Episode 16 - Terror in the NYC subway and A Manuscript worth killing for
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This episode delves into the realms of the extraordinary and the obscure, presenting two compelling narratives that challenge our understanding of reality. The first tale, "Tunnel Dwellers," chronicles the harrowing experience of journalist Trisha Jefferson as she descends into the forsaken subway tunnels of New York City, unearthing unsettling truths that defy the boundaries of the known world. Her quest for a captivating story culminates in a confrontation with an enigmatic entity, evoking the primal fears that lie in the shadows of urban legend. The second narrative centers on the Voynich Manuscript, an ancient text shrouded in mystery, pursued by linguist Evelyn Marlow, whose investigation leads her to a chilling encounter with forces that seek to suppress its secrets. Together, these stories serve as a poignant reminder that some truths are perhaps best left undiscovered, lurking in the liminal spaces between our reality and the unknown. Join us as we navigate these unsettling tales that explore the intersections of curiosity, dread, and the inexplicable.
Transcript
Imagine a world teetering on the edge of the familiar, a place where the fabric of the everyday begins to unravel, revealing glimpses of the extraordinary lurking beneath.
Speaker A:You're about to embark on a journey into the enigmatic, where the peculiar and the perplexing intertwine, where every tale twists the mind and tugs at the spirit.
Speaker A:It's a descent into the strange, the mysterious, and the unexplained.
Speaker A:This is when reality frays.
Speaker A:New episodes are published every Monday and Thursday.
Speaker A:And when Reality Phrase is available everywhere, fine podcasts are found.
Speaker A:Before we move on, please hit that Follow or Subscribe button and turn on all reminders so you're alerted when new episodes are released.
Speaker A:Today's episode contains two stories.
Speaker A:First up is the Tunnel Dwellers, a tale about a reporter who dared to venture into New York's abandoned subway tunnels and found that urban legends exist for a reason.
Speaker A:And second is the Voynich Manuscript, a story about a mysterious document that certain governments will kill for to obtain its secrets.
Speaker A:Now, let's get to the stories.
Speaker A:Trisha Jefferson, a journalist with a hunger for truth, descends into the labyrinthine depths of New York City's subway system.
Speaker A:She seeks a story, a flicker of the extraordinary and the mundane.
Speaker A:But in the forgotten tunnels beneath our feet, where light falters and reality bends, Trisha will find not just a story, but a truth that does not belong to our world.
Speaker A:This is the story of the tunnel dwellers.
Speaker A:Trisha Jefferson had always been a seeker, chasing the faint threads of the amazing that wove through the mundane.
Speaker A:It was autumn, and New York City was a paradox of glittering ambition and gritty decay, its streets alive with the clamor of taxis and street vendors.
Speaker A:Beneath the surface, in the shadowed veins of the subway system, a different pulse beat, one that whispered of mysteries older than the city itself.
Speaker A:Transit workers, their faces etched with the weariness of endless night shifts, spoke in low, reluctant tones of a humanoid figure haunting the tunnels, a creature too tall and too pale, its movements fluid yet unnatural, its eyes glowing like embers in the dark.
Speaker A:The stories were fragmented, dismissed as the imaginings of men dulled by monotony.
Speaker A:But to Tricia, a freelance journalist scraping by on crumbs from a failing website called the City Pulse, they were a beacon.
Speaker A:She was 32.
Speaker A:Her career stalled in a mire of puff pieces, her ambition burning brighter than her dwindled savings.
Speaker A:This was her chance to write something that mattered, something that could etch her name into the city's lore.
Speaker A:Tricia prepared with the precision of a cartographer, charting unclaimed territory.
Speaker A:Her tools were modest a spiral bound notebook, a five year old iPhone with a temperamental camera, a flashlight that flickered when shaken, and a creased map of the subway's decommissioned lines, obtained through a bribe of cheap whiskey to an MTA janitor.
Speaker A:She studied the rumors, piecing together accounts from late night diners and union halls.
Speaker A:The figure was seen most often in the abandoned tunnels of the IRT line near the 18th street station, a relic of the city's early subway days.
Speaker A:Some said it was a ghost, others a squatter gone mad.
Speaker A:But a few, those with the most haunted eyes, hinted at something not of this world.
