THE MAGNUS ARCHIVES #77 - The Kind Mother

MAG077 - Case #9941509 - Lucy Cooper
Statement regarding a supposed stranger claiming to be a close relative.
The Magnus Archives tells the tale of an estranged child who believes that an impostor posing as their mother now resides in their family home.
Starring: Gertrude Robinson - Sue Sims; The Archivist - Jonathan Sims
Writer: Jonathan Sims
Director: Alexander J Newall
Editors: Alexander J Newall, Mike LeBeau
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The Magnus Archives is distributed by RustyQuill.com and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence.

[@emilyneff3168]

My soul left my body when Jon's voice dies: "- how it works, how it ki...."

[@charliem.1368]

johns soul left his body too

[@b-blythe6763]

i legit thought he'd gotten stabbed midway through

[@frogonthebikeheh]

@@charliem.1368 I choked on my tea 😂🍵

[@moonlight_scribe]

It was definitely a legit bit of voice acting

[@ZaphodJan]

This lady hated her mother so much that no paranormal monstrosities could rewrite her memories

[@BunnyLove5763]

Jon sounded like he was on the brink of tears :(

[@michellemaloney2839]

I may be reading too much into it, but I think Jon loved Sasha, too, and he just realized she was gone. It wasn't romantic, but he's still devastated by her loss.

[@Falcon-doing-doodles]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the main difference between Jon and Gertrude is how they feel about their assistants. Jon may not be the nicest boss, but he still does care about them and does so much to try and prevent them from dying.

[@Vi_Vi_1]

@@michellemaloney2839 i definitely got this vibe too. Not romantic, just...she was a friend, he respected her, he cared for her, he trusted her, and realizing she's been lost genuinely hurts :(

[@hamburgerdog25]

​@@Vi_Vi_1 i was picking up that they definitely confided in one another. Jon would vent to her sometimes on tapes in season one and he seemed to trust her opinion a bit more than Martin's when she gave her statement. And he was always nicer to her compared to the others. They just seemed to be on the same wavelength, you know? They were good friends. I knew it was going to be sad when Jon realized that that isn't his friend and I figured he'd feel guilty (back to last episode, when he says "why Melanie..." as in why did she figure it out, and my guess, why he didn't even realize something was wrong). Excuse me, I'm preparing for the real feels hours now

[@Vi_Vi_1]

@@hamburgerdog25 Absolutely! It's what made this episode hit so damn hard, knowing they were good friends 😭 the idea of not only losing a close friend, but not REALIZING it for months?? Yeah that would fuck me up

[@cawareyoudoin7379]

Oh no.... The terrible realization... The grief... I cannot...

[@cawareyoudoin7379]

@past me, it's gonna get so much worse. But still, this was the moment that hit me the most in the series, along with "the Librarian". At the end of season 4, as a defense mechanism, I've desensitized myself, I think. Or it's just that the scale of the threat is so big that it's not felt anymore (overly sarcastic productions did a great video on this, how threats too big, especially not likely to happen (like the end of the world) don't really affect the audience that much, because we still can't really comprehend this scale of destruction. But, to their credit, they did what not many stories actually do- (SPOILERS) they did the apocalypse. It's cool, but I'm just like eh. What can you threaten me with now? Killing the characters? lol. Making them suffer? Been there done that. There's honestly nothing I can think of that could actually emotionally wreck me as the episodes in the first seasons did. But, Jonny Sims, feel free to surprise me. What you gonna do with that bat? You gonna hit me? Better make it count! Better make it *hurt* ! Better kill me in one shot!)

[@lilaboxx]

I read half of your spoilery comment and not gonna lie, usually anything in english affects me less emotionally because it's not my first language and i have to focus so much on understanding what's going on that I'm rarely affected but that voice acting felt like a punch

[@mjamin9124]

the creepiest thing about this is that it mirrors reality. there is mental disorder where someone _firmly_ believes that someone they know has been replaced by a complete stranger-- but nobody else seems to have noticed. hopefully, it _is_ just a disorder, and not something. else. it's called capgras syndrome

[@allie_678]

Omg… yeah. Hopefully it’s just a disorder 😳

[@bebeth8468]

Women seem to be more affected by the capgras syndrome than men funny, since, as far I can remember, the only two people that noticed the not-them were female

[@alexs1954]

@@bebeth8468 Three. The window watching woman, the woman from this statement, and the ghost hunter.

[@radiofyre13]

I was wondering if anyone would point that out

[@leafloaf3232]

@@alexs1954 and basira

[@voidmatic]

the "how it kil-" part is so well done since it's not only a moment where he realizes he's going to have to kill it, but also that Sasha has been gone for a while without him even realizing ... oOF

[@snoopdelarge]

"You're not Jim. Jim is not Asian"

[@waitingwarrior4203]

NotJim... O_O

[@gymsbeansent]

Jim be like "You seriously never noticed? Hey, hands off to you for not seeing race."

[@TheJuliana0901]

goddamn. best comment. it's exactly right

[@summerjuarez2322]

Identity theft is not a joke, Jim!

[@Vi_Vi_1]

HAHAHAHAHA

[@Vi_Vi_1]

"I don't know what this-....I know exactly what this means" and "how it works, how it ki-" both just wrecked me. The voice acting in this series is TOO GOOD

[@tearez13]

_"There is a stranger claiming to be my mother"_ Coraline? Is that you? Also: I really like the mention of changelings.

