Episode 105: The Devil You Know
(Theme song and intro plays)
0:0:55.1
ALEX: The Black Tapes Podcast is an exploration of life, belief, faith, and occasionally the paranormal. This season we are focusing our lens on the work of the Strand Institute and its enigmatic founder and president, Dr. Richard Strand. We’ll be telling our story in order, week to week, so if you haven’t listened to the first couple of episodes. Go back and start there. We’ll be here when you get back. From the National Radio Alliance and Minnow Beats Whale, it’s the Black Tapes Podcast. I’m Alex Reagan.
(Musical Interlude)
0:01:45.3
ALEX: This week, as promised, our Black Tape contains an exorcism. But first, we return to last week. You’ll remember I played a recording that had mysteriously appeared on my phone.
ALEX: Strand is convinced it’s nothing but some kid messing around with my phone, someone playing a prank, or the brain-child of some well-trained hacker who just happens to be a rabid Black Tapes Podcast fan. The more I listen to it, the more I think he’s probably right. Still….it is a bit creepy. Strand is in Seattle for a few weeks and I’m going to do my best to make sure most of his time is monopolized by Black Tapes cases. To that end, we have an exorcism. But before we jump in, I’d like to set the stage with a little background. To this day, The Exorcist is the scariest movie I’ve seen. I won’t watch it again, no matter how many friends tell me it’s not as scary as I remember. Something about that movie unsettled every part of me. I’m sure it has something to do with my growing up in a semi-religious household, my parents weren’t crazy devout, but I was exposed to that iconography and mythology at an early age. I knew who Satan was.
To be honest, this is the part of researching the paranormal that I wasn’t looking forward to. Ghosts, I could handle. Demonic possession? Not so much. And apparently, I’m not alone. According to a recent poll, 90% of Americans believe in God. Of that 90%, 67% believe demonic possession is an actual thing. That’s a lot of people who believe something else might take over their bodies and souls. In 1999, the Catholic Church listed 208 cases of demonic possession in America. Last year, they reported a staggering 1118 cases. That’s around a 450% increase. This has forced the Church to do something they have never done before…they now have programs devoted solely to training exorcists. In 1999, they opened the Exorcist Society of America. Before 1999, there were only 3 Church approved exorcists in the United States. Today, there are 32. Why the sudden rise of alleged demonic possessions?
ALEX: That’s Father James Kelly, he teaches religious studies and is a priest at the Church of St. Thomas in Bellevue.
ALEX: That’s Dr. Brad Gilbert, a family psychologist in Seattle. He’s a stout man with an easy smile. He’s Austrian, and there’s a dichotomy at work between his easy going nature and a severity that comes out when discussing the Church. I’m ashamed to admit the name Freud Flintstone popped into my head the moment I met him.
ALEX: Immediately following the conversation with Father Kelly, my producer Nic and I tried to track down a psychiatrist who performed this kind of work for the Church. We were unable to find a single doctor who had ever cleared a patient for exorcism. The Church and the medical community clearly have very different agendas regarding exorcism. I wanted to speak with somebody with experience on both sides of that line of faith.
ALEX: That’s Derek, we promised we wouldn’t use his last name. But a few years ago- he claims he was possessed by a demon.
0:11:18.6
ALEX: I will admit, I found all of this stuff fascinating but I still had no idea what actually went on during an exorcism. All I knew was what I saw on The Exorcist. So I looked online. I found a large number of videos claiming they were actual exorcisms. Here’s one from 2013.
ALEX: All I see is a woman out of her mind. Screaming. Wanting to maybe kill somebody. But did I see the Devil? Did things in the room move? No. She didn’t look like a woman possessed, she looked like a woman who needed to be taken to a medical professional. The rest of the videos appear to be similar to this one or clearly fake. Which brings us to Strand’s Black Tape.
ALEX: Okay, this one is hard to describe. There’s a middle-aged priest praying in Latin. There’s another priest next to him praying and holding a cross. On a bed in the middle of the room is 12 year old Jessica Wheldon. She’s brunette and slim- skinny. There are huge men holding each of her limbs down. One guy who looks like he weighs about 200 lbs has all his weight pressing down on one of her legs. Another guy around the same size has her by the other ankle. There are two others doing the same thing to her arms. These are strong men and they’re trying to hold down this little girl. And there’s something about her- she actually looks like she’s going to bite off their heads. Kind of like the girl in the Exorcist but without any special effects makeup, and a lot smaller.
I’ll be back with more from the exorcism in a moment, but first I’d like to go back to the strange message I found on my phone last week.
ALEX: Since we launched this podcast, we’ve received a lot of this type of thing. Mainly from people who don’t like Strand’s brand of skepticism. Most of these messages are easy to ignore, but this one felt a bit different.
ALEX: And a week later.
