Patreon UNLOCKED: The Cartography of Shadows

December 1, 2021·23 min·2 clips

In Chicago, a bar appears only once, where choosing between a red-haired man or Turkish woman bartender determines your entire experience.

The episode opens with a brief intro establishing that this Patreon bonus format focuses on listener questions and an Odd America segment. The first question, from a listener named Evan, asks Dr. Ryder to settle a dispute about Chicago deep dish pizza; Ryder admits he prefers Neapolitan and occasionally visits Pequot's. The second question, from Maria, asks whether Ryder has visited the Odd-Shaped Room, a legendary Chicago bar. Ryder says he has not visited but has heard hundreds of accounts from residents. He describes the bar as materializing anywhere in the city, accessible only once per person, and always busy but never crowded. Two bartenders work the Odd-Shaped Room: a stout red-haired Irishman who serves beer and whiskey and functions as a therapeutic listener, and a tall Turkish woman who offers a unique unrepeatable cocktail. Ryder advises that troubled visitors should seek the Irish bartender, as many credit him with inspiring life-changing decisions. The bar also hosts supernatural archetypes: an old man with a backgammon board whose victory promises longevity, a young woman who reads palms in exchange for a drink with accurate results, and a white-haired woman near the corner who, if engaged, may follow a patron out of the bar with unspecified consequences. The main segment, Today in Odd America, moves to Chambers, Kansas in 1895. Cartographer Marcus Phillebrown arrives by stagecoach after his employer, Patriotic Map and Globe, receives a letter claiming that the road west of town led to Colorado on horseback but to an unknown location on foot at dusk. Phillebrown, 64 and near retirement, treats the trip as a final adventure. He sets out on foot one evening, escorted by local men who leave at midnight and warn him to return by the road at noon. He never returns. In 1914, Phillebrown's body is found face-down in an Oregon ravine at age 83. His possessions include a leather-bound journal later published as The Cartography of Shadows by Little Brown and Company. The first journal entry describes arriving at an inn at the edge of a place called the Forest and Shadow, where the stars had turned black. The innkeeper, a dark-haired woman, asks if he is a refugee from Farbosia. Phillebrown oversleeps and attempts to return east but finds himself lost in an unknown landscape. He observes the ruins of an abandoned empire through binoculars, inhabited by misshapen creatures. He returns to the inn and meets three Kansas men playing cards who describe themselves as permanently trapped, having missed their one chance to leave. Their physical appearance—dull eyes and wax-textured skin—implies unnatural deterioration. Phillebrown resolves to keep traveling westward. The journal continues for hundreds of pages with accounts of the Forest and Shadow, including dark fairy tales, Aesop-style fables, and encounters with talking animals. One illustration—a burned skeleton nailed to a tree with a melted wax crown—is highlighted as particularly disturbing. After nine years in the shadow realm, Phillebrown meets a woman who speaks an unknown language and invites him to her home; all subsequent journal entries are written in an indecipherable script. Ryder attributes this to what he calls the sexually transmitted language of Flynn, a concept previously addressed on the show. The episode closes with a teaser for the next Patreon episode covering the Welsh woods of Oregon.

As heard by us

An unhurried map of dread that turns a practical mystery into a quiet disappearance.

A Voice From Darkness uses its Patreon bonus to move from listener questions and Chicago banter into something stranger, and that turn is the whole point. The episode is at its strongest when the impossible is treated like a matter to be checked, dated, and filed away.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Press play if you like your horror filed like a case record.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from A Voice From Darkness