[@citra1885]

Omg I just realized Coraline's story would fit this series without a doubt!

[@ironbarsjack7977]

Realizing Sasha is actually probably like dead and not mind controlled like I originally assumed

[@Iquey]

I'm wondering if she was eaten by all the worms and something took her place, like a Michael type or a not Graham that was inside the white and blue vase and climbed out!??

[@artimessnow3950]

I kind of figured something stole her identity when we heard the bit of her screaming and then something trying to sound more and more like her, copying the last words she said. "I see you"

[@august7493]

I thought she was trapped inside the table or something, I just realized how stupid that is

[@Companion92]

Poor Jon. This is not gonna help with his paranoia

[@happygilmore2778]

It's not paranoia if he's right!

[@ElForrest-Okey]

Its not paranoia if theyre really out to get you

[@jadynnkotch1833]

nope. i refuse to believe sasha is dead. i love her too much to accept that.

[@b-blythe6763]

I remember at the end of last season i was so prepared for the characters to realize the fake and go find the real Sasha ;-;

[@namaschu9418]

I hope she is, I don't think the alternative would be something I want for her

[@nikonikoknees4488]

who knows, maybe she wasn't real all along... just kidding :p! I'm sure she's out there somewhere

[@neroquin]

Way beyond that fam. She's been gone for a long time.

[@mistydevillier2197]

Well, sucks to be you!!🤫

[@josef3475]

For your information, St Peter's Church was designed by Thomas Graham Jackson, a pupil of Sir Gilbert Scott, who was the architect mentioned in "Foundation" as the pupil of Robert Smirke.

[@aliyinn3186]

Woah. Thanks for the info

[@mimkyodar]

SMIIRRRRKKKKEEEEEE

[@albuseisenhorn3385]

OH THAT IS TOO FKING GOOD, well done Simms

[@fevre_dream8542]

At this point I'm just gonna assume that any spooky building mentioned has Smirke etc to blame

[@mustard_96]

I always thought that the Not!People had some sort of magic that prevents the people that the originals closely and consistently associated with from noticing a difference, but it doesn’t affect people who only know them from occasional interaction. It kinda is confirmed in this statement, where the dad who is constantly around his wife wouldn’t notice, but the daughter (who has been estranged for a while) noticed immediately.

[@angryjelly7025]

At the same time, neighbors of this person's mother and all the people, who knew Graham before the change, except for a single girl who gave the statement, seem to also be affected, even though Graham didn't have any real friends or relatives among them. I think it just affects the whole world except for a very few

[@audacioustabby2774]

I'm not 100% on how The Fears work but I would assume this specific one would need a conscious victim or two to feel the fear. If it just replaced people and killed others for the lolz, then the only fear emitted would be betrayal or just plain death.

[@hamburgerdog25]

I thought it was telepathic. Just sort of taps into your brain and re-wires it a bit. Of course if that were case, it would never get detected. Unless maybe the only people it doesnt work on just have this sort of brain or mental makeup that it can't jack

[@suneee_]

SO THAT'S WHY MELANIE NOTICED NOT!SASHA WHILE THE OTHERS DIDNT!! i kept wondering how she managed to do that !

[@melissaharris3389]

​@@audacioustabby2774Exactly. Someone needs to know or there isn't any fear.

[@jaykatara5467]

I don't think we've ever heard Jon more terrified and upset than in this tape.

[@ironbarsjack7977]

Two minutes in and I realize what Jon meant when he said he knew where to start at the end of the last episode. Finally he’s catching on!

[@wakipaki7381]

Well at least this answer my constant screams of why Not!Sasha went undetected for so long. It's in-universe magic, not incompetence. That's alright, I suppose

[@spensirmclife6549]

Or your just like me who forgot that scene that happened at the end of episode 39 and just forgot what the original sounded like

[@BellaNya73]

they all did say that they thought it was jane prentiss screaming

[@kilogramate]

THE VOICEACTING OF THIS SERIES IS SO GOOD

[@kilogramate]

JON HOW?? GIV ME YOUR SECRET

[@takeoats]

@@kilogramate simple: act with your voice

[@TheXeno10]

dammit Jon trust martin already he is your sam in this horrifying adventure to mount literal doom your sam in the nights watch

[@DJsonnet141]

Your Sam on the road so far!

[@tearez13]

@@DJsonnet141 ON THE ROAD SO FAAAAAAARRR!!!!!!!!

[@XerxesTexasToast]

Being too much like your mom, to the point of friction, hit close to home for me.

[@nanahuatli2144]

I love how real the statement givers are. Personally I don't have this type of relationship, fortunately, but I've seen it happen to other people too often.

[@kohtea]

i was already spoiled for what happened to sasha, but when jon's voice dies at "how it ki--" my heart just DROPPED

[@simavolodina]

congrats, that's the first episode to really get under my skin and what did it wasn't even the supernatural part, just the real mom's stellar parenting

[@allie_678]

Ugh yes… same here.

[@sneasnake6368]

my fav comment ever hahahah

[@GarethOfByzantium]

Sarcasm? She was right about the husband though.

