Release date: July 6, 2016 First listen: Somewhere between the 20th October and the 5th November. On the way into work I think, I have vague memories of walking out of the cul de sac as Melanie was talking about cigarette smoke.

As someone who greatly enjoys the antics of The Ghoul Boys and BuzzFeed Unsolved and Watcher’s Ghost Files, I would subscribe to Ghost Watch UK in a heart beat. As an aside, starfleetrambo has an au within an au with Jon and Martin in the roles of Ryan and Shane in Ghost Files that sustains me.

- Once again, in the style of Grizzop drik acht Amsterdam around the 41minute mark of RQG 92 – Bringing Down The House LYDIA!… wait… ah, the introduction of Ms Melanie King, taker of no shit, giver of no quarter. I love her. I love this rabid terrier of a woman.

- The TMA to RQG pipeline is real fam.

- ‘People like a show. People like our show.’ Do I watch Ghost Files because I what proof of the exisitance of ghosts? No. Do I watch it to see two idiots, one having a great time and the other skirting the edges of self inflicted heart failure. Yes, absolutely. Melanie knows it’s a show, that it’s showbiz, at least at this stage of her understanding. And showbiz is a vicious battle for attention and survival. You’ve got to get the audience to like you as much as what you are presenting. She can be forgiven for P.T. Barnum-ing it up a little.

- ‘We are not ‘paranormal investigators’. We are researchers. Scholars.’ Hear as Jon clutches his Oxford degree to his chest like it’s his maiden virtue. I don’t think there’s that much between what Melanie and Jon do, just that it either the research is implemented or catalogued. Probably why they rub each other up the wrong way so much; they are some very similar in a lot of ways, one key one being the all encompassing need to appear in control and competent at all times.

- ‘…when you can just tell a story to the Magnus Institute!’ Stories. Stories man. We’ve being doing it since communication was a thing. I may be neck deep in The Sandman meta at the moment but in Rusty Quill Gaming, Alexander spoke of the team and said ‘No, we're not commoners, we're wildly unoptimized bards’ and I have taken that to heart my friends. Stories,. Songs. Let me drown in them. OK, gushing aside, it does come down to the stories for the Institute and The Eye. Jon finds himself tracking down stories from people on the street in series 4, just to make it thought the day. They’re not statements any more, not accounts of events for inspection and dissection. They’re stories, priceless as they are.

- ‘None of your ‘respectable’, paranormal investigators would believe you?’ That’s got to be hard though, when you know your own tribe won’t get it, won’t support you.

- Cambridge Military Hospital. Right, had no idea where this was going to be, I did not anticipate it being in Cambridge despite the name, and I was right there. It’s part of Aldershot Garrison town in Hampshire, population 10,500, which blows my mind a little. I mean, I knew garrisons are a thing, but it’s basically a company town… run by the army. Anyway, it’s a heck of a lot further outside of London than I anticipated. And I have a new level of respect that Ghost Hunt UK managed to talk they way into a MOD strong hold.

- January 2015, she’s been sitting on this for over a year at this point.

- According to the wiki, the hospital was closed on 2 February 1996 due to the high cost of running the old building as well as the discovery of asbestos in the walls. stares of into the middle distance with the knowledge of just how close I come to being in contact with the devil’s insulating candy floss on the regs. In 2014 permission was granted for the hospital to be converted to provide housing. The hospital building was given a Grade 2 listing and redeveloped at a cost of £60 million for residential use by Weston Homes in May 2019, 3 years after this statement was given. The main building finished in 1879 has been converted to include 74 apartments with large communal foyers and spaces in addition to a large penthouse incorporating the building's clock tower… And a part of my soul just died.

- ‘Illegal?’ ‘Unorthodox! And hey, the worst that we’ve ever got before was a fine.’ Ok, so you lose points you had gained when I thought you’d managed administrative and logistical wizardry, and Melanie, this is a site on an operational garrison town, the worst you could have gotten this time around could have been a lot more than a fine.

- I’m just saying, you need a Tim on your team. You need someone who can flirt you through the door.

- I wonder how hard Jon had to bite his tongue to keep from saying anything when Melanie mentions Georgie Barker. Ah Georgie, another TMA lady who I love dearly. I can only imagine Melanie isn’t looking at Jon in that moment because I imagine the face was doing something.

- Sarah Baldwin, pretty sure that’s a MAG001 Anglerfish name. Yup, disappeared from around Old Fishmarket Close in August 2006. So it’s been a little over 9 years she’s been part of The Stranger. Got into sound engineering, interesting, but The Stranger did always seem to come for the artistic types. I wonder how Georgie came across her, and if her ‘anti-fear’ vibes fucked with Sarah in anyway? Or was the ‘bit unsocial’ Sarah keeping out of range of Georgie’s magnetic field?

- ‘…but when we pulled up the building seemed dark. I don’t think it was abandoned or anything like that, but it certainly didn’t seem like anyone was home.’ Do all of The Anglerfish’s victims just live together now in one abandoned flat complex? I’d watch that show.

- ‘…because if we don’t have a sound tech, we don’t have a show.’ I’m looking at you Alexander Jalexander Newall. I see you and I love you, but sweet mercy man, you need to take care of yourself. Don’t you try to sidle out Jonny, you’re in this discussion too.

- ‘I was just about ready to scream in frustration,’ Melanie was such an easy target for The Slaughter, with rage so close to the surface.

- The close cropped hair, the seemingly temperature inappropriate clothing. I don’t think Sarah’s experiencing some things like she once did. Like, maybe, endothermic metabolism. If you keep your hair cropped close, probably going to be harder for folks to realise it isn’t growing.

- Smoking maybe something Sarah had retained from before she was ‘fished’, The Anglerfish asked for cigarettes after all, or it may be to mask the lack of a natural scent or the mustiness of taxidermy. It’s probably just Melanie’s word choice, but the fact that Sarah’s ‘puffing away’ makes it sound like she’d having to work for it. Or is this just another case of ‘Spike smokes in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, despite not needing to breath’?

- I was wondering if the ‘sharp and faintly floral’ smell may have been the result of taxidermy related chemicals, but the key one I found, Borax, apparently doesn't have a scent?

- ‘It’s a pretty imposing building, the sharp-tipped clocktower above the main hall.’ I suddenly flash forward 170 odd episodes to the tower in London.

- Yeah, from Sarah’s reaction, I’m sticking with my theory that The Slaughter and The Stranger really don’t like each other, even if they share some behaviour patterns.

- Give me the emotional angle, give me The Grey Lady’s tale. I want to go watch BBC’s Ghosts now.

