Lot 151: To Dance Among The Black Firs (Chapter 1 of 2)

The Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings

Documentary filmmaker Chase Hastings travels to the isolated town of Everwick, Maine, to investigate rumors of a mysterious ritual known as

Key takeaways

• Chase Hastings is a struggling filmmaker seeking 'the weird and the desperate' to revitalize his career.
• The ritual involves individuals in black faces covered with ash moving like 'broken puppets or bugs.'

Main topics

• Investigative documentary filmmaking
• Urban legends and folk horror

Notable quotes

Some things ain't meant to be filmed.

Conclusion

A chilling introduction to a folk-horror mystery that blends the tensi

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:00) This episode is brought to you by Apopheniacs. Reality is about to get really confusing in writer-director Chris Mars Polaro's new horror film, Apopheniacs. When everyone has the power to create AI deepfake video manipulations in the palm of their hands, anyone with access to your face can ruin your life in an instant. Starring Aaron Holiday, Jermaine Fowler, Michael Abbott Jr. and Sean Gunn. Everyday reality quickly gives way to a bloody nightmare of paranoia and confusion as people struggle to tell what is real and what is fake. Apopheniac shows how easily our ordinary lives can unravel by a single fake video that looks real. It then takes the chaos that unfolds and cranks the knob to 11. When anyone's version of the truth can be created with the tap of a finger, the horror isn't the lie. It's what happens when people believe it. Magenta Light Studios presents... Apopheniacs in theaters October 2nd. Speaker 1 (1:05) Come in! I've been expecting you! Curiosity is generally considered a virtue. It's how we discover new places, new ideas, things that might otherwise remain hidden. Of course, there are those who seem to regard remain hidden as something of a personal challenge. Today's acquisition, a battered red digital cinema camera. Professional equipment. Well used. though remarkably well cared for. Its former owner was a filmmaker, a man who apparently believed that if something could be found, it could be filmed. This is The Dance Among the Black Furs, Chapter One. What do you say we call action? Before we begin, I want to point out some of the customers whose names have been etched in brass on this beautiful plaque I had made above the front desk. These are some of the members of the inner circle of the antiquarium. We go Speaker 2 (2:19) by the Obsidian Covenant. Speaker 1 (2:23) Recent initiates include NML. Speaker 1 (2:29) Tasha? Kendra Hill DUMMY! Kelly Sinidas? and Heather Davies. We are ever appreciative of your devotion to the order. Go to theobsidiancovenant.com to receive the sacrament. Now, where were we? Oh yes. Speaker 1 (2:58) Welcome to the antiquarium of sinister happenings and odd goings on. Speaker 2 (3:43) Chase Hastings adjusted the shoulder strap of his battered video rig and watched the corridor wall flicker, jaundiced by the cheap fluorescence overhead. The Boston Festival of the Unknown ran with all the precise chaos of a dying organism. Someone had spilled coffee near the fire exit, and the carpet wore it like a wound, dark and spreading. He tried to keep his hands off the gear, but his fingers twitched, reflecting. Checking settings and cables for the 10th time in as many minutes. I was nervous. Speaker 2 (4:21) It was a nervous tick dressed as professionalism, a ritual he performed before every panel or pitch. It wasn't stage fright. Chase had long ago evolved past embarrassment, having surrendered his dignity to the cutting room floor and a dozen failed projects. Speaker 2 (4:40) The tension was something subtler, something like a hunger gnawing at the back of his skull. He had come here to feed, to scout the weird and the desperate, to sift the festival's soft underbelly for stories too raw or ridiculous for the daylight world. Speaker 2 (5:01) He was up next in the green room, squatting in a folding chair with his knees knocking against the battered casing of a red camera. The other panelists talked in clotted clumps, avoiding eye contact, each guarding their pitch like a wounded animal. Chase had already won an award, Best Local Documentary. The little engraved plaque currently lived under his passenger seat with the parking tickets. But the real win was always the next one. Speaker 2 (5:34) Through the thin wall, he could hear the crowd's laughter, a shrill, echoing thing. The program coordinator, a young woman with a clipboard and hair like a crow's nest, ducked her head in, did a double take at his setup. Speaker 3 (5:51) Five minutes. As Speaker 2 (5:53) if schedule were a living thing with teeth. Chase checked his watch. He tapped a note into his phone, a running tally of ideas harvested during the day. Speaker 5 (6:03) Let's see here. Missing headstones. Forest Hills. Interview groundskeeper. Arsonist priest. Try local PD again. White witch and JP. Email. Speaker 2 (6:18) None of it's sport, though. Not the way the best ones did. The way the Everett Channel haunting had, or the twin murders on the Green Line, or the South Boston cryptid incident that still got him hate mail from the Irish Catholic Mothers Association. Maybe he was burning out, growing immune to his own bullshit. Maybe the real stories had all dried up, leaving only the husks. He thumbed the record button and the familiar little LED stared back, red and unblinking. Speaker 5 (6:53) What's going on, Chase Hastings? Boston Festival of the Unknown, September... whatever the fuck it is, and I'm currently dying of boredom. Speaker 2 (7:00) He grinned at his own reflection in the lens. Lips cracked from too much coffee. Eyes rimmed in the sickly blue of sleeplessness. Speaker 5 (7:09) If anyone wants to murder me, please just do something creative. I recommend, like, battery acid or maybe artisanal cheese wire. He Speaker 2 (7:17) killed the feed. Feeling a little better. He was still scrolling through his phone, half listening to the murmurs around him when two of the other filmmakers edged off to the corner of the snack table. They spoke in tight, bent whispers, the way priests must have talked in those secret tunnels under the old North End. Something in their posture, the way the taller one hunched his shoulders like a man expecting a knife, drew Chase's interest. He drifted closer, pretending to fumble with his charger cord and eavesdropped. I'm telling you it's not worth it. Said the taller one. He wore a tweed jacket that belonged on a grandfather or maybe a high school literature teacher. Speaker 3 (8:05) But you filmed it, yeah? Said Speaker 2 (8:07) the other. A squat guy with sort of a face that invited door-to-door missionary work. Oh, you got something. I got 30 seconds before Speaker 3 (8:17) they started throwing rocks. And that was the easy part. Speaker 2 (8:20) The tall man's eyes darted, catching Chase for an instant. Then moving on. Speaker 3 (8:26) You know they don't even use town names out there. It's Speaker 2 (8:29) all... The second man made a weird, wriggling gesture with his hands. Speaker 3 (8:35) Letters and Speaker 2 (8:35) numbers. A guy from the network told me they're not even in the census. Speaker 3 (8:39) Bullshit, Speaker 2 (8:40) said the first, but with no conviction. Speaker 4 (8:43) There's no way. Speaker 3 (8:45) It's the 21st century. They Speaker 2 (8:47) don't care what year it is. Speaker 3 (8:49) You ever hear the, uh, black furs? Speaker 2 (8:52) That did it. Chase felt his pulse ratchet up, the word familiar but alien like a half-remembered tune from a childhood fever dream. He slid a step closer, and the shorter man noticed, falling silent. Sorry. smiling the smile that had gotten him access to crime scenes and mental hospitals and one memorable evening in the catacombs under Beacon Hill. Speaker 5 (9:17) You mentioned the black furs? I'm looking for stories like that. Like urban legends, folk stuff. I run a segment on the Monday's Obscurus web series. Speaker 2 (9:27) It was mostly true. The series existed. Through the network that had dropped his