Speaker A:At 2:30 in the morning, when the city's pulse slowed to a drowsy hum, Tricia slipped through a rusted gate at the edge of the 18th street platform.
Speaker A:The air was sour with a tang of mildew and oil.
Speaker A:Her boots crunched on loose gravel, the sound swallowed by the cavernous dark.
Speaker A:The platform was a ghost town, its once gleaming tiles cracked and smeared with decades of neglect, its pillars scarred with the faded tags of graffiti artists who had long since vanished into the city's churn.
Speaker A:She descended a maintenance ladder, its rungs cold and slick under her palms, her flashlight carving a flickering beam through the blackness.
Speaker A:The tunnel stretched ahead, a concrete artery lined with pipes that dripped rhythmically like the ticking of an unseen clock.
Speaker A:The distant rumble of active subway lines faded as she ventured deeper, replaced by a silence so absolute it pressed against her eardrums, alive with its own weight.
Speaker A:The air grew colder, clinging to her skin like damp silk.
Speaker A:Her flashlight caught something, a smear of luminescent residue on the tunnel wall.
Speaker A:Not the dull sheen of spray paint or the organic fuzz of but a shimmering pearlescent glow, like moonlight trapped in oil.
Speaker A:She paused, her breath shallow, and reached out to touch it.
Speaker A:The substance was warm, leaving a tingling sensation that lingered like static.
Speaker A:It wasn't random.
Speaker A:The trail snaked along the wall, irregular but purposeful, leading her deeper into the maze.
Speaker A:Her notebook remained in her jacket pocket, her instinct to document overridden by a growing unease that coiled in her gut.
Speaker A:The tunnel seemed to narrow, the walls closing in, though she couldn't tell if it was real or a trick of her fraying nerves.
Speaker A:The trail ended at a jagged fissure in a concrete wall barely wide enough for her to squeeze through.
Speaker A:Her jacket snagged on the rough edge, tearing a small rip as she pushed through, her shoulders scraping against the damp stone.
Speaker A:Beyond was a chamber, vast and uncharted, its ceiling swallowed by a darkness her flashlight couldn't touch.
Speaker A:The air here was heavy, the scent of age and ruin sticking in her throat.
Speaker A:Her light swept across the walls, revealing carvings, shapes that seemed to writhe under scrutiny, as if resisting comprehension.
Speaker A:They weren't the work of vandals.
Speaker A:They were too precise, seemingly etched with a purpose.
Speaker A:At the chamber's heart lay a pool of liquid, its surface unnaturally still.
Speaker A:It took a moment for her to realize it wasn't reflecting.
Speaker A:Her flashlight's beam rather swallowed every photon that came its way.
Speaker A:A deep thrum rumbled through the chamber, a sound she swore she could feel in her bones.
Speaker A:Faint ripples spread across the pool.
Speaker A:Then the thrum vanished, the liquid immediately going still.
Speaker A:From the far side of the pool came a new sound, a skittering noise that immediately conjured images in her mind of giant subterranean spiders scurrying about in search of prey.
Speaker A:Her breath came shallow, and she involuntarily took a step back.
Speaker A:With a trembling hand, she aimed the flashlight at the location of the noise, but the darkness was impenetrable, and the clacking, clicking sound intensified in seeming response.
Speaker A:Tricia couldn't draw a breath, her knees threatening to buckle and her bowels moments away from turning to water.
Speaker A:Heart pounding, she wanted to run, but her body refused to cooperate.
Speaker A:Something moved beneath the surface of the pool, something large enough to create a wake.
Speaker A:Then it emerged.
Speaker A:A figure silently climbed from the liquid, rising to an impossible height.
Speaker A:Its frame was skeletal yet elongated, its limbs bending with too many joints.
Speaker A:Its skin was translucent, a sickly sheen revealing a network of veins glowing faintly blue, like bioluminescent threads woven beneath glass.
Speaker A:Its head was hairless and smooth, and its eyes were large, burning with a soft amber light that locked onto Trisha with an intensity that felt like a physical weight.
Speaker A:Tricia shook from a visceral fear that was as primal as anything she had ever experienced.