- ‘…the shade of red they had used kept making me think that they were blood splashes…’ Might not be the surveying teams, might be The Slaughter not cleaning up after itself.

- ‘Silk will not stitch the butcher’s meat’. Erm… Ok I have thoughts. First off, raw ass line, wow. Next, are we seeing a commentary on the plight of veterans after conflict, how sometimes token and guilded efforts of support won’t fix what’s happened, fine silk to gussy up butchered flesh? Or am I seeing The Flesh and The Web poking in?

- Yeah, Sarah probably doesn’t require sleep and more than likely had just been lying there. Waiting.

- Melanie makes some interesting choices when she goes looking for Sarah; not waking the others, even just to have someone watching the equipment, not taking a torch instead using one of the cameras. Gives a little bit of an insight into her priorities that one, the work comes first.

- The unaccountable presence of the place, The Slaughter in the very bones of the building.

- ‘It smelled of copper, with another scent beneath it, acrid and sour, with the faintest hint of ammonia.’ Old blood and piss.

- Sarah speaking to whatever face of The Slaughter resided in the Cambridge Military Hospital in a ‘low, quick and desperate’ voice, ‘like pleading’. I wonder if Sarah went looking to make contact with The Slaughter, looking to treat and explain and apologise, rather than wait for whatever wrath the invasion might earn. She could have potentially have waited the night out, but the retribution may have come all the harder.

- ‘With her bag next to her,’ had she been planning on running?

- Whatever has happened to Sarah since becoming an agent of The Stranger, it appears to have left her human enough to leave ‘a smear of blood left on the wall’.

- ‘She shouted something into the room, this time in a language I didn’t understand’… Huh?

- Dear reader, when I heard the description of Sarah peeling her own arm, I had to stop and take a few fortifying breaths. I’ve kept horses for a lot of my life, and I had one idiot gelding de-glove his back leg. If you don’t know what de-gloving is, by the stars and all the little green planets, do not google image search it, just don’t. But yeah, my boy had a wound about the length of my forearm on him. That’s what I see when I hear Melanie talk about Sarah peeling her own skin.

- ‘…the recording is so distorted that you can’t really make anything out.’ The Entities once again fucking with digital media.

- I mean, Melanie’s quick to fly into a temper about the dreaming question, but Jon isn’t coming across great.

- With the reports of a nurse/grey lady figure and the stories of the apparitions being benign, how does that fact into the place being a strong hold of The Slaughter? Was it a tools that was to elicit conflicting feelings about comfort and care, making patients nervous of their carers at all hours?

- And just how did you go about contacting ‘Georgina Barker’ then Jon? Hey? How’d you do it? Did you have someone else call and made them promise not to mention your name?

- The name ‘Sarah Baldwin’ does set alarms ringing in Jon’s head, so it’s good to know he’s retailing information, even if he can’t do the old mind google yet.

- ‘The other figure is much taller, and appears to be pointing, though no features can be made out, it does not appear to be touching the ground.’ Jonny? Is there any significance to this description? Or is it merely to give us the heebiest of jeebies?

#the magnus archives #MAG028 #The Slaughter #The Stranger #The Web #The Flesh

[tmisaccidentreportbook]

MAG027, A Sturdy Lock

Case #0032408, Paul MacKenzie Release date: July 6, 2016 First listen: Somewhere between the 20th October and the 5th November. I think it was the walk home.

Well, I’m writing this in a state of physical and mental exhaustion, I may still be bleeding and the my scolded hand has about stopped stinging. LET’S GO! 

The Spiral would be so proud…

- Speaking of which, this is our second ever statement attributed to The Spiral and it comes hot on the heels of the first. We see two major features of The Spiral back to back; distortions in glass and mirrors, and doors. Doors that are there that ought not to be, doors that don’t behave as they should.

- ‘…repeated nocturnal intrusions into his home.’ I’m going to sound like a broken record but, once again, this encounter is within the home and damages the psychological and physical safety offered to one by one’s home. I mean, OK, a lot of people spend the vast majority of their time at home. Or at work. So a lot of these statements are going to either occur in a situation where someone has to be there, doing the thing because ‘survival under capitalism’ or in a place where there ought to be peace and sanctuary that gets invaded. Odds are it will be one of the two, kid, you didn’t discover anything groundbreaking. It’s just when you started listening to this show the first time round, you’d only just gotten out of a bad living situation and you were still in a bad working situation that was about to get a whole lot worse. Chill.

- ‘It’s strange to live alone.’ Is living alone currently and has been for maybe 9months now Heck, I forgot about that. I was lucky, eeeeerm, enough to not be living alone during lock down, though in hindsight, I would have been significantly better off if I had been and by this stage of 2020 I was living somewhere else with a lovely family who were friendly but also knew they were taking on a lodger that vaguely resembled a cat in need of rehabilitation. So they were very, very good about including me but also reading when I needed my space. But I worked through lock down, I work in animal husbandry and we needed to look after our charges. Thankfully spring and summer meant we could distance easily and still meet up for meals and be safe. But there’s a hell of a lot of work to do on a site that typically has a work force of +150 people plus volunteers going down to 7. But I don’t think any of us came through lock down unchanged. I think I’ve become sharper, not in the cruel way, I just seem to have more edge to me then I used to. I think the extended period of being alone meant that I wasn’t performing for folks as much as I had been in my life before. And when I didn’t need to hide the teeth, I realised I had them.

- We see it again, an Entity swooping in during a time of loss and grief. As well as the grief and the stress of ‘her condition’ towards the end, the fact that this man has lost the love of his life and his world has irrevocably changed for the first time in 40 years could certainly be a source of fear and uncertainty, along with everything else.

- Noises in the house at night is something, thankfully, that doesn’t bother me. Partly, because there’s a part of me that’s already made peace with death and at least I’d be going under my own duvet, but also I can be a very heavy sleep if the mood takes me. I went to boarding school through secondary, I learnt to sleep through a lot. I also was doing way to much and routinely pulled all nighters so when I did get to sleep, I was typically out like a light.

- Part of me wants to look up statistics of home invasions and burglaries in the UK and look at the age demographics for the victims, but I also don’t know where Mr MacKenzie lives. Also, I can get behind blissful ignorance as a concept.

- The fact that he’s not shying away from the use of the word ‘paranoid’ is telling me that there is a part of him that thinks what he’s experiencing could be illogical, and I’m trying to word this carefully because I know paranoia is something very real that people struggle with. It’s a discussion of mental health that I am not qualified to weigh in on, but part of me wonders that is Mr MacKenzie had not been experiencing such an elevated state of nervousness, if he would have attracted the attention of The Spiral at all.

