Part 11: Supernatural Encyclopedia Brown
The Magnus Archives was a horror podcast. It is now completed. Many of the show’s mysteries were never explained on the show. I intend to explain them. Spoilers for the show, but also spoilers if you wanna solve these mysteries yourself.
Something important happens in the episode Doomed Voyage. Something that is not obvious, but it’s possible to figure it out. Maybe some of you’ll enjoy figuring it out on your own? If so, listen carefully to the episode and think of it like a mystery.
I’ll give you some hints below, if you want them.
Hint 1: In the episode Ignorance, John is the presence of the camera. So his powers don't work, including the power to make people tell the truth.
Hint 2: Floyd is knocked unconscious for a few seconds. What is the purpose of this, from a narrative point of view?
Hint 3: Diamonds is a clue.
Hint 4: Card game is a clue.
Hint 5, last hint: Annabelle Cain didn’t kill Salesa.
The solution: Gantulga killed Salesa and took his place. Gantulga had taken the rug, an artifact of the Spiral. The rug can be used to create illusions, and Gantulga used it to cheat in a card game against Floyd and take his money. Gantulga gave the illusion that he had different cards than it did. But using an artifact of the Fears isn’t safe and the pattern from the rug attacked Gantulga. The pattern had diamonds. I think it also had hearts, spades and clubs. But Floyd only saw the pattern briefly and the pattern was moving, so he didn’t notice. The pattern forced itself into Gantulga and made him an avatar of the Spiral. Now he can create illusions without the rug, and the rug is blank and useless.
Now here comes Salesa and he is mad. Gantula knows he’s in trouble. Earlier in the story Salesa threw Jésus overboard for messing with the cargo. Gantulga knows he’s in for the same treatment. He fights Salesa. Salesa is getting old and tired, as established earlier in the story. Gantulga wins and throws Salesa overboard. He used his new illusion powers to make it seem like he is Salesa and Salesa is him. Floyd doesn’t notice the switch, as he is conveniently knocked unconscious when it happens. Gantulga also throws the now blank rug overboard, maybe worried that the pattern would leave him and get back on the rug and expose him. Gantula is exhausted, having thrown such a big man overboard.
Floyd noticed that “Salesa” is behaving differently. He gets drunk for two days. He hardly speaks. He doesn’t have a plan. That’s Gantula not knowing what to do. He gets drunk because he is upset about the trouble he’s in. He doesn't speak much, ‘cause he’s afraid he’ll give himself away. Later Floyd says about Salesa “he had this… wild energy I’d never seen in him before”. Because the real Salesa didn’t have wild energy, he was pretty calm.
Somebody hires Gantulga to get the camera. When Gantulga is on the island he breaks the camera lens. That way the camera stops working and he can keep being disguised. Two of the four men that go with Gantulga to get the camera do not return. Maybe the two men saw Salesa turn into Gantulga when they were close to the camera and Gantulga had to kill them.
Gantulga and the captain go to sell the camera. There is an explosion and only the captain returns. Quote “Some tried to ask the captain about Salesa, but he just shook his head. He wasn’t making much sense. We managed to gather the two of them had left early to deliver the artefact, but something had gone wrong. There had been an argument. They had been betrayed. Salesa was dead. The captain died soon after; the shrapnel trapped in his skull finally getting the better of him.”
I think the Captain had realized Salesa was Gantulga. Perhaps the person buying the camera wanted to test if it was real and repaired it with a new lens. But then maybe the Captain walks in on them and sees Salesa is actually Gantulga. Because of the shrapnel in the head the captain’s not able to explain the confusing thing that Salesa was already dead long before the explosion happened. That’s why it sounds like he’s not making much sense.
In Ignorance Gantulga can't be disguised because the camera has been repaired and is working. But that's okay because John, Martin and Annabelle don't know what Salesa looks like.
In Ignorance Gantulga, as Salesa, says he once sold the broken camera to a scared old man. This is a lie, the camera does not work when it is broken. The lie is to hide the fact that Gantulga broke the camera.
If you are skeptical of Gantulga taking Salesa’s place, without it there are many elements to the story that serve no part of the plot: Floyd being unconscious. The death of Gantulga. The rug. The death of Jésus. The strange behavior of Salesa after Gantulga’s death. The shrapnel in the captain’s head, and his inability to make sense. There is also no obvious reason why Salesa would want to throw the rug overboard. There is also the fact that we don’t hear what happened on the island, which seemed like it would have been the most exciting part of the story. Why leave it out, unless there was something to hide?
In Ignorance Gantula is able to lie to John, because of the camera. But why was he still pretending to be Salesa? And who ordered him to find the camera? I’ll talk about it in a later post.
