27 October: The Black Tapes

 

Today’s movie challenge topic for Cinematic Void’s 31 Days of Blogoween is “Shot on Video.” I’ll be honest, I don’t know many shot-on-video movies. So, I thought I’d switch things up again and talk about one of my favorite shot-on-audio stories: The Black Tapes.

The Black Tapes is a fictionalized nonfiction podcast best described as “Serial meets The X-Files.” Created by Paul Bae and Terry Miles, The Black Tapes ran for three seasons from May, 2015 to November, 2017. The podcast follows the exploits of radio host Alex Reagan (Lori Henry), who sets out to explore the world of paranormal investigation for the National Radio Alliance show Pacific Northwest Stories (not a real thing). While interviewing people for her story, Alex meets the enigmatic (and stuffy as all get out) Dr. Richard Strand (Christian Sloan), a man dedicated to debunking all things paranormal. Strand keeps records of all his cases on VHS in white boxes. There are, however, a series of tapes in black cases. These are cases that Strand was unable to prove or disprove. Alex becomes intrigued, and she and Strand begin to go through these black tapes.

I can’t help but think of driving to work when I think about this podcast. In 2015, I was living in Wilkinsburg, PA, and had to make the trek to Cranberry Township five days a week. Podcasts made that drive a lot better. The Black Tapes, in particular, made that drive spooky as heck. The soundscape that the show’s producers created is absolutely pitch perfect. The in-the-field recordings have the feel of actual on-the-spot interviews. The podcast sounds exactly like an NPR show. Bae and Miles also do a really fine job of creating verisimilitude by creating realistic backstories and folding in real people and real events into the overall story. The line between fiction and nonfiction is always blurred in The Black Tapes.

Alex’s and Dr. Strand’s reactions to what they see and hear also seem very realistic. Alex, like Mulder on The X-Files, wants to believe, while Strand, the Scully of the two, is always undercutting what we know to be true. It does begin to get tiring to hear Strand continually debunk the reality of what they are witnessing, but like The X-Files, this incredulity on Strand’s part does evolve.

The first season in particular makes for really great spooky listening. “The Unsound,” about a mysterious piece of audio that was supposedly created by the Devil himself, and “Turn that Frown Upside Down,” about a Maine town with a local legend - the Woman with the Upside Down Face - that can kill you if you see it, are two of the best episodes of audio drama that I’ve heard. Listen at your peril here!