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[SPEAKER_00]: Paranormal experiences don't really work to a time scale, and therefore we invite you to listen to a dark mini-sound.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Hello everyone and welcome to the actual Penultimate Mini-Sode for Season 24.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I have made a few mistakes in the last week or so, over the use of the word, Penultimate.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Completely my doing, and I've led accidentally some of you to believe you've missed an episode or two.

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[SPEAKER_00]: But no, you're in the right and I most certainly in the wrong on this one.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I accidentally believed we were in the Penultimate week last week.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So I do apologize if you've had me say Penultimate in a place where the word Penultimate should not have been, but let me guarantee, this is the Penultimate mini-sode for this season.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And as from a perspective of mini-sode at least, we have this episode and next week's only to go, I will reiterate that although we have season 25, as season were looking at as a rather special one, it's a

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[SPEAKER_00]: quarter centennial if you will, more or less planned out in regards to episodes, as you guys are well and truly know we're a fluid show.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So, do not let the fact when I say we have a series mapped out, with the experiences etc, stop you from sending in your experience immediately.

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[SPEAKER_00]: As many listeners will testify if they've submitted their experience, you may hear it a lot sooner than you would ever imagine.

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[SPEAKER_00]: To my memory, not one season has gone by since maybe season 10, we're an experiences coming that season and being used at that season.

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[SPEAKER_00]: We choose the experiences very much on where we've sat in the experiences around that experience.

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[SPEAKER_00]: If that makes any sense, now this minisode, our penultimate minisode, has come to us from a gentleman named Arthur.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Now, to be fair to Arthur, he has had several reservations about me airing this episode.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm quite informal with Arthur now, back in fourth fire email, due to the amount of times he's changed his mind.

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[SPEAKER_00]: However, at time of airing this episode, Arthur has told me to go for it and to ignore any further after erred responses from him to pull the episode.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So I know Arthur has genuinely struggled with submitting this episode.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So thank you Arthur for allowing me to let everyone know what they're about to hear.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Now with all that said, if you have your experience, the links in the show know,

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[SPEAKER_00]: At the end of this episode I'll also reference our wonderful Patreon team and how you can sign up for a free week as we're about to hit that down time so that you can still get your dark paranormal fix.

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[SPEAKER_00]: But right now, it's that time of the week where I ask you, no, demand that you find some well-deserved moments to yourself to make a nice drink, sit down, put your headphones in, and join me as we learn all about Arthur's email, the Dark Quadrant.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Hi Kevin, long time listener here.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I've started this email about six times over the past year.

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[SPEAKER_00]: and I've deleted it every time, because every time I read it back, it sounds like something I've made up.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Believe me, I haven't.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a very practical person by trade.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I work as an inventory assessor for commercial liquidation farms, which basically translates as when a business collapses or a warehouse gets abandoned, I'm the one who goes in and counts what's left for the

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[SPEAKER_00]: It's dusty, methodical, unglamorous work.

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[SPEAKER_00]: The kind of job that trains you to look at a space and only see data.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Sadly I'm close to retirement age, but if my English teacher was still alive, they would second the fact that I'm not much of a storyteller.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So the idea I could fabricate this or indeed make this up of the top of my head To anyone who knows me would be literally laughable So fiction work are not much good at but remembering things I'm excellent at I'm the one people turn to when they say Where were we when or things along that line I have an excellent memory which I think has been heightened by the role I do

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[SPEAKER_00]: which is part of the reason I will be sad when I retire next year.

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[SPEAKER_00]: However, back to my experience.

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[SPEAKER_00]: This took place last October when I was assigned to a contract at an industrial state outside leads in the UK.

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[SPEAKER_00]: A corporate document storage firm had gone bankrupt abruptly, leaving behind years of unplamed archiveed crate and officer equipment.

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[SPEAKER_00]: The basement level, a long subterranean archive floor, had been sealed for almost 15 years due to a legal dispute over the land, and I would be the first person contracted to go in and map it out.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Now although that basement had been sealed for 15 years, it wasn't atmospheric in the way you

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[SPEAKER_00]: It was more dry, sterile, almost perfectly preserved, which was somehow to me at least worse.

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[SPEAKER_00]: The kind of preservation you get when a stops circulating entirely.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It smelled of old ink and concrete, known natural light at all.

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[SPEAKER_00]: The auction company had rid the single string of low wattage light bulbs down the central corridor, but the branching aisles of either side stayed dark.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So I was using a head torch and a heavy tactical torch.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So when I navigated my way down those corridors I would at least have for lighting.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, as full as I could get it anyway.

