THE MAGNUS ARCHIVES #44 - Tightrope
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- čas přidán 18. 02. 2018
- MAG0044 - Case #9790302 - Yuri Utkin
Statement regarding an encounter with a strange circus.
The Magnus Archives tells the tale of a young boy’s exploration of a colourful carnival that comes to his home village and discovers all the fun of the fair is not what they expected.
Starring: Gertrude Robinson - Sue Sims; The Archivist - Jonathan Sims
Writer: Jonathan Sims
Director: Alexander J Newall
Editors: Alexander J Newall, Mike LeBeau
MERCH:
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The Magnus Archives is distributed by RustyQuill.com and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence. - Zábava
![Hello Jon Apologies for the Deception [Animatic]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/VN19_AZ6LZ0/mqdefault.jpg)
Gertrude has the exact voice I pictured in my mind for her
I for some reason thought she’d be polish.
Jon said that when he wrote her he kept hearing his mom's voice in his head, and they were scrambling to find someone to play her so he just let his mom try it. And since she's an English teacher, the first thing she did was correct the grammar errors in his script.
Yep, that's Gertrude alright.
Same, I also expect Gertrude to look like my primary school principal
@@JesseColton omg, that's so funny and cute xd
John: I don't know why she stopped recording these. Also, I'm gonna start hiding my tapes out of paranoia of my colleagues.
Yeah, Jon's only found one stash. She has more stashhouses than Avon Barksdale for tapes scattered around the archives.
@@mechengr1731 Hihi, are those little spoilers I see here?
@@mechengr1731 damn, spoilers without a warning
Dude those two men in overalls were the delivery men.
Thought so too!!
I knew I recognized them... how long have they been alive?
Hey, my grandma was young in the year this incident took place, and she's still alive too! Turning 81 in a month
@@chimedemon Are they alive?
Nanahuatli They were the ones who delivered the table to Jon a few episodes ago.
PSA for newcomers who don't know: Gertrude is voiced by Jonathan Sims' real life mom
Second PSA: don't read the replies to this comment bc there are some spoilers and I can't edit other people's comments 😭
That is great.
Really? Thats so cool!
Aww
Nice!
Spoiler?
In Soviet Russia, circus come to you
iiiii think thats true for pretty much every country
The beast tamer handles the beast WITH HIS BARE HANDS
P.S also i thinmk back in the day carnivals and circus would travel around like caravans
Only 5 minutes in, but my face dropped when I heard the words "Steam organ".
✨ *the spooky clown doll* ✨
Same. I’m working on a cosplay while listening and ran to my phone to see if there was a connection someone pointed out in the comments
@@sammieegoldwand ✨the circus arrived✨
I ticked at "circus in Russia"
same
See, now I'm wondering if Getrude mismanaged the archive on purpose, perhaps to force her successor to go through it all and start drawing conclusions. Between this and the fact that the forces of darkness apparently put her on top of their hit-list, she seems to have had it together.
I think so to, I mean one of the early ones was dreams, in which her horrible death is predicted.
I like to think she organized them in reference to one another. Probably not
She says later that she purposely kept the archives in a state of chaos in order to keep a certain person from figuring out her plans
That's my current theory
It also seems like she had some sort of protection against unnatural beings hence why it appeared To be a human who murdered her
Native Russian speaker here and I must say, Gertrude is much better in this language than Jon
Still butchered the word "другого" though
@@himeow7454 what does that mean
@@cezar3169 "the other" like in "circus of the other" in the calliope episode
Yeah, I noticed too. Сельсовет sounded pretty good to make me laugh
anything's better than pronouncing Ivan as "Eye-ven"
For some reason Gertrude reading feels like my grandma telling me a bedtime story (only much more upsetting)
Lmfao! This comment is just hilarious to me😂
I would love to hear her actress read old school nursery rhymes and fairytales/folktales.
9:00 the phrase "тигр еще не готов" can mean both "the tiger is not yet ready" and "the tiger is not yet finished" depending on. Guys at rusty quail seem to either have done some simple but satisfactory research, or they had someone who actually speaks russian.
Whoa… that’s really cool.
Is it the same with "Another Circus" and "Circus of the Other"?
@@minuspi8372 ehh, no? Another Circus - (what circus?) drugoi tsirk, Circus of the Other - tsirk (whose circus?) drugogo.
idk which one of the translations is more concerning
I love that Gertrude's voice also become's more businesslike after the "Statemend ends."
In Jon's case, we now know it's him deliberately trying to seem like he's not affected, like he's skeptical. In Gertrude's case though... I always thought it was far more genuine. Like she's legitimately unaffected.
No matter why they _think_ they’re changing their tones (if they notice that they’re doing it at all) there’s a creepy canonical reason that makes sense… though since this comment was from a year ago, I guess you probably know that now.
she knew
She really had an _eye_ for details
I thought it was because they were just theatre nerds-
She ain't no noob. This wasn't her first, or last, rodeo.
feeling like gertrude definitely knew what was up
I keep seeing people in the comments theorizing that she "organized" the archive in such a way for a reason, I must say I am now, more than ever, inclined to agree.
@@tearez13 👀
*cough cough* yes well...
So now I'm curious how the organ went from the circus to that one guy in season one, with the murderous clown dolls.
