LYS Podcast Episode 7

*-Intro Music-*

**AMANDA MORRISON’S NARRATION/VOICE OVER (AM V/O):** As we move through the investigation
into these things, Dr. Weylen Taylor, Patient 80, Lane Kelly and his blog and
of course, The Leap Year Society itself, we decided that we are going to have
to follow the story wherever it leads; no matter where that takes us. Right
now, the story is going to lead us to a very interesting place. From a
temporary website on the Deep Web, to a field somewhere in the Idaho
countryside and the discovery of something strange. You’re listening to The
Leap Year Society. I’m Amanda Morrison. Stay with us.

***-End of Intro-***

**AM:**  Ok, so…start at the beginning.

**COLIN ORRY (CO):** Well, I was looking for images similar to the graphic of what you’re
calling “The Leap Year Society Symbol”.

**AM:**  Right.

**CO:** And it took some
doing.

**AM:**  What did you do?

**CO:** I posted the image
in at least a dozen online forums connected to conspiracy theories, video
games, Egyptology, and a few other concerns.

**AM:**  And?

**CO:** And after a few days
I eventually found something.

**AM:**  What did you find?

**CO:** So I eventually
found The Leap Year Symbol on a website that mentioned a familiar group.

**AM:**  Who?

**CO:** The Bolchester
Alliance.

**AM:**  They’re the group from the numbers on the
poster and the website that sent Mitch that picture!

**CO:** Yep!

**AM:**  Ok, that can’t be a coincidence.

**CO:** There were a number
of links on that site and one of those led me to a temporary deep website,
something that only pops up periodically.

**AM:**  And what did you find on that deep website?

**CO:** I found a discussion
board.

**AM:**  And what were they discussing?

**CO:** They were discussing
a video.

**AM:**  What kind of video?

**CO:** Something really
strange and cool and probably real.

**AM:**  Ok, I’m officially interested.

**CO:** What do you know
about the Antikythera Mechanism”?

**AM V/O**: What did I know about the Antikythera Mechanism? Not much. Now,
however, I know a great deal more. The Antikythera Mechanism is an ancient
computer. It was discovered in wreckage in 1902. It’s believed that the
shipwreck occurred sometime between 60-70 BCE. It’s believed that this ancient
computer had been designed, built and used by the Greeks around 205 to 87 BCE.
So, what does an Ancient Greek computer have to do with this podcast?

**CO:** Well, I’m not
positive, but the folks discussing the Antikythera mechanism were discussing it
in relation to a video some of them claimed to have seen on the darknet.

**AM:**  What video?

**CO:** Allegedly, the video
is proof of the existence of the supernatural.

**AM:**  That’s a pretty bold claim, especially in a
world of top-line special effects.

**CO:** Well, they claim
that an artifact that looks a bit like a smaller version of the Antikythera Mechanism
was discovered by a geocacher buried in a field in Idaho.

**AM:**  So, what’s on the video?

**CO:** Well, that’s where a
few opinions differ.

**AM:**  What do you mean?

**CO:** I mean there’s no
real consensus.

**AM:**  Why do we care, exactly?

**CO:** We care because of
one of the conversations surrounding a possible description of the video.

**AM:**  What description?

**CO:** I’ve sent you a
screen capture from that forum discussion.

**AM V/O**: I opened the screen capture Colin sent. It was a few entries in what
appeared to be some kind of online discussion forum. The first entry reads as
follows:

“There’s no way it is fake, it’s real. A
friend of mine named Kent was there, he witnessed the change. Kent said another
one of his friends, Amy, went somewhere else for a second and then came back
acting weird. She said that she entered Jason’s mind. Jason was one of her
friends. She said it was like she was somebody else, but kind of different.”

The second entry:

“Who else thinks that
the artifact looks kind of like a stone version of the headpiece of The Staff
of Ra from Raiders? There’s no way the video is fake. I work at Snopes and used
to do work for NASA. DM me, I’ll prove it.”

And the final entry:

“All three of those
kids who found it were forced into mental hospitals. The whole thing has been
covered up, but the authorities don’t have it. It’s somewhere else; somewhere
safe.”

You can see why Colin
thought I’d be interested in this video. The fact that one of these kids
claimed to have ‘entered her friend’s mind’ was too similar to ignore. And,
there was something else. Colin sent me a drawing. Jason, one of the kids who
participated in the video, had allegedly drawn a symbol; something he’d seen on
one side of the artifact. It was a symbol I believed I’d seen before.