[@atiredweeb8551]

The way Jon's voice dies in his throat is just- 🤌🤌🤌 HE FINALLY FIGURED IT OUT LETS GOOOOO But also holy crap his paranoia probably just jumped from "everyone is a suspect for Gerteude's murder" to "Everyone could be a shape shifting liar that killed Gertrude and can kill me too and no one would know. *I* wouldn't know "

[@nanahuatli2144]

Not!Them and Stranger namedrop! But he still hasn't recalled Not!Graham. And yeah, I guess it just likes replacing people to fuck with their acquaintances, nothing more organized than that. Poor Jon... :( I guess she really isn't coming back.

[@b-blythe6763]

It's odd that Not!Graham seemed to know something was coming for him though.

[@samschmidt8772]

I feel like this is the moment where things really became real for Jon. The worms were scary but they found out how to deal with them and while they had several brushes with danger then, they all made it out alive, at least that's what everyone thought. The fact that this whole time Sasha hasn't been Sasha and all of the realization that as safe as the archives has felt, they're not all that safe. That one of his people, one of his team, one of his friends, has died. I don't know what that's going to do to Jon. Frankly I'm scared for him. He's been through so much. I don't know how much more till he breaks.

[@late_prince8945]

But not Sasha, I liked her so much. I had this tiny hope she would come back, but that's a thing from kid's cartoons

[@yourdadisastoner]

Are you from Poland?? I mean, your yt name surely is :D

[@late_prince8945]

@@yourdadisastoner Yes, unfortunately.

[@squesrobertson1881]

I like your mother.

[@kehlcassidy9562]

I also hope she's just trapped somewhere, not dead, but... *sigh

[@frogwithknives3749]

Is no one going to talk about the fact that jon read the end credits this time?

[@ot7biasedmashups]

THANKS FOR NOTICING. Shit threw me off. I wonder if Martin took over for a bit because Jon was getting too unstable and he's doing it himself again because, even though this situation is tragic, he's finally able to catch on? And like be more grounded in what the actual problem is instead of looking for Gertrude's killer?

[@maxskellington910]

That whole "How it ki-" part imo was Jon realizing that the real Sasha was dead, and it just sort of hit him. akHjdshj god his voice makes me so fucking depressed

[@birbelle]

And!! This also explains why Melanie remembers! It’s interesting to note that so many statement-makers die sometime after visiting the Institute, but clearly the Entities(?) want there to be survivors to tell their tale?? Or something?? Like how that poor lady ‘escaped’ from Michael, only to be caught again as soon as she made her statement. Michael could have taken her back at any time, but it chose THAT moment to do it. But then, didn’t Prentiss or someone say that the worms hate the Archives because knowledge reduces fear of the Entities or something? They were even physically slower once they entered the Archives,,, aaaaaa the pieces are slowly coming together but I can’t see what picture it is yet

[@jaxsonadros2066]

I have a theory that uses one tiny spoiler, so spoilers below My theory is that the Eye interferes in some statement givers fates so that they can collect and consume the fear they produce from having to relive it. The Eyes interference is never confirmed outright iirc, but there is a detail that gets revealed later that jon reading the statements causes the statement givers to relive the moment or have nightmares of him staring at them.

[@birbelle]

@@jaxsonadros2066 true!! plus all of the entities would benefit from statement givers bc when they relive their fear, they have to deal with both the og trauma (eg spiral) and new trauma of Having Something Watching. also... they probably just enjoy playing with their food lmao

[@Stormada14]

Jon’s paranoia turned him into the boy who cried wolf Edit: Also fun fact there’s a psychological condition called capgras syndrome where someone believes that a person they know has been replaced by an impostor who looks like them

[@conibal5045]

sasha kinda sus, i saw her vent in electrical...

[@anoninunen]

John: "I can vouch for Sasha, I saw her in the vents and she didn't kill me"

[@KemonoPriestessHazuki]

Jane Prentiss "The horde of worms, pestilence" = X People's church of the divine host, Maxwell Reiner = X NOT!Sasha = Next on the hit list : - 3

[@roxasxiii4454]

John's paranoia = INTENCE THERAPY

[@dannhoff6646]

Noo, please, i hope sasha isn't dead, or that she is instead trapped in something at least. I really liked her :'(

[@nanahuatli2144]

I was hoping she was sucked in by the table or something.

[@PirateGondolier]

"i was never enough for my mother and so now i doubt myself and my achievements" lmao we call that imposter syndrome 👉👉

[@golesh-ow5dp]

Sometime ago someone left a comment along the lines of"dif you know - when the recording is truly abnormal you can hear static " i thought that it couldn't be right . This time i turned the volume up. There. It. Was . Literally shivers . TMA has such amazing attention to details .

[@PedroKing19]

I hope you know it's been this way since the very first episode! It's worth a re-listen lol!

[@fluffsnake]

this actually brought tears in my eyes when Jon's voice broke off.......... T_____T I had actually hoped the table caused all this and that Sasha got somehow trapped in it(??) and replaced... Sasha being dead is hard to accept :(((

[@Vi_Vi_1]

I know, this one really hurts 😭

[@hermazingbartels2377]

It was a shock to hear Jon’s voice doing the outro! Now I’m used to Martin!

[@signin6233]

I love Gertrude!! Gosh, her voice is so fantastic

[@someoneawesome8717]

In terms of voice actors they are mother and son

[@Vi_Vi_1]

@@someoneawesome8717 i love so much that Jon's irl mother plays Gertrude. It's such a fun detail

[@someoneawesome8717]

@@Vi_Vi_1 Sue Sims is a delightful woman

[@Vi_Vi_1]

@@someoneawesome8717 indeed! Also apparently having a great voice runs in the family lol

[@HyacinthoIgnis]

the stranger huh 👀but oh god oh god the season end approaching holy shit poor jon :(

[@Jas-ii2bi]

I've been hearing about the stranger in the comments for a while, nice to finally actually get there in the series!