Panneapple wasn’t the grandpa part of the circus? His name was Nikolaj and there was a picture of him with the canopy in a circus. (I haven’t listened to this ep btw)
@@Anna-zi7sx It was Nikolai Denikin and Gertrude said he left the circus in the 70s. Also I need to check but I think the clown description matches the doll's
So I looked at the transcripts, the murderous doll: "Its threadbare body was white and purple polka-dot, with three pompoms down the front and a ruff just below the head. It had no woollen hair left, but instead had a tall, pointed white cap on top. Its face was painted a pure white, and its eyes were shut, with black lines drawn across them. The only colour was a splash of red across the hinged jaw. A smile."
And the actual clown in this episode : "huge and scowling in white and purple polka-dots"
@@cleliea8770 I didn't pick up on that at all and I *hate* it
@@cleliea8770 oh my God.
Her voice is really nice
It's real Jon's mom, I love that fact
Me, anytime something vaguely familiar is mentioned: I don't like where this is going :)
Does this mean that Denekin, the grandpa of the callopee lady, was a bad guy ?
If the circus was far safer after he left, he sure was a really bad one.
Probably the organ/playing the organ affects the people around
*calliope
Alethéia cal-e-ope /j
A powerful element of the organization, for sure, but the extents to which he was a perpetrator and victim himself aren’t quite clear. Hoping to learn more about him, as the only 3 episodes here that mention him at all are so sparse in detail.
my guy.. he had an clown doll that ripped people's jaws off. did you THINK he wasn't evil?
Why is literally every voice so gorgeous. Just every single one is a joy to listen to.
British
And they're all related, I mean Gertrude va is Jons irl mom, voice acting runs in the family I suppose
Later on in the series, Peter Lukas is like nails on a chalkboard for me
@@senormooples2354 later on Juergen Lietner is Jon’s irl dad lol
@emily barclay WOW WHAT?!
gertrude sounds so cool!!!!
I love her small accent
It's real Jon's mother
Gertrude isn't cool! SHE'S HARD CORE AND F**** AWSOME
Can Gertrude like...read me a bedtime story?
This is an anti-bedtime story. It keeps you awake instead of putting you to sleep.
@@anxiouscordyceps so it's a daytime story
@@SOLO.DANDELION i something listen this for being awake at job
"A crunching violence" is unbelievably vivid but just vague enough - the writing is so damn good
This is the circus Mr Bobinsky from Coraline used to perform in
Mr Bobinsky was one of the liquidators at chernobyl, that was why he had blue skin
Honestly, Jonathan Sims the wtriter deserves so much credit for research that went into these.
The naming and such are especially what hits for me, cause like. Russian names sound fake really often. Thats what happens, its normal (god knows im only good at distinguishing english names cause i read, listen and watch to quite a lot of stuff)
But like. Its uncanny how..
Normal the names sound.
Like i know not just One but two Yuri Utkins in my life and it is. A lil creepy not gonna lie (its good its supposed to be lmao)
Its one of those small details that really hit the nail on the general vibe
I dont know much about Russia, but isn't there a rich history of people trying to pass in and out of Russia without being detected by the police or military or government? Names have to be ordinary so that anybody can appear ordinary and just go on their way
Every single time I’m always shocked by the softness of martins voice doing the outro bc I’m so used to Jon doing it
Wow, I love Gertrude's voice! She sounds like a nice but posh lady I expected her to sound like. And, I won't lie, it was rather sweet to hear somebody pronounce the Russian version of the name 'Ivan' correctly for once, and the almost-correct (if for occasional stress slips) toponyms were a nice touch.
What I, as a native speaker of Russian, also find quite curious, is that in Russian, like sometimes in English, 'ready' as in 'ready for something' and 'finished' could be the same word готов. I wonder if this was intentional - and if it was, again, this is a very nice touch.
I once saw an acrobat fall from the tightrope in circus. I was a kid. It was scary, I hope she survived the fall. I am from Russia, too.
"Gertrude seems to know more than me" bestie I don't know how say this but whether or not you can achieve does not change the fact shes been working at this place for YEARS. Obviously she knows more than you????
Freak shows as part of a circus (the few that are still around, that is) are actually illegal in America
There goes all of my plans
@@noomre9105 you were gonna sign up?
I like it that way
People basically took advantage of the ill or impoverished
Pretty fuked ul
This was decades back and in Russia though
@@CTShun I am aware, I was just stating a random relevant factoid
Me hearing the words “freak show” mentioned in a horror context: I DONT LIKE WHERE THIS IS GOING NOT ONE BIT
same i was like "NOPE" lmao
Gertrude was actually competent? Holy shit
Podcast is officially cursed. I've tried to download it twice (this episode and #5) through an app that I used to download Night Vale and other music before, and the audio simply won't play. I've downloaded in between #5 and this one, so the app's not permanently broken. I mean, it's obviously either a bug or Rusty Quill doing something to prevent it, but I like to think the recordings refuse to be digitally moved around one more time.
I keep having issues trying to listen to them on podcast sites! I had to switch to youtube to keep listening :O
when trying to record digitally the audio shows significant signs of...... distortion.....
well it is the magnus archives
me, closing my laptop: podcast's haunted
Filipa Maria Costa "welp, guess ill get stalked by an entity"
Wow, Gertrude’s voice really sounds like I thought it would, very pleasant and posh! Also, if those were the delivery men in the circus, I would love to know to know more of them since they then have more lore and supernatural elements than simply being part of a mysterious delivery service ~ very exciting! (≧∀≦)
She's also voiced by Jon Sims' real life mom!
He calls out ‘Vanya’ in Soviet Russia and heard nobody answer? Pssh. Suspension of disbelief ruined. I can take silver predatory worms and perforated undead witches- but only one person in a Soviet Russian village being named Ivan? Preposterous. Good day sir!
