Somniloquy

Video Palace

After watching a mysterious white VHS tape, video collector Mark Cambria begins sleep talking in an unknown language. His investigation lead

Key takeaways

• The white VHS tape appears to have caused Mark's sleep talking in an unknown language, suggesting it may contain hidden or encoded content.
• Urban legends surrounding 'white tapes' describe them as rare, possibly mind-altering media that can 'look back at you' and trigger psychological effects.

Main topics

• Mysterious VHS tapes
• Urban legends and folklore

Notable quotes

I watched this tape once and now I'm talking in my sleep because of it.

The white tapes are super rare. They don't have UPC codes, so you can't find them in the store.

Conclusion

Mark Cambria's journey into the mystery of the white tape has led him to uncover tantalizing clues about

Transcript preview

Speaker 5 (0:00) Subscribe to Video Palace on Apple Podcasts and never miss an episode. All episodes of Season 1 of Video Palace are now available exclusively to Shudder members. Download the app or visit Shudder.com and keep listening. Speaker 3 (0:59) Mark. What? You were talking and you're saying. Yeah, you were. Here, I can play that for you. Speaker 6 (1:14) This all began when my girlfriend Tamara said I was talking in my sleep. It was a recent thing, and I was keeping her awake every night. Wasn't sure if I believed her, so I downloaded an app that tracks your snoring. It records whenever you make any noise during the night, and it backs it up to the cloud in your computer if you want. Thought I'd show her she was just dreaming, but... the app picked up something. Oh, Speaker 5 (1:36) no, kid. Speaker 6 (1:40) As far as I know, I'd never talked in my sleep before. I looked up somniloquy. It's the fancy name for sleep talking, and there's not a lot of information. I don't really know what causes it. Emotional stress is one possibility. I'm a freelance video editor, and Tamara's a librarian. We share a small apartment in New York and live paycheck to paycheck. It's not exactly a stress-free life, but I'm no more stressed now than I was a year ago. So, I doubt that's it. And it could be caused by medications or drug abuse, but without getting too much into my private life, I can say that that is probably not the cause. And it could also be a verbalized reaction to dreams. I almost never remember mine. Maybe that's why this one interests me so much. If this was the cause, then what was I dreaming about? Speaker 3 (2:33) What are you saying? It Speaker 5 (2:35) sounds Speaker 3 (2:43) like a foreign language. Speaker 5 (2:44) Have Speaker 3 (2:47) you been watching any obscure Italian horror movies lately? Speaker 6 (2:50) I work every night Speaker 3 (2:52) to sleep. Speaker 3 (2:54) Why do I even ask you? Speaker 6 (2:57) I wasn't kidding. I watch a lot of strange movies. The more I thought about it, the more a particular one came to mind. I'd gotten an unmarked white videotape the week before, and I watched a few minutes, and it was like some kind of experimental video from the 70s, like Guy Sherwin on crack or something. All static and noise and barely discernible moving shapes. Sometimes you'd make out a dark form, but then the static would overtake the frame. Speaker 6 (3:28) I haven't thought about it since, but listen to this. You hear that too, right? Test, test. Speaker 3 (4:11) Are you recording? Speaker 6 (4:13) Yes, yeah. Why? I don't know. Here. I gotta show you this. Speaker 3 (4:20) What? What is this for? Speaker 6 (4:31) Okay, so I got this a week ago, right before I started sleep talking. Speaker 3 (4:34) Uh-huh. This is weird. Okay, shh. Right Speaker 5 (4:40) here, right here. And Speaker 6 (4:46) this is me sleep talking. Do you hear Speaker 3 (4:52) that? This makes no sense. I watched Speaker 6 (5:00) this tape once and now I'm talking in my sleep because of it. Speaker 3 (5:04) What is this, Mark? What is this? Speaker 6 (5:07) I don't know. But I'm gonna find out. I'm Mark Cambria and this is the story of a strange videotape and a real mystery waiting to be solved. Welcome to Video Palace. Has their obsessions. My girlfriend Tamara loves deep dive investigative podcasts. So when I told her I was making one about the white tape, she insisted that I have real music. All the good ones do, she said. Thank you, by the way, to our friend Kat. She did the intro music you just heard. And if you hear any transition music, that's her too. Like this. Speaker 6 (6:14) My obsession's movies. VHS, really. I worked in a video store when I was in high school, and there was something amazing about finding a movie on the shelf and getting seduced by the outrageous box art and then making that physical commitment to watch an actual tape. DVDs came along, and sure, they looked and they sounded fine, but they were missing something. Something, I don't know, something tactile. And plus, VHS only lasted about 20 years, so there are all these underground trash classics that'll never be released digitally, and they'd be lost forever if it wasn't for people like me searching them out and collecting them. And I'm always buying huge lots of VHS cassettes cheap off eBay, hoping for some kind of hidden treasure. I actually own a copy of Death Row Diner. And one time I bid on a single copy of Tales from the Quad Ed Zone, but when