[@Carolina57685]

i knew theyd mention changelings when lucy talked about folklore, love it!! (even if thats not exactly what the creatures are exactly in this universe)

[@justinjacobs1501]

Folklore is often the attempt to explain the unexplainable...

[@Carolina57685]

@@justinjacobs1501 yeah, i know?

[@catch5145]

i really love Gertrude's delivery on statements! it's a bit more matter of fact and it sounds like she's discovering the information as we are, and i like that about it

[@RoseMultiverse]

Jon take some time to grieve man

[@namaschu9418]

I would sell my soul to Crowley himself to give John a hug

[@bebeth8468]

Which one?

[@namaschu9418]

@@bebeth8468 John Magnus Archives

[@bebeth8468]

Nono, I mean which Crowley

[@namaschu9418]

@@bebeth8468 Supernatural Crowley lol

[@bebeth8468]

@@namaschu9418 nice

[@pree381]

I had just the strangest sense of deja vu this entire episode. This is my first listen through of this podcast but I could have sworn I'd heard this story before.

[@yanshero42]

That's so strange, I felt the same O_O

[@americantoastman7296]

In case anyone reads these and starts to feel spooked about "weird coincidences" - i didnt get that feeling. At all. Sorry :

[@saurabhsharma6939]

I think the reason being you pretty much knew what was going to happen in the statement and jon's realization

[@spud2576]

You did. Unfortunately I don’t have the episode number but we’ve heard a similar story about something like this before. It was a man instead, he was a bit weird beforehand and made the protagonist uncomfortable, and towards the end he started to act very paranoid. The protagonist notices that a creature with long arms was reaching out of the guys window and in the morning the protagonist notices that the guy isn’t quite the same, and the Not!creepy guy says something vaguely threatening to him. Again, I don’t have all the details memorised, but this isn’t the only story like this.

[@saurabhsharma6939]

@@spud2576 that should be our episode 3 "Across the street" with amy patel and Not Graham

[@maddyc2025]

Hearing Jon s o so upset hurts...

[@molol44]

This is probably the scariest episode so far next to the underwater cave for me. Being killed and having your very existence erased to be replaced by someone else is horrifying. Plus Jon finally having that lightbulb moment about Sasha. The grief and guilt in his voice is palpable.

[@dark-harvet4897]

When I first listened to TMA I barely noticed that Sasha was replaced, so I was honestly in the same mental spot as Jon when the pieces were put together

[@vX-ter_]

I feel bad for jon in this episode, i mean, he found out that the sasha at thats now working at the archives is a fake, he reaslised that the real sasha could be and he cant tell anyone about it without risking gertrudes case going up in flames. All that stress is really going to damage his mental health more than it already is, i feel bad ya know :(

[@bluehairychair4885]

My mommy issues throughout this episode: strap in bae, we are in for a rollercoaster 🎢

[@Glamiers]

He’s finally putting it together! Also I think he should definitely tell Martin, I feel like Martin would be the only one to understand

[@robertj7414]

It feeds on fear, leaving one or two to feed itself. If no one notices at all there would be no one to fear it.

[@tamaralso]

Oh! I thought re-listening would make it less heartbreaking! I was wrong!

[@bunny4732]

I’m also here on a relisten and everyone’s comments on every ep are so good but this has become my new favorite comment on all the eps I’ve listened to so far because same 🥲

[@evagrev7351]

My theory from this episode and what we know so far: At last, the realisation we've all been waiting for. John finally put it together in the last episode, finally the supernatural's try or, to be exact in this episode, Not!Sasha's powers of making him not notice all the weird things about her weren't stronger than his will to know, to find out the truth. And he now knows that all those feelings were right: Not!Sasha is not Sasha. I was kinda hoping that Sasha wouldn't actually be dead, but since in this case there hasn't been anyone claiming to be the mother after the father died means that either the real mother was never in the normal-dimension ever again or that she was but under a different identity (something like forgetting her past life and being given another one where someone else knows that she's not who she claims to be or having amnesia or something like that, I don't know). Gertrude's burning the tape sounds reasonable, I wouldn't want to attract that creature's attention either and if you don't know how it works then it's best not to risk it, but I don't know if her burning the tape was only just because of that reason. That and her neglect of investigating further because "it would be a waste of time" sounds to me more like she didn't want to go to the offense with that creature and only wanted to collect the info about it. We get two names, Not!Them and the Stranger, so these are the names of two creatures who may or may not be the same entity with different manifestations. I mean, a person you know being replaced by a stranger does sound like something that an entity called Stranger would do, but many of those entities are very similar with others though they're different, so we don't know yet. Gertrude's last remark, of it being a creature that just goes and replaces people at random for a short time each time and the damage it would do if it had a plan, makes me believe that Not!Sasha does indeed have a plan. Her long "dates" at the wax museum, her volunteering to go and check out the taxidermy shop, her staying as Not!Sasha for so long, the shreds of paper John found in her desk when he was "checking for files", her going to the tunnels again and again, it's clear that she has a plan, a plan that we don't know yet, and she's working with someone else outside the Institute. Hopefully her plan will be shown in this season's finale, I'd hate to see her being inside the Institute for another season and John having to pretend everything is okay when he sure as hell knows it's not.

