THE MAGNUS ARCHIVES #44 - Tightrope 

I for some reason thought she’d be polish.

Jon said that when he wrote her he kept hearing his mom's voice in his head, and they were scrambling to find someone to play her so he just let his mom try it. And since she's an English teacher, the first thing she did was correct the grammar errors in his script.

Yep, that's Gertrude alright.

Same, I also expect Gertrude to look like my primary school principal

@@JesseColton omg, that's so funny and cute xd

Yeah, Jon's only found one stash. She has more stashhouses than Avon Barksdale for tapes scattered around the archives.

@@mechengr1731 Hihi, are those little spoilers I see here?

@@mechengr1731 damn, spoilers without a warning

That is great.

Really? Thats so cool!

Aww

Nice!

Spoiler?

I think so to, I mean one of the early ones was dreams, in which her horrible death is predicted.

I like to think she organized them in reference to one another. Probably not

She says later that she purposely kept the archives in a state of chaos in order to keep a certain person from figuring out her plans

That's my current theory

It also seems like she had some sort of protection against unnatural beings hence why it appeared To be a human who murdered her

iiiii think thats true for pretty much every country

The beast tamer handles the beast WITH HIS BARE HANDS P.S also i thinmk back in the day carnivals and circus would travel around like caravans

Whoa… that’s really cool.

Is it the same with "Another Circus" and "Circus of the Other"?

​@@minuspi8372 ehh, no? Another Circus - (what circus?) drugoi tsirk, Circus of the Other - tsirk (whose circus?) drugogo.

idk which one of the translations is more concerning

...понадобилось три года, чтобы до меня дошло!

Lmfao! This comment is just hilarious to me😂

I would love to hear her actress read old school nursery rhymes and fairytales/folktales.

No matter why they _think_ they’re changing their tones (if they notice that they’re doing it at all) there’s a creepy canonical reason that makes sense… though since this comment was from a year ago, I guess you probably know that now.

she knew

She really had an _eye_ for details

I thought it was because they were just theatre nerds-

She ain't no noob. This wasn't her first, or last, rodeo.

✨ *the spooky clown doll* ✨

Same. I’m working on a cosplay while listening and ran to my phone to see if there was a connection someone pointed out in the comments

@@sammieegoldwand ✨the circus arrived✨

I ticked at "circus in Russia"

same

It's real Jon's mom, I love that fact

Panneapple wasn’t the grandpa part of the circus? His name was Nikolaj and there was a picture of him with the canopy in a circus. (I haven’t listened to this ep btw)

@@Anna-zi7sx It was Nikolai Denikin and Gertrude said he left the circus in the 70s. Also I need to check but I think the clown description matches the doll's

So I looked at the transcripts, the murderous doll: "Its threadbare body was white and purple polka-dot, with three pompoms down the front and a ruff just below the head. It had no woollen hair left, but instead had a tall, pointed white cap on top. Its face was painted a pure white, and its eyes were shut, with black lines drawn across them. The only colour was a splash of red across the hinged jaw. A smile." And the actual clown in this episode : "huge and scowling in white and purple polka-dots"

@@cleliea8770 I didn't pick up on that at all and I *hate* it

@@cleliea8770 oh my God.

Probably the organ/playing the organ affects the people around

*calliope

Alethéia cal-e-ope /j

A powerful element of the organization, for sure, but the extents to which he was a perpetrator and victim himself aren’t quite clear. Hoping to learn more about him, as the only 3 episodes here that mention him at all are so sparse in detail.

my guy.. he had an clown doll that ripped people's jaws off. did you THINK he wasn't evil?

I keep seeing people in the comments theorizing that she "organized" the archive in such a way for a reason, I must say I am now, more than ever, inclined to agree.

@@tearez13 👀

*cough cough* yes well...