ALEX: Nic wasn’t excited about the meet.
0:14:43.8
ALEX: So I went to meet this mystery person. He looked like a librarian: a bit nervous but pretty docile. Nic ended up frisking him anyway. I sat down and asked him about the messages he kept sending to the show. His name is Brayden Court.
ALEX: I played him the message. He claims he had nothing to do with it. And I believe him. I told Strand about Mr. Court.
ALEX: And that brings us back to the exorcism of Jessica Wheldon.
ALEX: What just happened was… Okay, that little girl, on her back on the bed, for one full second, lifted those huge men off their feet. They’re using all their weight to hold her down. She does this a few more times.
ALEX: So, okay, that happened. The lifting up the men stuff was crazy and the way the girl looked at them, but the really scary part were the sounds. The howls coming out of the girl. They didn’t seem human. This wasn’t like those online exorcisms. At all. Those sounds… I’ve never heard anything like it.
ALEX: It turns out that the priest who performed the exorcism on the tape, Father Peter Vincent, is still around. We found him at a care home near Tacoma, Washington. It’s a mental health facility run by the Church.
0:21:32.3
ALEX: Father Vincent wasn’t that old, maybe early sixties. He was energetic, even happy. In fact, it didn’t seem like he belonged in that facility at all. At first.
ALEX: Strand approached the Archdiocese in search of that recording. But they said no such tape exists.
0:24:20.6
ALEX: We went back to the care home. It had been 24 hours since we visited Father Vincent. He was gone. The clerk told us that they moved him to a more… supportive environment. They wouldn’t tell us where. They said it was a privacy issue at his family’s request. Strand went back to the Church but nobody was willing to provide any additional information.
So, what’s the answer to the exorcism question? Was it an elaborate staging that Strand could’ve… or would have debunked had he had the proper foresight and equipment? Was it a display of some kind of super adrenal strength? The kind that allows a mother to lift a car from on top of her child? Or was it a genuine supernatural event? Something beyond the realm of normal human understanding?
0:26:31.6
ALEX: Here’s what we think we know about the disappearance of Coralee Strand: she vanished from the side of the highway in 1997, close to the place she and Strand had stopped for gas. They were on their way down the coastal highway to Big Sur. Strand disappeared for 5 days after filing the police report. He was a person of interest, and some, including Strand himself, would say he was the prime suspect.
Coralee’s parents remain suspicious of Strand and his own daughter apparently disowned him when he returned home after his 5 day trip. Strand claims he spent those 5 days looking for Coralee. And we will have more on that very soon, but first, we have what can only be described as a huge and incredible break in the story.
Okay, I’m on the phone with my producer Nic. He’s been researching every black tape case and doing his best to speak with everyone involved. Even peripherally with Richard Strand and the Strand Institute.
ALEX: We’d like to thank Christina Rains at Pacific Northwest Stories for helping us track down this audio. The tape had long since deteriorated, so this clip is taken from a digitized copy in their archives. Sadly, they didn’t digitize the entire tape, only the section used on the show. The next voice that you hear is going to be Coralee Strand.
0:33.55.8
ALEX: Okay, there are so many things. At this point, I was excited, scared, worried about losing control of the story, and worried about Strand. How was he going to react to hearing what Nic and I were sure was his missing wife’s voice so many years after her disappearance? What happened to Coralee at the end of the tape? Who was the man on the tape? Who was Warren? If we’re right about this, we’ve just heard significant evidence from a missing person’s case from 1997. Evidence that nobody, including the police or Richard Strand, had been able to examine in context.
I spoke with Nic, and we both agreed that the first step would be to share the tape with Strand. You’ll hear Strand’s reaction to that recording and a whole lot more, next week.
The Black Tapes Podcast is a National Radio Alliance and Minnow Beats Whale production, recorded in Seattle and Vancouver. Produced by Nic Silver, mixed and engineered by Alan Williams and Samantha Paulson. Edited by Nic Silver and Alex Reagan. Executive producers Paul Bay and Terry Miles.
0:0:55.1
ALEX: The Black Tapes Podcast is an exploration of life, belief, faith, and occasionally the paranormal. This season we are focusing our lens on the work of the Strand Institute and its enigmatic founder and president, Dr. Richard Strand. We’ll be telling our story in order, week to week, so if you haven’t listened to the first couple of episodes. Go back and start there. We’ll be here when you get back. From the National Radio Alliance and Minnow Beats Whale, it’s the Black Tapes Podcast. I’m Alex Reagan.
(Musical Interlude)
0:01:45.3
ALEX: This week, as promised, our Black Tape contains an exorcism. But first, we return to last week. You’ll remember I played a recording that had mysteriously appeared on my phone.
- (Recording plays) MAN: He’s not who you think.
