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KD: All right, so we had a lot of requests to cover this, so many that I think at one point, 90% of our e-mail was just asking us about it.
TJ: Maybe not 90%.
KD: All right, but it was most of it. We weren't dragging our feet on it, guys, we just wanted to make sure we could do it justice, not just some half-assed thing we threw together--
TJ: Like most of our shows--
KD: Fuck, man, way to call us out [laughter]. Nah, but seriously, even we were jonesing to do this badly, we were just waiting for the right time.
TJ: And the right guests. You guessed it--
KD: Pun definitely intended.
TJ: Fuck you [sounds of throat clearing]. Anyhow, we did bring in one of our long-time collaborators plus a first time visitor to the show to lend us a hand. From WeirdWave, it's Grant Perry.
GP: Hey guys, great to be back, especially for this extra spooky edition. Oooohhh.... [laughter] Anyhow, really been looking forward to talking about this for some time, so I can't wait.
KD: It's always a blast to have you on, Grant. And from The Sines in the Stars, it's Ella Cooper, who honestly, we were surprised when you contacted us to be on it.
EC: Well, I'd wanted to collaborate for sometime, but there never seemed to be anything that would really fit in with what I do until-- [pause]. I'm guessing you guys want to be the ones to do the dramatic reveal?
TJ: You know Kendall. Always wants to get the mic drop.
KD: Damn right. But yeah, the reason we've gathered you all here today--
GP: To solve a murder?
KD: Oh, that's next week. [laughter]. No, Halloween's just around the corner and what better creepy apocryphal media to talk about than our long-awaited dive into The Navidson Record? Welcome to Medium Player.
[intro music]
KD: So back in 2003, when YouTube wasn't even a twinkle in anyone's eye and Blockbuster was where you'd go to pick up a copy of The Phantom Menace, there was a pretty big market for underground tapes. Things like bootleg anime or porn or the most infamous, Faces of Death, where you could watch something gruesome that could be real, could be fake. My favorite one to go to was a site called “Shocking Videos” and I'd read the description, figure out if it sounded cool, order it, and then like a month later, you'd get cassettes in a brown package or a box that you could play on your VCR.
TJ: For the kids listening, a VCR is-- [laughter]
KD: Yeah, I know, old shit. Most of it was pretty crap, bad acting, bad effects, shit that you knew wasn't real as soon as you took a look at it. I only ordered maybe a few tapes each month and most of it was pretty disappointing. After a while, the only time I'd visit was to see if they had new stock or not and one day, I saw there was something that even the website owner wasn't too sure about. I'm trying to remember the description—I know it was in the weirdness category—something like “Documentary about a house that killed supposedly three people and spawned its own cult following.” He also mentioned that it reminded him of a Twilight Zone episode—shit, it was about a kid who gets lost in her own house--
EC: Little Girl Lost.
KD: That's it. Huh, I kind of feel stupid for not remembering it. Anyhow, the main thing was it was supposed to be real footage shot by the family who had cameras all over their house.
TJ: The classic found footage gimmick. Somehow they have enough money to film their house and run the cameras 24-7, but not enough to ever leave the fucker that keeps trying to murder them.
KD: Well, this was back in the early 2000s, pre-Paranormal Activity. Think something closer to The Blair Witch Project, where they justified it by saying that everything felt less real behind the camera. I think the dad was a photographer so he liked to document things. But you kind of touch on what's weird about it which is who would have found all this footage, edited it together, and decided it would be a great documentary.
TJ: Werner Herzog. Und now ve zee zie house vich has just eaten ein child. Truly, zis is a metaphor for adolescent depression. [laughter]
KD: No, if he'd done it, he would have released it on DVD with director commentary. So yeah, I ordered it because I figured what the hell, might as well get a good laugh out of it. See how fake it really looks. So while I was waiting for it, I went to one of my movie boards and posted about it, figured I'd see if anyone else had watched it.
