Episode 108: Board to Death
(Theme song and intro plays)
ALEX: Dr. Richard Strand is an enigma. I know, I have an astute command of the obvious. But I believe it’s true. I think to say that he’s skeptical might be seriously understating it. But I dunno. He’s chosen to work in the field of paranormal research, a world filled with believers. I can’t help but be reminded of Gertrude’s reaction to the player, Queen, in Hamlet. Doth Strand protest too much? I dunno. That’s almost too easy and there’s nothing about Strand that feels easy. Which brings us to the black tapes themselves. Strand has secured what he considers rational proof for all of his cases but these. This podcast seems to have awoken something in Strand- some kind of fierce desire to solve these black tapes. So I wasn’t surprised at all when Strand showed up, back in Seattle, with a new black tapes case in tow.
But first an update on Charlie Strand, as I’m sure you remember, Charlie is Strand’s estranged daughter. They had a falling out right after her mother- Strand’s wife, Coralee- disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1997. Charlie Strand is coming up after the break. It’s the Black Tapes Podcast, I’m Alex Reagan. Stay with us.
(music)
ALEX: Charlie Strand is a natural beauty, shoulder-length light brown hair, huge hazel eyes that seem to both challenge and comfort at the same time and not a touch of make-up. She could be tall, like her father, but I couldn’t tell. I was talking to her via Skype from her apartment in Italy.
ALEX: Nic went right to work setting up another interview with Charlie. And I went back to work trying to figure out Strand. I feel like there’s something about chasing paranormal phenomena from a skeptic or agnostic perspective that leaves you wanting more. It’s a bit unsatisfying. One moment you think you’re on to something real, something that could break open whatever barriers of doubt you hold in your mind, and then there’s Richard Strand to knock it all down. Strand is an avowed, evangelical nonbeliever, and yet…there’s a part of me that gets the sense that a small part of him might actually… want to believe. Why chase things he’s absolutely certain don’t exist? Or am I just projecting my own desire to believe onto the blank canvas of faith that is Dr. Strand.
ALEX: Maybe he was right. Maybe this stuff was starting to get to me. Yesterday, I received a text from Strand, which I’m only starting to get used to. He seems like the kind of person who would rather send a message in a bottle than a text. But you’ll appreciate that this is exactly the kind of message Strand would send. His text quoted Bertrand Russel’s version of Occam’s Razor, “Whenever possible substitute constructions out of known entities for inferences to unknown entities.” So is there a logical, scientific explanation for everything? Are we ever going to actually solve one of these Black Tapes cases? Which, of course, leads us to our next black tape case. Which, funnily enough, actually is a black vhs tape.
ALEX: If I sounded surprised, I was. And it wasn’t the sudden personal detail in the otherwise private persona that threw me off. It was the thought of Richard Strand’s father. Or rather, it was the idea that Strand had actually been a child with a dad at one point. Add to that, the fact that his father travelled the world in search of artifacts… while Strand himself travelled the world debunking stories from antiquity, well, there’s something about an apple falling from the tree here, but I’ll leave it out because of potential biblical symbolism. Strand wouldn’t like that in reference to his family.
ALEX: That’s Professor Peter Sodenfeld, he helped conduct that research back in 1993. He spent decades researching the ideomotor effect and the subconscious mind. He’s not the man in the video, that man, Dr. Isaiah Roth died three years ago.
ALEX: Professor Sondenfield gave me a name and it started a game of tag. The person who brought in that board ended up selling it right after the incident. I found the store, and the owner remembers one of his regular customers bought it several years ago- a game collector named Devon Williams.
ALEX: Devon Williams is a collector of Ouija boards and is on the executive committee of the American Talking Board Preservation Foundation. He’s taking me on a tour of his private collection. He’s bald, with thick eyebrows that make him look somewhat stern. But he has a quick smile and he’s actually quite charming.
ALEX: He left me alone in that room for a few minutes. When he came back, he seemed nervous. He was holding an old, worn box, just about the size of a Monopoly game.
ALEX: It was the one from Strand’s black tape. Or if not, it was very close to it. This board was unlike the others in his collection. In fact, this was unlike any Ouija board I’d ever seen. It was black, and I think it was wood, but I couldn’t be sure. The letters were white, almost pearl against the shiny black surface. I saw a moon and sun, but on this board, they were in the bottom corners. The rest of the symbols surrounding the perimeter of the board were incomprehensible to me.
ALEX: I showed Dr. Strand the photos of Devon Williams’ demon board, and told him what he said.
ALEX: Strand had me zoom in on one of the pictures I took of the demon board. It was so dark in the room that I hadn’t really noticed it, but on the underside it was covered in scrawls and symbols, again completely illegible to me. But Strand had me zoom in and focus on one image that was quite familiar.
ALEX: From an experiment with a Ouija board to an ancient, math-obsessed demon named Pazuzu, things were getting interesting. How do we fit a missing boy and a confessed murderer with bi-locating abilities into this picture? The next day, I received this message.
