Characters / The Black Tapes

Pacific Northwest Stories

Alex Reagan

A producer for Pacific Northwest Stories and the host of The Black Tapes Podcast.

• Agent Mulder: Alex tends to approach cases with more credulity than Strand, although she adopts some of his Agent Scully tendencies as time goes by.
• Culturally Religious: Had a religious upbringing, which is directly responsible for her fear of demons, even though she isn't currently religious.
• First-Person Peripheral Narrator: She starts off as this, simply wanting to showcase Strand and his cases for the benefit of her listeners, but grows out of it almost immediately as she quickly she takes a more active role in the developing plot.
• The Insomniac: By season two, Alex has developed sever insomnia, never sleeping more than an hour or two a night.
• Intrepid Reporter: Alex prefers to dig up as many sources and accounts as she can, even after Strand presents a plausible explanation for whatever case they're investigating. This has implications for the Black Tape cases as a whole, and the disappearance of Coralee Strand in particular.
• Pull the Thread: Develops a talent for it as the series goes on. Especially where Coralee Strand's fate is concerned.
• Talking in Your Sleep: Nic discovers a recording he believes to be of Alex, chanting creepily in her sleep.
• Sanity Slippage: Lack of sleep in the second season has left her irritable, paranoid, and willing to take actions that might be considered unethical. Whatever is causing the creepy chanting probably has something to so with it.
• Seeker Archetype: Can't bring herself to leave the unsolved Black Tapes and their attendant mysteries alone.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Her relationship with Strand can be described as this. She finds him somewhat insufferable and closed-minded, he considers her far too credulous and prone to prying, and yet they always find some reason to resume working together.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: The subject of demonology freaks her out.

Nic Silver

Alex's longtime friend and coworker. Producer for the podcast.

• Ascended Extra: He was always in the background, but he's taking a more center-stage role as of season 2. Possibly because of his involvement with TANIS.
• Big Brother Instinct: He's protective of Alex, to the point of frisking suspicious interviewees.
• Hero of Another Story: Nic is the protagonist of the Tanis podcast.
• Mission Control: His primary role in the series is to stay at the studio, digging up leads and making appointments and travel arrangements for Alex.
• Only Sane Man: As of season two, Nic seems to be the only member of the cast not growing increasingly unhinged. With the possible exception of having gone through an Eldritch Location, but he seems mostly okay afterwards.

Amalia Chenkova

A journalist operating in Moscow who once did freelance work for Pacific Northwest Stories, and with whom Alex has kept in touch.

• Amicable Exes: She mentions Nic fondly, at any rate.
• Break-In Threat: Someone gets into her apartment building to leave a letter urging her to drop her investigation. The letter does not specify which one, however, and Amalia refuses to stop any of her activities. Possibly leading to her disappearance.
• Intrepid Reporter: Even moreso than Alex. Amalia was apparently investigating a number of sensitive cases.
• Put on a Bus: Alex abruptly loses contact with Amalia late in the first season.
  • The Bus Came Back: Reappears in season 2, asserting she had to lie low because one of her cases heated up too much, and stays with Alex. Something is...off, though. At the very least, she hasn't told Alex everything.

Strand Institute and the Strand Family

Dr. Richard Strand

The founder of the Strand Institute, dedicated to investigating and debunking claims of paranormal happenings. His work, and eventually his personal life, are the subject of the podcast.

