Nightmare Fuel / The Magnus Archives

The show is basically one big one. Nonetheless, it has its standout moments.

This page is not spoiler-marked, per wiki policy.

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• The series starts off strong in MAG 01 with an anglerfish that appears to be using the bodies of former victims asking for cigarettes as a lure.
  • It's later revealed that it gets worse than that. The Anglerfish didn't kill its victims. It skinned its victims and kept them alive as wax figures.
• The protagonist of MAG 02 takes the Schmuck Bait and ends up with a coffin sitting in his living room for a year. If that wasn't bad enough, he notices that there's something moving inside it that reacts when he puts things on the coffin lid and sings when it rains. And to go From Bad to Worse, he starts to wake up after having apparently sleepwalked out of bed with the intent of unlocking the coffin and letting out... whatever was inside.
  • It's mentioned at the end that whatever was inside the coffin, the effect wasn't limited to the protagonist of this episode. People just... ignore not just the protagonist's room, but his entire building. A later statement reveals that the inside of the coffin has a set of impossible stairs. We're better off not knowing where they go.
    • We eventually discover exactly where the stairs go. It's very unpleasant, especially if you have claustrophobia.
• A woman whose hobby is people watching realizes not everything she watches is, well, people. Sets up the horrifying doppelganger infestation that affects the podcast.
• MAG 15 ends with a recording of the statement giver saying "Take her not me" over and over again for ''two hours'', painting a horrific idea of what happened to her sister.
• Jane Prentiss. Just... everything about Jane Prentiss. One of the milder things about her is that she's a trypophobe's worst nightmare.
  "Do... You... Hear... Their... Song?"
• MAG 19 and 20 veer into Religious Horror as a priest (seen also in MAG 08) visits the house on Hill Top Road to perform an exorcism. When he prays for protection, something that isn't God answers. The Entity (likely The Desolation) possesses him and has him declare to the other Entity in the house, "I am not for you. I am marked." From then on, the thing inside him stops him from being able to say the words "Lord" or "Jesus," prevents him from praying, and whenever his old priest friends try to speak to him, all he hears is the tolling of bells. It makes him hallucinate vividly, to the point that he can't tell what is real and what isn't, and by the end it has him murdering and eating people he thought he was preaching and giving Eucharist to. The sheer helplessness of having experienced a a series of supernatural traumatic events that he can't even pray about has him giving up on doing literally anything; he vows to take no action whatsoever, including killing himself, at the risk that he's hallucinating and might be unknowingly hurting someone else.
• In a similar vein, and working in the name of the same "entity", the one known as John Amherst. He is strongly implied to be the same Amherst as the one in the "The Tale of a Field Hospital." The one who kept "dying" over and over only to keep spreading disease. If he touches you, or you touch something he's touched, that's it - you will die of some horrible disease. If, in "Taken Ill," Josh had shaken his hand, he would have died. If, in "Pest Control," Jordan Kennedy hadn't been wearing his protective suit when Amherst lifted him up off the ground, he would have died. And yet Amherst himself doesn't seem to be able to permanently die, unless being set on fire did the trick. Prentiss was a problem but, if Amherst ever shows up at the Magnus Institute's doorstep, he will likely be a nightmare.
  • It didn't, however he has been taken care of. His fate, however deserved, is another kind of nightmare.
• The entity that is Michael. When we first hear about him, he's reaching into Sasha's shoulder—as in, reaching directly into Sasha's shoulder without breaking the skin—to remove one of the worms. When we first meet him, it's after a woman finishes describing her account of being caught in an Endless Corridor after entering a door which was apparently installed in a second-floor exterior wall and had not been there before. Michael has an incredibly creepy conversation with Jon, during which Jon realizes the woman left through a door which had not been there before.
  • Learning about how Michael was created is even worse. Gertrude tricked her assistant Michael Shelley (not to be confused with Michael Crew) into sacrificing himself to the Distortion to save the world, but he wasn't entirely subsumed—there's just enough of him left in there to crave revenge. (And that was definitely him and not it, because once it manifests through Helen it doesn't understand why Jon thinks it would be angry.) Talk about a Fate Worse than Death.
• The Book of the Dead, which predicts the reader's death in all gory, gruesome detail...but changes the circumstances, and moves the date closer every time you open/read it, so that you cannot use the knowledge of your death to avoid it.
• Lydia describing her unraveling sanity in episode 74, Fatigue. Particularly, her nightmarish and entirely Truth in Television description of how one's perceptions of the passage of time and reality itself can be completely destroyed by sleep deprivation.