TJ: That's when I said I had, right.
KD: Yeah, you posted that you'd watched it and half of it was like people screaming in darkness and then some really cheesy monster growls before the camera jiggled a whole bunch and went white.
TJ: I was so disappointed, because I'd had the same experience with the book. House of Leaves, in case anyone's interested.
KD: See, I didn't know it was based on a book.
TJ: Well, it's kind of like the Necronomicon that you can supposedly buy. It's not really the thing, but someone's attempt at it. There's like two stories in the version that you can buy on Amazon, only one of which relates to the creepy house. The other one is like a guy that says it's all fake bullshit, which I kind of applauded at first for the meta of it all until he started blabbing about his own issues and then there was an appendix where maybe it was real and I was out.
KD: Still sounds cool.
TJ: I mean, part of it was. It's something you know, maybe believing for a sec that something like this really exists in our world, a house where time and space are just completely screwed-up.
KD: That's why I wanted to see the video, too. I mean, nowadays, you can watch like a hundred videos of people like wandering into backrooms or see some YouTubers carry on an ARG for a year, but back then, it was a lot more limited.
TJ: Yeah.
KD: So yeah, I got the tape in the mail, popped it in and watched it. Here's the thing, though: it wasn't all like what Trevor told me it was.
TJ: See, that's what freaks me out.
KD: Most of it was what he said, but the end – it was like someone had taped over something, but it didn't go over all of it. There was the stupid screams and the growls, but then it cut to this darkness that felt... different. I don't know how to describe it, but imagine watching something like Sharknado and all of a sudden it's Jaws. Like shit suddenly got real.
TJ: Yeah, I agree. You sent me that and 100% it was not what I saw at the end. My tape just cut off right before that, though--
KD: Trevor?
TJ: Now that I think about it, there was a part at the beginning that was a few frames of like a hallway before it cut off. At the time, I thought it was just someone testing the camera before they began filming, but now...
KD: Creepy shit. Still, like me, I bet you wanted to see if that house really existed or not. Because here's all this stuff about it and people insisting it's real and you know most of them are probably bullshitting you, but on the off-chance that they're not--
TJ: You want something real. None of this smoke and mirrors, but genuine horror.
KD: But also like me, you kind of gave up after a while because the pictures that you found didn't match anything and no one online found a house that could have been it. People went to Virginia--
TJ: Or Washington. They mentioned something else up there as well.
KD: There, too. No one ever found anything, though, so I think pretty much everyone just figured it was another hoax like The Blair Witch, maybe a project by a film student trying to cash in on it who never made it big.
TJ: Fun fact, though. I heard Ryan Murphy mention it in some interview he did where he talked about almost turning it into the first season of American Horror Story before he realized that getting the rights to it would probably be a nightmare.
KD: That's true horror. I can see that.
TJ: Glad he didn't, given how that show went down the tubes, but the point is that it made an impact on people even if they didn't believe in it, because you couldn't disprove it 100% either. After all, just because you haven't found the house doesn't mean it's not out there.
[pause]
KD: Probably a good segue here then to bring in Greg. Greg here's one of the premier experts on this thing, unlike the two of us that kind of just dicked around in it.
GP: I wouldn't call me an expert, but yeah, I did go down the rabbit hole with it for some time. So like you guys said, there was a whole bunch of stuff about it, you know, myths and urban legends, and a whole lot of random trivia like the Murphy thing or the later rumor about Flanagan doing a series for Netflix. None of them ever panned out, but it kept the house alive in people's minds.
KD: Because it makes sense.
GP: It does, in the same way that the rumor that A24 had picked up the rights and was going to make some sort of elevated horror movie out of it does as well. There were a lot of people interested in the Record and more specifically in the house. And the first question everyone asked was: is the house real? Does it exist?
KD: I think it does, but in the same way Amityville does. There's a house out there where someone claimed it was haunted because they didn't want to pay the property taxes on it or something.