Speaker A:Her DNA recognized the danger of an ancient predator, even as her mind struggled to comprehend the creature.
Speaker A:Then the clicking sound grew louder, and she glimpsed movement around the creature's feet.
Speaker A:Beasts of Nightmare Fuel.
Speaker A:They were the size of a medium dog, and their skin gleamed like a spider's exoskeleton, so black they were invisible except when, close to the faint glow.
Speaker A:The tall creature emanated with six articulated legs.
Speaker A:They moved with a frightening speed.
Speaker A:For Tricia, panic surged, raw and primal.
Speaker A:She stumbled back, turned, and ran, the clacking of the beasts following her.
Speaker A:Without slowing, she threw herself at the crack she'd squeezed through earlier.
Speaker A:Her clothing was shredded and skin was scraped raw against jagged concrete.
Speaker A:Behind the clicking sound of the beast swelled as they pursued.
Speaker A:Tricia screamed in terror and fought her way through the narrow opening.
Speaker A:Her mind imagined the sensation of the beasts locking onto her with their legs, and she fought harder until she popped free.
Speaker A:On the far side, Tricia ran like she never had, but the tunnel seemed to stretch endlessly, the walls narrowing.
Speaker A:The flashlight flickered on and off, in sync with her pounding feet.
Speaker A:Her lungs burned, her heart pounded, but she ran with no destination other than somewhere far away from the creature and the beasts.
Speaker A:The quick quack of their feet chased her steadily, drawing closer.
Speaker A:Though she couldn't see them, she imagined they weren't just running on the floor of the tunnel, but also the walls and even the ceiling.
Speaker A:She expected them to drop on top of her at any moment, knocking her to the ground before swarming her.
Speaker A:The sound was there.
Speaker A:They were only a few feet behind her, racing along the abandoned tunnel to drag her back to the creature's lair.
Speaker A:She screamed in response to the screech of a subway train from above.
Speaker A:She had reached the ladder, leaping onto the rungs, and climbed before she emerged onto a subway platform.
Speaker A:She risked a glance back down the tunnel, expecting to see an overwhelming tide of beasts, but there was nothing but darkness.
Speaker A:The subway train above moved on, and quiet fell again.
Speaker A:In that moment of silence, she heard the clacking of hundreds of hard, sharp spider feet on the concrete.
Speaker A:Quaking, Tricia scampered the rest of the way up the ladder and emerged onto a brightly lit platform.
Speaker A:But she didn't pause to catch her breath.
Speaker A:Distance and speed were safety, and she sprinted for the stairs that led to the open air of the sidewalk above.
Speaker A:Tricia didn't slow as she climbed into the open air.
Speaker A:Reaching the sidewalk, she dashed across the street, nearly being crushed by a delivery truck.
Speaker A:But she made it to the opposite side unscathed, whirling to watch the subway exit, fully expecting the beast to come boiling out any second.
Speaker A:She gulped air in deep, ragged breaths and dialed 911.
Speaker A:She tried to shout into the phone when the emergency operator answered, but between her state of terror and the longest sprint of her life, she was unable to form a coherent sentence.
Speaker A:The NYPD responded to her call, the officer's eyes glazing over.
Speaker A:Once they calmed her enough to tell them what she had called, they were ready to dismiss her claims as induced by drugs or alcohol.
Speaker A:But her story clicked with one of the officers, and he decided it wouldn't hurt to take a look.
Speaker A:Trisha refused to accompany him, so with a shrug, he went below ground by himself.
Speaker A:When the officer didn't return, the NYPD turned out in force.
Speaker A:A search was made and the officer's body was found near the fissure Tricia had squeezed through, horribly ravaged.
Speaker A:Two more officers were killed in the chamber where the creature and its beast seemed to live.
Speaker A:New York City quietly shut down the 18th street subway station, blaming a leaking gas main for the disruption.
Speaker A:The abandoned tunnels of the IRT line were flooded with rapid expansion flight that permanently filled and sealed them.
Speaker A:Within hours, the foam had cured harder than concrete.
Speaker A:Tricia wrote the story, but the City Pulse website folded before she could publish.
Speaker A:She shopped it around to various outlets, but the city had done a good job of smearing her, and no outlet would touch the article.