I love her small accent

It's real Jon's mother

Gertrude isn't cool! SHE'S HARD CORE AND F**** AWSOME

Still butchered the word "другого" though

@@himeow7454 what does that mean

@@cezar3169 "the other" like in "circus of the other" in the calliope episode

Yeah, I noticed too. Сельсовет sounded pretty good to make me laugh

anything's better than pronouncing Ivan as "Eye-ven"

British

And they're all related, I mean Gertrude va is Jons irl mom, voice acting runs in the family I suppose

Later on in the series, Peter Lukas is like nails on a chalkboard for me

@@senormooples2354 later on Juergen Lietner is Jon’s irl dad lol

@emily barclay WOW WHAT?!

Thought so too!!

I knew I recognized them... how long have they been alive?

Hey, my grandma was young in the year this incident took place, and she's still alive too! Turning 81 in a month

@@chimedemon Are they alive?

Nanahuatli They were the ones who delivered the table to Jon a few episodes ago.

This is an anti-bedtime story. It keeps you awake instead of putting you to sleep.

@@anxiouscordyceps so it's a daytime story

​@@SOLO.SHAD0W-HAWK i something listen this for being awake at job

Mr Bobinsky was one of the liquidators at chernobyl, that was why he had blue skin

I dont know much about Russia, but isn't there a rich history of people trying to pass in and out of Russia without being detected by the police or military or government? Names have to be ordinary so that anybody can appear ordinary and just go on their way

There goes all of my plans

@@noomre9105 you were gonna sign up?

I like it that way People basically took advantage of the ill or impoverished Pretty fuked ul

This was decades back and in Russia though

@@CTShun I am aware, I was just stating a random relevant factoid

This is a spooky Russian village so they didn’t respond because they only respond to ‘spooky Ivan’ or ‘Yuri but weird’ makes perfect sense

Heey, in real life all guys in Russia named Sasha

same i was like "NOPE" lmao

I keep having issues trying to listen to them on podcast sites! I had to switch to youtube to keep listening :O

when trying to record digitally the audio shows significant signs of...... distortion.....

well it is the magnus archives

me, closing my laptop: podcast's haunted

Filipa Maria Costa "welp, guess ill get stalked by an entity"

Yup!

насколько я смог узнать, цена входа была 1 в среднем 1 рубль, могла достигать 1.5 рубля за передние ряды. as far as I could find, the entrance cost 1 rouble on average, 1.5 for the front row seat.

Описываемые события происходили в 1952 году, то есть до денежной реформы 1961 года, то есть 50 копеек по застойным ценам. Even so, в советской бедной деревне 1950х у людей не было не то что денег на цирк, но и денег вообще, да и, скорее всего, паспортов, but that's by the by. Эпизод в любом случае отличный

Да! Я тоже услышал "5 рублей" и сразу подумала, что никто в деревне у чёрта на куличках не смог бы себе такого позволить

in the 50s, before the reform, so divide by ten. Still way too expensive for poor villagers, especially right after the war and post-war famines, and with the kolkhoz system. Not Jonathan's fault for underestimating how horrific the actual poverty levels were, anyway. I love how this story has a cool and comfortable eerie atmosphere, since real horrors were not nearly as cute.

She's also voiced by Jon Sims' real life mom!

lmao squad

me and da boys

@@xxc00l_k1dzxx Hey, your profile picture is from that video game with the therapist who also happens to be a murderer !

@@justeundonut-moi.7979 heck yea

They have a union now

From which episode are the body builders?

@@swagburito9091 sorry for not replying to this lol, only saw it because i was re listening to the series. if you don’t know already, it was the episode with the clown dolls and the calliope with the boyfriend, josh, who got his jaw torn off. the person who sent in the statement said their grandad was part of a circus with a ventriloquist, two body builders, a steam organ player and a ring bearer i think? presuming you’ve gotten further into the series by now so don’t read more of this if you haven’t- it’s the circus of the other with nikola and them lot in it lol

I love her. She sounds like a kind teacher and her intonation is very expressive.

Ikr? ;^;

So she sounds like an old person?..

