The writing is so good

Shouldn't have tried to ford the river, bro.

Sometimes the writing in this series is on a whole different level lol

Picked the wrong man to hitch her wagon to Aww well,

Well given what we heard in Episode 18 with Toby Carlisle, she prolly survived to leave descendants that then emigrated to England.

IKR? You left us to soon queen

Amen, exactly what I was thinking

@@AshGreytreeCould be a coincidence.

Man's needs therapy big time

I like how this has just under half as many likes as the actual video

2-3episodes ago Jon : Hm Martin takes care of me like he actually cares about me mmmm HE MUST'VE KILLED GERTRUDE

/spoilers it reminds me of how he can't believe that his co-workers would genuinely want to throw him a birthday party, because why would they? he falsely assumes that people don't care about him which, ouch, but same

Nah. Fuck surviving. Talking meat is not my gourmet menu

you do not start a sentence ike that

@@marcusviniciusalvesmedrame3373 i think the horrors of cannibalism are overrated. There're some practical concerns but if I died and someone was alive and without food I would be glad to share my meat with them ^^

@@TIGGYQUE I agree with you, I just found the sentence funny hahah. Plus I didn't notice the survival part, I guess that's what struck me as weird

@@marcusviniciusalvesmedrame3373 SERIOUSLY HAHAHAHAHA

She lost her himbo husband.

​@@Ghostrecall_Mthat she did 😭😭😭

​@@Ghostrecall_MXD

Sound like something that a 120,000$ collegue would put you through

and he is losing

But instead of winning money you lose your bloody soul

j. j. jon mulaney

I knew the name sounded familiar! No idea if it's a coincidence or relevant though...

ooh! and both episodes have to do with meat... (toby carilse w/ covering his apartment w/ meat and mrs. carlisle avoiding meat entierly.....inch resting,)

So sad this never went anywhere, was hoping that the Carlisle were a hint at a family of patrons for the Flesh weree forming. But alas.

I knew that name sounded familiar!

In fairness a lot of names were intentionally repeated to throw people off the scent, so it's harder to pick out which repeated names are actually relevant

This podcast has the best comment section ever. Also I almost just choked on an olive.

That's just a Jerma stream.

@@zypalitra8080 a random jerma reference, crazy to meet you in the wild lol

Aww

How.... creepily cute

imagine he got so exited that he got the words mixed like "WE HAVE FOOD ALL OVER" And people think he means the berrys and nuts and he silently scowls himself XDD

We've all been there.

I've lived in Idaho, and that's entirely correct, I hate it there so much

*Wheeze*

God damn right

"The Magnus Archives has an episode for every fear you might have" Indeed, dying in Idaho is my greatest fear

@@ethanlivemere1162 I think LIVING in Idaho might be a greater fear tho!

*writes a paragraph* 'a'ight imma head out and freeze to death''

Pyrodoxic that’d be my paragraph.

I get the sense that she was stalling. Writing that letter would be her last act and she knew it. I can see her subconsciously cramming in as much detail and emotion as she could just because every second she spent writing was a second she wasn't freezing or starving to death or facing her situation at all.

Truce Truce that’s a good point. Didn’t think about it that way.

Lol I thought she was a man and got happy when I heard husband and colonial gays😹

Be note of the date, though. Back then, people didn't have the best dental records. Wick's teeth were perfect. That was the cause for alarm.

@@sajh_hope_arts Very much this. Contrast a guy stepping in from the pouring rain and being bone dry.

And, thinking about it, I should have noted, usually, rotten teeth were pulled out, iirc. The skinnier people were often thought as poor and larger people had money. Whereas, if we have perfect teeth now, there really isn't alarm because it's natural. Our lifespans are longer while then, during the Oregon trail days, they were shorter. Natives, diseases, the weather, everything was against these people. Though, this was just me going into more depth with what I remember from classes and could be more or less inaccurate.

maybe this is a hint towards his diet? cause I know dogs can keep their teeth clean by eating raw meat....

What does that phrase mean? I tried looking it up, but I don’t think the results I found were relevant.

according to some doctrine it is meant to literally be transformed into the flesh and blood of christ as it is eaten, and the Romans once misunderstood/propagandized that early Christians were actual cannibals. I'm guessing that's where the writers got the inspiration?

@@emersonpage5384 Yes that is the Catholic teaching, though the belief varies in other denominations.

Ahhh yes gravity falls and TMA. I'm not the only one.

