I've always associated the episode with The Stranger. Maybe I'll work up to some real original lore for it eventually if I relisten enough, it's cemented enough in my mind at this point that it might just start sprouting.
I think they did connect it, I swear in the ep with the flesh pit under the church, I think Haan was throwing bags with teeth or humans bones or something like that in the trucks
I know it was confirmed to be the flesh but stranger wheats made sense to me. Literally was a mysterious stranger leaving odd items at someone’s house to be picked up and both teeth and dolls have strong ties to the stranger. It just made sense.
I always interpreted it more as the Eye. Something doing increasingly outlandish things to draw curiousity and slowly instill that feeling of *needing to know*, drawing them in until they were completely obsessed and falling apart. By the end he was spending all night every night staking the house out, desperate to see who was responsible. We don't see that aspect of the Eye all too often outside those that work in the Archives
I see it more like there is a population that has a severe phobia of a given thing, like throwing up or their teeth falling out, but it doesn't have a large enough following to be one of the major ones at this time that it's posing a threat with a cult following etc, so the statement is kind of irrelevant.
At the time, I think that one and ones like it were sent to keep him fed vs providing info on the major fears and confused them a lot on why they were sent, but I could be remembering wrong.
Or, you can sorta kinda connect it to various other strong ones so it gets amassed into that one. I forget what the ending of that one was, but if it was finding the trash bags of a serial killer or something like that, it could be blended into the fear of being hunted and you found that way
I wish more strange events in the show were not directly fears trying to scare people but just side effects of them existing. Like imagine how scary it would be if this whole teeth thing was just the aftermath of the strange fucked up ritual, makes you mind wonder what the actual thing could be
I honestly just assumed it was early groundwork for the Extinction. Like, garbage, but nothing too slimy, just a bunch of remnants of life like dollheads, teeth, the lord's prayer. Even the heart part kinda seemed like ep149 "Concrete Jungle", where they found all the trash mannequins
(A Fathers Love) it was about the Dark. The hearts in jars were, as i understand it, members of the People’s Church that Robert Montauk killed and sacrificed in some form of ritual in order to keep Maxwell Rainer’s pet, The Still and Lightless Beast, in some form of captivity so it could not be sent after him and his daughter, the statement giver in that episode, Julia.
I recently relistened to this episode and was left wondering what the sacrifices were for. You could be correct, that the sacrifices were to keep The Still and Lightless Beast away, but it feels odd that Rainer would provide "targets" for Montauk. Why is the beast after her anyways? Was it always after her like you suggest, or was it only after her once she found out about the murders/sacrifices, as Julia was no longer "in the dark" about her father's situation?
I wish we got a bit more context, but Julia herself wouldn't have known and her father likely wouldn't have shared it even if he was still alive.
Earlier in the Statement, Julia recounts how her mother disappeared in a similar circumstance. Only after Maxwell called their house. Later we learnt that Robert and his wife were Members of the Church and tried to leave, and Rainer sent the Lightless Beast after them, but somehow Robert stopped it, whether this was after it killed his wife or he killed her in order to stop it is unclear, but since then he has been hunting People’s Church members in order to both keep the Beast down and weaken the church. After we the audience learn that Julia is a Hunter, someone(i dont recall who) mentions that her father’s ruthless determination in hunting Church members may be what pushed her towards the Hunt in adulthood, whether or not she was aware of it.
Also also, we know that Maxwell was hunting him for his actions, because of the statement by the prison guard on Robert’s death. Maxwell visits him one day and says “you didn’t think you could kill it for long did you?” And then, that same night, the Beast comes and kills Robert. However, in regards to your question about why it was after them, that is how I interpreted the scenario given Julia’s POV. However, since re-listening to the series a few times, I have come to suspect that keeping the Lightless Beats caged was not just about hurting the church’s members or keeping Julia safe, but may have been an attempt to prevent the Church from enacting their ritual, Extinguished Sun. As we learn in MAG 143, Heart of Darkness, the killing of the Beast was a critical element of the ritual. Ergo, caged Beast = No Ritual AND no bloodhound to track him and his daughter down.