ALEX: Strand is convinced it’s nothing but some kid messing around with my phone, someone playing a prank, or the brain-child of some well-trained hacker who just happens to be a rabid Black Tapes Podcast fan. The more I listen to it, the more I think he’s probably right. Still….it is a bit creepy. Strand is in Seattle for a few weeks and I’m going to do my best to make sure most of his time is monopolized by Black Tapes cases. To that end, we have an exorcism. But before we jump in, I’d like to set the stage with a little background. To this day, The Exorcist is the scariest movie I’ve seen. I won’t watch it again, no matter how many friends tell me it’s not as scary as I remember. Something about that movie unsettled every part of me. I’m sure it has something to do with my growing up in a semi-religious household, my parents weren’t crazy devout, but I was exposed to that iconography and mythology at an early age. I knew who Satan was.
To be honest, this is the part of researching the paranormal that I wasn’t looking forward to. Ghosts, I could handle. Demonic possession? Not so much. And apparently, I’m not alone. According to a recent poll, 90% of Americans believe in God. Of that 90%, 67% believe demonic possession is an actual thing. That’s a lot of people who believe something else might take over their bodies and souls. In 1999, the Catholic Church listed 208 cases of demonic possession in America. Last year, they reported a staggering 1118 cases. That’s around a 450% increase. This has forced the Church to do something they have never done before…they now have programs devoted solely to training exorcists. In 1999, they opened the Exorcist Society of America. Before 1999, there were only 3 Church approved exorcists in the United States. Today, there are 32. Why the sudden rise of alleged demonic possessions?
- FATHER KELLY: Most people make the mistake of presuming that exorcism and demonic possession are the exclusive purview of Christianity, they’re not.
ALEX: That’s Father James Kelly, he teaches religious studies and is a priest at the Church of St. Thomas in Bellevue.
- FATHER KELLY: All the major world religions address the ability of the devil to enter and partly or entirely possess a human host- Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, even Buddhism- where evil spirits can take over animals.
- ALEX: Yeah, but it’s Christianity that has built an entire industry devoted to the practice of exorcism. Private exorcists for hire, working outside of the bounds of the Church, have become millionaires.
- FATHER KELLY: I believe that Satan attacks our weakness. Greed is one of our greatest vices. It comes as no surprise that some would seek to profit from it.
- ALEX: How do you explain the recent rise in cases of demonic possession?
- FATHER KELLY: We live in an age where people are choosing to turn away from the Church and seek their own path, often that path leads to darkness, the occult, paganism, the rise of seances to contact dead spirits. Satan will use any opportunity to gain a foothold in people’s lives.
- ALEX: But then, why didn’t this exorcism boom happen in the 70’s? Paganism and the occult were huge then.
- FATHER KELLY: That’s when psychology began to gain legitimacy as a science, many victims of possession were mistakenly sent to asylums.
- ALEX: Mistakenly?
- FATHER KELLY: Sadly, yes.
- ALEX: Has there been an actual rise in cases of demonic possession? Or are there simply more exorcists?
- FATHER KELLY: Why would there be a need for more exorcists if there weren’t more occurrences of possession?
- GILBERT: Is that what they say?
ALEX: That’s Dr. Brad Gilbert, a family psychologist in Seattle. He’s a stout man with an easy smile. He’s Austrian, and there’s a dichotomy at work between his easy going nature and a severity that comes out when discussing the Church. I’m ashamed to admit the name Freud Flintstone popped into my head the moment I met him.
- ALEX: Well, Father Kelly showed me the numbers, reported cases of possession have jumped over 400% in the last decade and a half.
- GILBERT: Here’s what’s going on- these people are ill, they have issues that require professional treatment. When you’re hearing voices in your head, with the media and your church telling you that demonic possession is possible, it’s easier and perhaps even more romantic in some way to jump to the conclusion that you’re possessed rather than face the more difficult and realistic conclusion- that you’re sick and in need of medical attention.
- ALEX: The Church has invested a lot of money and resources into training new exorcists, and they seem to be convinced that it’s working.
- GILBERT: These people are very often suffering from a form of monomania or demonomania, and I’m including the Church when I say these people.
- ALEX: What’s demonomania?
- GILBERT: It’s what we call it when someone is convinced they’re possessed by the devil. Undergoing a rite of exorcism creates a placebo effect but does nothing to treat the underlying psychological condition. Ask the Church if they follow up on these so-called successful cases years later. I’m betting they don’t keep data on that.
- FATHER KELLY: The Church, as far as I know, doesn’t make those records public. But once a person is exercised of their demons- of course they’re cured. We strongly suggest they continue to attend church, moving forward. And we do our work for free- unlike modern psychologists who charge by the hour.
- ALEX: It sounds like you might have a problem with psychology.