Gravity Falls, tma AND welcome to night vale.

@@a.b.6689 The Holy Trinity of my adolescence

@@a.b.6689 i've gotten into gravity falls, tma, welcome to night vale and camp here and there. the four horsemen of Weird Shit Happens

​@@broblerone413 your comment made me laugh. "The four Horseman of Weird Shit Happens" 😂

“paranoic” and “like a rat man” were the best parts of this comment

addendum : paranoic is just an amusing word for me because it looks like a mispelling, reads like a mispelling, in every way it appears to be a mispelling of the word “paranoid”, and yet it isn’t… who decided on this word. I’m convinced it was a mispelling after someone forgot the line on the letter d and tried to pass it off as a new word

Maybe she was eating for two and just didn’t know it yet, having gotten intimate with Benjamin on the trail before they got to the fort and met Eustace, and she managed to survive and leave descendants leading all the way down to Toby Carlisle in Ep 18…

To be fair, she didn't have anything to drink either so she'd die of dehydration soon enough. I suppose she survived tho

There WERE no towns in the area then!

Freezing burns a lot of calories though because you are constantly shivering. Her fat resources would have been rapidly decreased so she would have had considerably less time than under normal circumstances. Also when the body runs out of fat it starts to break down muscle so if she didn’t move she would have been trapped there too weak to trudge through the snow let alone mountain climb. Unfortunately, she was a dead the second the started up that mountain.

The Donner Party ate lots of meat, but because they were starving, it was all lean. You need fat to survive extreme cold.

I think he takes it everywhere at this point XD

@@Companion92 ah, yes. Me, my boyfriend and his 2 028 tape recorders hidden in his underwear.

Don’t worry! It takes itself :)

he was taking a spooky shit

ITLL BRING US TOGETHER COULDNT THINK OF NOTHING BETTER HEY! TIME FOR SOME FAMILY FUN

this seems like the type of content jeff would be in to tbh

Oh my god I'm cackling

𝙊𝙉 𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝙏𝙍𝘼𝙄𝙇 𝙏𝙊 𝙊𝙍𝙀𝙂𝙊𝙉 𝙒𝙀𝙍𝙀 𝘽𝙍𝙊𝘿𝘼𝙒𝙔 𝘽𝙊𝙐𝙉𝘿 𝙄𝙉 𝙊𝙍𝙀𝙂𝙊𝙒𝙉

OHOHOHOHOHO! OXE LIKE ME!

Me too!

My theory is that Mrs. Carlisle, forced by her hunger, turned around and did eat her late husband and became a part of whatever cannibal cult to which her guide belonged. She survived the winter by dining on human flesh, and afterward she passed her cannibalistic ways to her children and her children's children and so on.

@@cocoTr33 I like to believe that she didn't do it consciously. The evil spirit thing reanimated Wick and he fed her pieces of her husband while she was dying of starvation. This is similar to what happened to Hannibal the Cannibal. They fed him his little sister and told him afterwards.

can you imagine how awkward it would’ve been if he got caught tho? “why the hell do you have your tape recorder? why is it ON???”

@@charliem.1368 at this point that wouldn't even surprise me anymore

Charlie M. martin: i- jon- no

I honestly thought it was recorded through the vents, simple as that 😅

No no, she has a point.

You made me cackle xD

My first thought too

what was the donner party again

@@hiddenace1953 a group of travelers from the 1800s who got stuck in the mountains over the winter and ended up canibalizing each other; Ask a Mortician has a pretty good video on the incident if you're interested in learning more.

@@tearez13 Was going to mention her. Love her content

@@tearez13 The worst thing about the Donner Party story is the guy who hunted down the guides. He sounds like the bad guy to me.

:(

Martin even told him to :(

Tbf though, what kind of therapist would be equipped to deal with this??? Would they just think he was experiencing delusions/psychosis?

@@-S.L. I mean, I think it'd be mostly for the paranoia rather than the supernatural.

@@mackenziedillon295 Tricky tho, since his paranoia is kinda the thing most likely to keep him alive. :( Dude's in a tricky spot.

@@-S.L. dude really is in a tricky spot, it's so sad

Ooooh...

Oh, shit. A hive mind

Remember the Schwarzwald from episode 23? What does it translate to? Black Forest. Or you could say, the Blackwood. It could be nothing, but it being this series...