**AM:**  I know I saw it somewhere.

**MITCH SORRENSON (MS):** It does look familiar.

**AM:**  We really need to catalogue all this stuff.

**MS:** Ye-really?

**AM:**  Yeah.

**MS:** Ok, because that
would take, like, four years.

**AM:**  You’re probably right.

**MS:** Are you sure it’s in
one of these photos from Dr. Taylor’s lab?

**AM:**  No, but that feels like the most obvious
place.

**MS:** My eyes are getting
blurry looking at all of this stuff.

**AM:**  Me too. Wait…I think I might know where it
was!

**MS:** Where?

**AM:**  We’re missing the photos we printed out, those
pages you read on the podcast earlier.

**MS:** They’re in my
office, I think. I’ll go look.

*Mitch leaves to look*
in her office for a few moments.

**MS:** Here.

**AM V/O**: And there it was: the symbol. The same symbol sketched by one of the
kids who was with the geocacher, who’d allegedly discovered a remarkable
artifact in Idaho. Mitch and I were looking at the same symbol on a page that
had been ripped out of a book; most like a book on Egyptology or similar, but
we didn’t have enough information to find the book’s title. It was a symbol
related to an ancient group of gods referred to as “The Unknown” in a number of
different books and articles collected by Dr. Weylen Taylor. In our last episode, Mitch, following a series of
missing clues, ended up meeting some strangers in a church; some strangers who
asked her if she was interested in hearing about a secret society. So, what did
she hear? What exactly did those strangers in that church share with Mitch?

**MS:** Well, ok. So, first
I’ll describe the people.

**AM:**  Great.

**MS:** There were three
people present, or at least there were only three people I could see.

There was a man and a
woman sitting in the front row, the first pew.

**AM:**  And the third person?

**MS:** Standing by the
altar behind me and to my right.

**AM:**  Could you describe these people for the
listeners?

**MS:** Sure, although there
wasn’t really anything that stood out about them physically. The man and the
woman in the pew were in their 30’s, well dressed, and the woman behind me near
the altar was in her 20’s maybe and dressed a bit more casually but otherwise,
nondescript. They really just seemed like normal people, at first.

**AM:**  At first?

**MS:** Well I mean, once
they started talking they were not exactly normal.

**AM:**  How do you mean?

**MS:** What they were
pitching me was definitely outside the lines.

**AM:**  What was it that they wanted to discuss?

**MS:** They told that they
belong to a group of people who were working behind the scenes to improve our
world.

**AM:**  And did they mention how they were planning on
accomplishing that feat?

**MS:** They did not.

**AM:**  What else did they say?

**MS:** They didn’t say
much, only that if I was interested in learning more, there was a new
membership intake of sorts coming up soon.

**AM:**  And you were invited?

**MS:** Uh, I was.

**AM:**  What is it?

**MS:** I’m not sure. I’m
supposed to apply online.

**AM:**  How?

**MS:** By visiting their
website.

**AM:**  Which is?

**MS:**
“Findyournewpath.org”.

**AM V/O**: The Bolchester Alliance appeared to be connected to the strange video
Colin was looking into. Looking for one secret society appears to have led us
to another, or perhaps The Bolchester Alliance was nothing more than what they
appeared to be. But, what did they appear to be? There’s really nothing online
outside of a website that was only recently set up. The website describes the
organization as a group of humanists concerned with “improvement in the face of
a changing universe”. Their website states that they’re not only concerned with
personal improvement and growth, but also the improvement and growth of all
humanity. Pretty lofty ideals. We’ll find out if Mitch ended up signing up for
her Bolchester Alliance orientation soon, but right now: we’ve got an update on
Patient 80.

*Phone ringing.*

**AM:**  Colin?

**CO:** Oh hey Amanda!

**AM:**  Hey, how are you doing?

**CO:** Pretty good, you?

**AM:**  Great. So, could you go over what you found?

**CO:** Yeah, so I was
looking in to Dr. Weylen Taylor’s practise before he ended up at the university.

**AM:**  And?

**CO:** And it’s pretty
murky actually; a residency in Canada, private practice for a while and then he
drops off the grid for about six years.