@@phoeberia2734 An old British person*

Sewerz bruh that’s Jonathan’s mum bro

I actually imagined her much like McGonagall before I even heard her voice

What a lovely lady

It could were a tiger before

It could were a tiger before

First time listener as well, and no assumptions needed. Both the name of the circus and the name "Denekin" match up with the clown doll/calliope episode.

@@Kefkaesque13 Thank you! I thought so, but I couldn't quite remember

I left them arguing there and went off to find Ivan. In my ten-year-old’s mind I was sure that I would be able to figure out where my younger brother had wandered to. I would return triumphant, and my father would tell all the village of how well I had done. As I walked, I became fascinated by the flickering gaslights, some clear and bright, others behind coloured glass, and decided that Ivan would also have been drawn to them. So I followed them round the tent, and through the wagons and trucks, until I found myself standing before a smaller tent, set off to the side of the big top. There was another wooden sign across the top. This one appeared to be written in English; I did not then understand what it said. Knowing what I know now, I believe it said, “Freak Show”. Now you must understand that the freak show was not part of a Soviet circus. Indeed, I believe even in America the practice has been out of fashion for many, many years, so I did not have any idea what to expect when I went in looking for Ivan. What I saw inside is one of the main reasons that I am so sure that my experience deserves to be in your library. It’s the reason I went to Moscow to study medicine, for the people, if such they can be called, that I saw in there were of such grotesque proportion and bodily forms that I became obsessed with learning how it was they might still live. It was only when I was many years into my medical training that I finally accepted that, scientifically, such things were not possible. A mouth cannot function if it’s located anywhere other than the face. Limbs cannot bend like rubber. A man cannot walk and talk and stare without a head. You will, I hope, forgive my lack of precise descriptions. It has been 27 years since that night, and I can no longer clearly distinguish between what is memory and what is nightmare. I walked along the row of cages. Those few other patrons who had found their way to this tent turned around quickly, leaving with pale faces and shaking legs, but I was determined to find Ivan. I closed my eyes as I walked, opening them only momentarily every few steps to check if he was there. I called out, but there was no reply, either from my brother, or from the silent things in their cages. Finally, I reached the end of the tent. The last cage was empty, save for a large hessian sack. It was tied by thick rope, wrapped around so tightly that it bulged through the gaps in its binding. I took momentary comfort in the fact that it was far too big to be Ivan. Still, I found myself approaching it, curiosity momentarily overcoming my growing sense of dread. Then, in the distance, the steam organ began to play, announcing the start of the show, and the bag began to move. It contorted itself, pulsing and throbbing like a wounded animal’s stomach, and fell heavily forward. I screamed and fled out into the frozen night. It was only when I was about to pass back out through the wooden gates that I stopped, remembering that, even if Ivan had fled like me, my father was still in this terrible place. I resolved to rescue him, and turned back towards the main tent. Light spilled out of the open entrance, as the steam organ kept playing. I entered to see two clowns fighting. Not the slapstick routines of the clowns I’d been used to, rife with wordplay and satire, but a crunching violence I had never seen before. One of them, huge and scowling in white and purple polka-dots, pinned down its smaller companion, whose bright yellow shirt was now streaked with red. With each blow from the big clown, the crowd, among whom I could clearly see my father, howled with laughter and cheers. The laughter didn’t sound right. None of it was right. It was as though I was looking at a tent full of vicious strangers, every one of whom wore a face I had known since birth. Then my gaze drifted upwards, to the tightrope stretched between the towering tent poles, and my heart stopped. Halfway across, tottering on legs too short to balance properly, was Ivan. Everything else was forgotten as I watched him there, and the sounds of the world around me faded away. The question of how he had got up there, or made it halfway along that thin metal wire, didn’t even enter my mind. I could think of nothing but that next step that would send him tumbling to a floor caked in sand, greasepaint and blood. No-one else in the audience or the ring seemed to have noticed him up there, and my throat had closed too tight to call to them. I