Algernon Blackwood is what comes to mind for me

Thank you John

I think of Lord Theodore Thomas Blackwood; explorer, gentleman, sapient sea slug

@@TheNotoriousLARGE Funnily enough, I just looked up his wiki page and found this: "On July 3rd, 1857 however, he landed in Seattle, Oregon in the United States of America"

Check out the talk between Jon and Martin in MAG-39 Infestation. They have a talk heart to heart and we have a hint of what happens with Jon and this statements. The ones recorded with tape.

Holy shit the data killed them

f

Rest in peace

ok this was pretty good

F

UNTIL DAWN!!!!!!!!!!!

SO SORRY THIS IS SO OFFTOPIC BUT HYLICS PFP!!!??!?? IN CRYINGGGG/POS

Everything else does so why not

Heh

For sure they do

Unrelated, I like your pfp

Great episode as always though. I've been binging these as I'm absolutely hooked. Everything about this series is fantastic

KZfaq was trying to warn you

Huh. I've been having the opposite problem: KZfaq keeps forgetting that I've watched something and sometimes recommends me videos I watched to completion, like, yesterday. Without that red progress bar and everything.

That's all i could think of through this episode lol.

Oh, absolutely

If oregon trail was written after tgwdlm and/or black friday

I have never watched this Musical but now i want to

This comment is so weird out of context

I love that movie too! Its the inappropriately peppy music! Speaking of...I recommend checking out musical comedian CW McCall's song about infamous cannibal guide, Alfred Packer, "Coming Back For More". 😄

Traditionally, the wendigo looks ice zombie-ish, with no feet, if not completely human. There is unfortunate bastardization recently, where the wendigo is given the appearance of an East European nature spirit.

Nope you didn't get it wrong but I'm very interested in how someone not from America learned about it?

@@bmann0843 There is a musical project called American Murder Song and they release albums and make videos and shows based on traditional murder ballads or original ones based on historical figures or folkloric figures, they have an entire album called The Donner Party in which all the songs are related to it. I looked up the story and did my own research to understand what it was all about, English isn't my native language but I managed to get enough info to get the proper context! :D

@@starberrycupcake that sounds really cool!

@@bmann0843 personally i really like spooky historical stuff, so i'll gladly watch any documentary or youtube video about it. I for myself learned about the Donner party from Ask a Mortician's channel :)

Happened a lot in that era.

Not as brutal as the real thing was, exspecially the donner party

This still better then dying of dysentery.

Seriously, it sounds like he's squeezed in an air conditioning vent.

yes, they were just rare as it was typically people of higher educations- therefore informed of their proper title 'native' rather than 'indian'- but also people who. well. weren't racist. so they weren't that common :/

@@kiwialberts8455 I was sure that the term ""Indian" was not considered racist back then. There was all sorts of official "Indian" stuff like the Indian police, but idk

@@PyramidXSlender it wasn't that the term "indian" was considered racist at the time, it was moreso that only people who tended to actually care about native american history would actually know the correct term and go out of their way to use them

Many people living on reservations today actually prefer the name “Indian” or “American Indian” over “Native American”. CGP Grey has a great video on it.

@@jasonschuler2256 it doesn’t really matter considering America is nowhere near india and Native Americans aren’t Indian at all.

😄

Holy shit. I keep finding vague puns in names in the Magnus Archives that may be just my imagination, like the person who liked to explore unknown places being named 'Nunez' but the transcript renders it 'Newness', which makes me wonder. This is another one!

Ah the Oregonian curse. It's not quite as bad as when Americans from other states get it wrong but...yeah.

oh man this is me whenever he pronounces Ny-Ålesund as Ni-Alesund

You now feel the pain when people say Appalachian wrong, FEEL THE PAIN!

Go look up some Welsh place names and try pronouncing them. So much worse

@Is me ? hi. What

@@scarcovy2607 "Where you SURE it was just your anxiety?" I believe that's what they meant. But yeah I hear you on the "oh no it's close to home, that's unnerving"

@@-S.L. Ha, I live in North Carolina, and when I heard thats where dumb Benjamin was from there, I couldn't stop picturing some spoiled dumbass who messed with so many women whole clans were gunning for him, so he hied out as far as he could go.

I have a horrible memory and don't remember Burke county being mentioned, I live their so I'm fairly interested if it is mentioned. Could you give me a time stamp?