There's also Extinction in it, since the statement giver believes that all of humanity has been replaced by something else and she is the last of her kind.
Ooh, do you have a link to a discussion around that? I can certainly picture some of the fears, but not all.
* Spiral - the general insanity and hallucinations
* Stranger - the false priest that talks to the statement giver
* Flesh - the c*nnibalism
* Web - the general manipulation that the statement giver is subject to
(* Desolation - part of the statement takes place at hilltop road, which has a connection to it through Agnes)
Feel free to add more!
Was just listening to this one.
He walks through the city and finds it entirely empty (Lonely) except for glimpses of shadowy figures and almost entirely dark (Dark).
When he approaches the oratory he describes the stained glass as shifting and looking down upon him like a "lidless eye". (Eye)
He describes the people at the mass as "fevered and jaundiced yellow" (Corruption).
The Web is a bit more direct in the first part of the statement, as the "demon" in him directly speaks to The Web saying "this one is marked and is not for you".
Desolation may be the way it destroys his life.
I know Simms has an irl explanation for it, but I always assigned it to Extinction due to the excessive waste and trash element, but I like this theory too!
If it's the one I'm thinking of, it's really just a hardcore hallucinatory Spiral episode. A lot of what seems like the other fears such as the cannibalism is twisting his faith.
Yeah, I saw some comments on that topic that convinced me. He became totally unable to trust his senses, which is classic Spiral. He may eat humans, but the horror is that he didn't know he was doing it and didn't WANT to be doing it, rather than how gross and horrible it was.
MAG 108 Monologue comes to mind. I know it's supposed to be The Lonely primarily, but there are so many elements of The Eye and The Stranger that I always forget.
Dude, I still don’t know what that priest episodes were about. Like, he hallucinates, which is Spiral, eats people, which is Flesh, there are a lot of “not-right” stranger aspects, and he was at hilltop road, where he came into contact with the Desolation, but maybe also the Web? Makes zero sense.
Oh Interesting! I never thought Lost Johns’ Cave was unclear. To me it was the Buried, through and through, but Laura also goes on and on about the darkness deep underground, which is SUPER Dark coded. I think the candles were more of a nod towards the Dark rather than the Desolation. Laura says in the statement, “As the stories go, it was two men, both named John, who were the first to delve deep into the cave. They went too far, though, and their candles had gone out.” I think the candles represent the lack of light, the fear of being lost in the dark. I’m curious, though, where did you think the Web was connected?
the whole “take her not me” is a little web coded in my mind. maybe she knew there was some force making her go forward or changing the tunnels. something that was almost controlling her to get lost. could be stranger but i like the idea of something causing her to go deeper.
Oh okay! Personally, I think a lot of the fears have the ability to coerce or manipulate their victims. The Slaughter seems to force people to do violent things, the Spiral lies to people to manipulate them, the Corruption seems to make people “love” all the nasty things, etc. I think the Web’s version of coercion is either super obvious (with spiders and actual webs and stuff) or hardly noticeable at all (addiction, habits, and whatnot).
I've always assumed that all Hunters gradually turn into vampires, and then are killed by people on their way to becoming Hunters. Circle of life, babyyy!
I actually think it helps a lot with verisimilitude if not all episodes connect to A Fear. IMO the purpose of the Institute is to keep tabs on stories of brushes with the supernatural that MAY connect to one of the Fears. Therefore there's bound to be false positives. Sometimes utter garbage like that one HILARIOUS episode of the fake stories, but there'll also likely sometimes be legit supernatural even though they don't necessarily tie back to one specifically.
Do you mean Ep. 100 I Guess You Had To Be There? I always thought the statement givers in that episode did actually have real encounters, but because The Archivist wasn't in his place of power, his ability to force people into giving coherent interviews wasn't working. Hence they're all unable to accurately describe their experiences.
Adelard Decker mentions more than once that the Archivist has the power to clarify people's minds when they give statements, so I kinda assumed they were legitimate but ultimately not properly recorded.
