Nic: From Pacific Northwest Stories and Minnow Beats Whale, it's Tanis. I'm Nic Silver. We're telling the story of Tanis in order, every two weeks. So if you're new to Tanis, you should go back and start at the beginning. We'll try not to get too far ahead by the time you get back.
Nic: Well, welcome back. A lot has happened since the end of season one and I'm gonna do my best to bring you up to date. It hasn't been easy. At times I've been scattered, and I'm only now beginning to feel somewhat normal, connected to myself again. I'm sure that sounds strange, and it's kind of hard to explain. I came out of that cabin feeling like I'd slept for 100 years.
Eventually I was able to piece together most of everything leading up to those final days and that became the bulk of the narration for season one. It was difficult managing the timeline. I decided I wanted to deliver an experience close to what everything felt like for me. To that end, I tried to deliver a lot of the narration as if it was happening in real time. It was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do, but I feel like we managed to accomplish at least part of what I set out to do at the beginning.
I'm sure a lot of you were concerned about what happened to those of us who entered the woods around that area, and I sincerely appreciate that concern. I'm also fairly certain that you, like me, are wondering what happened to Veronika, Morgan, Sam, and Tara Reynolds. Well, I'm going to fill you in on everything I've been able to dig up but, as I'm sure you can understand, that digging is ongoing. I can tell you that Veronika, Sam, and Morgan remain missing and that Tara Reynolds is under psychiatric care somewhere in Oregon.
As far as Tanis goes, they built a wall. A huge, towering wall around a large section of the forest, centered around the cabin. The amount of money and manpower it must have taken to do this in such a short amount of time is staggering. The end result? Tanis, or the area I suspect is the thing that I've been referring to as Tanis, is surrounded. Unreachable. And surprisingly, I'm not sure that's such a bad thing.
At the end of last season I mentioned that Cameron Ellis had asked me to take part in some kind of research study related to Tanis. I'll get to that soon, I promise. But in the meantime, I need to know what happened, or, what's happening.
I know after everything that took place out there in the woods that I should feel worried, scared, concerned, and seeing Tara Reynolds definitely made me feel every one of those things acutely. However, the primary emotion I'm feeling... is excitement. Excitement that all of this might actually be something. That Tanis might be real.
I've tried every angle possible, but so far I've been unable to contact Meerkatnip. So that avenue of exploration is currently closed to me. The police have been unwilling to share information on their investigation into the disappearance of Sam Reynolds, which isn't particularly surprising. So I decided to turn to the one person I knew who could provide some kind of information about what happened. As it turns out, he'd been expecting my call.
Nic: Cameron Ellis had been there when they pulled me out of that cabin. I felt like if anybody was gonna be able to fill me in on what was going on in the woods, it would be Ellis. I recorded this interview right near the end of season one.
Nic: I made it there in 15 minutes and sat in my car staring at the building. The rain pelted my windshield, which is something that I've always found strangely comforting. Sitting there in the foggy, fishbowl warmth of my heated car, I felt okay. I needed to feel okay. I'd been anxious lately, unable to sleep.
I was enjoying the possibility of that moment, that I might be about to learn something about the thing I'd been pursuing for so long. I had no idea what Cameron Ellis was going to tell me when I got up there, or if he'd be willing or able to tell me much of anything at all. But just the possibility was keeping me going.
Nic: So. Cameron Ellis was offering me a job. Light investigation into the breach and some cryptic talk about something Tanis adjacent. But was he genuinely interested in seeking my help for something, or was he just trying to keep me close, to keep an eye on me? If he really was interested in my help, what for? "Anomalous phenomena?" What could I possible have to offer that he couldn't find out on his own? He kept telling me that I needed to be careful. Turns out, he wasn't the only one.
Nic: She was right. I wish I hadn't seen those recordings. It was the stuff of nightmares. Real nightmares, what they call night terrors. Not someone chasing you down a hallway, or the feeling that you're running in place. I'm talking about dark existential worms and blood and bugs, buried alive, peeling flesh and gnawing bone. The cold, damp, musty understanding of the worst parts of humanity. I might play some sections of what she sent me on this podcast, I might not. I haven't decided.
Something I wanted to talk about fairly early on last season but never did find the proper time, was Meerkatnip's almost complete removal of my online identity. It was something we decided was essential due to some... threats I'd been receiving at the studio. Warnings from Cameron Ellis and a few other factors, all of which indicated that my life was in danger. Real danger. I asked MK to talk a little bit about that process.
Nic: It was nice to hear MK's voice. It felt familiar. It was a kind of anchor for the way I felt before... when I felt like myself. This isn't to say that I'm not feeling much better, I am, much better, but I'm still not... exactly the same. It's hard to describe. I'm not sure if I'm ever going to feel like I did before, but maybe that's not such a bad thing. I don't know.