- ‘I could feel their presence waiting on the landing.’ Can I just get a reading from the room; do other people get this? Does anyone else sometimes become aware of someone’s presence that they are unable to see or hear? I had a quick search to see if there was a word of any scientific or evolutionary reasoning to the phenomena, but all I could find was things that would serve me more at a séance than a study lab. I’m too tired to do a proper research dive so I’m going to chalk it up to residual animal instincts and awareness and wait for someone to correct me.

- Mr MacKenzie has been living in the same house for 40 years. I never moved house as a kid, I lived my life in one old converted barn. Every step on the stairs creaked but I learnt which ones really screamed, I knew how to get the sliding door to cooperate, I knew how to get the boiler to stop grumbling. It’s amazing what little foibles a place can have and how you learn to read them.

- The speed that this encounter takes place feeds into the dread of the situation. The slow walk across the landing, the slow turning of the door handle. It brings to mind the word ‘stalking’.

- I wonder if there was any significance to the battle over the door knob lasting twenty minutes?

- The blood on the hands after being on the door handle for the night. Mr MacKenzie describes feeling his hands ‘grow wet’. There’s no sudden pain of a cut and door handle itself was clean. Now the presence of blood on the hands may just be a supernatural thing, a sinister marvel to add to the dread, I once saw a case of a bird that was so terribly bruised, she was bleeding through her skin. I shudder to think what sort of pressure would be needed to recreate that on a human hand, if the presence of blood was in anyway had a mundane cause.

- The police have been mentioned in a few statements now, either in the immediate aftermath or in prolonged investigations but I think this may be the most involved we’ve seen them with an occurrence. In every instance we’ve encountered them, I can say I’ve been… overly impressed by their performance.

- Now 2003, maybe there aren’t the smartphones or the cameras that would have made gathering evidence of the second night’s visitation easier, but you’d think the dispatcher might have heard the ‘rattling and banging’ of the door down the line.

- I don’t think I’ll live to see retirement honestly, I think my generation and everyone after us will be lucky to, but I think I can understand the fear of being sent into a retirement home against your wishes. The loss of freedom and autonomy. The loss of privacy. Not being able to live life on your schedule and just… waiting. I think Mr MacKenzie is also experiencing fear of what his place is within his son’s life now too, as he says later, Marcus has his own life to lead. I think he himself is adrift as it might have been that he has been effectively living his life for his wife, especially is her ‘condition’ made her a dependant the later stages of her life.

- ‘…for the last month I have lain awake almost every night.’ The Spiral has got to love sleep deprivation, just one big feedback loop. Genius and also torturous.

- So he does try for footage evidence, but the devices don’t pick up anything. Anything except a face, ‘leering’. We know the Distortion has a strange appearance, too long and too many, but I think 2003 is too early for it to have taken Michael. Maybe this was the face of the Distortion before it took Michael’s?

- I can not tell you how quickly my stomach dropped at the line ‘maybe I should get a dog.’

- ‘I am not entirely made of stone’… Jon cares so much it is debilitating at times but he’s in a position that means he is having to ruthlessly suppress that to seem competent and professional. Jon wants so desperately to help people, but he wasn’t built to be a hero.

- Mr MacKenzie died of a stroke two months after the statement was given. Going by the date of the statement, this started July 2003 and could have been going til October, possibly November 2003. If we say 5 months at the outside. 5 months of acute sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation increases blood pressure, and high blood pressure is considered to be the leading risk factor for strokes. So… yeah, he died of fear.

- We met one of the previous generation of Institute staff member, Sarah Carpenter. I’m fairly certain she’ll be mentioned later in regards to Gertrude’s past missions, but I can’t remember anything key at this point.

- Marcus speaks of ‘already giving his statement’ and if memory serves, it’s another of The Spiral.

- The bedroom door never had a lock… So The Spiral cultivated an environment where Mr MacKenzie was his own jailer, cultivated an environment suitable for inducing long periods of sustained fear.

#The Spiral #MAG027 #the magnus archives

[tmisaccidentreportbook]

MAG026, A Distortion

Case #0160204, Sasha James Release date: July 6, 2016 First listen: Somewhere between the 20th October and the 5th November. I think it was on the walk home, I remember crossing the bridge as we meet what was once Timothy Hodges

We haven’t had a huge amount of time with Jon and his team but I think this episode gives us a little insight into the dynamic of the archival team and also re-establishes some characteristic that fandom had coloured in my mind. I think Jon cares about his assistances, each differently and with some funny ways of showing it, but I think he does. When he was elevated to Head Archivist, he requested Tim and Sasha as his assistances. It’s indicated that he has worked with them before and he knows them, trusts their abilities and skills. And I think there is an element of him trusting them in a social setting too. He knows them, knows how they tick. Jon’s personality and demeanour may make him difficult to approach or difficult to befriend, he’s giving me a lot of feral cat energy. I don’t know if we ever get any sort of confirmation of if Jon is neurodivergent, but I’m projecting so all the archival team is neurodivergent in my mind, but change may be hard for him to process and adapt to. Change such as a new set of responsibilities without clear handover instructions and settling in period, a new dynamic with work colleagues and a new member of the team. I can’t remember off the top of my head if Martin had been working at the institute before joining Jon’s team, but the live reads do confirm Jon didn’t know him prior to becoming Head Archivist. But Jon knows Tim and Sasha. I wonder if Jon is dealing with imposter syndrome, well actually I reckon that’s a given, but I mean with regards to being promoted over other, more suitable candidates. The fandom loves to discuss Sasha as the brains of the outfit, possibly the only one of them with any sort of training in library sciences, she may be the most competent one there. But Elias isn’t looking for competent, he’s looking for malleable and volatile and already in a state of quiet terror. Terror that they��ll be found out; Jon that he’s not up to the job, Martin that he’s lied. Then there’s Tim who is trying to find out what happened to his brother. In the midst of all this, Sasha doesn’t appear as anything more than another victim of the Glass Ceiling. Which I bet Elias would utilise that regardless, fucking product of his time. I so want to know how Gertrude fought her way into the role more.

I think Jon has got a lot of affection for both Sasha and Tim, but now he’s in the role of ‘Boss’, he’s having to temper it. There are moments of fondness and concern that bleeds in, and he wants her to recover and take care of herself. He trusts her judgement, more so than the others. Which is just brutal when she is the first to fall.