• Agent Scully: Strand always has some rational explanation at hand for whatever case he and Alex are examining, and flat-out refuses to entertain the idea that anything supernatural is occurring. His tendency to furnish these explanations without actual proof of his own, as well as the condescension with which he delivers them, gets called out a few times. That said, his tone often hurts his case when delivering even reasonable explanations about the burden of proof.
• Conspiracy Theorist: In the second season. Alex even notes the ubiquitous Room Full of Crazy.
• Expy: Initially, of James Randi, a skeptic and former magician who founded the James Randi Educational Foundation to educate the public and provide controlled scientific experimentation of alleged paranormal claims, with a $1,000,000 prize for anyone who can prove the paranormal under scientific testing conditions. Randi is notably much more personable than Strand, among other differences.
• Hollywood Atheist: Zig-zagged. Strand is blunt and disdainful of blind faith, but he acknowledges that rituals and religion often serve a necessary and beneficial function in life, he's generally altruistic in his aims, one of his stated reasons in the first episode for his quest to debunk the paranormal is that the world's beautiful and wondrous enough without belief in the supernatural, and he sometimes uses science to reassure people who are certain they're under threat from the supernatural (such as a caller with sleep paralysis). On top of that, he seems to have been an atheist since college - long before his possible Cynicism Catalyst.
• Impossibly Mundane Explanation: This guy has it down to an art. Alex eventually accuses him of using it to talk his way around subjects he doesn't wish to discuss, and dismiss anything not totally in line with his worldview.
• Loners Are Freaks: Edward Lewis accuses him of this.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Alex asserts that Strand's near-insistent desire for her to trust him would come at the cost of her skepticism, the very thing he claims to be trying to cultivate; not unlike the other paranormal investigators that Strand so disdains.
• Occult Detective: A skeptical variety. Strand firmly believes that the paranormal doesn't exist, and has devoted his life to debunking it.
• Revealing Cover-Up: Strand's explanations of his wife's disappearance always end up leaving something to be desired.
• Sanity Slippage: Like Alex, the second season has done a number on Strand's mental health.

Coralee Strand

The ex-wife of Dr. Strand, and stepmother to Charlie. Coralee vanished while on a road trip with her family in 1997. After first (naturally) suspecting Strand himself, the police believed her disappearance to be related to a local serial killer. Coralee is presumed dead by her family.

• Million to One Chance: Just what are the odds that a previously unknown recording of Coralee would be featured on an episode of PNWS produced by Alex, years before she began looking into Strand and his family?
• Missing Mom: Vanished, seemingly off the face of the earth, in 1997.
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Possibly. A woman matching Coralee's description has been renting a mailbox using the name of Coralee's old roommate, and has recently been seen coming to collect it.
• Til Murder Do Us Part: Her parents and acquaintances certainly think so, anyway.

Charlie Strand

Dr. Strand's estranged daughter.

• You Are Not My Father: Charlie disowned Richard after an unspecified dispute following Coralee's disappearance, and applied for legal emancipation. She has discounted the accusations of murder others have made against him, however.

Individuals Connected to the Black Tapes

Sebastian Torres

A young boy who may have inherited a peculiar "friend" from his father.

• Creepy Child: Alex finds Sebastian unnerving, though she's not sure if that's just because she knows about Tall Paul or because he's legitimately creepy.
• Distressed Dude: Sebastian is abducted in episode #7, by a cultist obsessed with sacred geometry. He is found unharmed later in the episode.
• Imaginary Friend: "Tall Paul," the shadowy, possible demonic figure often seen near Sebastian and his father, both from afar and in pictures and video. Sebastian is capable of talking to him, or at least of understanding him.
  Sebastian: "My friend says you don't wanna meet him."

Others

Brayden Court

A listener with a personal connection to the Strands.

• As the Good Book Says...: Quotes the bible several times when talking to Alex.
• The Fundamentalist: Strand refers to him as such. He considers Strand's atheism a mark of bad character and criticizes Alex's own agnosticism.
• Old Flame: Claims to be this to Coralee. Strand disputes this, referring to their "relationship" as a one-night indiscretion, and claims that Coralee eventually took out a restraining order.

Tannis Braun

A psychic who has hade run-ins with Strand over the years.

• Friendly Enemy: Downplayed; while he and Strand are opposed to one another and they have never just hung out together, Strand admits that he "doesn't not like him".
• Mundane Solution: While he claims to be a psychic and has assisted in several murder investigations, Strand believes that his abilities come from simply being a genuinely good detective who laid the groundwork for his reputation in a time when the Internet was just becoming publicly available.