Speaker A:Reputation in ruins, she took a desk job in a quiet town in Connecticut editing technical manuals for a faceless corporation.
Speaker A:She told herself she was safer this way, far from the city.
Speaker A:But the encounter clung to her, an unshakable weight.
Speaker A:At night, when the world grew still, she'd hear the quick clack of thousands of feet chasing her.
Speaker A:In her dreams, they caught her and dragged her back to being lost in the black pool.
Speaker A:Tricia Jefferson, a journalist who sought the astonishing in the shadowed veins of the city that never sleeps.
Speaker A:She ventured into a place where the rules of our world don't apply.
Speaker A:The creatures she found, or that found her exist not in the pages of her story, but in the liminal spaces where curiosity meets dread.
Speaker A:A reminder, perhaps, that some truths are not meant to be uncovered, for they belong to the realms beyond our own.
Speaker A:Tricia Jefferson now lives quietly, far from the tunnels, but the echoes of that night pursue her still, a relentless rhythm in the dark.
Speaker A:If you're enjoying the stories, please support the podcast by buying me a coffee.
Speaker A:The link is in the episode's show notes, and I would greatly appreciate your support.
Speaker A:Now onto today's second story, which is the Voynich Manuscript.
Speaker A:In the sterile, claustrophobic vault of Yale University's rare book library, Evelyn Marlow stood before the Voynich manuscript, its ancient vellum radiating a silent menace that seemed to hum through the air.
Speaker A: It was October: Speaker A:Its pages scrawled with an unreadable language and adorned with alien planets.
Speaker A:Uncharted star maps and figures submerged in glowing unnatural pools mocked every attempt at decryption.
Speaker A:Evelyn, a 34 year old linguist with a hard earned reputation for unraveling lost dialects, had staked everything on this moment.
Speaker A:Her career, her savings, and her sanity.
Speaker A:Years of scraping by on adjunct teaching and freelance translations had led her here, to a vault that felt more like a tomb.
Speaker A:Yale had granted her access after months of relentless petition, but the air was thick with unspoken warnings.
Speaker A:Scholars who had probed the manuscript's secrets had vanished, their research burned and their names erased.
Speaker A:Evelyn dismissed the tales as academic folklore, but as she stood alone, the vault's silence pressed against her.
Speaker A:Her hands, sheathed in cotton gloves, moved gracefully as she arranged her tools on a steel table.
Speaker A:A notebook dense with linguistic theorems, its pages dog eared and smudged from years of obsession.
Speaker A:A digital recorder.
Speaker A:A digital camera smuggled past the library's security in a hollowed out book and a pen light, its batteries taped in place.
Speaker A:The vault's overhead lights cast a harsh, clinical light.
Speaker A:The manuscript lay open, its pages brittle, exhaling a faint, acrid scent.
Speaker A:The script was a labyrinth of flowing glyphs, defying every known Alphabet, while the illustration plants with roots like coiled serpents, celestial charts mapping no earthly sky.
Speaker A:Women bathing in pools that shimmered with an unnatural green, seemed to pulse with life that made her skin crawl.
Speaker A:Evelyn's pulse hammered her breath shallow, each inhale tasting of the vault's sterile chill.
Speaker A:She had spent years chasing this enigma.
Speaker A:Her apartment was a chaos of facsimiles, and her dreams were haunted by spiraling glyphs and faceless watchers lurking just beyond sight.
Speaker A:The lights flickered, a brief stutter that plunged the vault into darkness, snapping her nerves taut as piano wire.
Speaker A:Her recorder's red light blinked steadily, capturing the faint hiss of the ventilation system.
Speaker A:But a low hum, almost imperceptible, seemed to rise from the manuscript itself.
Speaker A:Her notes, meticulously stacked, shifted slightly, their edges curling as if brushed by damp, invisible fingers.
Speaker A:But the steel door remained sealed, the room a fortress protected by bolts and tumblers.
Speaker A:She had heard the warnings.
Speaker A:A cryptographer found dead in a locked room, his notes reduced to ash.
Speaker A:A historian who vanished after claiming a breakthrough his family silenced with hush money.
Speaker A:Whispers of government agents tailing Voynich researchers, their motives buried in classified files so heavily redacted they were useless.