- FATHER KELLY: I respect all the sciences, but that respect must go both ways. The soul is immeasurable. That’s an area where science does not tread.
- ALEX: Aren’t you concerned that you’re endangering the lives of people who are genuinely ill and because of your treating their illness as demonic possession might not end up getting the medical attention they need?
- FATHER KELLY: It sounds like you might have a problem with religion.
- ALEX: Fair point. But I don’t have a problem with religion. Not really. I’m worried in the same way I’d be worried if some parent refused to give their child a necessary blood transfusion.
- FATHER KELLY: Mental institutions, hospitals, our streets are filled with people with mental illness who don’t respond to psychological treatment. What if we’re right and this is a religious problem?
- ALEX: It just….it seems dangerous.
- FATHER KELLY: We must follow strict protocols before we can even consider performing an exorcism!
- ALEX: Medical protocols?
- FATHER KELLY: Yes! We send the potential participant to a licensed psychiatrist. Only after receiving medical approval is that person cleared for exorcism.
ALEX: Immediately following the conversation with Father Kelly, my producer Nic and I tried to track down a psychiatrist who performed this kind of work for the Church. We were unable to find a single doctor who had ever cleared a patient for exorcism. The Church and the medical community clearly have very different agendas regarding exorcism. I wanted to speak with somebody with experience on both sides of that line of faith.
- DEREK: It happened a few months after my 14th birthday.
ALEX: That’s Derek, we promised we wouldn’t use his last name. But a few years ago- he claims he was possessed by a demon.
- ALEX: Can you tell me about what happened?
- DEREK: I remember going to my friend’s house and smoking up, it was a regular Friday night. He had another buddy who showed up with a new girlfriend and this girl had a Ouija board. I’d never played with one before.
- ALEX: You think the Ouija board may have had something to do with your alleged possession?
- DEREK: At one point, we were asking the ghost all these questions like when he died and how old he was, how he died. But then the girl asked why the ghost was even talking to us and the thing on the board went flying and landed in my lap. Freaked the sh(expletive bleeped out) out of all of us.
- ALEX: You think a ghost possessed you?
- DEREK: I don’t know what it was. I’d been into some dark music, at the time, I think it put my mind into a place it was willing to go anywhere. At least that’s what the priest said.
- ALEX: So it was the priest who suggested the music was related to your alleged possession?
- DEREK: He said you have to draw a line, and that’s what I believe now.
- ALEX: How much do you remember about what happened?
- DEREK: I don’t remember much. I do remember being angry, like all the time, for no reason.
- ALEX: Do you remember the exorcism?
- DEREK: (pause) No.
- ALEX: Not at all?
- DEREK: Maybe a few things, I guess. But it all feels like a dream.
- ALEX: What do you mean?
- DEREK: It’s hard to describe, I think maybe a dream is the wrong word. I can remember small things-everyday things like eating dinner with my parents and hanging out in the school cafeteria, but everything else feels dark. Like there is a thick cloud over everything.
- ALEX: Are you familiar with depression?
- DEREK: I have never been depressed, not really.
- ALEX: Do you remember how you felt when you came out of it?
- DEREK: Relieved, happy. Like the cloud lifted.
- ALEX: How long did they say you were possessed for?
- DEREK: Eight months.
- ALEX: And who told you that you were possessed?
- DEREK: Father Johnson was the one who finally figure it out.
0:11:18.6
ALEX: I will admit, I found all of this stuff fascinating but I still had no idea what actually went on during an exorcism. All I knew was what I saw on The Exorcist. So I looked online. I found a large number of videos claiming they were actual exorcisms. Here’s one from 2013.
- (video plays muffled sounds of a priest chanting over hysterical wailing)
ALEX: All I see is a woman out of her mind. Screaming. Wanting to maybe kill somebody. But did I see the Devil? Did things in the room move? No. She didn’t look like a woman possessed, she looked like a woman who needed to be taken to a medical professional. The rest of the videos appear to be similar to this one or clearly fake. Which brings us to Strand’s Black Tape.
- STRAND: Do you think by calling them "the black tapes," you might be leading the listener to the supernatural?
- ALEX: I don’t think so. Maybe, but it’s too late to change it now.
- STRAND: When we were exploring the Unsound, I believe you expressed an interest in demonology?
- ALEX: Actually, I think I remember saying the exact opposite. I believe I said that kind of stuff majorly creeped me out.
- STRAND: Well, you don’t have to watch this if you don’t want to.
- ALEX: Oh, I think I can handle it.
- (typing on a computer keyboard)
- (video plays demonic vocal noises)
- ALEX: So what are we looking at?
- STRAND: The exorcism of Jessica Wheldon.
- ALEX: Really? It took 4 guys to hold her down?
- STRAND: She was strong for her age.
- ALEX: How old was she?