This is a spooky Russian village so they didn’t respond because they only respond to ‘spooky Ivan’ or ‘Yuri but weird’ makes perfect sense
Heey, in real life all guys in Russia named Sasha
5:10 *GASP* It's the calliope Isn't it?
Wait did Gertrude change the filing system later on? So far, it was YYY/DD/MM. This one is YYY/MM/DD.
Who was that Denekin guy?
was he the grandfather with the red Calliope and murderous clown doll?
Yup!
If this organ is the same one from in Strange Music, and this Another Circus is as dangerous as Gertrude makes it sound, then it could be reasonable to guess that the dolls in the chest in Strange Music are of the same origin. Now that begs the question of what exactly are the dolls, and what did the circus use them for. Or who were they.
As Gertrude said that the town was lucky to make it out in one piece, and as in Strange Music there was a new doll in the trunk that looked just like Josh, I think the dolls may have been people who visited the circus. And both the clown doll in the trunk and the larger clown fighting in the tent wore "white with purple polka dot", the exact same wording. I think they might be the same clown. And the timeline would work out. Though it still doesn't explain how people were getting turned into dolls. From in Strange Music it seems that the clown was turning others into dolls, like what it did with Josh, but then there's the question of how it became a doll itself.
fun fact for all who didn't know: Gertrude is played by Jonny's mother, Sue Sims
Voice acting seems to run in the family.
Listening to this podcast multiple times is such a trip.
"I found this tape player covered in dust and cobwebs" you sneaky bastard.
5 roubles for a circus? in a _small_ town? in 1970s? what an expensive performance
in the 50s, before the reform, so divide by ten. Still way too expensive for poor villagers, especially right after the war and post-war famines, and with the kolkhoz system. Not Jonathan's fault for underestimating how horrific the actual poverty levels were, anyway. I love how this story has a cool and comfortable eerie atmosphere, since real horrors were not nearly as cute.
as soon as i heard circus, i knew it’d be about the circus that the two body builders were from. this series is so good.
From which episode are the body builders?
@@swagburito9091 sorry for not replying to this lol, only saw it because i was re listening to the series. if you don’t know already, it was the episode with the clown dolls and the calliope with the boyfriend, josh, who got his jaw torn off. the person who sent in the statement said their grandad was part of a circus with a ventriloquist, two body builders, a steam organ player and a ring bearer i think?
presuming you’ve gotten further into the series by now so don’t read more of this if you haven’t-
it’s the circus of the other with nikola and them lot in it lol
I’m guessing the “freak show” tent was the entities all traveling together or something perhaps 👀
lmao squad
me and da boys
@@xxc00l_k1dzxx Hey, your profile picture is from that video game with the therapist who also happens to be a murderer !
@@justeundonut-moi.7979 heck yea
They have a union now
So cool to get stuff from Gertrude
holy shit Gertrude sounds so fucking sweet. also the two men in overalls were breekon and hope and no one can convince me otherwise.
AAAAAAH IT'S GERTRUDE
I love her. She sounds like a kind teacher and her intonation is very expressive.
Самое невероятное из всей записи, это то, что вход в цирк стоил 5 рублей. Если я правильно помню, по меркам того времени это ну очень дорого, и у людей в деревне не было бы лишних 5 рублей на визит в цирк
насколько я смог узнать, цена входа была 1 в среднем 1 рубль, могла достигать 1.5 рубля за передние ряды.
as far as I could find, the entrance cost 1 rouble on average, 1.5 for the front row seat.
Описываемые события происходили в 1952 году, то есть до денежной реформы 1961 года, то есть 50 копеек по застойным ценам. Even so, в советской бедной деревне 1950х у людей не было не то что денег на цирк, но и денег вообще, да и, скорее всего, паспортов, but that's by the by. Эпизод в любом случае отличный
this one messed with me, great atmosphere holy shit. Haven't been this scared since "across the street". Maybe just the changing of the voice made it scary out of pure novelty.
Gertrude sounds like a Hogwarts professor! Why did she have to die?! T^T
Ikr? ;^;
So she sounds like an old person?..
@@phoeberia2734 An old British person*
Sewerz bruh that’s Jonathan’s mum bro
I actually imagined her much like McGonagall before I even heard her voice
I’m guessing the circus lady was the NotThem because of the record scratch voice 👀 reminds me of NotSasha from season 1
OMG, Gertrude's Russian is *SO* good! Not perfect, but still quite excellent.
Was Mrs. Sims learning one of the Slavic languages before or during the recording?
Man this 2nd season is at least as good as season 1!
??? I was taken aback so hard, I knew she was coming up but I was not prepared for:
-The actress being absolutely perfect to the point I want to hear everything she's been in!
-The sheer contrast! Jon "I don't know what's happening, what are these creatures, wth what?" Sims vs Gertrude "A yes, that apears to be the circus at the hight of their tour, they got off so lucky hm, oh well"
The clown... The clown is wearing the same clothes as the clown doll Denekin's granddaughter found
Was I the only one who thought the two dudes who led the kid away from the Tiger sounded like Breekon and Hope?
By the way, "the tiger is not ready" and "the tiger is not finished" is the same phrase in Russian. "Tigr ne gotov"
i like clown dolls so i took note of the description of the one who had its jaw in tact, and it has the same white suit with purple polka dots as the fighter clown here! he mustve been turned into a doll or something!
First time listener, but I'm just assuming this one is connected to the weird clown doll that tears off jaws?