Speaker A:Evelyn had scoffed at a colleague's grainy photos of a man in a dark suit watching from a car outside a library.
Speaker A:But now, alone, the stories came back, their edges sharpened by the vault's suffocating weight.
Speaker A:She turned a page, the vellum crackling like brittle bones, each sound unnaturally loud in the silence.
Speaker A:The illustrations grew stranger as she progressed, A diagram of concentric circles radiating lines like a shattered star and surrounded by glyphs that seemed to writhe under the light.
Speaker A:Her head throbbed, a dull ache spiking into a needle of pain behind her eyes.
Speaker A:She reached for her camera, fingers slick with sweat, but a sharp click, deliberate, metallic, like the cocking of a pistol, echoed throughout the vault.
Speaker A:Her breath caught and she whirled about, but she was alone.
Speaker A:She gripped the table's edge, her knuckles whitening, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs.
Speaker A:The manuscript was her target, but couldn't shake the sensation that she was being watched.
Speaker A:Another page turned, unprompted, the vellum flipping with a slow, deliberate precision that made her stomach lurch.
Speaker A:It stopped on a drawing of a humanoid figure, its limbs somehow unnatural and its face a blank void surrounded by script that shimmered like wet ink.
Speaker A:The pain in her head surged, her vision dimming as the glyphs seemed to lift, swirling into the air like ash caught in a draft, forming patterns that whispered truths she wasn't meant to know.
Speaker A:She glanced at the recorder, freezing when she saw the small display.
Speaker A:A waveform bounced, indicating something was being recorded, but she was alone and wasn't making any noise.
Speaker A:Evelyn checked the small machine, shocked to hear what seemed to be garbled speech, but it was unintelligible other than a single word.
Speaker A:Neutralize her.
Speaker A:Her mind flashed to the rumors, classified projects tied to the manuscript, agencies guarding secrets too dangerous to surface.
Speaker A:She had seen the evidence, a colleague's office ransacked and cryptic, memos stamped with a Pentagon seal, and a man in a dark suit watching her from a car outside her apartment Two nights ago.
Speaker A:She had dismissed it as paranoia, but the vault suddenly felt like a cage.
Speaker A:Footsteps sounded, heavy and deliberate, circling the vault's perimeter.
Speaker A:The lights flickered again, longer, plunging the room into a darkness that felt pregnant with danger.
Speaker A:It pressed against her skin like a cold hand.
Speaker A:When the lights came back, a shadow loomed on the wall, angular and still.
Speaker A:She spun, heart slamming against her ribs.
Speaker A:But she was still alone, and the shadow was gone when she turned back.
Speaker A:Panting from fright, she looked at the manuscript.
Speaker A:It lay open, the glyphs seeming to glow, mocking her with their defiance.
Speaker A:Then the footsteps returned in the corridor beyond, relentless, like hunters closing a noose.
Speaker A:A faint hum, not the ventilation but something mechanical and precise, rose from the walls.
Speaker A:The door's lock clicked, a sound like a guillotine falling.
Speaker A:Evelyn lunged for it, her gloves tearing as she clawed at the handle, her nails splintering against the unyielding steel, her notes scattered, pages catching on the table's edge, some drifting to the floor, smudged with faint oily fingerprints that weren't hers.
Speaker A:The lights died again and the manuscript's glow intensified, illuminating the blank faced figure, its void staring back in a silent accusation.
Speaker A:The footsteps stopped, replaced by a low electronic buzz, and a faint red light blinked in the vault's corner, a camera, or something worse, watching her every move.
Speaker A:Her pinwhite fell, its beams spinning wildly, catching flashes of the walls where shadows seemed to pulse.
Speaker A:When the lights snapped back on, the door was ajar, the corridor beyond a black maw.
Speaker A:Evelyn stumbled out, her legs unsteady, her torn hands leaving faint blood smears on the frame.
Speaker A:The library's halls were a maze of silence, the air thick with the scent of old pictures, paper.
Speaker A:She ran, her footsteps echoing, her lungs screaming until she burst into the New Haven night.
Speaker A:The quad was deserted and she turned back to look at the library as she caught her breath.