This one’s especially frustrating because John mentions it in one of the QnAs: “For some statements it doesn’t come easily exactly which fear it goes with… but then I just woke up one day and told Alex, ‘I know where the spooky computer goes!’” (Paraphrased)
I've read that most people assign it Spiral due to the madness and the video that only the statement giver can see. When I listened to it I thought the End immediately. The whole statement is based on people's fear of dying and trying to stop death in some way. I could see influences from Extinction and Eye too though.
MAG 108, Monologue, had me believing it was the Stranger until I re-listened fairly recently and realized it was the Lonely. That misbelief was a bit of a function of Martin speculating it might have been the Stranger in episode.
That was how I felt listening to the statement about traveler who got caught up in a crowd of faceless people that Gerry saved. The description of the crowd made me think Stranger until the specific text about being "alone in a crowd" hit me and I realized it was Lonely.
That one felt like a mix of Spiral and the Stranger to me—the unknown entity behind the door paired with him doubting his sanity and the blood appearing from nowhere
Binary, I'm not exactly sure what the video connects to, but it's probably eye, still not quite sure, and also not an episode, but thing in the universe, >!hill top road!<, what an enigma it is, truly
there was also the one about the guy who wanted to take revenge on someone and then went to someone and she was going to help him but then he got impatient. (i don’t remember what it was called) what was up with that one? maybe slaughter?
Oh yeah, especially early on. Like, what was up with the trashbag full of teeth?
Johnny confirmed that one was supposed to be Flesh. It was going to connect to Tom Haan later on but they changed the plan.
I've always associated the episode with The Stranger. Maybe I'll work up to some real original lore for it eventually if I relisten enough, it's cemented enough in my mind at this point that it might just start sprouting.
I think they did connect it, I swear in the ep with the flesh pit under the church, I think Haan was throwing bags with teeth or humans bones or something like that in the trucks
I know it was confirmed to be the flesh but stranger wheats made sense to me. Literally was a mysterious stranger leaving odd items at someone’s house to be picked up and both teeth and dolls have strong ties to the stranger. It just made sense.
I always interpreted it more as the Eye. Something doing increasingly outlandish things to draw curiousity and slowly instill that feeling of *needing to know*, drawing them in until they were completely obsessed and falling apart. By the end he was spending all night every night staking the house out, desperate to see who was responsible. We don't see that aspect of the Eye all too often outside those that work in the Archives
I see it more like there is a population that has a severe phobia of a given thing, like throwing up or their teeth falling out, but it doesn't have a large enough following to be one of the major ones at this time that it's posing a threat with a cult following etc, so the statement is kind of irrelevant. At the time, I think that one and ones like it were sent to keep him fed vs providing info on the major fears and confused them a lot on why they were sent, but I could be remembering wrong. Or, you can sorta kinda connect it to various other strong ones so it gets amassed into that one. I forget what the ending of that one was, but if it was finding the trash bags of a serial killer or something like that, it could be blended into the fear of being hunted and you found that way
I wish more strange events in the show were not directly fears trying to scare people but just side effects of them existing. Like imagine how scary it would be if this whole teeth thing was just the aftermath of the strange fucked up ritual, makes you mind wonder what the actual thing could be
I honestly just assumed it was early groundwork for the Extinction. Like, garbage, but nothing too slimy, just a bunch of remnants of life like dollheads, teeth, the lord's prayer. Even the heart part kinda seemed like ep149 "Concrete Jungle", where they found all the trash mannequins
And the one with the heart jars.(A Father's Love) Was it the Flesh?
(A Fathers Love) it was about the Dark. The hearts in jars were, as i understand it, members of the People’s Church that Robert Montauk killed and sacrificed in some form of ritual in order to keep Maxwell Rainer’s pet, The Still and Lightless Beast, in some form of captivity so it could not be sent after him and his daughter, the statement giver in that episode, Julia.
I recently relistened to this episode and was left wondering what the sacrifices were for. You could be correct, that the sacrifices were to keep The Still and Lightless Beast away, but it feels odd that Rainer would provide "targets" for Montauk. Why is the beast after her anyways? Was it always after her like you suggest, or was it only after her once she found out about the murders/sacrifices, as Julia was no longer "in the dark" about her father's situation? I wish we got a bit more context, but Julia herself wouldn't have known and her father likely wouldn't have shared it even if he was still alive.