ALEX: Michelle Braid was the woman from the experiment. She was now the head nurse St. Joseph’s Hospital in Everett, Washington. She was tired after a long shift in the ER, but graciously agreed to sit down and talk about that experiment in 1993.
ALEX: So there it is, as usual. Strand’s entire explanation of a fascinating history reduced to a few sentences. Maybe it was the demonic element, but something about this story didn’t sit right with me. I found the whole episode was…unsettling. It felt there were pieces missing from this picture. What did Dr. Roth and Michelle Braid really see in that room? Is it possible that two people could hallucinate, or imagine seeing such similar things? That feeling of something missing kept nagging at me, so I went back to that tape to take another look.
ALEX: It was subtle, but it was there. I played it again, just to be sure. Right before the moderator asks about the year of Samuel’s death, something happens. Michelle Braid’s hair moves, by itself, it’s as if someone or something brushes her hair from her left shoulder. It’s so subtle that you probably wouldn’t notice it, if you weren’t looking for it. But it happens. It moves, by itself. She smiles when it happens, as if remembering her grandfather, but it’s….it….it looks kind of….it’s terrifying. Completely unnatural.
ALEX: Stand was hoping Michelle Braid would come clean and admit some part in faking the demon board experiment. That didn’t happen and she really didn’t seem like the type to make something like that up. It looks like this particular black tape mystery was going to have to remain unsolved a little longer.
On the subject of unsolved mysteries, I’m sure a lot of you are wondering how Strand felt on the subject of the recording of his missing wife. I recorded an interview with Strand, the day after we aired that episode. And that’s coming up next time. Plus, a significant break in the story of Coralee Strand’s disappearance. It’s the Black Tapes Podcast, I’m Alex Reagan. We’ll be back again in two weeks.
ALEX: Thank you so much for listening to the black tapes podcast, if you enjoy our show, please rate and review on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you found us. 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. Associate producer Robert Romero Jr. Executive producers Paul Bae and Terry Miles.
ALEX: Dr. Richard Strand is an enigma. I know, I have an astute command of the obvious. But I believe it’s true. I think to say that he’s skeptical might be seriously understating it. But I dunno. He’s chosen to work in the field of paranormal research, a world filled with believers. I can’t help but be reminded of Gertrude’s reaction to the player, Queen, in Hamlet. Doth Strand protest too much? I dunno. That’s almost too easy and there’s nothing about Strand that feels easy. Which brings us to the black tapes themselves. Strand has secured what he considers rational proof for all of his cases but these. This podcast seems to have awoken something in Strand- some kind of fierce desire to solve these black tapes. So I wasn’t surprised at all when Strand showed up, back in Seattle, with a new black tapes case in tow.
But first an update on Charlie Strand, as I’m sure you remember, Charlie is Strand’s estranged daughter. They had a falling out right after her mother- Strand’s wife, Coralee- disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1997. Charlie Strand is coming up after the break. It’s the Black Tapes Podcast, I’m Alex Reagan. Stay with us.
(music)
ALEX: Charlie Strand is a natural beauty, shoulder-length light brown hair, huge hazel eyes that seem to both challenge and comfort at the same time and not a touch of make-up. She could be tall, like her father, but I couldn’t tell. I was talking to her via Skype from her apartment in Italy.
- (telephone ringing)
- CHARLIE: Hey.
- ALEX: Hi, Charlie! Thanks so much for taking the time out to do this. I understand you have to get to a meeting pretty soon? I’d like to apologize again if….if our including you and your family in this story has caused you any worry or concern.
- CHARLIE: (clears throat) Well, like I said to your producer, um….I was having a bad day and I was getting sick of answering emails and Facebook messages about my mom from total strangers.
- ALEX: That’s totally understandable.
- CHARLIE: Cool.
- ALEX: So, I’d like to ask you a few quick questions.
- CHARLIE: Mm-kay, go ahead.
- ALEX: Okay, well, I suppose the first thing I’d like to know is- why did you move in with your grandparents?
- CHARLIE: (pause) I just wanted a change of scenery…um, I was young and angry with my father. Not for- …not just for my mom, but for a lot of things. It’s a very confusing time for me.
- ALEX: That’s understandable. But Mrs. Jacobson told us that you said that you didn’t have a father. Like you were disowning him somehow?
- CHARLIE: Uh….like I said I was really young and I really just wanted to bury my head under the covers and pretend my mother would be home any minute, and well I certainly could have said those things at the time. The Jacobsons are probably not the most…reliable source, where anything involving my father is concerned.
- ALEX: And I understand you asked to be emancipated from your father at one point?
- CHARLIE: (to someone in her apartment) Um….I dunno. Okay, can you just put that in my bag? Okay, no, no, I’m gonna be off in a minute.
- ALEX: Charlie, do you have any idea why your father disappeared for those five days?