Speaking of things that came before, something I've been looking into from the earliest stages of imagining this show, are the shoes that keep washing up along the shores of Washington and British Columbia. Shoes containing severed feet. Most of them right feet. Terry Miles, my cousin and one of our executive producers, has been working on a film script based on these mysterious feet for years. It was Terry who suggested we look into this strange phenomenon. He indicated that one of the roadblocks to his investigating these strange events for his film had been a lack of access to the police investigations. A couple elements I have access that he didn't that might help mitigate things, are two friends with high level research skills and certain high level political and law enforcement connections: Meerkatnip and Cameron Ellis.
Nic: Something that's been an ongoing concern is the fact that I have no clear memories of the time I spent in that cabin. I've elected to allow my therapist to continue her recommended treatment plan. A treatment plan that includes hypnosis.
The following is a clip from a recording I made with my phone during a session with my therapist.
Nic: "It's waking up." That phrase. I could hear it repeating over and over. I'm not sure I can explain exactly how it made me feel, but I'll try. It was a feeling of being drawn out, stretched thin. Of having my so recently pulled together life slowly ripped apart, leaving me once again untethered. My therapist must have sensed something of what I was feeling because she ended our session early.
The phrase "it's waking up" sounded like it belonged to a familiar world. A world of dark and creepy ancient things. The world of Eld Fen.
As I mentioned last season, there's a serious dearth of documented references to Eld Fen. There's almost nothing out there aside from the few scraps we were able to dig up earlier. But that was before we had you, our listeners. I recently received an email from a listener. The subject line read "There are dangerous things." There was no text in the body of the message, but there was an attachment, a PDF. It was a manuscript, a scan of a faded photocopy. It was definitely old. There were staples marks and most of the pages appeared to have been hole punched at some point. It was long, well over 100 pages. The title was simple, two words: Eld Fen.
The writer of the document, or perhaps writer collector and conservator is more accurate, was a man named John Correman. Scattered fragments of notes indicated that Correman attended or worked at Seattle University in the 70s amid racial discord, riots, and at least one bombing. It looks like Correman left the university before Father Louis Gaffney brought in his Contagious Optimism plan, a key point in turning that institution around both financially and culturally. I asked Meerkatnip if she could dig up anything on John Correman, or August Wick, the writer of an epigraph sprawled across the first page of the manuscript.
Nic: It sounded like it was recorded on some kind of portable device in a small movie theater or screening room. You can hear the sound of the room in the film moving through the projector. There was only a minute or so. Meerkatnip said that a link was posted with no label or text at all, and that the link was dead within half an hour of the post going live. I'm going to play that recording for you now.
Nic: We'll have more on that recording coming up in our next episodes. In the meantime, I'm going to read you some of the manuscript titled "Eld Fen."
I'll be sharing more from the PDF document labelled Eld Fen as season two progresses. But for now, we're headed back to the Pacific Northwest, where Meerkatnip had an update on the mysterious feet situation. She told me that it looks like the police have no idea, no credible missing persons leads, no real clues at all. Something they did have, however, were DNA samples. I asked if there was any way to gain access to that information, but the police told me that access was limited to relatives only.
MK told me that even if I wanted her to find a more... creative way in, none of her agents would be able to hack into the databases containing that information.Those facilities were either too old or too secure. It was a dead end. And that's where Cameron Ellis came in.
Nic: So I got in the car and headed north from Seattle up to Everett to meet Alan Malden.
Nic: Alan Malden was tall, rail thin, with an enormous beard so thick and wiry that it looked like he might fall over from the weight of it. He was nervous, fidgety. The reason he agreed to an interview was that he used to listen to Pacific Northwest Stories way back when we were on terrestrial radio. He showed me an old worn out PNWS tote bag from a fund raising campaign back in the 90s. Seeing that old tote bag was surprising, but not nearly as surprising at the fact that Alan Malden has two feet.
Nic: I felt like I needed to speak with Alan Malden again but so far he hasn't returned any of my calls. Next time, Cameron Ellis sends me the video of the disappearing cabin, does his best to clarify at least one of his mysterious warnings, and I try looking at this mystery from another angle.
It's Tanis, I'm Nic Silver. We'll be back again in two weeks. Until then, keep looking.
Tanis is produced by Terry Miles. Produced, mixed, and edited by me, Nic Silver. Executive producers Terry Miles and Paul Bae.
For legal and safety reasons, we've elected to change some names, and leave others out entirely. We don't do this very often, but we're not willing to compromise people's safety for any reason.
Thanks again for listening to Tanis.
Nic: Well, welcome back. A lot has happened since the end of season one and I'm gonna do my best to bring you up to date. It hasn't been easy. At times I've been scattered, and I'm only now beginning to feel somewhat normal, connected to myself again. I'm sure that sounds strange, and it's kind of hard to explain. I came out of that cabin feeling like I'd slept for 100 years.