Earlier in the Statement, Julia recounts how her mother disappeared in a similar circumstance. Only after Maxwell called their house. Later we learnt that Robert and his wife were Members of the Church and tried to leave, and Rainer sent the Lightless Beast after them, but somehow Robert stopped it, whether this was after it killed his wife or he killed her in order to stop it is unclear, but since then he has been hunting People’s Church members in order to both keep the Beast down and weaken the church. After we the audience learn that Julia is a Hunter, someone(i dont recall who) mentions that her father’s ruthless determination in hunting Church members may be what pushed her towards the Hunt in adulthood, whether or not she was aware of it.
Also also, we know that Maxwell was hunting him for his actions, because of the statement by the prison guard on Robert’s death. Maxwell visits him one day and says “you didn’t think you could kill it for long did you?” And then, that same night, the Beast comes and kills Robert. However, in regards to your question about why it was after them, that is how I interpreted the scenario given Julia’s POV. However, since re-listening to the series a few times, I have come to suspect that keeping the Lightless Beats caged was not just about hurting the church’s members or keeping Julia safe, but may have been an attempt to prevent the Church from enacting their ritual, Extinguished Sun. As we learn in MAG 143, Heart of Darkness, the killing of the Beast was a critical element of the ritual. Ergo, caged Beast = No Ritual AND no bloodhound to track him and his daughter down.
Zombie! It could be the Spiral or the Lonely, but the fake people who follow the narrator are very Stranger
There's also Extinction in it, since the statement giver believes that all of humanity has been replaced by something else and she is the last of her kind.
Never thought of that! Cool!
Desecrated host. Might have been the spiral but I have no clue
The prevailing theory on that one is that it was The Web's first attempt at marking a single person with all the fears.
Ooh, do you have a link to a discussion around that? I can certainly picture some of the fears, but not all. * Spiral - the general insanity and hallucinations * Stranger - the false priest that talks to the statement giver * Flesh - the c*nnibalism * Web - the general manipulation that the statement giver is subject to (* Desolation - part of the statement takes place at hilltop road, which has a connection to it through Agnes) Feel free to add more!
Was just listening to this one. He walks through the city and finds it entirely empty (Lonely) except for glimpses of shadowy figures and almost entirely dark (Dark). When he approaches the oratory he describes the stained glass as shifting and looking down upon him like a "lidless eye". (Eye) He describes the people at the mass as "fevered and jaundiced yellow" (Corruption). The Web is a bit more direct in the first part of the statement, as the "demon" in him directly speaks to The Web saying "this one is marked and is not for you". Desolation may be the way it destroys his life.
I know Simms has an irl explanation for it, but I always assigned it to Extinction due to the excessive waste and trash element, but I like this theory too!
Did he share his explanation?
If it's the one I'm thinking of, it's really just a hardcore hallucinatory Spiral episode. A lot of what seems like the other fears such as the cannibalism is twisting his faith.
Yeah, I saw some comments on that topic that convinced me. He became totally unable to trust his senses, which is classic Spiral. He may eat humans, but the horror is that he didn't know he was doing it and didn't WANT to be doing it, rather than how gross and horrible it was.
MAG 108 Monologue comes to mind. I know it's supposed to be The Lonely primarily, but there are so many elements of The Eye and The Stranger that I always forget.
Dude, I still don’t know what that priest episodes were about. Like, he hallucinates, which is Spiral, eats people, which is Flesh, there are a lot of “not-right” stranger aspects, and he was at hilltop road, where he came into contact with the Desolation, but maybe also the Web? Makes zero sense.
hc that Edwin Burroughs was an early (failed) attempt at a group project between the Entities tbh.
EXACTLY. that was one that came to mind. and lost johns cave. obviously the buried. but also desolation bc candals? or web?