- CHARLIE: (to someone in her apartment) Okay, no, I’m just gonna…yeah. (to Alex) I’m sorry, I guess I didn’t have as much time as I thought. Maybe your producer can call back next week. Things should calm down a bit by then. Hope everything works out with your story.
- ALEX: Do you remember your mother ever mentioning somebody named Warren?
- (Skype disconnects)
- ALEX: Charlie?
ALEX: Nic went right to work setting up another interview with Charlie. And I went back to work trying to figure out Strand. I feel like there’s something about chasing paranormal phenomena from a skeptic or agnostic perspective that leaves you wanting more. It’s a bit unsatisfying. One moment you think you’re on to something real, something that could break open whatever barriers of doubt you hold in your mind, and then there’s Richard Strand to knock it all down. Strand is an avowed, evangelical nonbeliever, and yet…there’s a part of me that gets the sense that a small part of him might actually… want to believe. Why chase things he’s absolutely certain don’t exist? Or am I just projecting my own desire to believe onto the blank canvas of faith that is Dr. Strand.
- STRAND: I don’t understand.
- ALEX: You don’t find it the least bit unsettling that nobody has any idea who abducted Sebastian Torres? Or what happened to him while he was stuck out there in the middle of nowhere?
- STRAND: Of course I’m unsettled by it. But it’s out of our hands. The FBI is involved at this point. And solving child abductions is not exactly our area of expertise. There’s nothing we can do.
- ALEX: That’s it? (pause) Hello?
- STRAND: You’re starting to believe there’s something supernatural about Sebastian’s disappearance, aren’t you?
- ALEX: And you’re not the least bit open to the possibility.
- STRAND: I’m open to any possibility. As long as it’s within the realm of the possible.
- ALEX: That sounded rehearsed.
- STRAND: It sounds to me like you’re on the verge of allowing yourself to believe that the Torres family has been stalked for several decades by some shadowy figure for the sole purpose of using their son in some secret Satanic ritual in the woods.
- ALEX: (pause) Well, when you put it that way-
- (Both laugh)
ALEX: Maybe he was right. Maybe this stuff was starting to get to me. Yesterday, I received a text from Strand, which I’m only starting to get used to. He seems like the kind of person who would rather send a message in a bottle than a text. But you’ll appreciate that this is exactly the kind of message Strand would send. His text quoted Bertrand Russel’s version of Occam’s Razor, “Whenever possible substitute constructions out of known entities for inferences to unknown entities.” So is there a logical, scientific explanation for everything? Are we ever going to actually solve one of these Black Tapes cases? Which, of course, leads us to our next black tape case. Which, funnily enough, actually is a black vhs tape.
- ALEX: That looks like a real VCR.
- STRAND: It’s the latest model.
- ALEX: Wow. (laughing) Remote control and everything.
- STRAND: Pretty fancy.
- (Both laugh)
- ALEX: Okay, I really hope that this isn’t another exorcism.
- STRAND: No. Are you familiar with the Ouija board?
- ALEX: Perfect. How come it’s never the friendly ghost of grandma at the top of the stairs?
- STRAND: You DO know there’s no such thing as ghosts, right?
- (Both laugh)
- ALEX: Is this video going to be a bunch of college kids at a cabin?
- STRAND: Not quite.
- (inserting video tape, tape starts)
- MODERATOR: Are you there? Is anyone there? If anyone is there, please speak with us.
- (video is paused)
- ALEX: So what’s happening?
- STRAND: This video was shot on the campus of the University of Washington in 1993. The man talking is in charge of the experiment. The people around the table are random volunteers.
- ALEX: They were researching Ouija boards at the university?
- STRAND: They were looking into a number of anomalous phenomenon.
- (tape starts playing)
- MODERATOR: Is anyone there?
- (planchette sliding on board)
- MODERATOR: Yes.
- BRAID: Oh my god.
- (planchette sliding on board)
- MODERATOR: What is your name? Do tell us your name.
- MODERATOR: (planchette sliding on board) J. O. H. N. John. Hello, John.
- (tape pauses)
- ALEX: I suppose you believe they were moving it themselves?
- STRAND: Exactly.
- ALEX: But why? What’s in it for the participants? Especially if it’s for a study. Do you think they’re trying to scam the researcher?
- STRAND: There’s something called the ideomotor effect. Basically, our voluntary muscles can move independent of thought and intention. So, if people are asked to focus on the Ouija board’s planchette, their fingers are going to move it, no matter how hard they try not to because they’re so focused on the task.
- ALEX: A Planchette? That’s the heart-shaped thing in the middle?
- STRAND: Yes.
- ALEX: So all of those people just decided to move the planchette to spell the name John?
- STRAND: The next part of the experiment will make it clearer.
- ALEX: They’re all blindfolded.
- STRAND: Watch what happens now.
- MODERATOR: John, if it’s okay we’d like to speak with you. John? Are you there?
- MODERATOR: (planchette sliding on board) Yes.
- ALEX: That wasn’t yes, that went nowhere!
- MODERATOR: John? Would you mind answering some questions?