@@bmann0843 17:03

When he said this, he smiled and all the square and shining teeth in his mouth seemed to catch the light. I was hesitant as I’d met plenty of hucksters and bandits who were keen to pass themselves off as guides and as Benjamin haggled the price my misgivings grew, for Eustace Wick seemed offer little in the way of resistance and we secured his services for only twenty dollars. Plenty of money to be sure, but for the services he was offering and the dangers involved it was practically nothing. Unfortunately for all my consternation it soon became clear that Benjamin had made up his mind to hire the man. To be fair to him, we did not have the resources to winter in Fort John, and were we to try and make our way back, there was every possibility the weather would still turn deadly on us. We were caught between the devil and the sea, and Benjamin had determined that, guided by Eustace Wick, we were going to try and swim. The poor fool had no idea the devil was the one leading us into the water. Nobody tried to stop us leaving, though it was clear from the looks upon them they believed us to be dead already. My own hopes were scarce higher, but the little man who now rode with the scaffold and joked as we traveled, keeping Benjamin in higher spirits than I had seen him in months. This began to fade as the cold air began to hit us and the paths through the rockies became steeper and narrower. The journey was hard but we pushed on for almost a week. Eustace Wick seemed to be as good as his word, keeping us on those trails that the wagon could use without too much danger. The cold robbed us of sleep, though, and after those first days, the once beautiful vistas and rolling peaks of the mountains seemed to become jagged and vile ribs jutting from the carcass of the world and picked clean by vultures. Benjamin became quiet. I became sullen. Eustace Wick became more aggravatingly jovial than before, and by the time the first snowflakes began to fall he was practically hooting with joy. My suspicions about his motives had begun to freeze into an icicle within my chest, hard and focused. When we woke up one morning a week and a half into the journey to find one of our wagons wheels smashed and destroyed beyond repair, I could not find it in myself to be surprised. The snow was falling thickly by this point. We had already used all our replacement wheels over the many months of the journey. We were trapped there and we would surely die. It was then that Eustace Wick appeared standing on a nearby rock that same big grin on his face. He told us that there looked to be a snowstorm coming but he had found a nearby cave where we could wait it out. He didn’t even pretend dismay of the state of the wagon. Benjamin and I followed him, and sure enough, there in the side of the mountain was a shallow but well hidden cave. It’s hard to say at exactly what point I realized specifically that Eustace Wick was planning to eat us. It may have been that he made no mention of retrieving any food from the wagon when he led us to his den. It could have been the piles of firewood already neatly stacked up against the far wall cut into logs. It might just have been the way he looked at Benjamin with his square white teeth bared an unearthly smile. But somewhere between the wagon and the cave I became convinced that our so-called guide but lured us up here with no intention short of killing us and eating our flesh. I had no time to communicate this thought to my husband however who still seemed woefully oblivious of the situation, and once we were inside the small cave there was no privacy in which to discuss it. So I just had to sit there, watching Eustace Wick building a fire as Benjamin tried to suppress his shivers and make conversation with the man who he still did not realize had turned from our guide into our captor. I simply watched and waited as the storm began to descend outside, and the warmth of the fire was quickly overcome by the icy chill of the wind. Night began to fall. The fire was the only light casting along dancing shadows upon the walls behind us. I could feel hunger gnawing at me and was sure that I was not the only one, but I had a strange thought that the bearded man squatting on the other side of the flames was waiting for someone to mention it, so I refused to do so. My husband of course had no such reservations, and began to bemoan our forgetfulness at leaving what little food we still had in the wagon. Of this Eustace Wick’s smile, if it were even possible, got wider and he said that we had all the food we needed. He stared into the fire and began to mutter something. It sounded like a prayer. I think he was in his own demented way saying grace. I remember the words exactly. He locked eyes with Benjamin and said, “Come, meat. Be my guest. And let thy gifts to me be blessed.” As he said this, a silence fell across the cave. The wind died and the shadows on the wall stopped moving, as though they were watching the scene in rapt attention. Eustace Wick withdrew a long, sharp knife and stalked over to Benjamin, who made no move to defend himself. His eyes were wide, staring at the mad cannibal approaching him with a look of both fear and rapture. The whole scene was so utterly unreal that it took me almost a full second to remember and draw my gun. All through this journey I had kept my father’s camp locked pistol hidden tucked inside my crinoline. Benjamin knew about it of course, but had obviously never mentioned it to Eustace. Had I had a possibility of reloading it I might have drawn it earlier but with only a single shot, and I a barely passable shooter, I knew that I needed to be sure of my moment. As it turned out, I left it too late, for even as I placed the barrel to the temple of the foul murderer and pulled the trigger he drew the blade across my husband’s throat. There was a terrific bang, a splash of brain, and a spray of blood. The two men fell dead upon the floor and I found myself alone in the silence of the icy night. I’m sure I need not tell you the tears that I shed that night. Tears that were ice even before they touched the ground. I wept for my beautiful, stupid Benjamin and I wept for my own life, now most certainly lost at the cold and snow, and to hunger. It was as this last thought passed unbidden through my mind that I heard it. Very faint, calling softly. The sound of Benjamin’s voice. I called over to him, for a second overjoyed that he might be alive, but as soon as I touched his ice-cold skin already beginning to turn blue I knew that it could not be so. Despite this, his head began to turn towards me and his frozen eyes opened. His lips parted above the gaping red slash across his throat and he spoke. “Eat me,” he said. I leapt back, shaking my head, praying the Lord to rid me of these terrible visions, but his voice came again clearer and louder, this time begging me attend to eat him. He told me how good he would taste, better than any salted pork. I could cook him over the fire, he said, and the cold would keep him fresh for as long as I needed. I yelled at him, screamed at him to be quiet, for whatever devil had taken up inside to go back to hell, but it made no difference. Still he pleaded to be eaten. It has been five days now and Benjamin still entreats me. He taunts and curses me by turns, calls me a coward who would rather die than be part of something greater than myself. The entrance to the cave has all but blocked with snow and even if I were to dig my way out there is nowhere for me to go. I don’t even know where whatever’s left of the wagon would be. I think I might try, though, now I have finished this account of the events that led up to my fate. I hope whoever finds this does not judge us too harshly. We were simply seeking a better life. I leave this here in the oilskins of Eustace Wick in the hopes it may be protected from the depredations of winter. As for myself, I will try to dig my way out and get as far as I can. I will not survive, but I hope the Lord understands it is not suicide. It is simply that I can no longer stand to be trapped here, where the corpse of my husband begs me to make it meat.