First time listener as well, and no assumptions needed. Both the name of the circus and the name "Denekin" match up with the clown doll/calliope episode.
@@Kefkaesque13 Thank you! I thought so, but I couldn't quite remember
i love love love gertrude's voice I want her to narrate everything that happens, I want her on the news, I want her on the radio, I want her in my life
It’s so sad and scary to hear Jon’s voice slowly go from confident and matter of fact to anxious and paranoid
This honestly the most horrifying episode to me. I'm not scared of the circus or the regular body horror in this series, I don't know what it is
gertrude's voice is very soothing
The steam organ player could sign with Grifters Bone. Maybe he even has for a time, seeing that the clowns went violent.
Wow! Mrs. Sims has such a lovely reading voice, it was like listening to audiobooks of the Far Away Tree almost, great work 👍
Lord I didn't know how much I missed Jon's voice in the intros until I heard it again.
[CLICK]
GERTRUDE
Case 9790302. Yuri Utkin. Incident occurred in the village of Algasovo, central Russia, November 1952. Statement given 2nd of March 1979. Committed to tape 15th of April 1997.
Gertrude Robinson recording.
GERTRUDE (STATEMENT)
As a child, I always loved the circus. I grew up in the little village of Algasovo, deep in the forest steppes. We were tiny, far below the notice of the district’s *райсовет* (1), and as such we were quite a poor community, with little hope of being added to the circus routes as anything but a waystation. Every year he would take my brother Ivan and me, and we would make the journey down to Morshansk to see the circus as soon as it arrived.
Jugglers, acrobats, wild animals… it took my breath away every time. My favourites were the clowns. Not as you would think of them; I’ve seen what you call clowns in this country, but back then clowns would actually tell jokes, not simply hit each other and fall over. I didn’t always understand the jokes they told, but there was something intoxicating about sitting there, surrounded by people all laughing and cheering. Even if I didn’t always share their amusement, I always shared in their joy.
I never liked the acrobats, though. I would watch them swinging from the top of the tents, leaping between the trapeze or walking their tightropes, and my chest would tighten, and all I could see in my mind would be the image of them falling to the sand-covered floor. I’ve never been afraid of heights myself, you understand; I used to spend half my summers at the top of the tallest trees I could find. When I was six, my best friend Piotr fell when we were climbing together. He survived, but broke his leg so badly that he still walks with a limp today. From that moment, that long terrible moment when I watched him fall, whenever I would watch the acrobats fly through the air it was all I could do not to close my eyes. Still, that doesn’t change the fact that my visit to the circus in Morshansk remains some of the happiest memories I have of my childhood.
One day in early November, the circus came to Algasovo. To say this was strange is to put it very mildly. As I’ve said, we were a small village, and far below the notice of the troupes that travelled the region. More than that, winter was beginning to set in, and it should have been many months before the touring season began again.
Then, as now, all circuses were owned and run by the government, something that is taken very seriously, so the idea that it might be an independent company that had simply found itself in Algasovo was unthinkable. There were always rumours of vagrants or travellers who would set up their own shows, but these would be small things, always half-ready to move on if someone reported them to the local *сельсовет* (2). This circus was huge, easily as big as the ones I would see at Morshansk. The trucks rolled through the village shortly before dawn, and by the evening there it stood in the field to the east of town. Over the entrance stood a brightly painted wooden sign that read *“Другой Цирк”* (3), “Another Circus”.
I begged my father to go. He was weary, but it became clear that almost everyone in the village was planning to visit, even if only so they knew what to report to the *сельсовет* later. Soon a mob of us were heading through the icy November evening towards the colourful tents and bright lights. As we approached I heard a shrill, piping sound. I’d never before heard a steam organ - they had not been used in the other circuses I had visited, and I found the noise invigorating. There was something in its shriek that thrilled me, though it was the last time I would be able to hear such a sound without being filled with the deepest dread.
There was no fence around the outside, but instead the gate stood alone before the circus, with the name illuminated by gaslights either side. It was not a surprise that such a place would not have electricity like the ones in Morshansk, but still it seemed as though the flickering shadows cast by those lamps were starker than I was used to. Next to the gate stood a short woman in a leotard, seemingly oblivious to the cold. As the group of us approached, she began to wave with a slow, languid motion and called over for us to come in. The circus was open, she said, and all were welcome. Her voice was strange. The Russian she spoke was perfect, but her accent, her intonation were all wrong; each time she spoke it was abrupt and repetitive, like a scratched record.
If my father and his friends noticed, they didn’t show any sign of it, though they were suspicious enough already. I didn’t care. I was too excited about the circus. Ivan was even keener than I was, and upon hearing this invitation, he burst out of the crowd and ran eagerly through the gate. And then it was as though some spell were broken, and the wariness seemed to disappear all at once. My father took my hand and led me through under that bright sign, paying the five roubles for entry.
Beyond it there were more gaslights casting their pallid glow on tents and wagons. That whistling steam organ still played, giving the place a feeling of life and energy, while the air was full of sweet smells. From behind the tent came the roar of a big cat, and I let go of my father’s hand as I ran ahead to see. Sure enough, there, sat behind thick iron bars, was the vivid, orange face of a tiger. It regarded me with narrowed eyes, though it remained still. I was entranced. Its fur was shiny and thick, and its mouth curled open to reveal long teeth of brilliant white. I had seen bears and lions before, and once even an elephant, but I’d never seen a real-life tiger before. I leant closer, until all that was between us were six inches and some rusty iron bars.