- STRAND: 12.
ALEX: Okay, this one is hard to describe. There’s a middle-aged priest praying in Latin. There’s another priest next to him praying and holding a cross. On a bed in the middle of the room is 12 year old Jessica Wheldon. She’s brunette and slim- skinny. There are huge men holding each of her limbs down. One guy who looks like he weighs about 200 lbs has all his weight pressing down on one of her legs. Another guy around the same size has her by the other ankle. There are two others doing the same thing to her arms. These are strong men and they’re trying to hold down this little girl. And there’s something about her- she actually looks like she’s going to bite off their heads. Kind of like the girl in the Exorcist but without any special effects makeup, and a lot smaller.
I’ll be back with more from the exorcism in a moment, but first I’d like to go back to the strange message I found on my phone last week.
- (message plays) MAN: He’s not who you think.
ALEX: Since we launched this podcast, we’ve received a lot of this type of thing. Mainly from people who don’t like Strand’s brand of skepticism. Most of these messages are easy to ignore, but this one felt a bit different.
- Caller: You have no idea what Strand is capable of! We need to meet! Text me at (bleeped out).
ALEX: And a week later.
- VOICEMAIL: You have one new message.
- Caller: Strand is lying. If you wanna know the truth, meet me at the (bleeped out).
ALEX: Nic wasn’t excited about the meet.
- ALEX: What?
- NIC: No way!
- ALEX: C’mon! You’ll be there. It’s a crowded coffee shop.
- NIC: I just don’t think it’s a good idea, Alex.
- ALEX: (sigh) Okay, how about this? You’re coming with me.
- NIC: Okay. But I’m frisking this guy!
- ALEX: (laughs)
0:14:43.8
ALEX: So I went to meet this mystery person. He looked like a librarian: a bit nervous but pretty docile. Nic ended up frisking him anyway. I sat down and asked him about the messages he kept sending to the show. His name is Brayden Court.
- COURT: Coralee and I were going to get married before she met… him.
- ALEX: Dr. Strand?
- COURT: Yes.
- ALEX: In your message, you said that I have no idea what he’s capable of. What do you mean by that?
- COURT: You can’t trust him, he’s a liar. You know he’s an atheist?
- ALEX: Yes.
- COURT: And you still speak with him?
- ALEX: Yes. And I assume you must know that I do.
- COURT: To the choirmaster of David, the fool says in his heart, “there is no God, they are corrupt, they do abominable deeds, there is none who does good.”
- ALEX: That’s from… the Bible?
- COURT: Psalms 14:1. And there’s more.
- ALEX: I’m sure there is. But is there something maybe more specific about why I shouldn’t trust Strand?
- COURT: He killed Coralee. Is that not enough?
- ALEX: But do you have any evidence to support this theory?
- COURT: Be watchful. Your adversary, the Devil, prowls around like a roaring lion. Seeking someone to devour.
- ALEX: Okay, um. I’m probably gonna leave now.
- COURT: You’re making a mistake.
- ALEX: I was wondering… how did you get that message onto my phone? Were you in the restaurant or did you do it remotely?
- COURT: (pause) What message?
ALEX: I played him the message. He claims he had nothing to do with it. And I believe him. I told Strand about Mr. Court.
- STRAND: Brayden Court is a fundamentalist nutjob. Coralee was never his girlfriend.
- ALEX: He claims fiancee.
- STRAND: She had an… indiscretion one night. In the end, she had to get a restraining order.
- ALEX: After reporting Coralee missing, is it true that you disappeared for five days?
- STRAND: (pause) Yes.
- ALEX: Is it okay if I ask why?
- STRAND: I was looking for my wife.
- ALEX: Well, wasn’t that up to the police?
- STRAND: They didn’t know Coralee.
- ALEX: You felt like you had insight they didn’t?
- STRAND: They put out an all points bulletin and asked around, but everything they did was halfhearted at best.
- ALEX: What makes you say that?
- STRAND: Because they thought it was me. I’m sorry, I have to get to a meeting.
ALEX: And that brings us back to the exorcism of Jessica Wheldon.
- (Exorcism plays. Jessica Wheldon wails over priest chanting in Latin)
ALEX: What just happened was… Okay, that little girl, on her back on the bed, for one full second, lifted those huge men off their feet. They’re using all their weight to hold her down. She does this a few more times.
- (Exorcism continues to play)
- ALEX: This can’t be real. There’s no way.
- STRAND: Keep watching.
- ALEX: Oh. My God.
- (Jessica Wheldon screaming, sounds of something shattering)
- (footsteps)
- MAN: The Grigori is gone, the girl is safe.
- ALEX: Holy sh(bleeped out).
- ALEX: That was crazy!
- STRAND: Pretty convincing stuff, isn’t it?