Eventually I was able to piece together most of everything leading up to those final days and that became the bulk of the narration for season one. It was difficult managing the timeline. I decided I wanted to deliver an experience close to what everything felt like for me. To that end, I tried to deliver a lot of the narration as if it was happening in real time. It was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do, but I feel like we managed to accomplish at least part of what I set out to do at the beginning.
I'm sure a lot of you were concerned about what happened to those of us who entered the woods around that area, and I sincerely appreciate that concern. I'm also fairly certain that you, like me, are wondering what happened to Veronika, Morgan, Sam, and Tara Reynolds. Well, I'm going to fill you in on everything I've been able to dig up but, as I'm sure you can understand, that digging is ongoing. I can tell you that Veronika, Sam, and Morgan remain missing and that Tara Reynolds is under psychiatric care somewhere in Oregon.
As far as Tanis goes, they built a wall. A huge, towering wall around a large section of the forest, centered around the cabin. The amount of money and manpower it must have taken to do this in such a short amount of time is staggering. The end result? Tanis, or the area I suspect is the thing that I've been referring to as Tanis, is surrounded. Unreachable. And surprisingly, I'm not sure that's such a bad thing.
At the end of last season I mentioned that Cameron Ellis had asked me to take part in some kind of research study related to Tanis. I'll get to that soon, I promise. But in the meantime, I need to know what happened, or, what's happening.
I know after everything that took place out there in the woods that I should feel worried, scared, concerned, and seeing Tara Reynolds definitely made me feel every one of those things acutely. However, the primary emotion I'm feeling... is excitement. Excitement that all of this might actually be something. That Tanis might be real.
I've tried every angle possible, but so far I've been unable to contact Meerkatnip. So that avenue of exploration is currently closed to me. The police have been unwilling to share information on their investigation into the disappearance of Sam Reynolds, which isn't particularly surprising. So I decided to turn to the one person I knew who could provide some kind of information about what happened. As it turns out, he'd been expecting my call.
- Cameron: Hello Nic.
Nic: Cameron Ellis had been there when they pulled me out of that cabin. I felt like if anybody was gonna be able to fill me in on what was going on in the woods, it would be Ellis. I recorded this interview right near the end of season one.
- Cameron: Frankly, I thought I'd be hearing from you much sooner.
- Nic: I've been busy.
- Cameron: I understand.
- Nic: I'd like to know what's going on with...
- Cameron: The breach?
- Nic: Yes, the breach.
- Cameron: I'd rather not discuss it over the phone. Can you come over to my office?
- Nic: Okay.
- Cameron: Will you be driving yourself, or should I send a car?
- Nic: I'll be there in half an hour.
Nic: I made it there in 15 minutes and sat in my car staring at the building. The rain pelted my windshield, which is something that I've always found strangely comforting. Sitting there in the foggy, fishbowl warmth of my heated car, I felt okay. I needed to feel okay. I'd been anxious lately, unable to sleep.
I was enjoying the possibility of that moment, that I might be about to learn something about the thing I'd been pursuing for so long. I had no idea what Cameron Ellis was going to tell me when I got up there, or if he'd be willing or able to tell me much of anything at all. But just the possibility was keeping me going.
- Cameron: Thank you for coming.
- Nic: Uh yeah, thanks for the invitation.
- Cameron: We can speak freely here.
- Nic: Great, so what's with the wall? What happened to Tara Reynolds? And what about Veronika, Morgan, and Sam?
- Cameron: Well I'm gonna answer your questions as directly as I can. If you feel you'd like me to expand on anything, please let me know.
- Nic: Okay.
- Cameron: We don't know what happened to Veronika, Morgan, and Sam. And like I told you earlier, Tara Reynolds is in a facility. Unreachable.
- Nic: And what about the wall?
- Cameron: They built the wall because they're scared of what's been happening.
- Nic: Tanis? What you've been called the breach?
- Cameron: Yes. As you well know, there have been reports of strange behavior, dangerous behavior. A lot of it linked to that particular region of the forest.
- Nic: The cabin.
- Cameron: Around that area, yes.
- Nic: So the cabin is inside the wall?
- Cameron: It was.
- Nic: It was? What do you mean, it's gone?
- Cameron: Yesterday.
- Nic: What happened?
- Cameron: It just... disappeared. They were filming, it shimmered for a second, and then it just vanished.
- Nic: It just vanished?
- Cameron: Yes.
- Nic: Could I see the video of what they were filming?
- Cameron: I'll set it up.
- Nic: Thanks. Thank you.
- Cameron: How are you sleeping?
- Nic: Um, not well. (long pause) What are you gonna do with it?
- Cameron: With what, the video?
- Nic: With Tanis.
- Cameron: It's complicated.
- Nic: Yeah, you say that a lot.Who's in charge?
- Cameron: It's a coalition. There are a few layers, it's...
- Nic: Complicated, yeah. So can you tell me anything else?
- Cameron: I'd like to offer a suggestion.
- Nic: Okay.