• The Not-Them in general (imagine one of your family members or friends gets replaced, and you are incapable of noticing—or worse, you're the only one who can tell, and the thing in your loved one's place taunts you for fun before leaving a trail of destruction in its wake), but especially when Jon accidentally unbinds Not-Sasha and she attacks.
  (delighted, sinister giggling) "Jo-ooon...Jo-oooon..."
• Because the show concerns itself with primal fears, you're pretty much guaranteed to run into your own personal nightmare fuel somewhere in the series. Afraid of spiders? The dark? Being buried alive? It's in there.
• MAG 81 involves a Leitner called "A Guest For Mr. Spider". This Leitner made a particular impression on fans, as although Leitner tomes can be any kind of book, this is the first one seen that's mocked up as a children's book. Jon describes a harrowing event from his childhood in which opening and reading the book compelled first him, then his childhood bully, to walk up to a mysterious door to be devoured by the titular entity.
  • Jonny Sims' talent for insidious terror is well-played here. The book acutely comes off as something a child might innocently read without realizing something is wrong until it's too late, but which would be highly off-putting to adults from the word 'go'. As the story goes, Mr. Spider is visited by a succession of unsettled and frightened guests, flies who bring him gifts before disappearing. Mr. Bluebottle brings a cake, which Mr. Spider doesn't eat. Mrs. Fruit brings flowers, which fail to sway him. The last is the most disturbing—Mr. Horse brings his son, with the implication being he hoped Mr. Spider would take his son instead of himself. Mr. Spider simply eats both of them.
  • This is arguably made sadder, if not worse, in the Robert Kelsey illustrated version. In that one, Mr. Horse does indeed bring his son, but we get a close-up of said son covered in the spider's webbing, possibly implying Mr. Spider caught said son and Mr. Horse tried to keep him from being dragged off, but failed and was reeled in, too. The most horrible thing in the illustration is the final close-up on Mr. Spider's front door, dark and bloodied, with it horribly clear the flies knew before knocking that something awful awaited them on the other side.
    • There's also the series of images that show Mr. Spider, bloated from his meals and covered in gore, slowly turning to look at the reader.
      Mr. Spider wants another guest for dinner. It is polite to knock.
• MAG 86 takes the fear of the dark and turns it up to eleven. When a creature made of darkness begins stalking the statement giver, his only protection is hiding himself under his blanket. The creature waits until he's lured into a false sense of security before telling him the blanket never offered him any real protection and attacking him.
• Season 3's finale is centered around stopping the Unknowing ritual, and the ritual is terrifying: the main characters quickly lose sense of themselves and each other, the corpses of people like Gertrude and Jurgen are puppeteered to mock Jon, and still living people turned skinless wax figures forced to sing and dance. Even the show's theme song is replaced by music from the ritual.
• Episode 125: Imagine you've been infected by something, something slowly changing you into a monstrous berserker (who can't, as confirmed by something Basira says in 127, even cry anymore), and then you wake up to discover your coworker, who you're pretty sure is no longer actually himself but a meat puppet for an Eldritch Abomination, doing surgery on you. No wonder Jon gets stabbed.
• Jon's growing Archivist powers is a reminder that, though not as overtly terrifying as the other powers, the Eye is still an Eldritch Abomination to be feared. Not only does Jon just know things but it's implied the reason tape records spontaneously manifest around people is because of him. His Compelling Voice also becomes so powerful he can terrify Breekon by immobilizing him and ripping statements from his mind.
  Breekon: Stop it!
  Jon: No.
  • Jon's powers evolve to new, more horrifying levels in Episode 159. Jon tries compelling Peter Lukas to tell him what Elias is planning and Peter resists, even using his Lonely powers against Jon. Not only does Jon overpower Peter's own powers but he also kills Peter when Peter refuses to answer.
• Episode 139: Eugene Vanderstock talks about taking a job at a foundry so that he can collect sacrifices for Agnes Montague; he preyed on migrant workers, rendering them down for fat to make candles. And they were awake during the whole process. And he melted their mouths closed so they couldn't scream.
• Six episodes later, in Episode 145, we find out that Gertrude Robinson did something to him. Something that horrifies even Arthur Nolan, a lifelong cultist of the Desolation. We find out by the end of the episode, and the result is Eugene's head being stuffed with sawdust whilst still alive. Horrifying.
  • Then again, considering the unspeakable things Nolan and his cult were okay with doing to innocents, Gertrude's actions weren't that far out of line. He and his followers are mostly upset that it's happening to them this time.
• The only thing Annabelle will say about the spider...thing...she saw as a child is that if a spider gets big enough, it's not entirely made of spider anymore. So what is it made of, Annabelle?