As I stared at this beautiful creature in front of me, it moved its head. It was the strangest thing to watch. It seemed to shift its position slowly, like a doll having its joints twisted, but its face remained completely still. The mouth stayed curled to reveal its teeth, the ears stayed alert and pointed forward, and the eyes still stared out, though where they had at first seemed brilliant, they now had an almost glassy look to them. Without warning it roared, the same powerful cry of violence that I had heard before, but as it did so I fell back in surprise. The tiger’s mouth had not moved.
As I scrambled back, I felt a large hand on my shoulder, and looked up to see two huge men in overalls. They lifted me easily, so my feet hung almost two feet from the ground. They talked fast, crude Russian, and their words seemed to shift back and forth between them, telling me that behind the tent was off limits, and that I should leave the tiger alone as it wasn’t ready to perform yet. At least, that’s what I thought they’d said at the time. It was only later that it struck me their exact phrase had been that the tiger “wasn’t finished”. They carried me back to my father and placed me down next to him. He thanked them, and asked me if I’d seen my brother.
Ivan had not returned after he ran off through the gate, and my father was growing concerned. He was standing talking to a pale man in a flamboyant red coat, whom I took to be the ringmaster. This brightly-dressed man said there was no reason to be alarmed, that he would ask his people to be on the lookout, and that Ivan would no doubt return when the show was about to start. There was much to explore in the circus, he told my father patiently, and children often let their excitement get the better of them in this strange new place, but they had never lost one yet. This last part he said with a smile that I think was supposed to be reassuring, but reminded me too much of the tiger with its shiny, unmoving teeth.
I left them arguing there and went off to find Ivan. In my ten-year-old’s mind I was sure that I would be able to figure out where my younger brother had wandered to. I would return triumphant, and my father would tell all the village of how well I had done. As I walked, I became fascinated by the flickering gaslights, some clear and bright, others behind coloured glass, and decided that Ivan would also have been drawn to them. So I followed them round the tent, and through the wagons and trucks, until I found myself standing before a smaller tent, set off to the side of the big top. There was another wooden sign across the top. This one appeared to be written in English; I did not then understand what it said. Knowing what I know now, I believe it said, “Freak Show”.
Now you must understand that the freak show was not part of a Soviet circus. Indeed, I believe even in America the practice has been out of fashion for many, many years, so I did not have any idea what to expect when I went in looking for Ivan. What I saw inside is one of the main reasons that I am so sure that my experience deserves to be in your library. It’s the reason I went to Moscow to study medicine, for the people, if such they can be called, that I saw in there were of such grotesque proportion and bodily forms that I became obsessed with learning how it was they might still live.
It was only when I was many years into my medical training that I finally accepted that, scientifically, such things were not possible. A mouth cannot function if it’s located anywhere other than the face. Limbs cannot bend like rubber. A man cannot walk and talk and stare without a head. You will, I hope, forgive my lack of precise descriptions. It has been 27 years since that night, and I can no longer clearly distinguish between what is memory and what is nightmare.
I walked along the row of cages. Those few other patrons who had found their way to this tent turned around quickly, leaving with pale faces and shaking legs, but I was determined to find Ivan. I closed my eyes as I walked, opening them only momentarily every few steps to check if he was there. I called out, but there was no reply, either from my brother, or from the silent things in their cages. Finally, I reached the end of the tent. The last cage was empty, save for a large hessian sack. It was tied by thick rope, wrapped around so tightly that it bulged through the gaps in its binding. I took momentary comfort in the fact that it was far too big to be Ivan. Still, I found myself approaching it, curiosity momentarily overcoming my growing sense of dread. Then, in the distance, the steam organ began to play, announcing the start of the show, and the bag began to move.
It contorted itself, pulsing and throbbing like a wounded animal’s stomach, and fell heavily forward. I screamed and fled out into the frozen night. It was only when I was about to pass back out through the wooden gates that I stopped, remembering that, even if Ivan had fled like me, my father was still in this terrible place. I resolved to rescue him, and turned back towards the main tent. Light spilled out of the open entrance, as the steam organ kept playing.
I entered to see two clowns fighting. Not the slapstick routines of the clowns I’d been used to, rife with wordplay and satire, but a crunching violence I had never seen before. One of them, huge and scowling in white and purple polka-dots, pinned down its smaller companion, whose bright yellow shirt was now streaked with red. With each blow from the big clown, the crowd, among whom I could clearly see my father, howled with laughter and cheers. The laughter didn’t sound right. None of it was right. It was as though I was looking at a tent full of vicious strangers, every one of whom wore a face I had known since birth.
Then my gaze drifted upwards, to the tightrope stretched between the towering tent poles, and my heart stopped. Halfway across, tottering on legs too short to balance properly, was Ivan. Everything else was forgotten as I watched him there, and the sounds of the world around me faded away. The question of how he had got up there, or made it halfway along that thin metal wire, didn’t even enter my mind. I could think of nothing but that next step that would send him tumbling to a floor caked in sand, greasepaint and blood.
No-one else in the audience or the ring seemed to have noticed him up there, and my throat had closed too tight to call to them. I could do nothing but watch as Ivan took another step along the tightrope. He swayed to one side, then the other, and I could see he was crying, tears falling to the floor like single drops of rain. He took another step. And then another. He did not fall. I watched in amazement as my seven-year-old brother walked and walked. My heart was still clenched in fear, and I could not breathe. Ivan took his final step, lifted his right foot, and placed it upon the platform on the opposite tent pole. He had made it. He gripped the pole and moved around it and out of sight.