[@hiddenace1953]

Thank you for always replying to these videos. Your conclusive theories are so interesting and these are always what I'm thinking. Honestly I just love them so I just wanted to say thank you.

[@evagrev7351]

@@hiddenace1953 Thank you for your kind words :$ ^_^

[@maggiem6209]

Holy shit. I've been sitting here, listening to this while crocheting a reading shawl. I knew pretty early it was the Not!Them, but when the reporter mentioned the Changlings tape, and when Jon mentioned that Sasha's tapes were the only ones missing, EVERY HAIR ON THE BACK OF MY NECK STOOD ON END. That was such a terrifying and emotional delivery holy SHIT.

[@kimberlyalexandrae1]

I just wanan cry man. I loved Sasha! How could this be done to a main character!!! ;_; I hope she's brought back somehow but its unlikely.

[@TheNitpickChick]

Oh... no. Strap in my friend. 😔 (Although this comment is a month old, so I’m sure you know by now what is to come... 😢)

[@lizziejones2183]

The way the statement just starts "There is a stranger claiming to be my mother," made me want to throw up

[@debbiebishop86]

i love gertrude so much..................

[@snugg1e143]

*cries*

[@macabrecitrus2127]

This is so sad... The grief that it must cause to realize a loved one died months ago without you knowing...

[@CamilleChauTempsDesCerises]

Gertrude knows so much more than us and Jon, it's fascinating to listen to her

[@melissaharris3389]

50 years is a long time to be in a post.

[@nikonikoknees4488]

dude I can't even listen through the audio recording of Gertrude telling the story because it just sends so many chills down my spine.

[@jaredlucev2705]

"What confuses me is why one or two people can always see through it?" Me: "Well, we need something for the episode don't we?"

[@oldbeef8103]

gertrude is so sessiiiiii

[@coreacartoonist]

I’m afraid for Jon :(

[@namaschu9418]

I was so afraid of how John would react and I was right to be

[@Andrea-lu8fz]

OMgg this one hit me hard,, i love my mom so much so just thinking about this gives me Chills ;--; ,, also props to jonathan who probably is going to do a big dumb thing again for his trust issues :))) totally cool :)) also The Stranger (with block mayus) aparently the Not!Them is an "aspect" of it, so we can only asume the creatures we have seen before likely are an "aspect" of one other big thing behind them!!!!!! cant wait to find out where this leads T--T

[@meilen2819]

ok so I it threw me off when I heard Jon's voice at the credits and not Alexander's

[@tonio1377]

HOLY FUCK Tho thinking about how this is going to mess up Jon even more is slightly terrifying ;_; someone helps my boy please

[@cezar3169]

Jeez, this one really scared the crap out of me. I couldn't bear the thought of my mother dying and a Not!Them replacing her and my father ignorant about the woman he was kissing.

[@late_prince8945]

Oh man, I know this one is gonna be good

[@matthewkisner5386]

I don't usually make comments. But I have no one to speculate with about this, so please humor me. But I believe that the reason for some people remembering and others not is that while it has to blend in, the fear has to come from somewhere. What would be scary or amiss if it simply changed everything?

[@Piper_____]

That’s a really good theory! I also saw someone say that it only impacts those who know them really well, but I don’t know if that tracks given the neighbors’ altered recollections. This theory that you have makes a lot of sense, especially since the not!them seem to take joy in the terror they cause those that know

[@aw3707]

hey outro jon is back

[@pyrosianheir]

Oh, thank god... Jon didn't go on to an entirely unrelated case. Good. Sad, since he's likely about to realize that Sasha's been gone for a while, but good. Edit: OH SNAP! I think this was the first mention of a name for one of the... source things for each fear source! And, sure enough, Jon's about to break down... Poor guy. He's not the emotionally stunted person that the rest of the cast seem to think he is....

[@mimkyodar]

Mary Keay outright mentions The End though. and Trevor directly alludes to The Hunt

[@pyrosianheir]

@@mimkyodar I must have left off for a night between Mary's and this one the first time through. When did Trevor mention the Hunt, directly? I don't remember a proper name drop for it.

[@alabaster_rox]

There was also when Mike Crew used Ex Altiora and invoked The Vast!

[@Idran]

Back in the hospital episode, ep 12, Gerard namedropped the Beholding and the Desolation, I think that was the absolute earliest?

[@Cthulhuer]

This episode gave me literal chills

[@nabibobetauu]

I knew it, that’s why all of the tapes with Sasha voices disappeared - they’re the only thing that don’t get overwritten

[@f_mva]

this episode is amazing! but im VERY curious about the "aspect of the stranger" thing... i have some theories that i think are turning out to be correct

[@epsyblue7714]

Poor Jon. This revelation is really hurting him.

[@Alsarnia]

Jon's been so bad at this spying thing so far so now I'm just imagining him forcefully wedging himself between Not!Sasha and the others while giving her suspicous glares and not explaining himself. You're not subtle, Jon. Go take a nap.

[@cantaloupegodling352]

The way he trailed off saying "how it kills" in that second he properly realised the fact Sasha is actually dead.

[@tinytortoise1998]

If the original Rose Cooper studied English and Irish folklore, she probably was familiar with changelings. I imagine that whatever replaced her found it funny to turn her into one of the myths she studied.