- Cameron: Be careful.
- Nic: Okay, that's a little cryptic, even for you.
- Cameron: Have you considered the fact that you made it out while the others... didn't?
- Nic: I was lucky.
- Cameron: Maybe. Or maybe there's something different about you. Something unique? You were the only one who returned from the breach.
- Nic: Okay, that sounded unnecessarily weird and creepy. (long pause) Tara Reynolds made it back.
- Cameron: I'm not exactly sure that's true.
- Nic: Right.
- Cameron: Be careful, Nic.
- Nic: Yeah, you already said that. Does your warning, or series of warnings, have anything to do with Nathaniel Carter?
- Cameron: (long pause) And that brings us to a crossroads of sorts.
- Nic: What do you mean?
- Cameron: Well, there's a world of layers unfolding here quickly. And I'm not sure you're ready to embrace the possibilities.
- Nic: Oh I think I'm more than ready to "embrace the possibilities," I just need to know what the possibilities are.
- Cameron: You need to be patient for a little while.
- Nic: That's not my strongest quality, patience.
- Cameron: There have been other... disturbances, disappearances.
- Nic: Related to Tanis or the breach?
- Cameron: It's possible.
- Nic: And what does that have to do with me?
- Cameron: These additional anomalous phenomena might be best described as... adjacent to the breach, rather than directly connected. Although we might be wrong about that.
- Nic: So is...
- Cameron: I'd like your help to look into some of them.
- Nic: To look into some of your "breach adjacent anomalous phenomena?"
- Cameron: Along with some light investigation of the breach itself, yes.
- Nic: Some light investigation?
- Cameron: At first.
- Nic: Any why me, again?
- Cameron: Because you made it back from the breach relatively unchanged.
- Nic: Relatively?
- Cameron: Yes.
Nic: So. Cameron Ellis was offering me a job. Light investigation into the breach and some cryptic talk about something Tanis adjacent. But was he genuinely interested in seeking my help for something, or was he just trying to keep me close, to keep an eye on me? If he really was interested in my help, what for? "Anomalous phenomena?" What could I possible have to offer that he couldn't find out on his own? He kept telling me that I needed to be careful. Turns out, he wasn't the only one.
- MK: Glad to hear you're alive.
- Nic: Thanks, you too.
- MK: You are alive right? You're not some kind of, like, Tanis zombie or anything?
- Nic: (laughs) Well, I felt a little messed up for a while, but I think I'm pretty much back to normal. Whatever that means.
- MK: Good.
- Nic: Thanks.
- MK: Okay (sighs).
- Nic: Okay, so your message indicated that you'd found some horrific recordings. Videos I think?
- MK: Yeah.
- Nic: I didn't find anything in my inbox.
- MK: That's because I didn't send them.
- Nic: That's not like you.
- MK: I deleted them.
- Nic: Really?
- MK: Well, okay, not really. But I don't think you should see them or hear them.
- Nic: Why not?
- MK: They're fucking horrific.
- Nic: Okay, but I'd like you to send them if you don't mind.
- MK: You're gonna regret saying that.
- (Inbox bings)
- MK: Okay, don't say I didn't warn you.
Nic: She was right. I wish I hadn't seen those recordings. It was the stuff of nightmares. Real nightmares, what they call night terrors. Not someone chasing you down a hallway, or the feeling that you're running in place. I'm talking about dark existential worms and blood and bugs, buried alive, peeling flesh and gnawing bone. The cold, damp, musty understanding of the worst parts of humanity. I might play some sections of what she sent me on this podcast, I might not. I haven't decided.
Something I wanted to talk about fairly early on last season but never did find the proper time, was Meerkatnip's almost complete removal of my online identity. It was something we decided was essential due to some... threats I'd been receiving at the studio. Warnings from Cameron Ellis and a few other factors, all of which indicated that my life was in danger. Real danger. I asked MK to talk a little bit about that process.
- Nic: I was hoping you might be able to explain how you were able to essentially remove my online identity, photos, articles and the rest?
- MK: Was not difficult.
- Nic: No?
- MK: No, you're basically a luddite.
- Nic: (laughing) That's not true!
- MK: Uh well, Myspace and LinkedIn weren't that hard. And Livejournal? I mean, pffft come on.
- Nic: I was on Facebook!
- MK: Barely.
- Nic: Still, that had to be difficult.
- MK: It can be, but it was a lot easier considering your friends and family were willing to take everything down.
- Nic: You let me have Twitter though.
- MK: Yeah, it was a new account. It's easy to monitor and track Twitter's API from the ground up.
- Nic: Okay, well thanks for clearing that up. A lot of people have been wondering why they can't find pictures of me.
- MK: I should post your yearbook picture.
- Nic: (laughs) What year?
- MK: Can't say, it would give away too much. So what's going on with Pacifica Station?
- Nic: You're still listening to the podcast?