TJ: No giant demon pig with glowing red eyes?
KD: Nobody bringing home the Satanic bacon [laughter].
GP: Trevor?
TJ: I don't think it's real. I saw the pictures in the back of the book and really, they could be any house out there. Just randomly post a few shots to make it look authentic and if people question it, say that of course the house changed what it looked like.
KD: This Amazing Secret Home Renovators Don't Want You To Know! [laughter]
TJ: You've been quiet through this, Ella. What do you think?
EC: I think—it's complicated. Yes and no.
TJ: Super cryptic answer. I like it.
GP: Right, so no one has any consensus on it. But what is clear is that some people think it's possible that the physical house exists, even if the qualities attributed to it do not.
KD: You didn't say if you believed in it.
GP: Oh, I do. Because I've found evidence of it.
KD: What the--
TJ: Dude, are you serious?
GP: As much as anyone can be about it. TJ mentioned that set of stairs and it got me thinking. If you were going to talk about a house and it was real, would you really give exact coordinates for it? Or would you try to disguise it, throw people off so that if they did go looking, they'd never be able to find it. Even if it was real, you wouldn't want people to hang out on your doorstep, hoping for the right set of circumstances to make it do its thing.
KD: Especially if they're idiots like Trevor and me.
GP: Yep. [laughter] Seriously, though, you're right. You don't want the Fargo thing to happen where people die looking for the house or you get some lunatic showing up and breaking in. So I got to thinking about it and wondering what the important parts of the house were, what the key elements that tell you that here be monsters.
TJ: Abandon all hope, ye who enter.
EC: I get it. If you were to distill it down to its essence, what would it be?
[pause]
TJ: The spiral stairs. The house being bigger on the inside than outside.
KD: Totally the stairs. The labyrinth is what makes the house.
GP: Exactly. And that's what mentioned in the book, a group of explorers finding stairs. So the key is not looking for something outside, but inwards.
TJ: I feel like that's really deep and I'm not nearly high enough to understand that.
KD: Same.
GP: So what you're looking for is stone stairs. Where would one find those and who would make them? I could have started by trying to dig stuff up in Virginia, but there's enough people that have gone looking that have made it a dead end. Same with Pennsylvania, New York, Maine--
KD: Stephen King country. I guess there you'd look for an evil clown.
GP: And if the book's to be believed, the house might not be what you think it should be. It's transformed itself into something mundane, disappearing around the couple at the end and yet somehow still persisting in some form.
EC: Energy transitioning from one state to another.
KD: Oh, shit, is that what you mean about the house may or may not exist?
EC: Something like that. The potential for its existence is there, but if it's not observed, then it is nothing. Once it becomes observed, it is simultaneously something and the absence of something.
TJ: Schrodinger's Cat: The House.
KD: And you said you weren't high enough [laughter].
GP: Yes. That's along the lines of I think the way we need to view the house. Not as something that definitively exists, but something that could exist if someone was looking for it. Like the video tape that has a few frames interspliced that lead you into looking for it.
KD: The house wants to be found.
TJ: Thanks, Gandalf.
KD: Fuck you [laughter]. Anyhow, it's not going to make it easy. I think I get it. You can't see it unless you're on the right wavelength to observe it.
EC: It really reminds me of this one old radio show I listened to years ago. It was about a group of men that robbed a bank and decided to hide their stash in an old observatory with a shed. There was an old astronomer there that when asked, said it had nothing in it.
KD: I really don't like where this is going.
EC: But when they came back and put their money in there, all but one of them, the guy who didn't go in, stopped responding. The astronomer came back and when the guy demanded to know what happened to his friends, the answer was nothing. Of course, the guy didn't believe him, so the astronomer took him up to the telescope and showed him what was beyond that door. Nothing. There was nothing there.
TJ: Shit.
EC: So that's what I think of when I think of the house. A door that leads to nothing, except in this case it also leads to something.