I do not know how long I had stood there watching, but it seemed like only a moment later I felt my father’s hand grip me by the shoulder. I turned to see him standing there with Ivan by his side. He had a look on his face as though he had eaten something that had spoiled, and without a word he led us out of the circus and back to our home. The field was empty by the next morning.
No-one in our village ever spoke of that night, and when the state circus came to Morshansk the next year, my father did not offer to take us, and we did not ask.
For many years, I thought that it might have been some strange dream or distorted memory, as no-one ever acknowledged that it had happened. But I asked Ivan about it when we were older, and he hesitantly said that he remembered the circus coming, but everything after running through the gate was a blur. I pressed him further on the subject, and he just shook his head. He didn’t remember what happened, he said, but he still got terrible nightmares. Every November, around when the circus had come to Algasovo, he would dream that he was there again. He could smell the sawdust and hear the steam-organ playing, but he could not move. In the dream he would find himself tightly bound with coarse rope and trapped inside a thick hessian sack. I remembered those nights. He always woke up screaming.
GERTRUDE
Final comments: sounds, from what I can tell, like Yuri Utkin and his brother were rather lucky in their encounter with the circus, as both escaped with only significant mental trauma. A decidedly tame result for a run-in with Gregor Orsinov’s troupe, especially as this would have been during the height of their tour. If it was in the 70s, after Denikin had left, then maybe it would come as less of a surprise, but as it stands, I think it somewhat amazing that the whole town appears to have made it through in one piece. Obviously it’s a good thing the children survived, but it does pique my interest in Ivan Utkin. Unfortunately, he appears to have passed away in 1984, but he must have been something rather special.
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ARCHIVIST
Supplemental. This is the first of the tapes I have received from Basira.
Luckily it appears that Gertrude was not as lax in properly marking these tapes as she has been the rest of the archive. While it provides some interesting context for Leanne Denikin’s statement, and this strange circus, I will admit to some disappointment it doesn’t address any of my more pressing questions about Gertrude’s tapes.
Why did she begin recording them? And why stop? If she’d been doing so right up until her death, she would’ve likely gotten through much of the archive, and… moreover I wouldn’t have had to find this tape player tucked away in the storage room, covered in dust and cobwebs.
Moreover, she clearly knows a lot more about what is going on than I had previously assumed. This is far from the first time she has encountered ‘The Other Circus’, or ‘The Circus of the Other’, or however it translates. I suppose I’ll have to return the tape to Basira, and wait until she can get me another one. It is infuriating to have to simply… wait like this, but there is little else I can do.
Additionally, I think someone may have found these… secret tapes. They do not appear to have been disturbed, but the drawer in which I kept them is slightly more open than I left it. I have not mentioned it to the others, as if any of them did open my drawer for innocent reasons, then I don’t want to let them know there is anything significant about the tapes inside. I have prised up one of the floorboards, and will be hiding them beneath there from now on.
End supplement.
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*_Footnotes_*
1• “raysovet” or “district council”
2• “selsovet” or “village council”
3• “Drugoy Tsirk”
3 OPTIONS
MARTIN- Was housekeeping and checked the drawer and was like "I dont wanna make jon mad so ima ignore this"
Elias- FUAWK FUCKAI FUCKI hes probably evil if it was him who checked the drawer
Not sasha- well she isnt sasha.. lmao she might just be wanting to scare john.
This circus might be evil but at least there's no animal cruelty, considering the Fake Tiger.
It could were a tiger before
It could were a tiger before
Hears "steam organ"
....oh no
i like Getrudes voice, very soothing. Reminds me of my elementary school librarian
So getting in character while reading runs in the family.
So the cursed circus makes a comeback, the lion is a puppet and Gertrude knows plenty but doesn't bother to explain in their own notes. Lovely
What a lovely lady
I love Gertrude's voice and how you can clearly tell from her comment at the end that she's very familiar with all this stuff to the point that dealing with it has become routine for her.
GERTRUDE OMG this is so awesome
This was definitely one of the scariest episodes so far for me. I loved circuses as a kid, and "familiar comforting things but perverted" is one of the horror tropes that affect me the most.
It was also not a good idea to listen to this at 1 am.
wait didn't the delivery men talk like the people who told the kid to leave the tiger alone? I'm not finished with the episode so idk but hey. parallels that may not exist. wooo.
Nice to know Breekin and hope used to work at a circus
I'm going back through the series after having finished it. When Jon would go on about Gertrude's disorganization, I always thought, hey, she lived pretty long for someone in her vocation. She probably knows what she's doing. If you're up against supernatural threats which you commonly brush up against by virtue of taking the statements of their victims, being a little disorganized may be the among least of one's concerns. Jonathan's mother did a wonderful job voicing her! She captured focused, resolute Gertrude so perfectly!
Gertrude also reads into the statements likes Jon, she was also a theatre kid.
Why were Breecon and Hope there? Was that circus like... a gathering place for reps of whatever Weirdness is about? Between the delivery boys, the calliope, and so on...
When I was a kid, I went to circus school (yes, that's a real thing, and yes, they teach children to use the trapeze and other awesome shit). This will be an interesting episode!
hello from russia.
the efford put in trying to pronounce цирк другого, as well as names & other stuff, is noticed and appreciated, even if i am so late to comment on it & probably repetitive 😂
oh. i grew up near morshansk. cool!
Breekon & Hope are likely the circus guys 👀👀👀 and NotThem is the circus lady beckoning people inside! I’m guessing these 3 are all working for The Stranger!