- (planchette sliding on board)
- MODERATOR: Yes.
- ALEX: Why’s that guy saying yes? It was nowhere near yes.
- STRAND: He wants the test subjects to believe it’s working to see how long it goes.
- ALEX: How long does it go?
- STRAND: Too long. I’m going to fast forward.
- ALEX: (Alex giggles) Different people?
- STRAND: It’s the next day.
- ALEX: But same test?
- STRAND: Look at the board.
- ALEX: Okay, so that’s not the same Ouija board.
- STRAND: I’m gonna skip the first part and go right to the blindfold test.
- MODERATOR: Are you there Samuel?
- ALEX: Samuel?
- STRAND: That’s their contact.
- ALEX: Ooooh.
- MODERATOR: Samuel? Samuel, would you like to continue speaking with us? (planchette sliding on board) Yes.
- ALEX: They moved it to yes.
- STRAND: Keep watching.
- MODERATOR: When did you die, Samuel? Samuel?
- MODERATOR: (planchette sliding on board) 1. 9. 8. 5. 1985.
- BRAID: Oh my god. That’s my grandfather.
- ALEX: What are the chances of one of the test subjects having a grandfather named Samuel who died in 1985?
- STRAND: Very slim, I’d imagine.
- MODERATOR: Where did you die, Samuel?
- MODERATOR: Samuel? Where did you die?
- (Planchette sliding on board)
- MODERATOR: H.O.M.E. Home. Where is home, Samuel? Where is home for you?
- MODERATOR: (planchette sliding on board) No.
- ALEX: A spirit with attitude! I like it! (Strand chuckles)
- MODERATOR: Samuel? How did you die? (Pause) Samuel? Do you remember how you died? Do you remember how you left us? M. U. R. D. E. R.
- BRAID: I don’t wanna hear this experiment anymore, Professor.
- MODERATOR: Please, don’t move.
- MODERATOR: Samuel, do you know…? (Planchette sliding on board wildly) Okay, Samuel. Samuel! Stop! (Planchette flying off board, electricity surges) Oh my god.
- ALEX: What just happened?
- STRAND: There was a short circuit and the breakers turned off.
- ALEX: But that guy, running the experiment, the professor, why did he say, “oh my god”?
- STRAND: It’s unclear.
- ALEX: It looked like he saw something, in the room, across from him.
- STRAND: Unfortunately, he was looking directly under the mounted camera. Nothing else was in that room, except for what you saw in the video.
- ALEX: Did you ever interview that guy? The moderator?
- STRAND: Yes.
- ALEX: Well?
- STRAND: At the time, his report didn’t seem worth following up on.
- ALEX: What did he claim he saw?
- STRAND: A shadow.
- ALEX: A tall shadow?
- STRAND: Yes.
- ALEX: That was one hell of a Ouija board session.
- STRAND: That wasn’t a Ouija board.
- ALEX: It wasn’t?
- STRAND: The Ouija board has been around since the middle of the 19th century, people kept them in their salons and parlors to entertain dinner guests. There was a certain… group of people that had become…unhappy with how their spirit board had become a game, so legend has it that this group made another board for more… serious communications. With darker spirits.
- ALEX: Darker spirits? Like…?
- STRAND: They called it a demon board.
- ALEX: A demon board? Of course, it’s always demons! (Strand laughs) Why would anyone want to do that? Create a demon board? Not that I believe any of this- of course.
- STRAND: Of course. People have always had a fascination with tapping into unknown wells of power, they believe that having demons on their side would gain them access.
- ALEX: Access to what?
- STRAND: To power. They believe if they tapped into the darkness, the pure evil of Hell, somehow, that they could effect change on earth.
- ALEX: Wait…wouldn’t this be something people talked about? I’ve never heard of it. A demon board? How do you know about this?
- STRAND: My father used to have one.
- ALEX: Your father? What did he do?
- STRAND: He was an antiquities dealer. He travelled the world, collecting rare items of value and selling them. One day he brought home a demon board and told me about its origin.
- ALEX: Must have made a great bedtime story.
- STRAND: It did. I was fascinated.
- ALEX: You know, this is the first time I’ve heard you mention your father.
- STRAND: Most of us have fathers.
- ALEX: Of course.
- STRAND: We weren’t really that close.
ALEX: If I sounded surprised, I was. And it wasn’t the sudden personal detail in the otherwise private persona that threw me off. It was the thought of Richard Strand’s father. Or rather, it was the idea that Strand had actually been a child with a dad at one point. Add to that, the fact that his father travelled the world in search of artifacts… while Strand himself travelled the world debunking stories from antiquity, well, there’s something about an apple falling from the tree here, but I’ll leave it out because of potential biblical symbolism. Strand wouldn’t like that in reference to his family.
- (phone ringing)
- SODENFIELD Hello?
- ALEX: Hi, is this Peter Sodenfeld?
- SODENFIELD Yes, it is.
- ALEX: My name’s Alex Reagan.