**AM:**  What do you mean by “drops off the grid”?

**CO:** I mean he just
disappears.

**AM:**  Kind of like now?

**CO:** Kind of, but last
time he turned up in rural Japan, way up north in Hokkaido.

**AM:**  What was he doing up there?

**CO:** No idea, but it was
about a year after that experience that he started working and teaching at the
university.

**AM:**  No idea at all what he was doing in Japan?

**CO:** I haven’t been able
to find anything yet, but there was something between Japan and the university.

**AM:**  What?

**CO:** A psychiatric
hospital in Northern California.

**AM:**  What was Taylor doing there?

**CO:** He was treating
patients suffering from severe mental trauma.

**AM V/O**: So, Dr. Weylen Taylor left school for a residency in Canada, entered
private practise for a while, disappeared and then popped up in Japan before
coming back to the United States to work at a psychiatric hospital in Northern
California. It feels like way too much of a coincidence that this man
disappeared twice. I asked Colin and Mitch to look into possible destinations
for Taylor and to research private investigators that specialize in finding
people. I thought that would probably be too expensive, but at this point I
didn’t want to leave any stone unturned. Speaking of turning over stones, Mitch
found some new information about that video.

**MS:** *(Reading)*
“Looking for this thing is probably going to get somebody killed.”

**AM:**  Wow that sounds sinister.

**MS:** It’s a Facebook
post.

**AM:**  Yikes.

**MS:** I know…and there’s
more.

**AM:**  Ok.

**MS:** A Facebook group
discussing what they’re calling “the artifact” was deleted. Facebook

denies any such page
ever existed, but a few of the kids digging into the video posted screen
captures from the page.

**AM:**  That’s interesting.

**MS:** And there’s
something you’re going to love here, I think. It’s a video a teenage boy took
of his sister watching the video. You can’t really see anything on the screen
itself because, you know, whoever is recording is focused on the girl’s face,
on getting her reaction, but you can definitely make out a lot of the audio.

**AM:**  How long is the video?

**MS:** It’s really not much
more than a snippet.

**AM:**  Well?

**MS:** Well what?

**AM:**  Are you going to play it?

**MS:** Of course.

**-Audio from Reaction Video-**

**KENT:** What the fuck is it?

**YOUNG WOMAN:** It’s that thing she pulled out of the ground.

**KENT:** What’s it doing?

**YW:** Glowing blue.

**KENT:** Shit. Let’s go.

**YW:** Fuck that!

**KENT:** Stay here then. Amy! Jason!

**UNKNOWN VOICE:** You’re not supposed to be here.

**KENT:** What are you talking about?

**UV:** Please…Something isn’t
right!

*We hear a loud*
banging noise and a woman cries out.

**-End of Recording-**

**AM:**  Ok, that was creepy.

**MS:** Um yeah.

**AM V/O**: The scream came from the young girl whose brother was recording her
watching the video. Like Mitch mentioned earlier, we don’t actually see the
video itself, we just hear some audio and see the girl’s reaction to whatever
she’s seeing on the screen. We’re going to keep looking into that video and all
of the strangeness surrounding it, of course, but right now I’m sure you’re
wondering why we haven’t gone back to check out Dr. Weylen Taylor’s lab. Well,
that’s because it’s taken us a while to get access, not because of any red
tape, but rather because the person who needed to sign off on us re-entering
the space had been on vacation. In our last episode, you’ll remember that we
looked at that exorcism video and compared it to photographs we had taken in
Dr. Taylor’s lab. It looked like the same room, except that in that video,
where there should have been four bookcases, there were only two. Once again,
Yvette led us from the parking lot to Dr. Taylor’s laboratory.

*-***Berkeley University Campus-**

**YVETTE**: How are things going with your podcast?

**AM:**  Pretty good…I think.

**Y:** You’re enjoying it?

**MS:** Sometimes.

**Y:** Isn’t that always
the way?

**MS:** No, I mean it’s been
great. It’s just getting complicated.

**Y:** You should talk to
Constance in the English Department; she’s all about secret cults. She grew up
in one.

*They reach the lab*
and you can hear keys jingling.