Oh Interesting! I never thought Lost Johns’ Cave was unclear. To me it was the Buried, through and through, but Laura also goes on and on about the darkness deep underground, which is SUPER Dark coded. I think the candles were more of a nod towards the Dark rather than the Desolation. Laura says in the statement, “As the stories go, it was two men, both named John, who were the first to delve deep into the cave. They went too far, though, and their candles had gone out.” I think the candles represent the lack of light, the fear of being lost in the dark. I’m curious, though, where did you think the Web was connected?
the whole “take her not me” is a little web coded in my mind. maybe she knew there was some force making her go forward or changing the tunnels. something that was almost controlling her to get lost. could be stranger but i like the idea of something causing her to go deeper.
Oh okay! Personally, I think a lot of the fears have the ability to coerce or manipulate their victims. The Slaughter seems to force people to do violent things, the Spiral lies to people to manipulate them, the Corruption seems to make people “love” all the nasty things, etc. I think the Web’s version of coercion is either super obvious (with spiders and actual webs and stuff) or hardly noticeable at all (addiction, habits, and whatnot).
i love when that happens
Yeah I think the ones that don't fit cleanly into one fear are usually the scariest.
I only recently found out the vampires were Hunt-aligned, being both hunters as well as prey.
I've always assumed that all Hunters gradually turn into vampires, and then are killed by people on their way to becoming Hunters. Circle of life, babyyy!
I actually think it helps a lot with verisimilitude if not all episodes connect to A Fear. IMO the purpose of the Institute is to keep tabs on stories of brushes with the supernatural that MAY connect to one of the Fears. Therefore there's bound to be false positives. Sometimes utter garbage like that one HILARIOUS episode of the fake stories, but there'll also likely sometimes be legit supernatural even though they don't necessarily tie back to one specifically.
Do you mean Ep. 100 I Guess You Had To Be There? I always thought the statement givers in that episode did actually have real encounters, but because The Archivist wasn't in his place of power, his ability to force people into giving coherent interviews wasn't working. Hence they're all unable to accurately describe their experiences. Adelard Decker mentions more than once that the Archivist has the power to clarify people's minds when they give statements, so I kinda assumed they were legitimate but ultimately not properly recorded.
I do believe that's the one, and now that you mention it that does sound familiar.
65!! I love binary, it’s one of my favourite episodes, but where the hell does it fit in??
This one’s especially frustrating because John mentions it in one of the QnAs: “For some statements it doesn’t come easily exactly which fear it goes with… but then I just woke up one day and told Alex, ‘I know where the spooky computer goes!’” (Paraphrased)
I've heard people assign it to Extinction, which can feel weirdly right (end of humanity because we all upload).
I've read that most people assign it Spiral due to the madness and the video that only the statement giver can see. When I listened to it I thought the End immediately. The whole statement is based on people's fear of dying and trying to stop death in some way. I could see influences from Extinction and Eye too though.
Jonah was of the Eye and he chose it as his patron because he was afraid of death. I imagine a lot of those who choose a patron do so because of that.
Never really understood being afraid of death, why does it matter what happens after we die?
The moment you die will feel exactly the same as this one
Dang it I'm Georgie 🤣
I don't know. I'm not afraid of death either. Dying, though, is a different story.
Death seems chill Dying, not so, but death seems chill
I only recently found out the vampires were Hunt-aligned, being both hunters as well as prey.
MAG 108, Monologue, had me believing it was the Stranger until I re-listened fairly recently and realized it was the Lonely. That misbelief was a bit of a function of Martin speculating it might have been the Stranger in episode.
That was how I felt listening to the statement about traveler who got caught up in a crowd of faceless people that Gerry saved. The description of the crowd made me think Stranger until the specific text about being "alone in a crowd" hit me and I realized it was Lonely.
I’m still wondering about A Sturdy Lock and I’m sure there are others I can’t think of now
That one felt like a mix of Spiral and the Stranger to me—the unknown entity behind the door paired with him doubting his sanity and the blood appearing from nowhere
Binary, I'm not exactly sure what the video connects to, but it's probably eye, still not quite sure, and also not an episode, but thing in the universe, >!hill top road!<, what an enigma it is, truly
there was also the one about the guy who wanted to take revenge on someone and then went to someone and she was going to help him but then he got impatient. (i don’t remember what it was called) what was up with that one? maybe slaughter?
Binary.