- ALEX: (pause) Yeah.
ALEX: So, okay, that happened. The lifting up the men stuff was crazy and the way the girl looked at them, but the really scary part were the sounds. The howls coming out of the girl. They didn’t seem human. This wasn’t like those online exorcisms. At all. Those sounds… I’ve never heard anything like it.
- ALEX: Okay, so I’m guessing they added those sounds in post-production, along with the special effects involving the bed? It was pretty well done.
- STRAND: Those sounds were coming from the girl.
- ALEX: No way. Someone could easily do all that stuff with a computer. I could pull that off. Easily. An hour in the edit suite.
- STRAND: It wasn’t a computer.
- ALEX: I’m surprised to hear you say that. Have we switched roles here? (Strand laughs) C’mon! There’s no way that was real.
- STRAND: I’m not saying it was real, it just wasn’t manipulated by a computer after the fact.
- ALEX: How can you be so sure?
- STRAND: I was the one recording.
- ALEX: Y-you were there?
- STRAND: I was behind the camera about seven or eight feet from the bed.
- ALEX: Okay. That’s surprising. The tape was…
- STRAND: Pretty convincing, I know, believe me. Had I know they were going to stage such an elaborate… presentation I would have set up additional equipment and microphones around the house. The family positioned themselves as skeptical and I fell for it.
- ALEX: So you don’t think it might be genuine?
- STRAND: No. I do not. Do you?
ALEX: It turns out that the priest who performed the exorcism on the tape, Father Peter Vincent, is still around. We found him at a care home near Tacoma, Washington. It’s a mental health facility run by the Church.
- ALEX: So what’s the story on Father Vincent?
- STRAND: I met him in the mid 90’s. When I was just getting started, when I was working on my thesis, and asked if I could tag along, watch him work. They were the standard, run-of-the-mill exorcisms. Usually a young man or woman, clearly mentally ill. He let me videotape a few of them for the Church and for my research, as long as I didn’t make them public.
- ALEX: So the one that I saw? That’s not how exorcisms usually go?
- STRAND: No. And in that case, the Bishop of the Archdiocese of Seattle demanded that I hand over the original tape.
- ALEX: Did you?
- STRAND: No.
- ALEX: Why not?
- STRAND: I’m convinced they wanted to leak this to help sell exorcism in the Church. They thought I’d hand over the original, and make a copy, then disseminate that copy thereby lending credibility to the whole exorcism thing.
- ALEX: So how did Father Vincent end up here?
- STRAND: It turns out that was the girl’s fourth exorcism, the third by Father Vincent.
- ALEX: Really?
- STRAND: That exorcism changed him. It became personal.
- ALEX: Do you think we should be talking to him about it?
- STRAND: He likes talking about it.
- ALEX: Oh. Cool.
0:21:32.3
ALEX: Father Vincent wasn’t that old, maybe early sixties. He was energetic, even happy. In fact, it didn’t seem like he belonged in that facility at all. At first.
- ALEX: I saw the tape of that girl’s exorcism.
- FATHER VINCENT: You kept it?
- STRAND: Research.
- ALEX: There were these voices coming out of the girl, like several voices at the same time. There’s no way she could have made those sounds.
- FATHER VINCENT: She didn’t make those sounds.
- ALEX: Who was it?
- FATHER VINCENT: Are you a believer?
- ALEX: (sigh) I’m trying to keep an open mind.
- FATHER VINCENT: Richard’s a bad influence. He’ll convince you there’s no moon in the sky when it’s right in front of you.
- STRAND: It’s a gift.
- FATHER VINCENT: Careful around him. He’s everywhere. And, he’s watching.
- ALEX: Richard?
- FATHER VINCENT: No. The Grigori. I came face to face with it.
- ALEX: The Grigori?
- FATHER VINCENT: The Wheldon girl was the first time.
- STRAND: You didn’t tell me there was another case.
- FATHER VINCENT: This one was worse. Much worse. They watch, and they wait, and they know when you’re looking for them. You don’t want to find them.
- ALEX: I don’t understand.
- FATHER VINCENT: This watcher is unique among them. This one is crueller, and toys with us.
- ALEX: Are you talking about Satan? The Devil?
- FATHER VINCENT: No. Not Satan. The other one.
- STRAND: You’re talking about the elemental.
- ALEX: The elemental?
- STRAND: The elemental is an ancient myth, controversial among the clergy.
- FATHER VINCENT: It’s no myth.
- STRAND: Did somebody record the second exorcism?
- FATHER VINCENT: Of course. The Church requires it.
- STRAND: Where would this recording be housed?
- FATHER VINCENT: You could ask Bishop Thornton.
- STRAND: Bishop Thornton has it?
- FATHER VINCENT: He might, if it still exists.