[@Drak_buddy]

Everytime he realizes this means Sasha is dead the moment it sets in it always makes me wanna cry he cares so much

[@midnights2631]

The pain in Jon's voice is sad, he had the realization his friend, Sasha, is dead. :(

[@sheepgrass500]

I heard that this podcast has a fear for everybody and omg this is def my episode, one of my most common nightmares are where my mom isn't my mom, like it looks like her but 100% is not her, and all I do is scream or cry because I know it wants to hurt me but I can't just run away because I have to find my real mom if she isn't already dead. Ngl this episode is freakily specific to those nightmares lolll

[@racoon_in_ankhmorpork]

Poor Jon. The realisation that Sasha is likely dead… the voice acting broke my heart. Poor, poor Jon.

[@nrpbrown]

Fun episode to have your mother narrate!

[@fauxclaws]

dam, if he tries to tell anyone they might just think he's being overly paranoid again. Plus the brief silence were he's realizing sasha is probably dead. Up untill now i'v kinda been holding out hope that there's some way to bring her back, but his reaction makes it feel more like she's gone for good now.

[@Alsarnia]

"I can't tell the others" Well, we all know how bad you are at lying so it won't be long until they figure out you know something anyway.

[@toastghost9145]

With Sims once again voicing the endcard, I can't shake the feeling that the previous voice this season was Not-John.

[@cawareyoudoin7379]

WAIT A SECOND

[@sophienah4654]

i thought it was martin?

[@cawareyoudoin7379]

Yeah, I think it was Martin too. Curious why, though.

[@emerson3323]

@@cawareyoudoin7379 Martin's voice actor is the director and sounscaper for the show, so it makes sense that he does a lot of the announcements.

[@cawareyoudoin7379]

@@emerson3323 My dear friend. It's been two months. I am a different person now. I know that, and much more now. Sometimes much more than I'd want to. I am awaiting the last season, and though I'm not up to date with all trivia, I DO now know that Alex is the director. I was quite immersed back then, and this was my first podcast ever, so I had no idea what was going on (didn't help that Jonathan Sims was played by Jonathan Sims. In Night Vale (the second podcast I'm listening to), they at least had the decency to give him a different surname. Oh, mr Sims...). I was listening to it on youtube, and wanted to have it on my phone without using the internet, so I went to do something else, played the episode on the computer, and tried recording on my phone. Fortunately it locked itself, and I did discover the podcasts app. I'm a different person now.

[@lauraperic5596]

this is the first ep in a while to have jon narrating the end(outro or whatever thats called)

[@Spar10Leonidas]

Looks like my comment on an earlier episode where I referred to this entity as a “changeling” was rather prescient, even if that isn’t the name that the characters in the series prefer to use.

[@faxonii]

GERTRUDE Case 9941509 - Lucy Cooper. Incident occurred in Draycott, Somerset, August 1994. Victim’s name given as Rose Cooper. Statement given 15th of September 1994. Committed to tape 4th of November 1996. Gertrude Robinson recording. GERTRUDE (STATEMENT) There is a stranger claiming to be my mother. I don’t know who she is. Everyone else says that she’s my mother, and gives me looks of alarm when I tell them she’s an impostor. I don’t know what to do. My mother and I have always had our differences. To be honest, it’s only been in the last five years or so that we really began speaking again. She was always a strong-willed woman, never one to blunt her opinions, and throughout my childhood it gradually got worse. Nothing I ever did was quite good enough, and any hint of pride I might have taken in myself or my achievements was always undercut by some cutting little critique. Even on those rare occasions that I succeeded at something highly enough to actually warrant her praise, it was always appended with doubt. I remember when I was fifteen I came first in an inter-school athletics competition. I was two seconds ahead in the hundred metre sprint, and all she could say was, “Make sure being the best runner doesn’t distract you from your exams”. It didn’t really come to a head until I got engaged to Laurence, though. We’d been dating on and off through university, and I’d sat through enough awkward family dinners to know that my mother didn’t like him, but her disapproval was nothing new, so I ignored it. When he proposed to me after our graduation, I’d assumed she would simply tolerate it as she had every other one of my decisions. I was wrong. When I told her, she got angry. Not the chill, disapproving anger I was used to from, but a genuine shouting rage. She accused me of throwing my life away, told me I’d regret it, and that Laurence was good-for-nothing scum who’d drag me down and stop me achieving anything. I answered her in kind, and the argument that we had that night was the last time I saw her for almost ten years. I’d try to convince myself that our differences were just that: we were simply two very different people. But sometimes I worry that the reason we could never get on was that we were far too much alike. For instance, we were both far too stubborn for our own good. Maybe that’s why I stayed with Laurence through two affairs, as if accepting that I’d made a mistake would be letting her win. In the end I only left him when he was jailed for embezzlement, eight years into our marriage. Even then, I didn’t want to speak to her. Didn’t want to tell her she’d been right. It wasn’t until my father had his accident that I finally decided to try and make amends. My father is a gentle man. To this day I couldn’t really tell you anything about his thoughts or opinions on anything, as they were invariably bulldozed by my mother. He was a benign, ineffectual presence, always in the shadow. For all that, I did love him; so when he fell from a ladder and ended up in a wheelchair, I made the decision to try and reconnect with my parents. It wasn’t easy. Beyond the greying of her hair, my mother hadn’t changed, and the reconciliation I’d hoped for never really came. I spent my visits biting my tongue, or getting into vicious fights whenever I wasn’t able to. But I could always see on my father’s face how much he liked to see me, how happy he was to have our small family together again, so I persevered. I think she saw it too, to be honest, and whenever he wheeled himself painfully into the room, she would try her best not to antagonise me. After a while we came to an uneasy peace. There were practical issues as well. They’d retired to the small village of Draycott in the Somerset countryside, and as I lived in London and didn’t have a car, it was two trains and a long bus ride anytime I wanted to see them. But I made the effort. I even conceived a reason to go more often - I’ve been doing some freelance work this summer for the British Library, recording and compiling oral histories on various topics, and it so happened that during her time as an academic, my mother had been something of an authority on English and Welsh folklore. In fact, one of the reasons she always gave for retiring out there was how many myths and legends made their home in the area. So I proposed that I make some recordings of her, telling and discussing them for the project. She agreed, though not before telling me how pointless the whole thing sounded, and over the last few months I saw them several times. My father was happy, the recordings I got were surprisingly usable, and everything seemed to be getting better. Two weeks ago I went to see them, and someone else opened the door. Someone I didn’t recognise. She wore my mother’s clothes, but they shouldn’t have fitted her. My mother is tall, rail thin and always keeps her hair cut short, but the woman who answered my knocking was shorter, rounded about the middle and wore her curly white hair down almost to her shoulders. I had definitely never seen her before. I asked if my parents were home, and she laughed. It was a soft, joyful sound that was so unlike anything I expected to hear in that house that I had to take a step back to collect my thoughts. My father wheeled round the corner and shouted a greeting as though everything was perfectly normal. He moved up beside the plump old woman standing in the doorway and looked at me, smiling. The image made me feel queasy. I’m not even sure why, at this point I had no reason to think this person was anything other than a friend of my parents, but something wasn’t right. I asked where my mother was, and they both got very quiet. I repeated the question with more force, and my father looked up to this strange woman in confusion. She smiled sadly and stepped towards me, opening her arms as if to hug me, but I yelled at her to get back, demanding to see my mother. My father’s face grew dark, and he told me that my joke wasn’t funny. With the most force I’d ever heard from him, he told me that however angry I was, this wasn’t the right way to deal with it. I looked back at this woman, standing there with open arms, and she smiled at me.