ALEX: That’s Professor Peter Sodenfeld, he helped conduct that research back in 1993. He spent decades researching the ideomotor effect and the subconscious mind. He’s not the man in the video, that man, Dr. Isaiah Roth died three years ago.
- ALEX: You helped Dr. Roth with his research back in the 90’s.
- SODENFIELD Yes, I completed my thesis into the ideomotor phenomenon under Dr. Roth.
- ALEX: So, how did the Ouija board come into it?
- SODENFIELD I don’t really recall. I think maybe someone in the lab suggested it for one of our tests. It actually turned out to be an ideal method to demonstrate the ideomotor response. It might have been Dr. Roth’s idea, I don’t really remember.
- ALEX: At one point, you start using another board, in a controlled experiment. Do you remember that?
- SODENFIELD The specifics of the boards themselves weren’t crucial to our tests. The response was the only thing that mattered.
- ALEX: On the second day of your experiment, do you remember the test going out of control?
- SODENFIELD Yes.
- ALEX: I saw the video, and Dr. Roth looked quite alarmed.
- SODENFIELD It was very chaotic, there was a lot of confusion.
- ALEX: At one point, Dr. Roth says,” oh my god”, and it looks like he’s staring at something under the camera. Do you remember that?
- SODENFIELD The power went out momentarily.
- ALEX: Well, yes, but this was before the power went out. In the video, Dr. Roth is staring under the camera when he says, “oh my god.” It’s quite clear he saw something. Do you remember any of that?
- SODENFIELD You’re working with that paranormal investigator? The one with the million dollar prize?
- ALEX: Dr. Richard Strand, yes.
- SODENFIELD I believe Dr. Roth was interviewed by Dr. Strand around the time of the experiment.
- ALEX: Yes, we’re reexamining the case.
- SODENFIELD I’m afraid I don’t know what more I can add.
- ALEX: Well, I don’t really need you to add anything- just confirm. Did you talk to Dr. Roth about what he saw in the room that day?
- SODENFIELD You know they discovered he had a brain tumor shortly after that incident?
- ALEX: I’m confused. Didn’t he die just a few years ago?
- SODENFIELD Yes, but he had an earlier tumor removed, a little while after the experiment. It’s possible it had been affecting his vision for years.
- ALEX: So, what did he tell you?
- SODENFIELD He said he saw something standing there.
- ALEX: In the room?
- SODENFIELD Yes.
- ALEX: What did he say it looked like?
- SODENFIELD A dark figure.
- ALEX: Tall?
- SODENFIELD Quite tall, yes.
- ALEX: How high was that camera placed?
- SODENFIELD It was near the ceiling, so maybe 8 ½ feet. 9?
- ALEX: Did anyone else report seeing that figure?
- SODENFIELD Yes.
- ALEX: Who? Do you remember?
- SODENFIELD There was a young woman in the group, the brunette in the video sitting to Dr. Roth’s immediate left.
- ALEX: Do you have a list of the volunteers from that experiment?
- SODENFIELD Somewhere, maybe, but that’s a lot of boxes to go through.
- ALEX: If it helps, my producers would be more than happy to go through that stuff.
- SODENFIELD I’ll see if one of my TA’s is available to assist them.
- ALEX: Thank you.
- SODENFIELD Happy to help.
- ALEX: Oh! One more thing, we’re interested in looking at that second Ouija board, the one that they were using just before the power went out. Do you have any idea where it may have ended up?
- SODENFIELD Why?
- ALEX: It looked like it might have some historical significance. I’d like to track down the owner to let him know what he might have on his hands.
- SODENFIELD Sure.
ALEX: Professor Sondenfield gave me a name and it started a game of tag. The person who brought in that board ended up selling it right after the incident. I found the store, and the owner remembers one of his regular customers bought it several years ago- a game collector named Devon Williams.
- WILLIAMS: This one is the Expirito, also called the Revelator. Made by the W.S. Reed Company in 1891.
ALEX: Devon Williams is a collector of Ouija boards and is on the executive committee of the American Talking Board Preservation Foundation. He’s taking me on a tour of his private collection. He’s bald, with thick eyebrows that make him look somewhat stern. But he has a quick smile and he’s actually quite charming.
- WILLIAMS: This one is one of the original Kennard Novelty Company’s designs from 1891.
- ALEX: Oooh, okay.
- WILLIAMS: And this one’s an early William Fuld design dating back to 1902. Look at the bird’s eye maple top!
- ALEX: It’s lovely!
- WILLIAMS: Uh-huh!
- ALEX: Um…I was wondering. Do you have anything older?
- WILLIAMS: Older than the Kennards? I have some planchettes here.
- ALEX: Okay.
- WILLIAMS: Here’s a beautiful writing planchette from Paris, traced back to about 1869.
- ALEX: Wow. That is beautiful.
- WILLIAMS: Yeah. Are you a practitioner?
- ALEX: Me? No. I’m doing research for one of our shows. I’m actually looking for a specific board.