- MK: Yeah, I still wanna make sure you don't make me look like an asshole.
- Nic: (laughs) Right, well. Apparently Pacifica Station was under the control of a group called Section.
- MK: Yeah, and Section shut it down in 1985.
- Nic: Right, that's what Cameron Ellis told me.
- MK: I'm still looking into it, but that information appears to be accurate.
- Nic: Were you able to dig up anything new on Nathaniel Carter or the other two research studies?
- MK: I'm working on a lead regarding the 2009 study, but there's nothing anywhere on the 80s. That stuff was sealed up tight and it was pre-internet so it's tough. It's really tough.
- Nic: What about Section?
- MK: As far as I can tell, they were active in the 70s and 80s and then faded into the background for a while. There's sporadic references, but if they were active past the 80s, it was definitely behind the scenes.
- Nic: Are there indications that they did remain active?
- MK: There's some, yeah.
- Nic: What were they actively doing?
- MK: Depends on who you believe.
- Nic: What do you mean?
- MK: Well there's no official organization or agency of any kind that goes by the handle Section.
- Nic: No?
- MK: No. And there's conflicting stories about what Section might mean, who or which agencies the name might be referring to.
- Nic: Okay, you might be losing me here.
- MK: There's a lot of deep web rumors.
- Nic: Of course there are.
- MK: Okay so just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
- Nic: (laughs) Right.
- MK: Some say it was a section of the CIA, others believe "section" refers to a covert arm of the Department of Defense, others say NSA, FBI. One high level source claims Section is actually ATF.
- Nic: Alcohol Tanis and Firearms?
- MK: That's funny.
- Nic: Thanks.
- MK: Don't mention it.
- Nic: So what do you think?
- MK: I have no idea.
- Nic: Best guess?
- MK: A combination, maybe a few people from each?
- Nic: Wow.
- MK: There's one kind of out-there theory that fits.
- Nic: Yeah?
- MK: Section could be a consortium of power players from various different agencies, including the EPA.
- Nic: The EPA?
- MK: Mmhm. You asked for my best guess.
- Nic: I suppose I did.
- MK: In the end there's one part of the message, something that was put on Snapchat, it's the best lead I was able to find.
- Nic: What is it?
- MK: Parzavela.
- Nic: What about Parzavela?
- MK: You know your podcast has actually made it a lot hard to wade through all the Tanis TeslaNova Parzavela Xanu Section bullshit?
- Nic: Right. I suppose there's a lot more noise out there now.
- MK: Yeah, you think? A lot more.
- Nic: But you did manage to find something connecting Parzavela to Section?
- MK: Ah, kind of but not directly.
- Nic: What was it?
- MK: An old film from the 70s.
- Nic: What's it called?
- MK: I don't know.
- Nic: You don't know?
- MK: Mm, no not exactly.
- Nic: I don't understand.
- MK: Someone from Parzavela was looking for an old film, and a few other information specialists I know tracked requests for a similar film to a hacker citing Section as an interested party. This particular hacker was embedded high up in the 1990s.
- Nic: Hacker or information specialist?
- MK: Well this guy or gal is an old school hacker. If they used the name Section, they know what they're talking about.
- Nic: And they were both looking for an unnamed film?
- MK: Yeah.
- Nic: What makes you think it was the same film?
- MK: The description.
- Nic: What was it about?
- MK: Apparently everyone who sees it goes insane. Like, kill your entire family and then yourself with a serrated kitchen knife insane.
- Nic: Wow.
- MK: Yeah, it's allegedly set in the Pacific Northwest, lots of trees, it's really deep conspiracy stuff. They say it's either authentic or it somehow incorporates visual effects that wouldn't be invented until decades later.
- Nic: And you have no idea what it's called?
- MK: Mm, depends who ask, but there's a whole bunch of different titles. Tenebris Oculta, Enfer Sur Terre, Hell on Earth, The Trees. But most people on the deep web simply refer to it as The Last Movie, because if you ever do manage to see it, it's the last thing you ever see.
- Nic: I don't s'pose you have a copy?
- MK: No, but that's only because it doesn't exist.
- Nic: You're sure?
- MK: Mm, I'm almost positive. This kind of thing would be hard to keep secret, especially from me.
- Nic: But not impossible?
- MK: No not impossible, but unlikely.
- Nic: If you don't mind looking into a bit more, I'd really appreciate it.
- MK: Yeah, you got it. I'm still on the payroll right?
- Nic: Right.
- MK: Hey Nic?
- Nic: Yeah?
- MK: I'm glad you survived the weird death cabin.
- Nic: Thanks.
- MK: No problem. (Skype disconnects)
Nic: It was nice to hear MK's voice. It felt familiar. It was a kind of anchor for the way I felt before... when I felt like myself. This isn't to say that I'm not feeling much better, I am, much better, but I'm still not... exactly the same. It's hard to describe. I'm not sure if I'm ever going to feel like I did before, but maybe that's not such a bad thing. I don't know.