- Once again, in the style of Grizzop drik acht Amsterdam around the 41minute mark of RQG 92 – Bringing Down The House SASHA! I beg you to listen to Rusty Quill Gaming it is a joy. Ben Meredith, voice of Elias Bouchard, plays first a sad dwarven sea dad, then a smoky little beef cake of a goblin paladin. I love Grizzop and the friendship he has with Lydia Nicholas’ Sasha Racket is just a thing of beauty, but I whole heartedly love my stabby daughter.

- Sasha doesn’t shy away from calling Jon out on the possibly preferential treatment he’s giving her, suggesting she go home and recover. Martin wasn’t offered such treatment, but as Jon points out, he didn’t have a safe home to go to for recovery. He also said Martin wasn’t injured, which he wasn’t but he had been in solitary confinement and psychologically tortured for 2 weeks so I’d say some TLC was warranted.

- He sounds vaguely indulgent as he’s introducing her statement and I’m soft.

- Sasha disparaging Martin’s self preservation instincts sits real weird with me. Sasha seeks refuge in artefact storage, alone, in the confusion of Prentiss’ attack, when so much about Martin’s character is so much about survival. Also, her tone breaks my heart a little, it’s not cruel but… it’s not the kindest either. I think in the elapsed time, my mind’s just built her up to be the caring older sister of the group, something of a Katara or a Hermione. Which is probably some internal bias rearing their ugly heads, odds are it’s a me problem.

- We get some more insight into Jane Prentiss. We have 9 Flesh Hive related deaths that the listeners know about at this point; 7 at the hospital (6 from colonisation), Harriet Lee and, soon, Timothy Hodge.

- While Martin has sought refuge at the Institute, the Flesh Hive does not appear to have finished with him or the archival team. By the sounds of it, worms laying siege to the Institute. I wonder what the other departments are coping? Also, is it safe to assume that Prentiss has taken up residency in the tunnels at this point?

-. So, so far we know that Sasha lives in Finsbury Park and Martin lives in Stockwell. Think that’s it for the team so far. I’d say she has the longer commute possibly. But at the mention of ‘…my building is old. Victorian,’ I had a near Pavlovian response, something in my head going on point and demanding ‘Smirke?!’ A name that can illicit such a violence within me, second only to that of Leitner.

- And hello Michael. Or at least whatever it is that wears his face these days.

- There’s something about seeing something for what it really is through glass or in a mirror that is really stomach dropping. A missing reflection from the mirror telling you that may be a vampire you’re dancing with vampire, suddenly a kitsune’s tails are there, a fae’s glamour doesn’t hold up under glass.

- ‘I was as surprised as anyone that this undeniably sinister figure wasn’t causing me more distress. To be honest, I was surprised how quickly I accepted that.’ I think fear’s like hypothermia; when you stop shivering is when you’ve really got to worry.

- We also get a bit of an insight into how Sasha thinks, when she confesses she’s been a bit of a skeptic, like Jon. Or at least, like Jon presents to be, but we later find a bit about Jon’s reasons for his connections to researching the esoteric.

- I wondered if there was any significance to the purchasing of lilies. I love flower language me, but all the meanings I could find were pretty positive things, no harbingers of doom. Then I remembered that they are very toxic to cats and… Sasha’s been talking about her curiosity a lot…

- ‘I really wish it wasn’t in Chelsea. Everything around here is so expensive.’ Fucking Johan. Posh twat. It just feeds into the unease of the place and its’ staff. We’ve hear how Martin’s worried about money and Sasha’s painfully aware. Johan set it in an expensive part of London then employs academics who can’t afford the area, just feeding into that loop of uneasiness. But the fact that she gets out of the Tube at Victoria to walk might narrow down where the Institute building is, It wouldn’t be hard to jump on the Central and District line to head further into Chelsea, but as Sasha says she walks from Victoria station, that may put it in the east end of Chelsea, right in the shadow of Westminster to the east.

- ‘Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action’.  1. Rule of three, 2. I am stealing that phrase, 3. Nothing to add, but it’s the rule of three.

- ‘“Are you secretly a monster?”’ probably would have been a great opener.’ It’s the Throat of Delusion. It lies. It could have said ‘yes’ but it wouldn’t matter because you own reasoning brain would lie for it.

- Jon and Tim were arguing about Smirke! A confirmed mention of another dusty old bastard who wanted to fuck around and found out. Gerard should have been allowed to beat him up too, as a treat.

- ‘I know, but it would have to have been Martin, wouldn’t it? I mean, anything goes wrong around here, it always seems to happen to him.’ Leave my boy alone. Maybe it always seems to be him because you are watching him like a hawk all the time.

- ‘Seriously? If a member of the public came in, you would have torn that statement to shreds.’ I think Sasha quiet brave for actually talking to Jon and having him in the room as she gives her statement. The assistances have more than likely all seen and heard what Jon makes of the run of the mill statements, ripping into them and their authors with not too much care or regard. I think Sasha is right to be hesitant in that regard. I wonder if this hesitancy from his team gives Jon any pause?

- ‘My curiosity apparently conquered my nervousness.’ In one of the later Q&As, Alex and Jonny discuss what D&D class each of the characters would be, and it’s agreed that Sasha would be a wizard, and this statement is giving me big ‘complete disregard for my own safety there is knowledge to be sought’ energy.

- ‘…no, not for him. For it.’ I’m glad Sasha’s dehumanising The Distortion from the off. The fact that Distortion!Helen was able to build such a rapport with the Archival team in later series was always a source of concern. The Distortion is many things, but it can not be your friend.

- ‘…and told me that I had no idea what was really going on. It didn’t sound like it had any intention of telling me, though.’ The board is set, the pieces are moving. And we don’t get to know the rules.

- ‘By this point I was just about sick of this weird thing that looked like a person.’ Sasha’s got the right of it, but it gets harder and harder. Not only as we learn of the Avatars and meet them, but as members of the cast get consumed more and more by The Entities and as Jon struggles with what he  becomes and what he sets in motion.

- The idea that The Distortion knows the archival team is one to indeed create an ‘unsettling’ feeling to feed into the dread, but my brain wants to know the logistics. Does an unexplained randomly appear in the HR office one evening after lock up?

- Tim’s April Fools’ joke! Confirmation Office Jester. Give him the jingly hat!

- So it’s about 10miles from Hanwell Cemetery to Victoria Station. Nearly 50mins by public transport at time of checking, 9:30pm. It’s about 12 to 13miles as the crow flies from Manor House Station in Finsbury Park, over an hour by public transport. She’s going out of her way. And is this going to be travel expenses reimbursed and over time paid? Doubt it.