**Y:** Here we go again.
Just holler if you need anything.

**AM V/O**: Yvette opened up the door and left the two of us standing outside of
the lab.

**AM:**  My hands are shaking. What if there really is
a secret room in here?

**MS:** I know; it’s crazy.
Looks the same.

**AM:**  Yeah.

**MS:** You ready?

**AM:**  Um, I’m not sure.

**MS:** How heavy do you
think these bookcases are?

**AM:**  I don’t know! You don’t think there’s a secret
switch or something?

**MS:** I don’t believe it’s
that high-tech in here.

**AM:**  You’re probably right.

**MS:** Hey, look at this!

**AM:**  Wow.

**AM V/O**: Mitch pointed to one section on one of the bookcases. It was worn at
precisely the spot somebody might grab it with their hand to move it to pull it
into the room to open up a secret area.

*Sounds of moving a*
heavy object.

**MS:** Holy! Woah!

**AM:**  Yeah! This is going to take a while.

**AM V/O**: We pulled back the bookcase to reveal exactly what we suspected we
would find hidden behind it. It was indeed a secret room. There were two
chairs, an enormous metal Steampunk-looking tanker desk, and a tall, narrow,
old, wooden filing cabinet against the far wall. There was a long, wide
wood-framed chalkboard and a bunch of old recording equipment. It was pretty
much exactly what we were hoping it might be. We did the same thing as before:
turned up the lights, got our phones and took photographs of absolutely
everything we could.

**AM:**  There’s so much…stuff.

**MS:** Yeah. What is this
thing?

**AM:**  It looks like some sort of EKG machine or
something?

**MS:** Weird.

**AM:**  How do you want to handle the filing cabinet?

**MS:** Well, let’s see.
There’s some more equipment, but there’s really only one drawer of actual
files.

**AM:**  Let’s try and take pictures of everything.

**MS:** Copy that.

**AM:**  Is there anything on Patient 80?

**MS:** You bet there is.

**AM:**  What is it?

**MS:** A file.

**AM:**  Let’s take a look.

**AM V/O**: And take a look we did. There were a number of interview transcripts
and additional notes on Dr. Taylor’s treatment process, but there was no
information on the identity of Patient 80. We were about to leave, when I saw
something familiar.

**MS:** Hey, what is it.

**AM:**  This release slip.

**MS:** What about it?

**AM:**  I recognize the name of the psychiatric facility.

**MS:** Ok, what about it?

**AM:**  It’s the place Dr. Taylor worked when he came
back from Japan, before he came here to the university.

**MS:** Ok, what do you
think it means?

**AM:**  I’m not sure, but it looks like Patient 80 was
registered in that hospital under registration number “21 14 11 14 15 23 14”.

**MS:** Does that help us?

**AM:**  That hospital shut down last year, but it
hasn’t been emptied. I think they’re using it as part of a film set these days.

**MS:** Still not sure how
we’re going to get access to a private hospital’s patient records.

**AM:**  We’re not actually looking for patient
records, just one patient’s name.

**MS:** And how are we going
to find that information?

**AM:**  We’re going to phone a friend.

*The sound of Amanda*
dialing a phone number.

**-Phone Call with Amanda’s Friend-**

**DISGUISED VOICE (DV):** *(Distorted)* Hello?

**AM:**  Hi, is now a good time?

**DV**: *(Distorted)* It’s
perfect.

**AM V/O**: As you can tell, we’re using a filter to disguise our interview
subject’s voice. We’re doing this because they’ve asked us not to reveal their
identity on this podcast. I have a good friend who works on locations in film
and television. They also work as a creative advisor of sorts on this show. We
send earlier mixes of each episode to them for notes. When they heard this
episode, they did something we didn’t ask them to do: they found that patient
number listed on the facility’s manifest. Every other number on that manifest
referenced the name of the patient, except for one: our number. So, we still didn’t
have a name, but we did have something. My friend was able to get two names
connected to the patient we believe is, or was, Patient 80. The patient had two
visitors during their time at that facility. We have their names and we were
able to get in touch with one of them.

**MICHAEL SAIL (MSa):** Of course I know the patient’s name. I’m the person who checked him
into the hospital.

**AM V/O**: You’ve been listening to the Leap Year Society. I’m Amanda Morrison.
Thank you for listening.  (*Rest of outro)*

**END**

NOTES

* Patient

 80’s registration number at the hospital 21 14 11 14 15 23 14 spells “U N K N O W N” when you convert to letters.