Speaking of things that came before, something I've been looking into from the earliest stages of imagining this show, are the shoes that keep washing up along the shores of Washington and British Columbia. Shoes containing severed feet. Most of them right feet. Terry Miles, my cousin and one of our executive producers, has been working on a film script based on these mysterious feet for years. It was Terry who suggested we look into this strange phenomenon. He indicated that one of the roadblocks to his investigating these strange events for his film had been a lack of access to the police investigations. A couple elements I have access that he didn't that might help mitigate things, are two friends with high level research skills and certain high level political and law enforcement connections: Meerkatnip and Cameron Ellis.
- MK: So weird.
- Nic: Yeah.
- MK: How many feet?
- Nic: 16 feet since 2007, mainly right feet.
- MK: That's so weird.
- Nic: (laughs) I know. People go looking for them, scavengers.
- MK: Ah, what happened to looking for like, seashells and driftwood?
- Nic: All of the feet had running shoes, hiking shoes. Nice shoes, these are...
- MK: Gross.
- Nic: (laughs) Yeah. How can 16 feet wash up and the police can't match even one of them to a missing person anywhere?
- MK: I have no idea.
- Nic: I was wondering if you might be able to look into it for me?
- MK: Okay.
- Nic: Maybe there's something I'm missing.
- MK: Ah yeah, I think that's likely. Where should I start looking?
- Nic: The police departments in Washington and British Columbia.
- MK: Okay. Just severed feet stuff?
- Nic: Any information on any of the investigations into the feet would be awesome.
- MK: I will see what I can do.
- Nic: Thank you.
- MK: Yeah. (Skype disconnects)
Nic: Something that's been an ongoing concern is the fact that I have no clear memories of the time I spent in that cabin. I've elected to allow my therapist to continue her recommended treatment plan. A treatment plan that includes hypnosis.
The following is a clip from a recording I made with my phone during a session with my therapist.
- Nic: They, they all hold Tanis in their minds, she told us. She said it's much older than the Haida, and that it's extremely rare to find a complete map. That's why it takes four. But even with four, four parts, four people, the map is almost always incomplete. She said that the four of us, our map was like something she'd never seen before. And when she spoke about it she sounded excited and... something else. She...
- Burnnett: What?
- Nic: She sounded scared.
- Burnnett: Veronika sounded scared?
- Nic: Yes.
- Burnnett: Okay. Try and stay with her. Did she say anything else?
- Nic: I asked her about Raywood, the night before she started hearing the calm.
- Burnnett: And what did she say?
- Nic: She said that the town was actually called Saint Raywood. Veronika wrote Saint Raywood in my journal and then she started moving the letters around.
- Burnnett: To what end?
- Nic: Saint Raywood, she said, was an anagram, Tanis Doorway. She laughed and said it was a coincidence, but.
- Burnnett: Did she say anything else?
- Nic: Yes.
- Burnnett: What did she say?
- Nic: She kept repeating something to herself as we moved closer to the calm.
- Burnnett: What was she saying?
- Nic: "It's waking up."
Nic: "It's waking up." That phrase. I could hear it repeating over and over. I'm not sure I can explain exactly how it made me feel, but I'll try. It was a feeling of being drawn out, stretched thin. Of having my so recently pulled together life slowly ripped apart, leaving me once again untethered. My therapist must have sensed something of what I was feeling because she ended our session early.
The phrase "it's waking up" sounded like it belonged to a familiar world. A world of dark and creepy ancient things. The world of Eld Fen.
As I mentioned last season, there's a serious dearth of documented references to Eld Fen. There's almost nothing out there aside from the few scraps we were able to dig up earlier. But that was before we had you, our listeners. I recently received an email from a listener. The subject line read "There are dangerous things." There was no text in the body of the message, but there was an attachment, a PDF. It was a manuscript, a scan of a faded photocopy. It was definitely old. There were staples marks and most of the pages appeared to have been hole punched at some point. It was long, well over 100 pages. The title was simple, two words: Eld Fen.
The writer of the document, or perhaps writer collector and conservator is more accurate, was a man named John Correman. Scattered fragments of notes indicated that Correman attended or worked at Seattle University in the 70s amid racial discord, riots, and at least one bombing. It looks like Correman left the university before Father Louis Gaffney brought in his Contagious Optimism plan, a key point in turning that institution around both financially and culturally. I asked Meerkatnip if she could dig up anything on John Correman, or August Wick, the writer of an epigraph sprawled across the first page of the manuscript.
- MK: I feel like you're turning me into a ghost hunter.
- Nic: I take it there's not much on John Correman online?
- MK: It would help if you could get obsessed with people who were alive in the internet age.
- Nic: Sorry.
- MK: I don't believe you.
- Nic: So there was nothing?
- MK: Not nothing.
- Nic: What did you find?