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[SPEAKER_00]: The first two days were completely un-eventsful.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I'd walk a nile, log a barcode, note the content and I'd move on.

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[SPEAKER_00]: The only sounds were my own boots and the muffled diesel from the generator through the ceiling.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It was on the Wednesday afternoon near the end of the eastern quadrant, I found something that didn't fit.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It was the end of IL-14, there was a heavily reinforced security cage, the kind with a steel frame and wire mesh panels, locked with an old combination lock.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I shone my torch through the mesh, and inside instead of files or office furniture, there were CRT TVs, probably 40 of them, all stacked on the shelving, all facing outwards.

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[SPEAKER_00]: The boxy kind from the late 90s, the ones with the thick plastic casings and curved glass screens.

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[SPEAKER_00]: They were all of course unploked.

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[SPEAKER_00]: The colour cables coiled on the floor.

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[SPEAKER_00]: But there was no obvious reason for them to be there.

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[SPEAKER_00]: They weren't listed in any documentation, nor anywhere on the pre-liminary inventory.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I log the

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[SPEAKER_00]: I made a log of the cage, noted the anomaly for the office to query and I moved on.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I got maybe 10 or 15 feet away, already turning the corner into the next aisle, when I heard a sound.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Very quiet, a dry, rhythmic, tick, tick, tick.

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[SPEAKER_00]: The sound these old TV's would make when the plastic casing is cooling after you've switched

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[SPEAKER_00]: I must have heard a thousand of times as I owned one, and it's a very unique sound.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I stood perfectly still, listening to this ticking and then I headed back, shining my torch down that aisle, directly at that cage.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing had changed, but I stood and listened.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Silence, the ticking had stopped.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I put it down to a simple temperature differential in the

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[SPEAKER_00]: the next morning is when things shifted.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I came back at 8 a.m.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I got the generator running, and I went straight to that eastern quadrant to finish the mapping.

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[SPEAKER_00]: When I reached the end of aisle 14, I stopped.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Three of the monitors in the middle row had been turned around.

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[SPEAKER_00]: They were

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[SPEAKER_00]: But this cage was still locked.

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[SPEAKER_00]: The dust on that combination dial completely understabbed.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I stood looking at the lock and the TVs back and forth for a good while.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Moving those units would have meant opening a locked steel door, physically lifting monitors that believe me on not light,

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[SPEAKER_00]: The floor of the cage did have a thin layer of settled dust.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I crouch down and look through the mesh with my torch angle low.

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[SPEAKER_00]: That layer of dust was completely intact.

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[SPEAKER_00]: No disturbances, no footprints.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't panic.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I want to be clear about that because I do think it matters.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I noted it in my log, lot 402-3 units repositioned, cage integrity uncompromised, query with office, and I moved to the Western Quadrant and kept working, because that's what you do.

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[SPEAKER_00]: You note the anomaly and you keep working.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I've worked in enough abandoned buildings, alone, to know that the mind is very good at creating significance from coincidence, and I wasn't ready to abandon that instinct just yet.

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[SPEAKER_00]: By mid-afternoon I was up on a rolling ladder in the western section, working through an upper shelf, and the generator contact.

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[SPEAKER_00]: so I made my way slowly down the ladder in complete darkness and fumbled in my bag to find both.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Once I had them both on, I started back up the ladder.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Again, because that's what you do, generators cut out especially in abandoned buildings.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It had cut out briefly before, on the Tuesday.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It's not unusual.

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[SPEAKER_00]: old equipment, cold days, mixed together with zero maintenance and these things happen.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So just as I'm about to continue with my work, I heard the wine.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And if you grew up with CRTTV's, you know the sound I'm talking about exactly.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It's that high thin electrical frequency that they emit when the tube is warming up.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Before the picture comes on.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It's a very specific sound, almost inordable, unless a room is completely quiet, and the basement was absurdly quiet.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Now this wine wasn't loud, but it was there, coming from the eastern side of the building.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I descended the ladder telling myself this was just residual charge.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Old capacitors can hold current for a long time.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Something just discharging.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I know just enough about electronics to construct a plausible explanation.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And I held onto that very thin explanation very deliberately as I walked back through the dark towards the central corridor.

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[SPEAKER_00]: At the main intersection, I paused.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Down the eastern corridor at the very far end, there was a faint light, pale and slightly blue.

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[SPEAKER_00]: The quality of light that only comes from a CRT screen, that particularly cold flicker, yes it was coming from aisle 14.

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[SPEAKER_00]: As I walked up to check, I noticed, one screen, that was all.

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[SPEAKER_00]: One monitor in that locked cage with no power source, showing static on the screen.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I should have left, I should have walked to the stairs at least.