- ‘…a threat or a warning or just a lie.’ I imagine they’re all one and the same to The Throat of Delusion.

- I’ve still got flower language on the brain so I had a look to see if azaleas meant much. Not a huge amount applicable, until I found that azaleas and rhododendrons were once so famous for their toxicity that to receiving a bouquet of the flowers in a black vase was a recognised death threat. So lilies and azaleas; poisonous, toxic. Seems about right for both The Corruption and The Spiral.

- ‘… though riddled with woodworm.’ Even the pub’s been chewed over.

- ‘… (not prepared) to seeing it. To smelling it.’ Jonny again leaning on the senses that lend themselves to the more visceral aspects of horror. The fact that smell can illicit such physical responses, such as throwing up as we’ve seen in previous Corruption and Flesh statements, but kudos to Sasha for holding it together.

- ‘I glanced desperately at Michael, but it just watched me, its face unreadable.’ It’s not your friend. It won’t be your friend.

- I did not like Timothy Hodge, but to be fair, that is one heck of an STD he got of Harriet… The fact that his body’s gone after the event is thoroughly strange to me. I’d be surprised if the body gave way under the force of the fire extinguisher but, even if it did, there’d be clothes and other items. Did Sasha keep hold of the wallet? Did she lose time, did Michael spirit the remains away? But it means that from 20th November 2015 to 1st April 2016, he’s been becoming the newest colony of the Flesh Hive.

- ‘I should really quit, you know. We, we all should. I don’t think this is a normal job, I, I don’t think this is a safe job.’ If memory serves, it may have already have been harder than it should have. I don’t think they were doomed just yet, I can’t remember the details that Elias reveals on the matter, but it would be hard. But similar to Jon, Sasha seems intent to stay out of curious. It’s not Jon’s drive, not the hunger to know and comprehend that will drive him into becoming The Archivist, but it’s there none the less. Which is why I think Sasha, ‘the most level-headed of the team’, would have fucked Elias up as The Archivist, and I would have loved to have seen it.

#The Corruption #The Spiral #the magnus archives

[tmisaccidentreportbook]

MAG025, Growing Dark

Case #0151904, Mark Bilham Release date: June 29, 2016 First listen: Somewhere between the 20th October and the 5th November. But it was definitely on a walk in, I remember the centre coming into view when the lightbulbs were mentioned.

This statement dives into another instance of religion and faith and how they can go from being support networks to highly predatory very easily, very quickly if the target is in the correct state.  There are some Entities that lend themselves to divinity more than others, but The Dark is certainly one that could be easily exulted.

- The statement was made April 19th, 2015 and the late spring/early summer was when things were starting to shake out at the Magnus Archives.

- Mark is another who starts the statement in an adamant sate of mind, but surprisingly it’s one of denial. We’ve seen people in a state of disbelief and they have appeared confused and nervous, maybe defensive but submissively so. When we see someone taking about more of a firm stance, they tend to be demanding to be believed that what happened to them, happened, supernatural elements and all. But Mark is being assertive in his denial of what he experience even possibly being supernatural. I’m mollified to see that the example he went to was ‘Like ghosts and stuff’, which had been exactly my thinking about the Magnus Archives right up until I pressed play on MAG001.

- The ‘No offence, I guess,�� really doesn’t feel to convincing. Would have loved to know what Gertrude would have thought of him.

- Ah, he’s a medical student. Boy, you may be a scientist, but you are gonna see some weird shit so you better become open to it. In what the human body can become, in what human behaviour can become, hell, even what your own eyes will tell you is there after a few too many night on call.

- I’m not sure about how I feel about him saying ‘I’m not sure how good I’d be at a long-distance relationship.’ On the one hand, well done for having that level of self awareness, on the other, seems like a strange place to reveal this information. I wonder if he’d spared it much thought before he told his story under the influence of The Eye?

- ‘I don’t know if I ever actually heard her laugh. Maybe she just didn’t find my jokes funny.’ This boy is giving me levels in self-absorption that I am not enjoying.

- The description of Natalie is going to be skewed as it is coming from Mark, who did not like her, and I know people with strong faith who are lovely, wonderful souls, but… If I walked into a home and saw a framed bible passage on the wall of the common area of a shared house, I’d be nervous too. The missionary drive of Christianity unnerves me greatly at the best of times, without even considering the history of the practise and the impact it has had on the globe. I’ve had folks asking to pray for me before for one thing and another and every time it’s felt like an invasion, no mater how well intended.

- ‘crochet, politics or God’… Yeah, I think I’d be backing away slowly, and I do cross stitch for pity’s sake.

- ‘…reading some boring book on the political history of the bonnet or something.’ This could be an actual topic of a book, or this could also him using hyperbole to be a bit of a dick. I did look up ‘political history of the bonnet’ and lost a few minutes learning about the Jacobite song ‘Bonnie Dundee’.

- The sudden loss of a loved one has been the catalyst for a few inciting incidents now, and each time it’s been a different Entity to swoop in. I don’t think there’s any one Entity with a monopoly on grief. But with grief and upheaval comes new, unsure circumstances that can be terrifying, compounded by the lose of a key person in the support network.

- And this vulnerability is something cults will look to exploit. Natalie may have ‘found her new church’, but I wonder how much looking she really needed to do.

- The Bible quote, while possibly a red flag, it’s prolonged absence after her apparent return to faith, is possibly a bigger red flag. It may have been somewhere else in the house, but Mark pulling our attention to it is a key point.

- So Natalie was ‘at church’ overnight. She’d ‘leave in the evening and come home early in the morning, just as the sky was starting to get light’ and when asked would say ‘church’. Now, I’ve done midnight mass before and in my experience, people don’t tend to linger once you’re done. If you made me do that every night, doesn’t matter how good the kingdom of heaven is, I want my bed.

- Well, we’ve already seen vampires so whatever Natalie’s becoming, it’s not that. But the way Kathy jumps to her defence with an itemised list before trailing off and realising what she’s doing does suggest some kind of influence.

- So we know why Natalie’s unscrewing the lightbulbs, we know it’s dangerous, creepy and unnerving as hell. But there’s also a voice in my head going ‘well, cost of living crisis...’ I think I’d take to wearing a head torch.

- Was Kathy’s inability to sleep a by-product of Natalie’s behaviour, or do you think she was purposefully draining something from Kathy with these rituals? I mean, even if we take away creepy evil darkness religion, that’s rude as hell. Had Kathy tried ear plugs and such? But I imagine whatever work of The Dark this is could bypass ear defence and white noise machines. I also imagine that if she tried to confront Natalie, she’d get the same response that Mark had done when he asked questions.