- MK: There's a community on the deep web obsessed with Lovecraft, Derleth, and Asterix comics.
- Nic: There's something for everyone.
- MK: Mmhm. There's not much in the way of Eld Fen stuff, but there was one poster who contributed information on the subject.
- Nic: Um, what kind of information did they contribute?
- MK: Weird stuff.
- Nic: (laughing) Weird stuff, like what?
- MK: Like they mentioned the name August Wick, the guy you quoted in the beginning of your weird Eld Fen book. Apparently this Wick guy is like the Lovecraft of the Eld Fen set, if Wick wasn't actually Lovecraft himself. Although from what I've been able to dig up, that's unlikely.
- Nic: Really?
- MK: Yeah, August Wick was most likely a pseudonym and then there's conflicting reports on what his or her real name might have been. Like I said, some believed Wick was actually Lovecraft himself, but the timeline of his work doesn't match up. Others thought Wick was a mad professor obsessed with creating a religious order similar to Aleister Crowley's Thelema. And then others believed that he was actually a notorious serial killer, Carl Panzram, writing this stuff in a kind of fugue state from prison.
- Nic: Wow. Anything else?
- MK: Not really, I sent you everything I could find including a recording.
- Nic: A recording?
- MK: Mmhm.
- Nic: What is it?
- MK: Mm, I think it's better if you just listen.
- Nic: Cryptic!
- MK: I thought you'd appreciate cryptic.
- Nic: You really do know me.
- MK: Yeah, yeah.
Nic: It sounded like it was recorded on some kind of portable device in a small movie theater or screening room. You can hear the sound of the room in the film moving through the projector. There was only a minute or so. Meerkatnip said that a link was posted with no label or text at all, and that the link was dead within half an hour of the post going live. I'm going to play that recording for you now.
- (film projector reel spinning.)
- (distorted thumping, reminiscent of footsteps.)
- (unintelligible wavering voice over scifi-sounding distorted music)
- (distorted thumping, reminiscent of footsteps.)
- (woman breathing heavily)
- (menacing low breaths)
- (tingling bells)
- (woman breathing heavily)
- (extremely quiet voices, too low to hear)
- (echoing large drum)
Nic: We'll have more on that recording coming up in our next episodes. In the meantime, I'm going to read you some of the manuscript titled "Eld Fen."
- Nic: It was already old when it began to see. Towering above the silence, the water, the mud, and the wind. Its natures and forms faded and fallen from the world. The wet beasts in the muck falling from it even now, sliding down toward the ancient dark, thick and cold. The things that hide, the things that become the dark, the things that hunt and eat and dream, they hear him now, moving, preparing to rise. The oldest of them all, the end of sleep, the end of light, the one they fear. The one they hear in the rising of the wind. The one they call the end. The one they call Eld Fen.
-
- - August Wick, found among the notes of John Correman.
- There are some things that just feel different, strange. Like they belong to another place or time. Things glimpsed from the corners of eyes, from behind the safety of windows, from a mind occupied with shadows. It's easy to forget them, these things, in the safety of the sunlight, in the heat of an embrace, or the mire and motion of our working lives. But sitting alone at the edge of the day, as the light slowly fades from the waking world, there's a moment when things are different. When things begin to creep in, to seep and bleed from the edges. Dark things. Old things. Things far too frightening to focus on or think about for any extended length of time. Horrific silent things waiting to be dreamt.
- But even in dreams, there is danger. There are paths from there to here, and that's a dangerous and terrible thing.
- I would never be writing this had I not found John Correman's notes. I sincerely wish I hadn't found them, but there's no going back. I can't get the words out of my head. I can't think about anything else. John Correman was one of my professors at Cornell University. I'd been taking a philosophy of religion class that I was struggling to grasp, and I found myself attending office hours almost weekly, committed to establishing some understanding of the assigned work but failing miserably.
- It was during these brief sessions that I got to know John Correman. We were both from Seattle and had actually attended the same high school, although many years apart. Professor Correman believed I had a knack for writing, just not writing about religious studies. He suggested journalism or fiction might be a more prudent use of my writing time. He was right. Had it not been for Professor Correman's candid assessment of my work, I might have spent another year or two toiling in an academic milieu that I just didn't feel passionate about, rather than focusing my attention on fiction, which has since become the primary focus in my working and writing life.
- Correman and I became friendly. Although I dropped out of Cornell my senior year, we continued to meet every month or two to play tennis, go to the movies, or just talk over breakfast along the shore of Cayuga Lake. A couple of years later, we met randomly on the street in Seattle, where it turns out we had both moved within a few months of each other. We began meeting fairly regularly again for coffee until I moved away to San Francisco about a decade later.
- I was in Seattle for a job interview waiting for Correman to join me for breakfast, when I received the news that he'd been run over by a delivery van on his way to the restaurant. It was a hit and run. They never found the driver of the van.