[@faxonii]

“Come, give your mother a hug,” she said. The hour or two after that are a bit of a blur. I have vague memories of being numbly taken through into the living room, sat on the sofa and handed a cup of tea. I tried to drink it as they talked on at me, but it was ice cold, so I must have been sitting there a long time. I nodded once or twice, I think. My dad clearly thought I was having some sort of breakdown, and was just talking about whatever came into his head in the hopes of calming me down. The woman who was not my mother just talked cheerily, as though there was nothing at all amiss. She had a kind voice, and her words were warm and friendly. She was nothing like my mother, and I was very quickly becoming deeply afraid. Had she done something to my real mother, and somehow convinced my father she was her? It seemed a ridiculous thought. My father may have been disabled but his mind was still sharp, and he’d never showed any signs of the sort of dementia that would let a stranger pose as his wife. Was he her prisoner? Maybe, but he didn’t seem to be acting as though anything was wrong, and if that was the case why bother trying to convince me of so obvious a lie? I excused myself, and moved quickly out towards the back garden. Neither of them made a move to stop me. I saw a phone near the back porch and grabbed it, intending to call the police, when something caught my eye. It was a series of photographs on the wall, showing our family in happier times. It had been there for as long as I’d been to the house, and likely a lot longer. I had spent a long time staring at it my first visit there, lost in pleasant nostalgia, remembering days at the beach or the trip we took to Hanover when I was eight. But now, in every one of them there stood this new woman where my mother should have been. She looked younger in these pictures, just like my father, and across the dozen pictures on the wall I could see a timeline of this woman growing old alongside him. There was no way these photos could have been staged, and I could even see a small crease on the bottom corner of the Hanover picture. I remembered I’d sat on the pictures by accident on the journey home, bending the corner out of place. I’d got a nasty talking to after that, and certainly not from the kindly fraud currently putting the kettle on in the kitchen. It didn’t make any sense. It still doesn’t make any sense. After dinner I insisted that we get out the photo albums, spouting some nonsense about catching up on memories. My father and the woman who was not my mother agreed readily enough, and so out came the albums and I began to look through them. I must have looked at well over five hundred photographs that evening, and not a single one was out of place or failed to feature this stranger where my mother should have been. As my turning of the pages became more and more frantic, I spotted a look on the face of this new mother. It was amused, almost mocking, and I became sure that she knew. Whoever this woman that called herself Rose Cooper was, she knew it was a lie as much as I did, and my confusion and fear delighted her. For all that, though, I was at a complete loss to explain any of it. Every piece of photographic evidence I can find supported this woman’s claim to be my mother. My father’s memories agreed, as did the memories of the two neighbours I was able to talk to the following day - Tom Harrison and Joanne Fisher. Both of them told me that they’d known George and Rose Cooper since they’d moved in, and when I asked them to describe Rose, they said she was medium height with a kind, round face and long, curly white hair. I even took a walk up to the Church of St. Peter’s, where I knew my mother occasionally visited, to ask the vicar, a polite man named Neil Angus. He told me the same thing as the others, though he did ask after my mother’s health. Apparently she’d had a bit of a fall the week before outside the church, and the vicar had come out to help after hearing her cry out. He turned a bit pale when he said this. I pressed him further, and he told me that, although she’d seemed fine when he had reached her, the scream was like nothing he’d ever heard. I asked the woman who is not my mother about her ‘fall’ near the church. She looked me right in the eyes, smiled, and said it was nothing. She’d just had a “bit of a funny turn”. That’s it, really. I left immediately and haven’t been back. I’ve never been a believer in the supernatural before, but it seems clear to me that something attacked my mother near St. Peter’s church, killed her and somehow replaced her completely. The only piece of evidence I can find is the recordings I’d made of her beforehand. The tapes still have her real voice on. I have a few, so you can have one for whatever tests you might want to do. I’m going to go back to my father and play him the others. Maybe it’ll jog a memory, or maybe he’ll try to have me put away. Either way, I have to try. I used to think I hated my mother; I really