- A song in a language that they couldn’t recognise, and it’s the same song, on and on. Was Natalie trying to tie the home into some form of ritual, small ‘r’, in practising away from ‘the church’ or was it just a case of, this is her life now. There’s no mention of what Natalie did for money, and presumably she’s paying rent on the property along side Kathy. What is she doing during the daylight hours? Sleeping? Would retribution even doing anything?

- I wonder what language it was. I can’t remember The Dark having an affinity for one language or another off the top of my head.

- I really feel for Kathy, I’ve been in a living situation where I felt trapped in my the other occupant of the house. And he was the live in landlord, so extra fun. At this point in the listening experience I was less than a month out of that situation. Did he kick me out during the pandemic year of 2020? Yes, yes he did. Muses bless Trish and her family for taking me in when they did.

- Jonny… Jonny how many times are you going to take the tree branch of ‘the sanctity of the home’ and char it and splinter it and put nails through it and wrap it in barbed wire and then hit me in the gut with it? Because it hurts every time and I never learn to dodge. Having someone who’s been your friend for years change so drastically, have such a negative impact on your own quality of life and then have them try to convert you to the thing that has been making you miserable and scared by proxy? Yeah, I’d have not even sat down at the table, I’d have run.

- ‘Kathy had wanted to run… but didn’t know quite how to do so. She said it would have felt… rude.’ Manners maketh man and all but Kathy, there’s no one here to judge other than the friend who has made the home you share unliveable for you. Dispense with the niceties and get out of there.

- Actually, I’m slightly worried for Kathy. She’s a people pleaser and appears to be avoiding conflict to the best of her abilities to the detriment of her own well being. The fact that she didn’t want to appear rude, that she ate what she couldn’t see or identify… I’m getting Jonestown vibes. Especially as Natalie just sits and watches and doesn’t move to eat herself.

- ‘She said that they were all going… She said that it wasn’t long until they were collected by Mr. Pitch. She said that Kathy could come too, if she liked. She could be saved.’ Welp… that doesn’t sound too shiny… Sounds a lot like The Heaven’s Gate Cult of 1997. And others. Yikes.

- ‘No, but you’re a natural for Them. You’re worshipping as we speak.’ Is this ‘Them’ the first indication we get of The Entities? Or just The Dark alone? Is Natalie more clued in than anyone at this point, were they going to attempt a Ritual, OK capital R this time. She said 300 years was a long time, was that when they’d last attempted? Or was that just how long Maxwell Rayner’s been around?

- Hearing the description of how the lights don’t seem to work as well as Mark got closer to the flat, it’s evident the the presence of an acolyte of The Dark is going to be doing that, and I know that this spooky eldritch horror, but there’s a morbidly curious part of me asking ‘how though?’ Is it like a black hole, gravity so strong it bends light and it can’t escape? Is it like a sponge effect sucking everything in? If she emitting her own aura of darkness smothering any occurring light?

- Description of Natalie’s room… Well, sorry Kathy love, but there goes the safety deposit.

- A key piece of evidence and an address left at the scene. Do you think Natalie left it on that chance that Kathy changed her mind and came looking? We’ve got the closed eye motif, connecting this to The People's Church of the Divine Host we first heard of in MAG009, when Julia Montauk’s mother disappeared.

- Good move to call Kathy, establish a contact and a time line. That fact that you didn’t tell her you were going to a secondary location… bad. Not good. Don’t do that.

- ‘…(the church) might be bad for her.’ in the voice of Taako, y’know, from TV Great job, Angela Lansbury!

- So Hither Green Dissenters Chapel. Part of the Hither Green Cemetery, which has two chapels; the Anglican Chapel, which appears to still be in use, and the Dissenters Chapel, which is abandoned. Founded in 1873 and was designated for non Anglican use, hence ‘Dissenters’. It’s south of Lewisham, but Mark never gives a location for Kathy and Natalie’s flat, but he mentions her getting a job in East Ham, which is clear across the river and an hour’s drive at least. Admittedly, I’m going from central East Ham and I’m looking at google maps at just before 6 in the evening. That’s going to be rush hour stuff.

- ‘The iron gates stood wide open, so I went in.’ I was wondering how Mark was going to get in. We’re about 50 years or so after the height of the resurrectionist fear with the Anatomy Act of 1832 meaning grave robbing wasn’t so great a concern, but the Victorians were still weird about death. The cemetery probably has impressive walls.

- From google maps and what photos I can find, it does look like a pleasant, open place. Street view’s not cooperating at the moment.

- ‘I shouldn’t have gone in. Of course I shouldn’t have gone in. I’m not that stupid. I’ve never been that stupid. But for some reason, standing there in that dark, empty cemetery, I made the decision to look inside.’ … The face I am pulling right now… It’s like the more restrained older sister to a facepalm.

- ‘…were some hooded cultist freaks waiting to jump me.’ Mark, my dear boy, may I introduce you to the subject of social camouflage. They are not going to be wearing robes with hoods, they are not going to be making animal sacrifices or whatever. Because this is the big leagues now. They aren’t going to jump out at you, you will never even see them.

- The chapel suddenly being so much bigger than it had any right to be is feeding into my little though of ‘are disciples of The Dark mini black holes that bend time and space around them weird?’

- The singing, after discussions of the The Slaughter and The Stranger using music as a tool in my notes on MAG024, seems I can add The Dark to the list.  

- ‘At one point I honestly thought I might have died and gone to hell.’ Interesting how he maintains his disinterest in faith but in this moment of fear and vulnerability, seems to reach out to the Christian doctrine of hell as a reference point.

- What were the ‘leathery’ fingers that reached for Mark? Was it something inside a cage?

- I’ll say it, it’s a bitch ass ritual if one fool with a smart phone can blow it off the tracks…

- ‘I think that’s everything. Can I go now?’ He sounds like a contrite little boy.

- March 11th 2015 they report Natalie missing. Oliver Banks, oh I’m so sorry, Antonio Blake makes his statement 2 days later. Was March 11th that night? Was March 11th the first night Oliver sees Gertrude in his dreams?

- So ‘Nee-allisand’ or ‘allisunt’ could be referring to the Norwegian town ‘Ny-Ålesund’, according to Tim. Side bar: imagine being on a pub quiz team with these people. They’d be terrifying. But it’s a company town own by Outer Bay, which rings a bell. I think it’s one of the corporations that is part of the Rayner/Fairchild/Lukas Daedalus mission.