I'll be sharing more from the PDF document labelled Eld Fen as season two progresses. But for now, we're headed back to the Pacific Northwest, where Meerkatnip had an update on the mysterious feet situation. She told me that it looks like the police have no idea, no credible missing persons leads, no real clues at all. Something they did have, however, were DNA samples. I asked if there was any way to gain access to that information, but the police told me that access was limited to relatives only.
MK told me that even if I wanted her to find a more... creative way in, none of her agents would be able to hack into the databases containing that information.Those facilities were either too old or too secure. It was a dead end. And that's where Cameron Ellis came in.
- Cameron: It took a bit of looking, but I was able to find something.
- Nic: Thanks, I appreciate it.
- Cameron: It's not much. Of the 16 samples matched against every database in the world, only one resulted in a name.
- Nic: I'll take anything at this point.
- Cameron: Alan Malden.
- Nic: Alan Malden?
- Cameron: His name was flagged when they ran the DNA. Criminal record.
- Nic: How did he die?
- Cameron: He didn't.
- Nic: What do you mean?
- Cameron: He's alive.
- Nic: What?
- Cameron: He's alive and living in Everett.
- Nic: Really?
- Cameron: I sent you the information.
- Nic: Thank you.
- Cameron: You're welcome.
Nic: So I got in the car and headed north from Seattle up to Everett to meet Alan Malden.
Nic: Alan Malden was tall, rail thin, with an enormous beard so thick and wiry that it looked like he might fall over from the weight of it. He was nervous, fidgety. The reason he agreed to an interview was that he used to listen to Pacific Northwest Stories way back when we were on terrestrial radio. He showed me an old worn out PNWS tote bag from a fund raising campaign back in the 90s. Seeing that old tote bag was surprising, but not nearly as surprising at the fact that Alan Malden has two feet.
- Nic: You're okay with me recording this interview for the podcast?
- Malden: Yeah, that's fine.
- Nic: Thanks. Um, so I'd like to dive right in if that's okay.
- Malden: Go ahead.
- Nic: Well, the first thing I'd like to ask is...
- Malden: Yes, I have both of my feet. The originals, not prosthetic. The police asked the same thing.
- Nic: Do you mind, um, could I see?
- Malden: (pause) Of course. (pause, rustling) See? Two feet, ten toes.
- Nic: Thanks.
- Malden: It's fine.
- Nic: So what else did the police ask about, if you don't mind me asking?
- Malden: Uh (sighs). Not much of anything really. Once they saw that I had two feet they chalked it up to a clerical error and left me alone.
- Nic: Have you lived in this area long?
- Malden: Um, I moved here from outside Olympia about two years ago.
- Nic: The foot they found, the one the computer claimed matched your DNA?
- Malden: Yes?
- Nic: It was just over two years old.
- Malden: Right.
- Nic: Did you spend any time in the woods around this area here at that time?
- Malden: I used to hike there almost every morning.
- Nic: Right there?
- Malden: Mmhm.
- Nic: While you were out there, did anything happen? Anything strange?
- Malden: I'm sorry, I thought this was gonna be more like a profile or something.
- Nic: What do you mean?
- Malden: I dunno, like you used to do on the radio.
- Nic: Right. I'm not sure I follow, I mean...
- Malden: I'm afraid I have to get to work.
- Nic: Oh. Okay.
- Nic: Alan Malden is alive, he has two feet, and he lives in Washington State.
- MK: Uhh, that's crazy. You want me to look into this guy?
- Nic: I'd rather leave him alone.
- MK: Yeah, it might be too late.
- Nic: What did you find?
- MK: He used to live right there, Tanis central.
- Nic: He told me that. Anything else?
- MK: He was reported missing by his wife. Ex-wife.
- Nic: 'Kay, he didn't tell me that. How long was he missing?
- MK: Almost a month.
- Nic: Oh. Where did they find him?
- MK: In his bed.
- Nic: Really?
- MK: Mmhm. His wife, his now ex-wife, came home from work to find him sleeping in his bed. He couldn't remember how he got home, he believed he'd left for a morning hike that morning.
- Nic: He lost an entire month?
- MK: That's what he says. This whole thing is... fucking weird.
- Nic: (laughs) Any theories?
- MK: Oh this is so not my department.(Skype disconnects)
Nic: I felt like I needed to speak with Alan Malden again but so far he hasn't returned any of my calls. Next time, Cameron Ellis sends me the video of the disappearing cabin, does his best to clarify at least one of his mysterious warnings, and I try looking at this mystery from another angle.
It's Tanis, I'm Nic Silver. We'll be back again in two weeks. Until then, keep looking.
Tanis is produced by Terry Miles. Produced, mixed, and edited by me, Nic Silver. Executive producers Terry Miles and Paul Bae.
For legal and safety reasons, we've elected to change some names, and leave others out entirely. We don't do this very often, but we're not willing to compromise people's safety for any reason.
Thanks again for listening to Tanis.