did. But now I can’t stop listening to those tapes, now I know they’re the only way I’ll ever hear her voice again. All of them except the tape we recorded on the old myths of the fae, of changelings. I’m not ready to listen to that one yet. GERTRUDE Final comments: Unfortunately for Ms. Cooper’s attempts to convince her father, it appears George Cooper died of carbon monoxide poisoning from a gas leak two days after this statement was recorded, before her next visit. No other bodies were found, and there has been no sign of anyone identifying themselves as Rose Cooper since. Based on the interactions and effects, I suspect this to be the creature that Adelard Dekker refers to as the “NotThem” in statement 9910607. If the pattern of behaviour is consistent with what he establishes, then further follow-up on this case is pointless: the thing has finished with the Cooper family, and will not be revisiting them. It rarely seems to stay in the same place or with the same people for long, though it’s hard to guess at its motives. Personally, I suspect it to be an aspect of The Stranger, though that’s entirely conjecture at this point. What puzzles me more is why one or two people can always see through it. The sheer power that it must be able to call upon to be able to rewrite so much of reality, seemingly as a reflex, is staggering. So why does it always miss a few witnesses? It is at least reassuring to know that magnetic tape seems to escape being overwritten, so if I get changed, you can be sure this is my real voice. Based on Dekker’s statement, it would seem Polaroids are also relatively stable. Beyond that, I find it comforting that this creature appears content to travel freely sowing random terror. I dread to think the damage it could inflict if it had a purpose. I have destroyed the tape Ms. Cooper provided us as a precaution - I have no interest in attracting this thing’s attention. [CLICK] [CLICK] ARCHIVIST I found this tape while rifling through the boxes Basira provided me. It was labelled “Changeling / Imposter,” and given Melanie’s outburst last week, I thought it a prudent place to start listening. It is, uh… The tapes that went missing after the Prentiss attack all had Sasha’s voice on them. I hadn’t put it together until listening to this. I don’t know what this… I know exactly what this means. But I don’t know what to do about it. I can’t tell the others. Even if I could get them to believe me, they’d find out about Gertrude’s tapes. I can’t risk that. I need to deal with this myself. And that means I need more information on this thing. How it works. How it k… I need to know how to stop it. I’m going to start by tracking down the statement by this “Adelard Dekker”. I… I think the statements from the Nineties are marginally more organised now. If it’s here, if Sasha… I’m going to find out how to kill it. [CLICK]

[@aliyinn3186]

@@faxonii thank you!

[@sololad2423]

We got a name for it!

[@uncreativeusername7148]

George Cooper is also the name of Sheldon Coopers father and I pictured his face all the time they talked about the father lmao Also poor Jon :c I love this podcast so much and I'm glad they're finally catching on about Not!Sasha

[@anteyefolkz7777]

That's nothing , when I was miraculously born , I was almost dead from the umbilical cord looped around my neck. Considering the terror of a life that has followed , I realise her own body was trying to kill me before I even knew it, how fuckin scary is that?

[@mjamin9124]

the umbilical cord is actually made up of fetal cells- it was part of your body, not hers. imo that makes it even creepier in some ways

[@LunDruid]

I don't know why this story kinda got to me a bit... went to give my mother a hug.

[@wonderwhatsgonnahappen579]

Now Jon finally knows 😢 Man, i can hear the fear and grief in his voice as it dies mid sentence. 💔 Here, i offer daily hugs to Jon 🫂

[@laurenloertscher1319]

These ones, the spooky rather than the violent or disgusting, these ones are my favorite.

[@mysharona9097]

isn't it implied that Tim knows about Sasha? A few episodes back he mentioned her name and sounded too disgusted to say what he thought.

[@mimkyodar]

Nope. Only Melanie.

[@fevre_dream8542]

My working theory is that Tim and Sasha had a thing going before Not!Sasha replaced her and started dating "Tom" the stock photo man.

[@clayxros576]

The rage that would have filled me as I listened to this in Jon's place, I'd have been sharpening one of the weapon artifacts just to make sure the Not!Person is lost or way beyond dead. When people close to me are hurt, I can feel the ancient rage of my ancestors surge. Weirdly, my mom has it more than my father oftentimes, so I know it isn't the Swedish side. Guess some folks just have a deeper family defense. And I can only imagine the sorrow Jon felt...because when you don't have rage to fill that razor sharp void, it's such a cold vacuum.

[@dpmjmun]

I've been recording stories from my grandpa, got me right on the mood for this ep again