ARCHIVIST Statement ends. Certainly a grotesque tale, but I don’t have access to the sort of information required to verify any of the details provided by the unnamed Mrs. Carlisle. There is no record of any Eustace Wick that I could find. There is a Benjamin Carlisle mentioned in the 1838 census of Burke County, North Carolina, but that’s about it. The prayer apparently spoken by Mr. Wick is a perversion of the old Lutheran grace: “Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, and let thy gifts to us be blessed”. There was a noted Lutheran preacher by the name of Horatio Wick that is mentioned briefly in several histories of Massachusetts as rather violently falling out with his colleagues in the church, the Sacrament of the Eucharist, but he apparently drowned in 1832. What interests me most is how this unsigned letter, if it is to be believed, made its way from an icebound cave in Wyoming or Idaho all the way to the personal collection of Jonah Magnus. End recording. [MUFFLED VOICES FROM A HALLWAY] TIM Look, I tried talking to Elias about it. It doesn’t seem to be doing good. MARTIN He’s under a lot of pressure. You know how messed up he’s been since Prentiss. TIM How messed up he’s been!? MARTIN [quickly] Of course, I’m sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean that you weren’t, just TIM No! Because I didn’t start stalking my coworkers. MARTIN Maybe try talking to him. TIM Sure, like he doesn’t already look at me like I’m a murderer. MARTIN Look, we just gotta let him work through this. I suggested therapy but he just says no. TIM Well, we need to do something. MARTIN Yeah, maybe. The preceding conversation was overheard on the 19th of November, 2016. It reaffirms my current worries about Tim, though does go some way to reassure me that Martin is unlikely to be the culprit, especially following our earlier conversation. [sigh] I need to be more careful.

Right!!! I was screaming what about eating the horses??!!!

@@lablabs2613 They went horsin around

They used oxen.

👀

Yo we got the same pfp!

@@freedomsavage2668 Yo, same pfp!!! Hell yeah!!

Yeah he got all hot and burn-ey in the unfinished house he was sent to bless

Reminder that some older beliefs were that you absorbed the traits of what you ate. Eating the heart of a powerful animal, etc.

Archive assistants: this is Jon. He's a bit loony this days

Honestly it says something about Jon's mental state that he didn't put the two cases together.

Also, DID JON BRING THE TAPE RECORDER INTO THE BATHROOM 💀

do you understand cs you look confused