Episode 111

"The Codex Gigas" aired on September 28, 2015.

## Summary

### Coralee Strand / Lisa Graves

Alex plays the interview she conducted with Tina Stevenson, regarding the post office box at her store in Lake Tahoe that was being leased to a Lisa Graves, but whom Tina identified as Coralee. Strand believes Tina could just be wanting to somehow capitalise on the notoriety of the case and the show. Nic tells Alex that he spoke with the gas station attendant that remembers the event leading up to Coralee's disappearance, and that she remembered Coralee and Strand fighting before Coralee left. Strand says they were fighting about what he believed was her ongoing affair, after which she grabbed her purse and started walking down the highway. Alex speaks with Tina again, but she has no new information on Coralee.

### Interviews: Percival Black's Background

Alex mentions that she still hasn't heard from Amalia, but before she went radio silent, she gave Alex the contact of Percival Black's roommate during his music studies at the University of Bath, Reggie Erdman. Alex calls Reggie, and he explains that Black had lived with him for two years when they were students in 1983, when he says he heard Black composing music that had an inexplicably profound effect on him. Though Reggie was 15 years younger than Black, he still invited him out for social events, and though Black always declined, Reggie eventually noticed that Black started leaving the apartment very late at night. One night Reggie followed Black, but lost him after they went through the woods and Black headed into a clearing; the next day Reggie found a note from Black saying he was sending people to retrieve his belongings from the apartment. Reggie guessed he may have belonged to a modern pagan group that liked to gather in the area.

Interested in pursuing leads on this pagan group, Alex contacts Alice Kermode, a professor of architecture at the University of Bath who is also well versed in local lore. Alice mentions caves in the area that local pagans like to explore, noting the petrographs or cave paintings contained therein. Alice guesses that the paintings were left by Anglo-Saxons hiding from the British during the war, as they are very militaristic and depict legions of people with one tall figurehead amongst them. Alice mentions that these paintings might be older, however, possibly dating to the 16th century, and may even depict ritual sacrifice. Alice offers to send Alex scans of the cave paintings; when she and Nic analyze them later, they see one of the paintings is of a group gathered around a very tall figure with an upside-down face.

When Alex asks to contact someone who works in the music department at the University, Alice tells her that there's never been a music department there.

### The Order of the Cenophus and the Codex Gigas

Alex asks Strand what he knows about the Order of the Cenophus, but having never heard of them, he offers to get information from people he knows that study religious history. An hour later, Alex is contacted by Dr. Rufus Carmichael, a professor who teaches and writes about Benedictine history at Cambridge. Carmichael explains the history of the Benedictine Order, outlining the autonomy of each abbey, ensuring no two monasteries are exactly alike, though they all follow the same basic rules. Carmichael next relates the story of a monk named Herman, a Benedictine monk in the 13th century who was accused of committing such an atrocious sin that the other brothers condemned him to being walled up alive in the monastery, in Podlažice in the Czech Republic. In exchange for clemency, Herman offered to inscribe a text so beautiful that god himself would bless their monastery. When Herman realized he couldn't complete the assigned task of reproducing the bible in a year, he allegedly sold his soul to the devil, and the result was the Codex Gigas, a version of the bible containing only several select books of the Latin bible, with a drawing of Satan in the middle, and the rules for the Benedictine Order ripped out. It is believed that Herman's apprentice, Soběslav, tore out the pages as an act of rebellion against the Order, for forcing Herman to trade his soul and possibly also in order to sabotage the sale of the bible, when the monastery ran into financial problems a few years after its publication. Soběslav set to work producing a new version of the Codex Gigas from memory. They say his anger consumed him, and he poured that anger into his own version of the Codex Gigas. It seems Soběslav's new Codex was the foundation upon which a new order was built, and it was named after Soběslav's text: The Cenophus.

Carmichael is skeptical when Alex mentions the seance held at the Glushka monastery, and he believes it's as fabricated as the video from the 90s that some American tourists captured of a body supposedly falling from the tower at the monastery. Alex plays the video for Strand who says he's familiar with it, and dismisses it as a hoax.

### Meeting with Carl Jenkins

Nic tells Alex they've been getting messages from Carl Jenkins, a man who claimed to have known Travis Collinwood, one of Strand's former assistants who had died after hearing the Unsound. Nic arranges a meeting with himself, Alex and Carl, and mentions Carl insisted that Strand attend as well.

After waiting at a cafe for an hour, Alex is approached by Carl while both Nic and Strand had left to take phone calls. Alex describes him as extremely good-looking ("Sexy James Bond"), and after evading Alex's questions, he took the coffee Strand had left behind and exited the cafe. When Alex explains what happened to Nic and Strand, Strand says that couldn't have been Carl, as he just got off the phone with him and was waiting in Strand's office at the university, as someone had called him claiming to have a job for him. Nic pulls up a photo of Carl and Alex confirms that wasn't the same person that approached her.

## Characters

### Recurring Characters

Alex Reagan, host and producer

Dr. Richard Strand, paranormal investigator

Nic Silver, producer

### Guest Characters

Reggie Erdman, Percival Black's roommate at the University of Bath

Alice Kermode, Architectural professor, University of Bath

Dr. Rufus Carmichael, professor, University of Cambridge

Carl Jenkins, (supposed) friend of Travis Collinwood

## Notes

http://theblacktapestranscripts.weebly.com/episode-111-the-codex-gigas.html

https://www.reddit.com/r/PNWS/wiki/characters#wiki\_episode\_11