ALEX: Strand approached the Archdiocese in search of that recording. But they said no such tape exists.
- ALEX: So do you think they’re lying? That they actually have the recording?
- STRAND: I’m not sure.
- ALEX: Wouldn’t it be in the Church’s best interest to have that out there? If I was the Pope, I would want all of these videos up on YouTube.
- STRAND: It is good marketing. The Church using the fear of Satan to push their agenda.
- ALEX: So why would they deny it? Why hide it?
- STRAND: (frustrated sigh) I don’t know. Let’s go back to Father Vincent, maybe he knows more than he let on. There has to be a copy floating around somewhere.
0:24:20.6
ALEX: We went back to the care home. It had been 24 hours since we visited Father Vincent. He was gone. The clerk told us that they moved him to a more… supportive environment. They wouldn’t tell us where. They said it was a privacy issue at his family’s request. Strand went back to the Church but nobody was willing to provide any additional information.
So, what’s the answer to the exorcism question? Was it an elaborate staging that Strand could’ve… or would have debunked had he had the proper foresight and equipment? Was it a display of some kind of super adrenal strength? The kind that allows a mother to lift a car from on top of her child? Or was it a genuine supernatural event? Something beyond the realm of normal human understanding?
- STRAND: It was staged.
- ALEX: How can you be sure?
- STRAND: I was working the camera about seven or eight feet from the foot of the bed. If the Church wants to make it look like a convincing possession, they can easily plant some speakers and stage the more dramatic action.
- ALEX: Did you find any speakers or anything?
- STRAND: I was ushered out immediately and they sealed off the room.
- ALEX: So do you think the girl was involved? And the others?
- STRAND: I don’t know about the girl, but I’m pretty sure those men were involved. They’d have to be.
- ALEX: That would mean an extremely elaborate set up. To what end?
- STRAND: Well, if this tape leaked, it could have convinced untold numbers of people that the devil is real. To the Church, generating that level of interest would be more than worth the price of staging an exorcism.
- (theme music)
0:26:31.6
ALEX: Here’s what we think we know about the disappearance of Coralee Strand: she vanished from the side of the highway in 1997, close to the place she and Strand had stopped for gas. They were on their way down the coastal highway to Big Sur. Strand disappeared for 5 days after filing the police report. He was a person of interest, and some, including Strand himself, would say he was the prime suspect.
Coralee’s parents remain suspicious of Strand and his own daughter apparently disowned him when he returned home after his 5 day trip. Strand claims he spent those 5 days looking for Coralee. And we will have more on that very soon, but first, we have what can only be described as a huge and incredible break in the story.
Okay, I’m on the phone with my producer Nic. He’s been researching every black tape case and doing his best to speak with everyone involved. Even peripherally with Richard Strand and the Strand Institute.
- ALEX: How would you describe this recent development? What’d you find?
- NIC: Well, I’d describe this most recent development as 50% technology and 50% luck.
- ALEX: But all Nic, right?
- NIC: Right! Well, everything actually started with a Google alert.
- ALEX: That sounds like serious Sherlock Holmes type stuff.
- NIC: (laughs) Maybe more like Dora the Explorer. When I’m researching I set up alerts for a bunch of search terms. For example, when we started looking at which paranormal investigators to consider for the show, I set up alerts for their names along with related search terms like, “controversial,” “popular,” “poltergeist,” I then set up a catch-all algorithm that would parse the results.
- ALEX: Okay, you’re getting a bit nerd technical here, maybe.
- NIC: (laughs) Okay, well, what I was looking for was a number of mentions of say, “Richard Strand,” coupled with other search terms. The combination would help me find the leading figures in the field of paranormal research.
- ALEX: And what happened when you applied this method to Coralee Strand?
- NIC: Right, so, I collected a large number of key search terms surrounding Strand, including his wife’s name, her school, the words kidnapped, missing, and some others, I also included very specific details about her thesis.
- ALEX: Her thesis?
- NIC: Apparently, she’d been putting off grad school. She became a pretty successful writer during the first year of her program and her friends told me she just couldn’t find the time to finish. It was Strand who finally suggested if she didn’t do it then she might never get around to it.
- ALEX: What was it about? Her thesis?
- NIC: The illusion of permanence in art and culture. It was tentatively titled, I would imagine jokingly, “What Happens When Art Goes Out For Cigarettes and Never Comes Back?”
- ALEX: (laughs) Okay, so you set up your search algorithm and pointed it in Coralee’s direction?
- NIC: Yes.
- ALEX: And what did you find?
- NIC: Well, I found us.
- ALEX: You found us?
- NIC: Yeah.
- ALEX: Could you explain?