- WILLIAMS: Well, if I don’t have it, I’m sure I’ll know someone who does. Which one are you looking for?
- ALEX: I’m looking for something called a demon board. We’re trying to track down a specific board you purchased several years ago. (Pause) Mr. Williams?
- WILLIAMS: Have you ever used a talking board, Ms. Reagan?
- ALEX: No, but I’ve seen one in action.
- WILLIAMS: And you’ve seen what they can do?
- ALEX: You believe in them? That they’re capable of contacting the other side?
- WILLIAMS: I’m not just a collector.
- ALEX: Right. Well, could you show me that board?
- WILLIAMS: That…particular board is not for sale.
- ALEX: Oh, no! I’d just like to take some pictures. Do you still have it?
- WILLIAMS: Why do you want pictures of it?
- ALEX: Well, it would be great to have some images to support our story.
- WILLIAMS: Please, wait here a moment.
- ALEX: Thank you.
ALEX: He left me alone in that room for a few minutes. When he came back, he seemed nervous. He was holding an old, worn box, just about the size of a Monopoly game.
- WILLIAMS: This is what you’re looking for.
ALEX: It was the one from Strand’s black tape. Or if not, it was very close to it. This board was unlike the others in his collection. In fact, this was unlike any Ouija board I’d ever seen. It was black, and I think it was wood, but I couldn’t be sure. The letters were white, almost pearl against the shiny black surface. I saw a moon and sun, but on this board, they were in the bottom corners. The rest of the symbols surrounding the perimeter of the board were incomprehensible to me.
- ALEX: Do you have the planchette?
- WILLIAMS: It’s in another part of the house?
- ALEX: Can I see it?
- WILLIAMS: I prefer to keep them in separate areas of the house.
- ALEX: Okay…do you mind telling me why?
- WILLIAMS: This is not a regular talking board, it resembles one, but this particular board is different. With talking boards, we contact the spirits of the deceased. It’s quite a peaceful method of communicating with loved ones, but this one doesn’t do that. You were correct earlier, this is what is referred to as a demon board. But it has another name- The Zuzu Board.
- ALEX: Zuzu Board?
- WILLIAMS: Does that name sound familiar?
- ALEX: Sorry, but no.
- WILLIAMS: Well, suffice to say this board is unique. There’s only one in existence. This board is very dangerous. And extremely powerful. Rather than communication with the deceased, this board is intended to communicate with (pause) something else.
- ALEX: With what?
- WILLIAMS: This board was created to summon darkness, evil, malevolent spirits. I’ve been offered obscene amounts of money to sell it, but I would never allow this particular board to reenter the world. It’s safer here, with me, where it can remain beautiful, extremely dangerous, and unused. Some people have unwittingly used it as they would a Ouija board, to devastating effect.
- ALEX: How?
- WILLIAMS: Do you believe in spirits, Ms. Reagan?
- ALEX: Um…maybe?
- WILLIAMS: Maybe? Well, whether you believe in them or not, they are real. You can’t take that for granted. For the people who’ve tried to use this, as a Ouija board, to contact deceased loved ones, try to talk to their mother or father, their lives are changed forever. Imagine sitting down thinking you’re going to talk to your dead mother and instead communicating with an extremely intelligent, powerful, ancient demon. Did you know that demons are extremely adept at mimicry?
- ALEX: Okay, forgive me, but this all sounds a little bit-
- WILLIAMS: Terrifying?
- ALEX: Farfetched.
- WILLIAMS: You’re mocking me!
- ALEX: No, sorry, I’m not. It’s just…it’s a lot to take in all at once.
- WILLIAMS: Do I strike you as unbalanced?
- ALEX: No.
- WILLIAMS: Do I strike you as the kind of person who would keep this board’s planchette locked up on the other side of the house for no good reason?
- ALEX: So, this board won’t work without a planchette?
- WILLIAMS: Yes, it has no power.
- ALEX: That’s fascinating. Do you mind?
- WILLIAMS: As you like.
- (camera shutter clicking)
ALEX: I showed Dr. Strand the photos of Devon Williams’ demon board, and told him what he said.
- STRAND: Pazuzu?
- ALEX: Gesundheit.
- STRAND: The Zuzu Board. Zuzu is another name for Pazuzu, in ancient, Babylonian mythology, he’s often depicted as the ruler of demons.
- ALEX: So you didn’t inspect this board during your initial investigation?
- STRAND: I tried, but I wasn’t given access. Besides, my theory involved the participants being coached in advance.
- ALEX: So do you think this is the same board? The board from that experiment.
- STRAND: It looks like it.
- ALEX: I thought so.
- STRAND: Look at this, here, on the back. In the bottom corner.
- ALEX: What is it?
- STRAND: Can you zoom in?
- ALEX: Yeah….right…? Oh!
ALEX: Strand had me zoom in on one of the pictures I took of the demon board. It was so dark in the room that I hadn’t really noticed it, but on the underside it was covered in scrawls and symbols, again completely illegible to me. But Strand had me zoom in and focus on one image that was quite familiar.