could do nothing but watch as Ivan took another step along the tightrope. He swayed to one side, then the other, and I could see he was crying, tears falling to the floor like single drops of rain. He took another step. And then another. He did not fall. I watched in amazement as my seven-year-old brother walked and walked. My heart was still clenched in fear, and I could not breathe. Ivan took his final step, lifted his right foot, and placed it upon the platform on the opposite tent pole. He had made it. He gripped the pole and moved around it and out of sight. I do not know how long I had stood there watching, but it seemed like only a moment later I felt my father’s hand grip me by the shoulder. I turned to see him standing there with Ivan by his side. He had a look on his face as though he had eaten something that had spoiled, and without a word he led us out of the circus and back to our home. The field was empty by the next morning. No-one in our village ever spoke of that night, and when the state circus came to Morshansk the next year, my father did not offer to take us, and we did not ask. For many years, I thought that it might have been some strange dream or distorted memory, as no-one ever acknowledged that it had happened. But I asked Ivan about it when we were older, and he hesitantly said that he remembered the circus coming, but everything after running through the gate was a blur. I pressed him further on the subject, and he just shook his head. He didn’t remember what happened, he said, but he still got terrible nightmares. Every November, around when the circus had come to Algasovo, he would dream that he was there again. He could smell the sawdust and hear the steam-organ playing, but he could not move. In the dream he would find himself tightly bound with coarse rope and trapped inside a thick hessian sack. I remembered those nights. He always woke up screaming. GERTRUDE Final comments: sounds, from what I can tell, like Yuri Utkin and his brother were rather lucky in their encounter with the circus, as both escaped with only significant mental trauma. A decidedly tame result for a run-in with Gregor Orsinov’s troupe, especially as this would have been during the height of their tour. If it was in the 70s, after Denikin had left, then maybe it would come as less of a surprise, but as it stands, I think it somewhat amazing that the whole town appears to have made it through in one piece. Obviously it’s a good thing the children survived, but it does pique my interest in Ivan Utkin. Unfortunately, he appears to have passed away in 1984, but he must have been something rather special. [CLICK] [CLICK] ARCHIVIST Supplemental. This is the first of the tapes I have received from Basira. Luckily it appears that Gertrude was not as lax in properly marking these tapes as she has been the rest of the archive. While it provides some interesting context for Leanne Denikin’s statement, and this strange circus, I will admit to some disappointment it doesn’t address any of my more pressing questions about Gertrude’s tapes. Why did she begin recording them? And why stop? If she’d been doing so right up until her death, she would’ve likely gotten through much of the archive, and… moreover I wouldn’t have had to find this tape player tucked away in the storage room, covered in dust and cobwebs. Moreover, she clearly knows a lot more about what is going on than I had previously assumed. This is far from the first time she has encountered ‘The Other Circus’, or ‘The Circus of the Other’, or however it translates. I suppose I’ll have to return the tape to Basira, and wait until she can get me another one. It is infuriating to have to simply… wait like this, but there is little else I can do. Additionally, I think someone may have found these… secret tapes. They do not appear to have been disturbed, but the drawer in which I kept them is slightly more open than I left it. I have not mentioned it to the others, as if any of them did open my drawer for innocent reasons, then I don’t want to let them know there is anything significant about the tapes inside. I have prised up one of the floorboards, and will be hiding them beneath there from now on. End supplement. [CLICK]

*_Footnotes_* 1• “raysovet” or “district council” 2• “selsovet” or “village council” 3• “Drugoy Tsirk”

I’m on my relisten and there’s SO much forehadowing with the tape recorder and webs that we all just missed. A few eps ago Martin was talking to Jon and used the phrase ‘whatever web these tapes have you trapped in’ and I was like BOY

@@emilybarclay8831 Stuff like that is why the Martin Is Working For The Web theory stuck around for so long too I think :3

@@Idran he’s not working for anyone but the Best Boys Squad™️

NotThem? Stranger? Do these people come later in the series? I don't remember hearing about them

Wonder if Russia has an OSHA equivalent... probably, idk what it’s called though