Speaker A:Her pulse skyrocketed when one of the library doors opened and a tall man in all black stepped out.
Speaker A:Something wasn't right about him, and her blood froze when she realized there was only a black void where his face should be.
Speaker A:The figure's head swiveled to lock onto her and she turned to run, but found herself in the strong grip of a large man wearing a dark suit.
Speaker A:He lifted her feet off the ground and spun away from the library as if shielding her body with his.
Speaker A:She struggled, but his grip was iron and he was impervious to her attempts to break free.
Speaker A:From behind came the sound of three hard thumps like nothing she had ever heard before.
Speaker A:Then the unmistakable sound of a human body falling to the ground.
Speaker A:The man set her on her feet, releasing his hold and stepping back.
Speaker A:Go home, he said, his words shocking her into silence.
Speaker A:It was a trick.
Speaker A:Back pedaling away from him, she caught movement on the left library steps with the corner of her eye and turned to look.
Speaker A:Another man, also wearing a dark suit, was just concealing what seemed to be a pistol beneath his jacket, only there was a weird long tube extending from the muzzle.
Speaker A:As she watched, he bent and ripped a black fabric mask off the faceless man, revealing perfectly normal human features.
Speaker A:The man who'd shielded her reached out and grasped her arm, gently turning her away from the scene.
Speaker A:Go home now, he said, his eyes boring into hers.
Speaker A:Evelyn didn't hesitate another moment.
Speaker A:Breaking into a sprint, she raced across the quad and didn't stop until she reached her apartment.
Speaker A:Blasting through the front door, she slammed it behind her, shot the deadbolt home, and frantically wedged a kitchen chair beneath the knob.
Speaker A:Shaking from fear and adrenaline, Evelyn hugged herself tightly, then realized her apartment had been ransacked.
Speaker A:The contents of every drawer and cabinet had been dumped on the floor, couch cushions were torn open and searched.
Speaker A:The closet had been emptied, her clothes shredded, and in a pile on the bedroom floor.
Speaker A:There were also multiple holes in her walls, as if whoever had done this suspected suspected she had hidden something behind the drywall.
Speaker A:With a gasp of realization, Evelyn rushed to a small desk in the corner of the dining room.
Speaker A:Its drawers were in a pile, the surface swept clean, and her laptop, along with reams of research on the Voynich manuscript, was gone.
Speaker A:Understanding she would likely be dead if not for the mysterious men who had protected her outside the Yale Library, Evelyn fled to a small coastal town taking a clerical job sorting invoices in a windowless office.
Speaker A:Two months later, a small package with no return address arrived inside a small USB drive with no explanation of what it might contain.
Speaker A:Several days passed before she convinced herself to look at whatever was on the the drive.
Speaker A:When she inserted it into her computer, two folders, simply identified by the numerals 1 and 2, opened.
Speaker A:Folder 1 was a shaky video that she realized was from a body cam.
Speaker A:It was the faceless figure on the library steps being unmasked.
Speaker A:Only there were details she hadn't seen that night.
Speaker A:The man was armed with a pistol and and a large hunting knife, and in a pocket was a printed photo of Evelyn.
Speaker A:The message was clear.
Speaker A:He'd been there to kill her.
Speaker A:30 seconds after she played the video, folder one self deleted, and there was nothing she could do to restore it.
Speaker A:With a trembling hand, she opened folder two, her breath catching.
Speaker A:The folder contained every single document about the manuscript that had been stolen from her apartment, and many more that she had never seen before.
Speaker A:It also held a complete scan of the manuscript, something Yale would have never allowed her to do.
Speaker A:Scrolling through the thousands of files in the folder, Evelyn's eyes settled on a simple text document that was simply labeled Read me.
Speaker A:She opened it, her breath catching when she read the simple message will be in touch.
Speaker A:The stories presented are inspired by true events.
Speaker A:Names and locations may have been changed for privacy reasons.
Speaker A:New episodes of When Reality Phrase are uploaded every Monday and Thursday.
Speaker A:If you're enjoying the journey into the strange, the mysterious, and the unexplained, be sure to press that Follow or Subscribe button and turn on all reminders so you're alerted whenever an episode drops.
Speaker A:Until next time, thank you for listening to When Reality Phrase.