GP: It's the hardest question. How do you look for something that changes, depending on who perceives it? Maybe I might find the house as a suburban ranch home in Virginia and someone else might see it as a set of stairs in Washington.
KD: But you said you found evidence of it.
GP: I found what I think might be part of a house. It doesn't mean that it is the house.
KD: We're definitely not high enough for any of this.
TJ: What did you find?
GP: A set of stairs, not in Washington, but Oregon, up near Portland. They're buried in the woods, almost completely hidden, from view, but if you hike in enough, you'll see them, just these stone things jutting out from the ground.
KD: Fuck.
TJ: You've got pictures?
GP: Some. It doesn't matter. They're not there anymore.
KD: What? They disappeared before your eyes?
GP: No. I just--
TJ: Dude. You mean you got all the way there and you couldn't--
GP: I couldn't go down them. I put my feet right at the edge and I stopped. It was like something in my head was telling me “this is not for you.” I picked up my bag and I turned and walked away.
KD: I wouldn't have been able to.
GP: You would have. See, I'd been digging around, really getting into some strange theories on message boards. One guy was doing research on Salish houses because he'd read this article about how they transformed from daily use to ritual use in the winter and it got me thinking about the idea that the house as a gate to the underworld. The whole thing with the minotaur was obvious, but even before that, it really felt like it was a case modern civilization encroaching upon something that it shouldn't.
KD: Eldritch horror and the idea that man should not know certain things.
EC: The idea that people by interfering with things cause them to happen. If you don't go down the stairs, there's everything down there, but if you do, then the wave function collapses and only one thing remains.
KD: Which could be nothing.
GP: Yeah.
TJ: So in House of Leaves, once Will Navidson made it through the house and came to some sort of epiphany along with his girlfriend, it no longer needed to function. Its purpose had been served.
GP: It's why you can never find the Navidson House again. Once you step out of the river, you can't re-enter it because you've already changed it.
KD: You can never find the house again, once it's been observed, is what you're saying.
GP: Everything I have is meaningless because it won't lead anyone anywhere. What I think the house is something that no one's ever going to be able to truly report back on because what they saw no longer exists and never will again, not in that form.
EC: No replicating the experiment.
GP: And believe me, I tried. I went back to where those stairs were because I spent all night wondering what would have happened if I went down there. Could I have figured out once and for all what those stairs were? The maze, the spirals, the beast at the center of it all – was that something created by the thought of humanity or something beyond comprehension?
KD: You're nodding, Ella. I would have thought this was too out there, too unscientific for you.
EC: My mother was the one who turned me onto science, but she was also a philosopher. She could have gone anywhere with her degree, her background, but she ended up teaching in a liberal arts college in Western Washington because she didn't want to have to choose between the two and they told her she didn't have to.
TJ: Wait, was that--
EC: Evergreen, yeah. But she always told me that while most things out there have some basis in a defined reality, there were other things on the periphery that we didn't yet have the capability to comprehend. Her studies of both physics and philosophy was her way of trying to make sense of it all, and realizing that she couldn't. Not in this lifetime.
KD: Huh. Wait, Greg, you said you went back to the stairs. So there was nothing there? Not the nothing of weird science potential, but like trees and rocks and the absence of stairs?
GP: Well, there was something there. There was a rope leading straight into the ground and a backpack next to it. Someone had scratched something into one of the trees, but it was raining pretty hard at that point and my glasses were swimming in it so I couldn't read what it said. If I had to guess, it was maybe a name – Sam?
KD: Shit.
GP: I let the cops know, not about... this, but what I'd found, and they discovered a car parked near the side of the road a few miles down. No one was ever reported missing from that area, so as far as I know, they never did anything about it.
TJ: Seriously?
GP: I mean, after all, nothing happened.
[silence]
[recording ends]
Note: the episode this was purported to have transcribed has never been aired, so it's unknown whether or not it's a fake or something that got canceled. Will update if able to ever get a hold of anyone involved.--eds