- ALEX: It’s the pentagram.
- STRAND: In two, concentric circles. And look at those tiny symbols around the circles. What do they look like?
- ALEX: Are those….are they numbers?
- STRAND: It appears so.
- ALEX: Just like the numbers in the cabin where they found Sebastian, and just like the numbers in Simon Reese’s room.
- STRAND: Can you email these pictures to me? I’m going to send them to a friend that has a better grasp of this kind of thing.
- ALEX: Sure.
ALEX: From an experiment with a Ouija board to an ancient, math-obsessed demon named Pazuzu, things were getting interesting. How do we fit a missing boy and a confessed murderer with bi-locating abilities into this picture? The next day, I received this message.
- SODENFIELD Hi, Alex. This is Peter Sodenfield. We found that volunteer list you were asking about. The participant’s name is Michelle Braid. And it looks like the last address we have for her is 547 (bleeped out). It says here she was a nursing student back then, if that information helps. Anyway, good luck with everything. Goodbye.
- (phone ringing)
- BRAID: Hello?
- ALEX: Hi. Is this Michelle Braid?
- BRAID: Who’s calling?
- ALEX: My name is Alex Reagan, I’m calling from the Black Tapes Podcast. (pause) Hello?
ALEX: Michelle Braid was the woman from the experiment. She was now the head nurse St. Joseph’s Hospital in Everett, Washington. She was tired after a long shift in the ER, but graciously agreed to sit down and talk about that experiment in 1993.
- ALEX: So, do you mind explaining what you saw that day?
- BRAID: Well, on the first day we did a couple of rounds playing with a regular Ouija board, but the next day, the board was different. It was black and had these really bright white letters and weird symbols all over it. It was actually kind of pretty. I remember that board feeling warm to the touch. It was strange. The first few hours of the experiment were really fun, but when we did that second round with the blindfold…I can still hear the professor calling out those letters. And I can still smell…it.
- ALEX: Smell?
- BRAID: Yes, it was like….almost like a musk, but rotten. Like a wet, rotting deer. It was overwhelming, and there was this…sound, as well. Kind of a dark, throbbing, static. It was horrible. I wish I’d never taken part in that.
- ALEX: Do you remember anything else that happened?
- BRAID: You didn’t read the report?
- ALEX: Report? No.
- BRAID: We were all debriefed after the testing and asked to submit reports of everything we experienced. I personally met with the professor.
- ALEX: Dr. Roth?
- BRAID: Yes, and I explained. I mean I told him what I saw.
- ALEX: What did you see?
- BRAID: Well… he stopped the experiment or was about to. I can’t remember exactly, but I took my blindfold off a split second before the others and… it was…just standing there.
- ALEX: What was standing there?
- BRAID: This thing. This tall, dark thing.
- ALEX: Could you describe it?
- BRAID: Um, okay. Well, the musky, dead animal smell was overwhelming at this point and that thing was just standing there. It was dark, but not black, more negative? Or kind of an absence of light. I don’t really know how to explain it, but it was terrifying. It had two legs, but like an animal: tall, thick, maybe like a deer. And it had really, long black hair covering its face. (pause) And it was…smiling.
- ALEX: It was smiling?
- BRAID: Yes.
- ALEX: Sorry, but if it had hair covering its face, how could you see it smiling?
- BRAID: I could see its teeth.
- ALEX: Was this before or after the power went out?
- BRAID: I don’t remember. It was so long ago. But there was something else.
- ALEX: What?
- BRAID: Well, right before I realized it, that my- it was my grandfather who was speaking to us through the Ouija board. I think it was right before the question about when he died.
- ALEX: Yes?
- BRAID: Well, I felt my grandfather put his hand on my shoulder. Like he used to do when I was reading.
- ALEX: You felt his hand?
- BRAID: Yes. Just for a moment.
- ALEX: Can you remember anything else?
- BRAID: Not really. I remember feeling like I’d fallen into some kind of trance or something and then I saw that…that thing. When I think back on it now, I think Dr. Roth was probably right.
- ALEX: What do you mean?
- BRAID: He told me it was probably a figment of my imagination that I had been blindfolded for so long that my mind had been manipulated by this experiment, he said that it was natural to see shapes in the darkness. I think he said that I had fallen into a self-hypnotic state. Which caused very realistic, dreamlike visions. I suppose it doesn’t matter, in the end we only spelled things when we weren’t blindfolded. With the blindfolds on, we just spelled out nonsense.
- ALEX: Wait, he told you that you were spelling out nonsense while you were blindfolded?
- BRAID: That’s right, it was just a trick of the brain.
- ALEX: Right.
- BRAID: He never did explain everything about my grandfather. I guess the name Samuel is common enough, but the year he died?
- ALEX: Were you angry about them using your grandfather’s passing to manipulate you?
- BRAID: Well, a little bit, at first. But my grandfather wasn’t murdered. He died of pneumonia, in the hospital, from complications during a bypass.