- The screaming at the Ritual site on the night of Gertrude’s murder… What’s that about? Gertrude didn’t have a hand in the disruption of this Ritual, not unless it was merely interrupted and Gertrude used this information to go back and destroy it completely. I could maybe understand screaming at the sites of Rituals she’s foiled; The Silence, Sunken Sky, The Scoured Earth, The Last Feast,  The Great Twisting. And now I’m listing them, good grief this woman is terrifying. But why was there a scream at Hither Green Dissenters Chapel?

Out and out, The Dark is a cult. It’s a cult. For millennia, we’ve huddled in the darkness for safety and companionship. And I think this is an important stance to make, that support systems and community is important and vital, but we need to have our critical thinking skills about us. Cults will target those who feel lost, who are isolated, and who have fervour to burn. And we’re living in a time that is very conducive to cults, as much of the last century really. Social upheaval, pandemics, war, financial crash after financial crash, political institutions crumbling. Cults will thrive in a time of transition, loss, uncertainty and fear. And they’re pyramid schemes, we see Natalie trying to recruit Kathy and Kathy, being the social creature that we all are, goes along with it until she can not bear it any longer.

We are all susceptible to social pressures. Take care of yourselves, OK?

#the magnus archives #MAG025 #The Dark

[tmisaccidentreportbook]

MAG024, Strange Music

Case #0051701, Leanne Denikin Release date: June 22, 2016 First listen: 20th October, can’t remember where I was and I’ve been trying to cleanse the palette a little with some of The Adventure Zone: Graduation. That makes for an interesting combo.

The possessed killer doll has been done a lot. Child's Play, Annabelle, and a new release M3GAN to name a few. And, it may be that I am not as in tune with media tropes as I’d thought, but it honestly hadn’t occurred to me that this was a possessed killer doll situation until sitting down to make notes on this one. I’m going to chalk it up to Jonny’s writing giving this a new lick of grease paint.

- ‘Let me be clear: I’m not scared of clowns.’ Well I am. Or well, I thought I was. But not long after this, I’d go on a Scare Night with a group of my friends from work; masked, boostered and outside. But it was a series of horror mazes we’d work our way through, you know the sort, and they were themed. One of them was definitely circus themed. I wasn’t scared or spooked in that one, or indeed any of them if memory serves. Mainly in the circus one I was just distracted by the sheer noise and strobing lights. But I think there was also a little bit of ‘I might be a bit nervous but I have several dear friends who are actively terrified and are huddling around me like I’m the mama goose in this situation. Time to link arms, hold hands and turn on the flamingo shaped fairy lights I’m wearing in my infinity scarf. Off you go girls!’ I had a great night but I wasn’t spooked. Possibly because of the noise, probably by the fact that I had finished consuming Season 1 by that point at least.

- I agree with ‘baffling’ nature of clowns and to a degree dolls to. Leanne makes a good point about statues.

- Leanne takes quiet a stand on insisting that the events she’s reporting actually happened. I wonder if she’s run up against indifference or hostility before in connection to this. She later states that there has been police investigation, more than likely she’s not been believed or she may not have dared to tell them. She’s got little to no relationship with her parents and she no longer has her partner, she’s more than likely desperate to be believed but someone, anyone. And given how the Institute operates a… supply chain shall we say for The Lonely, she would have been ripe for the taking, given that, her grief and loss and how her story ends. I wonder, did she emigrate, or was she just lost.

- I had never heard of Bootle, needed to look it up. Appears to be a seaside town, just north of Liverpool.

- Music wasn’t something I’d quite considered as a tool for horror before this podcast. Yes, I knew of sirens singing to lure the unwary in and how the film soundtrack can change to let you know shits about to go down, but short of ritualistic chanting, I can’t think of any times where I’ve seen music actively drawing out the threat and being so linked to it. We’ve seen music play a part before with The Piper, MAG007, and we’ll see it with Grifter’s Bone, MAG042, and I think in MAG125, Civilian Casualties, bagpipes cry. The Slaughter and The Stranger seem to be the two Entities that employ music the most, Nikola Orsinov referring to the efforts of The Stranger preparing for ‘the dance’. It’s interesting how these Entities both draw on music as a tool, because at first thought they don’t seem that aligned, but they have many themes in common. The confusion of battle, not knowing friend from foe, common man becoming the enemy other, the idea of officers dancing at balls the night before battle through the 1800s, circuses and shows being run like military operations, the military flair of a ringmaster’s regalia. The two seem very tangled up together and it seems fitting that The Slaughter put pay to The Stranger’s ritual attempt in 1787, MAG116.

- ‘I don’t have a great relationship with my parents, and have always had some problems making friends.’ Leanne seems perfectly ready for The Lonely to take her by the end of her statement. Her hesitancy in calling Joshua her ‘partner’ is telling. Although the nature of the end of the relationships were very different, the only statement of The Lonely we’ve had so fair has been MAG013, from a woman mourning the sudden loss of her fiance.

- ‘It was a hot, muggy day, and I remember wondering whether the stinging in my eyes was from the tears or the sweat.’ I’ve attended funerals in the summer, I’ve worked funerals in the summer. It’s never easy.

- ‘…I’d always felt it was mine in some ways.’ I can understand this sentiment, and I think that makes the break in and burglary all the more brutal. It’s the violation of the safe space and sanctuary. Although I’ve been living away from the family home for a good long while and I’ve never really been one for roots, there will always be a part of me that belongs to a home, garden and field in the Vale of Belvoir.

- So Grandpa Nick was Nikolai. We’ve establishing the Russian connection.

- ‘…had to cut the lock off.’ I’m gonna say, it there’s a padlock on an attic door that you’ve never seen opened or used and you can’t find a key for it anywhere on the property, that’s a red flag.

- ‘The only things there were an old steamer trunk, a small stool and a bright red calliope organ.’ I’m gonna say, it there’s a padlock on an attic door that you’ve never seen opened or used and you can’t find a key for it anywhere on the property, and then you get it open and there’s only a few, rather singular items in there, that’s a bloody big red flag.

- Oh now I’m imaging a statement covering an episode of a ‘storage hunters’ type show and the premise is terrifying and hilarious in equal measure to me.

- ‘The Calliaphone’. Right, I looked this up because it didn’t quite sound right and it might be a case of brand name becoming the common term. From the wiki ‘the air-driven calliope is sometimes called a calliaphone, the name given to it by Norman Baker, but the "Calliaphone" name is registered by the Miner Company for instruments produced under the Tangley name’.