- NIC: Of course, so as most of our listeners are aware, we both came to this podcast from a rather popular national radio show called Pacific Northwest Stories. As you know, on PNWS, you and I produced more than a hundred episodes. One of them was called, “Sounds Like America,” and featured a segment called, “Love on Tape: Sound Audio on the Topic of Love.”
- ALEX: Yeah, that was a very popular episode.
- NIC: Right? Imagine my surprise when the transcript of an episode of Pacific Northwest Stories that you and I helped produce four years ago pinged my search algorithm at 94%.
- ALEX: That sounds high.
- NIC: It is. It means at least 3 or more unique search terms on the same webpage.
- ALEX: What were the search terms?
- NIC: In this case, the name “Coralee,” the term, “Apocryphenia,” which is the title of one of Coralee Strand’s published papers, and the title of her first book, “Watchwards.”
- ALEX: Okay, so, what does all this mean?
- NIC: Right, I’m gonna have to take you back to 1997, a triathlete named Carl Harrison was training for a race. Carl was great in the water, and not a bad runner, but he struggled with cycling. He committed to six months working on nothing but the bike, and he was in the middle of a training run when he stopped to fix a flat tire. While he was fixing the tire, he found a tiny audio cassette voice recorder, you know the type that were popular in the 90’s for dictating notes and speeches and whatever? I know a few songwriters who used them to, you know, take down ideas for songs. Anyway, Harrison picked up the recorder and took it home. He ended up buying a three pack of new tapes and tossed that original tape in a junk drawer. He told me that for some reason he just couldn’t bring himself to throw that original tape away. 15 years later, his daughter found it, listened to it, and sent it to Pacific Northwest Stories because she heard the host asking for found audio.
- ALEX: Wait. Are you telling me that we played audio of Coralee Strand? From a tape recorded right around the time she disappeared in 1997?
- NIC: Yeah, it would appear that we did.
- ALEX: How did we miss this?
- NIC: Well, it was 4 years ago. That particular tape was actually a very small part of that show, and the searchable transcripts from those early episodes were just put online last week.
- ALEX: Tell me you managed to find the recording.
- NIC: What do you think?
ALEX: We’d like to thank Christina Rains at Pacific Northwest Stories for helping us track down this audio. The tape had long since deteriorated, so this clip is taken from a digitized copy in their archives. Sadly, they didn’t digitize the entire tape, only the section used on the show. The next voice that you hear is going to be Coralee Strand.
- CORALEE: I’d like to talk about love. My goal is to explore the role of love in a culture of disparity. Is there a correlation between our attitude towards monogamy and spirituality and cultural extinction? It’s not dissimilar to the thesis of Watchwards and not really far removed from what I was trying to say with Apocryphenia. I was reading Louise Pearson’s recent article on honey bees, she said something interesting about directional mating patterns.
- What if love is like a honeybee? Are we meant to be monogamous? Can we remain with one person, in one place, for most of our lives? A hive can be moved up to three feet from its original site and the bees will still be able to find it. But more than this and the bees won’t be able to find their way home. This is called the three mile rule. If you need to move the hive more than three feet, then it needs to be moved at least three miles away, left for three weeks, and then returned to its new location. By moving three miles, the flying bees will not attempt to find their old site but will relocate to the new one. After three weeks, the original bees will have died to be replaced by a new workforce. So, when the hive is returned to the vicinity of the old site, there will be very few bees that can remember it and normal relocation can take place.
- What if this is the answer to a struggling marriage? What if you need to go far away from your life, from your partner, from your husband? Most of us stray within the three foot area, metaphorically anyway, but what if we went further? Could we then find our way back? Not quite to the starting point but just to the left? Just enough to make enough of a difference to save the relationship. To extend that love.
- MAN: Coralee?
- CORALEE: Warren?
- (tape cuts off)
0:33.55.8
- ALEX: Oh my god! It was the thing about the bees! I l remember I loved that segment.
- NIC: Me too.
- ALEX: Ah, this is so… it’s crazy.
ALEX: Okay, there are so many things. At this point, I was excited, scared, worried about losing control of the story, and worried about Strand. How was he going to react to hearing what Nic and I were sure was his missing wife’s voice so many years after her disappearance? What happened to Coralee at the end of the tape? Who was the man on the tape? Who was Warren? If we’re right about this, we’ve just heard significant evidence from a missing person’s case from 1997. Evidence that nobody, including the police or Richard Strand, had been able to examine in context.
I spoke with Nic, and we both agreed that the first step would be to share the tape with Strand. You’ll hear Strand’s reaction to that recording and a whole lot more, next week.
The Black Tapes Podcast is a National Radio Alliance and Minnow Beats Whale production, recorded in Seattle and Vancouver. Produced by Nic Silver, mixed and engineered by Alan Williams and Samantha Paulson. Edited by Nic Silver and Alex Reagan. Executive producers Paul Bay and Terry Miles.