- ALEX: Is there anything else you can remember about that day?
- BRAID: After seeing what I saw, or thought I saw standing in that room, I just wanted to put everything behind me.
- ALEX: Were you aware they were filming those experiments?
- BRAID: Yes. We all had to sign releases.
- ALEX: Well, the film shows that… well, when you were blindfolded, you actually did spell out all of those things.
- BRAID: What?
- ALEX: My colleague believes that you and the other members of the experiments were coached, told what to spell.
- BRAID: That’s not true! I’m sorry but like I said, I have put all that stuff behind me. Now if you’ll excuse me.
- (hangs up)
- STRAND: It’s an original Divaldi.
- ALEX: Divaldi?
- STRAND: The demon board. I sent your photos to the talking board scholar. She said Anton Divaldi crafted it himself.
- ALEX: And who is Anton Divaldi?
- STRAND: It’s a pseudonym. Most people believe Divaldi was actually a man named Carson Mordecai, a contemporary of Allen Kardec. Mordecai and Kardec are considered the fathers of modern Spiritism.
- ALEX: Spiritism?
- STRAND: Yes, generally speaking it’s a movement devoted to contacting spirits and the philosophy that it entails. Mordecai was an academic teacher, quite popular in Europe in his day.
- ALEX: Okay.
- STRAND: In the mid-1800s, Mordecai built a talking board. Before then people had been using writing planchettes on a piece of paper. It’s basically a pencil attached to a planchette, these instruments have been used since the 12th century in China since the century, so it wasn’t that revolutionary, but Mordecai developed a board to go with the planchette, and it took off. After Mordecai’s death, talking boards really started gaining popularity, especially in Baltimore.
- ALEX: Baltimore? Wait. From Europe to Baltimore?
- STRAND: Baltimore is the historic center and birthplace of the modern talking board.
- ALEX: Way to go, Baltimore. That should be on their tourism brochures! (Both laughing)
- STRAND: Well, legend has it that Mordecai wasn’t happy with the way the talking board was being commercialized, gaming companies were mass producing it by the late 1800’s, Mordecai was quite old by this time. He didn’t want to die with his legacy being used as parlor entertainment.
- ALEX: So he made a demon board?
- STRAND: Legend has it that he had an idea to make the talking board motr esoteric, no one knows what his process entailed, but it was enough to scare the Church, which banned all talking boards in the late 1890’s, and allegedly threatened Mordecai and his family until he swore he would no longer manufacture talking boards. Most scholars agree, however, that he continued his work under the name Divaldi, and secretly crafted at least a hundred demon boards before his death.
- ALEX: So what’s the difference between a Ouija board and a demon board?
- STRAND: Well, there are rumors and myths, of course. The most popular being that Divaldi had some cult in Eastern Europe perform a dark ceremony over each board, some say it involved the blood of Christians. Others say cult members performed human sacrifices while chanting satanic prayers, opening each board to Pazuzu himself.
- ALEX: Do you think these things actually happened?
- STRAND: Maybe, but these stories work just as well if you simply make them up.
- ALEX: Right.
ALEX: So there it is, as usual. Strand’s entire explanation of a fascinating history reduced to a few sentences. Maybe it was the demonic element, but something about this story didn’t sit right with me. I found the whole episode was…unsettling. It felt there were pieces missing from this picture. What did Dr. Roth and Michelle Braid really see in that room? Is it possible that two people could hallucinate, or imagine seeing such similar things? That feeling of something missing kept nagging at me, so I went back to that tape to take another look.
- MODERATOR: When did you die, Samuel? Samuel?
- MODERATOR: 1. 9. 8. 1985.
- BRAID: Oh my god, that’s my grandfather.
ALEX: It was subtle, but it was there. I played it again, just to be sure. Right before the moderator asks about the year of Samuel’s death, something happens. Michelle Braid’s hair moves, by itself, it’s as if someone or something brushes her hair from her left shoulder. It’s so subtle that you probably wouldn’t notice it, if you weren’t looking for it. But it happens. It moves, by itself. She smiles when it happens, as if remembering her grandfather, but it’s….it….it looks kind of….it’s terrifying. Completely unnatural.
ALEX: Stand was hoping Michelle Braid would come clean and admit some part in faking the demon board experiment. That didn’t happen and she really didn’t seem like the type to make something like that up. It looks like this particular black tape mystery was going to have to remain unsolved a little longer.
On the subject of unsolved mysteries, I’m sure a lot of you are wondering how Strand felt on the subject of the recording of his missing wife. I recorded an interview with Strand, the day after we aired that episode. And that’s coming up next time. Plus, a significant break in the story of Coralee Strand’s disappearance. It’s the Black Tapes Podcast, I’m Alex Reagan. We’ll be back again in two weeks.
ALEX: Thank you so much for listening to the black tapes podcast, if you enjoy our show, please rate and review on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you found us. 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. Associate producer Robert Romero Jr. Executive producers Paul Bae and Terry Miles.