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[SPEAKER_00]: They were right there, ten foot to my left.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know why I didn't.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Curiosity maybe?

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[SPEAKER_00]: Fear?

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[SPEAKER_00]: The same flat professional habit that makes you note an anomaly instead of running from it?

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[SPEAKER_00]: I walked to the end of the corridor and peered closer into the cage.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It was just the one screen.

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[SPEAKER_00]: The middle unit in the top row, facing outward the way it had originally.

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[SPEAKER_00]: The static was ordinary.

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[SPEAKER_00]: The grey and white interference of an on-tune channel, no image, no shape, nothing unusual, except there was no power.

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[SPEAKER_00]: There was however, noise.

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[SPEAKER_00]: The noise of the static I only noticed the closer I got, as if the volume was on one.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I stood there looking at it for probably 30 seconds, then I turned to leave.

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[SPEAKER_00]: As I did so, the static sound changed pitch.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't look back immediately, I took one more step, then I stopped.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Because something had registered in my periphery on my way round, a change in the light to shift in the pattern on the concrete wall.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I turned back.

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[SPEAKER_00]: The image on the screen was no longer static, and it took me a good while to understand just what I was looking at.

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[SPEAKER_00]: The picture was dark and slightly grainy, the way old CCTV footage looks.

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[SPEAKER_00]: A narrow corridor of metal shelving, a person stood at the end facing away, holding a torch.

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[SPEAKER_00]: The beam of said torch cutting down the aisle in front of them.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Then I recognised the high visibility best.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I recognised the particular way I hold a torch, slightly low into the left.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I habitive years of ducking under shelving.

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[SPEAKER_00]: This was elevated, looking down.

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[SPEAKER_00]: The way a camera mounted high in a wall would look.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And the person on the screen wasn't moving in real time.

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[SPEAKER_00]: They were stood completely still.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I left.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have a better way to put it.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I left quickly and I didn't look behind me and I didn't go back.

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[SPEAKER_00]: curve, I've spent the better part of a year trying to pull that image apart.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Residual Electromagnetic Charge in the tube, a reflection of something I didn't notice, a psychological response to low-level carbon monoxide from a poorly ventilated generator.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I've looked up everything every documented case.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I can construct a version of the explanation that almost hold everything together.

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[SPEAKER_00]: If I rarely squeeze at the boundaries of believability and I try and work at it.

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[SPEAKER_00]: But the person on the screen wasn't moving.

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[SPEAKER_00]: They were stood still in an aisle I had left 90 seconds earlier.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And I had been moving when looking at the screen.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for reading this, Kev.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I hope if anyone else has experienced something they can't quite account for, and a desperate to keep a rational, open mind in terms of it being something normal, that there may be just take a deep breath and send their experience to you.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Best wishes, Arthur.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Well Arthur, I will once more thank you for submitting your experience, although you know how many times I've said thank you for allowing me to use your experience in our back and forth emails to one another.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I feel I've got to know you a little bit better than the average submitter.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And if anyone's wondering Arthur is Arthur's real name, it seems rather strange and I said this too Arthur, as most people who are quite on the fence about submitting their experience if they opt to do so, they very much would like to stay anonymous.

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[SPEAKER_00]: For some reason which I found rather humorous, Arthur was not bothered in the slightest about his name being used.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It was more the context of the experience and I guess it kind of felt like if we do this, I'm officially putting my name on it, rather literally, so I thank you for your bravenous author and for an amazing email that does make me at least question how people like you do those jobs where you go to somewhere abandoned on your own and not freak out at any single

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[SPEAKER_00]: And a huge thank you to each and every one of you who have joined us today for this little nibble before our main course on Friday the Pundleton Dark Paranormal of Season 24.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Now as I mentioned at the beginning we are of course about to enter our fellow period before the start of Season 25.

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[SPEAKER_00]: will we take a few weeks off from the show?

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[SPEAKER_00]: And this will be the perfect opportunity to claim your free week trial for our Patreon team.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Now, at the first level of Patreon, you will receive ad free episodes, and let's be honest who doesn't like that.

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[SPEAKER_00]: The next tier you get early access and ad free episodes, and that goes for debuts and finale's.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And at the third tier, you gain an hours extra content each and every week of the year, even on the downtime between seasons.

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[SPEAKER_00]: and that comes in the form of a dark bite episode of 30 plus minutes, and an episode of after dark, will we dissect what we've spoke about recently.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Plus, you gain access to the full back catalog of over 200 hours of dark bite episodes, enough to keep anyone going over the break.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So, the link for Patreon is in the show notes, or you can go to patreon.com

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[UNKNOWN]: You