- The carving of ‘Be still, for there is strange music’ on the lid is interesting and the statement doesn’t specify if machined on, done by hand professionally or roughly scratched on. Was it done buy an artisan proud of their work and sending it off with a blessing or was it added as a warning?

- Also, the instruction of ‘be still’ is one that makes me nervous. Usually the wish would be for merriment and movement when music plays, which is why being made to sit tight during concerts always made me antsy, so why do you need to be still for them music? Is it so something doesn’t see you? Will you be caught in the dance and unable to stop? Will you become still, whether you will it or not?

- The jaws are gone. Dolls that have been silenced… Why that manner of death though?

- 23 dolls. Grandpa was up to some shit.

- ‘…oldest doll still has jaw.’ So, I’ve learnt that there are recognised different types of clowns. Great, that live in my head. But I think this lil guy could possibly to be a white faced clown, a Pierrot, the loyal, hardworking, dependable servant character of the Commedia dell'Arte. Well, he’s hard working, gotten 23 meals already.

- ‘Or maybe selling. They were definitely antiques, so they might have been worth something.’ I already mentioned working auctions in MAG005 and yeah, while the dolls themselves may have been eerie, they weren’t as eerie as the folks most interested in them.

- In the style of Grizzop drik acht Amsterdam around the 41minute mark of RQG 92 – Bringing Down The House SASHA!

- ‘Tried and succeeded. They were actually quite helpful.’ All of the archival assistances are wonderful, they are the best beans, but Sasha is probably the most effectively by conventional and, y’know, well tested and legal methods. I reckon by illegal methods, she’d be down right dangerous. But Harold Silvana isn’t a name we’ve heard yet, but we will in MAG035, which is a type of statement I’ve taken to referring to in my head as ‘fear goulash’. Like, freaking shit is happening, but they’re all in on it, MAG020 was a bit like that, everyone had a bit of flavour in there.

- There is a whole section on the calliope wiki about how it can be pronounced. There a great little rhyme featured there;

Proud folk stare after me, Call me Calliope; Tooting joy, tooting hope, I am the calliope.

I mean, it’s wrong, but it’s cute.

- I am with Jon hard on this one. The instrument is named after the Greek muse eloquence and epic poetry. Mother of Orpheus. Hesiod and Ovid called her ‘Chief of All Muses’. Put some respect on her name.

- I love that when the recording resumes, there’s some emphasis on ‘ka lie oh pee’. Just a little bit of pepper to make the point.

- ‘By rights, when I sat in front of it and pressed the first key down, nothing should have happened.’ Oh and that ‘should’ is key there isn’t it. If the laws of the world are being fucked with, get out. If reason and physics peace out, you do too.

- ‘…came a loud, howling tone.’ I’m reminded again of the Carnyx as I mentioned them in MAG007, a howling instrument for the battlefield rather than the music hall.

- I can’t find any indication of what piece of music ‘Faster Faster’ might have been but it is a very evocative name for The Stranger’s purposes. Moving and dancing faster and faster until the world around you is unrecognisable. It could also be that Leanne is chasing her grief, as when she first played it, it was to her Grandpa’s memory.

- Josh’s reaction to the music is something that could be expected, especially after his reaction to the contents of the trunk, but it can not be as easily explained. While Leanne is caught up in the playing of the music, we get no indication of what Josh is seeing, if she or their surroundings are changing in anyway or if his reaction is solely to the music and its’ effects on him. As he doesn’t give any justification or explanation when the music stops, we can’t be sure.

- Was there a chance that the clown doll glimpsed him, in the short moment the trunk was open?

- ‘…in those last weeks he became moody, short-tempered, constantly on edge.’ The change in Josh’s behaviour can certainly be attributed to The Stranger’s influence, but I’m interested to know exactly how. Is it simply the constant presence of the music or is it something more? Is this new behaviour that’s being propagated within him, or are his masking behaviours being stripped away to reveal what he was really like?

- But Leanne is fully alone now; somewhat estranged from her parents, grandfather dead, partner out of the picture.

- ‘So, for the third time, I got out that ladder and climbed into the loft.’ We get the magical rule of three and we see the cloth poppet of Josh. With the Clown, the ringleader, reaching for him.

- I’m glad there is no use of the phrase ‘voodoo doll’ in the piece. Although the use of a doll effigy to hurt Josh is clearly implied, with the likeness and the 22 other jawless dolls, the words are not said and I appreciate it as the practise is so often misattributed with terrible connotations.

- I’d like to know more of why Josh was chosen. Was it simply a case of the calliope and its’ retinue needed to feed? Was Leanne off limits as she was the one who provided the music? Was it because Josh had hurt her and the calliope and the attendant now considered her under their protection?

- The break in, another instance of the violation of the safety of the home, especially considering that Leanne had such a connection to the place. But Breekon and Hope, and yes it’s got to be those two; two people, ‘looked legitimate’ as a moving service, in the employ of The Stranger, Breekon and Hope not being stopped because they ‘looked legitimate’. The shit you can accomplish with a hard hat, a high vis jacket and a clip board, I tell you.

- Leanne immediately knew that the calliope and what happened to Josh was connected. I mean, the signs are all there, but although she may not know how it works, she understood the connection enough to swear up and down that she didn’t play the calliope a third time.

- Before Josh and Leanne broke up, he said that ‘he still heard that calliope music’. And once again my mind circled back around to MAG007, and Wilfred Owen and other doomed soldiers cocking their heads to catch the music of The Piper.

- So Josh was found dead, jaw gone, no foreign DNA found on him, and his windpipe crushed by ‘some sort of rope, apparently woven out of thick wool’. Well, the white clown had ‘no woollen hair left’. None left. What if it was kept to hand though, within the trunk?

- ‘Tim said it reminded him of some articles he’d read on travelling circuses.’ We’ve still to meet Tim in the flesh, but this is the first indication we get of Tim’s history with The Stranger and with the Circus of Gregor Osinov.

- ‘Gregor Osinov and Nikolai Denikin.’ Yup, Grandpa was up in some shit. We don’t get confirmation that Nikolai is the calliope player, but given his talent at the piano, it’s not a massive leap of logic. If that is the case though, who are the other 22 dolls.

- The picture was taken 1948, so in the wake of WWII. A time when The Slaughter and The Stranger probably stalked the world rank and file.

- We get our first mention of The Circus of the Other and the legacy of Gregor Osinov.

- So the calliope was unaccounted for between 2004 and 2007. What was Nikola Osinov doing with it in that time, and why did it make its’ way to the Magnus Institute?

#MAGO24 #The Stranger #the magnus archives