NotThem? Stranger? Do these people come later in the series? I don't remember hearing about them
The two dudes!
I started brewing tea at the beginning of this episode but forgot about it as soon as I figured out Gertrude was narrating. I now have tea that's been steeped for 15 mins too long.
I'm still going to drink it, I just find that hilarious
Gertrude has a very nice voice actor.
Ah yes, the Russian appendage to the Breecker and Hope phenomenon, Ivan and Igor.
Honestly at first I just assumed they were two regular strongmen in the circus. Now where have we heard about a couple of strongmen in the circus before...
I love this episode!!! Scary Circuses are one of my favourite horror tropes!
I've just noticed, that we haven't heard from Not-Sasha at all. I wonder what it's up to?
SPOILERS
"...this tape player tucked away in the storage room, covered in dust and COBWEBS"
The foreshadowing!
I’m on my relisten and there’s SO much forehadowing with the tape recorder and webs that we all just missed. A few eps ago Martin was talking to Jon and used the phrase ‘whatever web these tapes have you trapped in’ and I was like BOY
@@emilybarclay8831 Stuff like that is why the Martin Is Working For The Web theory stuck around for so long too I think :3
@@Idran he’s not working for anyone but the Best Boys Squad™️
Steam organ is back! I wonder if Nikolai knew about the effect it had on people and if he did, why did he do it? I'm so curious, I hope we learn more soon! :D
re listening to the strange music episode with this in mind really makes me appreciate these episodes so much more
Delivery guys are also cat sitters.
OSHA probably wasn’t even around back then lmao 😂 idk enough about history though to know for sure!
Wonder if Russia has an OSHA equivalent... probably, idk what it’s called though
Gertrude is scary sounding. I don’t know why I got chills and tears when she mention seeing evan on the top.
First-time listener, 23/10/2023: Gertrude is somehow everything I imagined and better.
"Yeah we haven't lost one kid yet" sir I think I'd prefer if you lost them all. So it is the same circus as in 024 and the delivery men were a part of it? Hm
I had heard of the magnus archives from tiktok, and (to not spoil anythinf {i think}) the second i heard Yuri/Gertrude describe the girl the greeted everyone, I thought about that sound and thought "thats the girl!" So excited to see where the circus will lead
This reminds me of Herman fuller's circus of the disquieting (scp)
Bro imagine walking on a tiperope.
Unexperienced. No saftey. High in the air
Thats a nightmare to live with.
The Church of the Other, those med students, and the not sasha and not graham seem like theyre all the same faction or group or....i wonder if there is a singular being behind it
Gertrude sounds exactly how I imagined it
As I stared at this beautiful creature in front of me, it moved its head. It was the strangest thing to watch. It seemed to shift its position slowly, like a doll having its joints twisted, but its face remained completely still. The mouth stayed curled to reveal its teeth, the ears stayed alert and pointed forward, and the eyes still stared out, though where they had at first seemed brilliant, they now had an almost glassy look to them. Without warning it roared, the same powerful cry of violence that I had heard before, but as it did so I fell back in surprise. The tiger’s mouth had not moved.
As I scrambled back, I felt a large hand on my shoulder, and looked up to see two huge men in overalls. They lifted me easily, so my feet hung almost two feet from the ground. They talked fast, crude Russian, and their words seemed to shift back and forth between them, telling me that behind the tent was off limits, and that I should leave the tiger alone as it wasn’t ready to perform yet. At least, that’s what I thought they’d said at the time. It was only later that it struck me their exact phrase had been that the tiger “wasn’t finished”. They carried me back to my father and placed me down next to him. He thanked them, and asked me if I’d seen my brother.
Ivan had not returned after he ran off through the gate, and my father was growing concerned. He was standing talking to a pale man in a flamboyant red coat, whom I took to be the ringmaster. This brightly-dressed man said there was no reason to be alarmed, that he would ask his people to be on the lookout, and that Ivan would no doubt return when the show was about to start. There was much to explore in the circus, he told my father patiently, and children often let their excitement get the better of them in this strange new place, but they had never lost one yet. This last part he said with a smile that I think was supposed to be reassuring, but reminded me too much of the tiger with its shiny, unmoving teeth.
I left them arguing there and went off to find Ivan. In my ten-year-old’s mind I was sure that I would be able to figure out where my younger brother had wandered to. I would return triumphant, and my father would tell all the village of how well I had done. As I walked, I became fascinated by the flickering gaslights, some clear and bright, others behind coloured glass, and decided that Ivan would also have been drawn to them. So I followed them round the tent, and through the wagons and trucks, until I found myself standing before a smaller tent, set off to the side of the big top. There was another wooden sign across the top. This one appeared to be written in English; I did not then understand what it said. Knowing what I know now, I believe it said, “Freak Show”.
Now you must understand that the freak show was not part of a Soviet circus. Indeed, I believe even in America the practice has been out of fashion for many, many years, so I did not have any idea what to expect when I went in looking for Ivan. What I saw inside is one of the main reasons that I am so sure that my experience deserves to be in your library. It’s the reason I went to Moscow to study medicine, for the people, if such they can be called, that I saw in there were of such grotesque proportion and bodily forms that I became obsessed with learning how it was they might still live.
It was only when I was many years into my medical training that I finally accepted that, scientifically, such things were not possible. A mouth cannot function if it’s located anywhere other than the face. Limbs cannot bend like rubber. A man cannot walk and talk and stare without a head. You will, I hope, forgive my lack of precise descriptions. It has been 27 years since that night, and I can no longer clearly distinguish between what is memory and what is nightmare.