  • It's implied that the chips shop itself was a giant spider blending in, and that this was the reason people unconsciously avoided the place.
• An idea the podcast has been exploring more and more in season 4 is how much choice humans influenced by the Entities have. And it seems like...an unsettlingly high amount. Jon was not made to feed, and he can choose not to. So can Daisy. Like Elias said: they didn't have to want to become what they did to choose it. Likewise, the Lightless Flame never got any explicit instructions; aside from the fact they can turn into wax and melt people, how different are they really from a regular religion with petty sectarian squabbles and violent extremism? Maybe humans really are the real monsters.
• The end of episode 160: a ritual finally succeeds. And not just any ritual, but a ritual conceived to bring not just a single Entity into the world, but all of them.
  Jon: [Laughing Mad] The sky, Martin! Look at the sky! It's looking back!
  • Worse, Jon is not only the one to bring it about but he's also forced to do it by Elias, who lays a trap for him in the statements brought to help with his hunger. Jon's helpless to stop Elias from speaking through him and enacting the ritual.
• Episode 163 was intense enough that cast, crew, and patreon supporters who got early access felt the need to warn people about the subject matter... and rightfully so. Jon and Martin have to cross through what amounts to a metaphysical miasma of trench warfare, and then Jon records a 'statement' that amounts to a sort of stream of consciousness where he channels several people one after the other, each with a new and brutal look at the military industrial complex, the horrors of war, and the painful duty of medical officers within a warzone to prioritize the dying. The writing is beautiful, the imagery haunting and pulling no punches, and it's constantly underscored by the distant sounds of gunfire and artillery.
• There is only one thing that's demonstrably sacred in the TMA universe, and that's fear.
• "Ceaseless watcher, turn your gaze upon this wretched thing" is undeniably awesome mostly because it's turned on the richly deserving, but it's also terrifying, particularly when Jon seems to indulge more in the "feeding his patron" aspect of it when he adds "and drink your fill" in 171. Imagine the entire world coming down on you like a ton of bricks and liking it.
• Episode 172 may as well be called "premium unleaded nightmare fuel". The Web's domain is full of theaters in which giant spiders manipulate hooks on rope, gouging into their victims to turn them into helpless puppets in agony. Said helpless puppets' personal lives are relentlessly mocked for an audience's laughter before they're forced to sit at a table and ingest hundreds of hatching spiderlings. The play poor Francis is in is said to have taken place upwards of forty-eight thousand times.
• Episode 173 establishes itself with one line: "What did you think happened to the children?". The bulk of the episode is descriptions of children desperately running from countless monsters through pitch-black streets as their parents look on uncaringly, with graphic descriptions of their helpless terror. Perhaps worse, the end of the episode is the duo realizing that there's nothing they can do to help the children. All they can do is leave them to their fate and move on.
• Episode 174, "The Great Beast". Said Beast is a massive entity that so dwarfs the average human that it blots out the sun wherever it goes. Its massive footfalls can be heard periodically throughout the recording, providing a sense of powerful dread that never crosses the line into terror, but never quite recedes, either. The descriptions of it make it clear that this thing can be seen from anywhere, and is always moving. Trying to escape it is about as hopeless as trying to outrun a tornado. Perhaps the worst part is that it's entirely composed of people—millions, perhaps billions of innocent people twisted together in constant agony, some able to see the world from hundreds of thousands of feet up, with their only escape being the merciless gravity that will be their end should they choose it. Thank God Jon and Martin don't have to fight it.
• Episode 182, "Wellbeing". Listeners may find themselves shocked at the return of Nikola Orsinov—it's not actually her, however, but a doctor with the same voice, called Jane Doe. She leads Martin and Jon on a tour of a nightmarish hospital where hideous surgeries take place with the explicit purpose of making the patients anything but well, and the worst part? Her walking is accompanied by the sound of scissor-like blades.
• Episode 193, the culmination of the quest to confront Elias/Jonah. We see a flashback of the real Elias during his interview with previous Institute Head James Wright, who is of course actually Jonah Magnus. Poor Elias suffers the absolutely diminishing and terrifying experience of being scanned and seen and known by Magnus. Magnus' voice, by the way, is utterly terrifying, some horrifying mix of Voice of the Legion and the drone of recorder static.
• There are several small hints throughout the series that, even ignoring the supernatural elements, the universe of the show is not our own—usually in the form of historical dates and dates given in the show not matching up. The final season reveals that the multiverse is absolutely a real thing... and the show ends with the Entities being sent to some Expendable Alternate Universe. Which raises a very real possibility that they might have ended up in ours. Uh-oh...

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