I walked along the row of cages. Those few other patrons who had found their way to this tent turned around quickly, leaving with pale faces and shaking legs, but I was determined to find Ivan. I closed my eyes as I walked, opening them only momentarily every few steps to check if he was there. I called out, but there was no reply, either from my brother, or from the silent things in their cages. Finally, I reached the end of the tent. The last cage was empty, save for a large hessian sack. It was tied by thick rope, wrapped around so tightly that it bulged through the gaps in its binding. I took momentary comfort in the fact that it was far too big to be Ivan. Still, I found myself approaching it, curiosity momentarily overcoming my growing sense of dread. Then, in the distance, the steam organ began to play, announcing the start of the show, and the bag began to move.
It contorted itself, pulsing and throbbing like a wounded animal’s stomach, and fell heavily forward. I screamed and fled out into the frozen night. It was only when I was about to pass back out through the wooden gates that I stopped, remembering that, even if Ivan had fled like me, my father was still in this terrible place. I resolved to rescue him, and turned back towards the main tent. Light spilled out of the open entrance, as the steam organ kept playing.
I entered to see two clowns fighting. Not the slapstick routines of the clowns I’d been used to, rife with wordplay and satire, but a crunching violence I had never seen before. One of them, huge and scowling in white and purple polka-dots, pinned down its smaller companion, whose bright yellow shirt was now streaked with red. With each blow from the big clown, the crowd, among whom I could clearly see my father, howled with laughter and cheers. The laughter didn’t sound right. None of it was right. It was as though I was looking at a tent full of vicious strangers, every one of whom wore a face I had known since birth.
Then my gaze drifted upwards, to the tightrope stretched between the towering tent poles, and my heart stopped. Halfway across, tottering on legs too short to balance properly, was Ivan. Everything else was forgotten as I watched him there, and the sounds of the world around me faded away. The question of how he had got up there, or made it halfway along that thin metal wire, didn’t even enter my mind. I could think of nothing but that next step that would send him tumbling to a floor caked in sand, greasepaint and blood.
No-one else in the audience or the ring seemed to have noticed him up there, and my throat had closed too tight to call to them. I could do nothing but watch as Ivan took another step along the tightrope. He swayed to one side, then the other, and I could see he was crying, tears falling to the floor like single drops of rain. He took another step. And then another. He did not fall. I watched in amazement as my seven-year-old brother walked and walked. My heart was still clenched in fear, and I could not breathe. Ivan took his final step, lifted his right foot, and placed it upon the platform on the opposite tent pole. He had made it. He gripped the pole and moved around it and out of sight.
I do not know how long I had stood there watching, but it seemed like only a moment later I felt my father’s hand grip me by the shoulder. I turned to see him standing there with Ivan by his side. He had a look on his face as though he had eaten something that had spoiled, and without a word he led us out of the circus and back to our home. The field was empty by the next morning.
No-one in our village ever spoke of that night, and when the state circus came to Morshansk the next year, my father did not offer to take us, and we did not ask.
For many years, I thought that it might have been some strange dream or distorted memory, as no-one ever acknowledged that it had happened. But I asked Ivan about it when we were older, and he hesitantly said that he remembered the circus coming, but everything after running through the gate was a blur. I pressed him further on the subject, and he just shook his head. He didn’t remember what happened, he said, but he still got terrible nightmares. Every November, around when the circus had come to Algasovo, he would dream that he was there again. He could smell the sawdust and hear the steam-organ playing, but he could not move. In the dream he would find himself tightly bound with coarse rope and trapped inside a thick hessian sack. I remembered those nights. He always woke up screaming.
GERTRUDE
Final comments: sounds, from what I can tell, like Yuri Utkin and his brother were rather lucky in their encounter with the circus, as both escaped with only significant mental trauma. A decidedly tame result for a run-in with Gregor Orsinov’s troupe, especially as this would have been during the height of their tour. If it was in the 70s, after Denikin had left, then maybe it would come as less of a surprise, but as it stands, I think it somewhat amazing that the whole town appears to have made it through in one piece. Obviously it’s a good thing the children survived, but it does pique my interest in Ivan Utkin. Unfortunately, he appears to have passed away in 1984, but he must have been something rather special.
[CLICK]
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ARCHIVIST
Supplemental. This is the first of the tapes I have received from Basira.
Luckily it appears that Gertrude was not as lax in properly marking these tapes as she has been the rest of the archive. While it provides some interesting context for Leanne Denikin’s statement, and this strange circus, I will admit to some disappointment it doesn’t address any of my more pressing questions about Gertrude’s tapes.
Why did she begin recording them? And why stop? If she’d been doing so right up until her death, she would’ve likely gotten through much of the archive, and… moreover I wouldn’t have had to find this tape player tucked away in the storage room, covered in dust and cobwebs.
Moreover, she clearly knows a lot more about what is going on than I had previously assumed. This is far from the first time she has encountered ‘The Other Circus’, or ‘The Circus of the Other’, or however it translates. I suppose I’ll have to return the tape to Basira, and wait until she can get me another one. It is infuriating to have to simply… wait like this, but there is little else I can do.
Additionally, I think someone may have found these… secret tapes. They do not appear to have been disturbed, but the drawer in which I kept them is slightly more open than I left it. I have not mentioned it to the others, as if any of them did open my drawer for innocent reasons, then I don’t want to let them know there is anything significant about the tapes inside. I have prised up one of the floorboards, and will be hiding them beneath there from now on.
End supplement.
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