The Bradley Recordings
Origin: scenario "The Moonchild" by Paul Fricker
Contents
Description
Over a period of years through the late early 2000s, a spirit identified as "Bradley Kimble", an invisible entity seen only by his parents and a handful of occultists in the Milton Keynes area of England, was interviewed and interrogated by a number of occultists. Some of the talks were amicable, and some descended into confrontation, screaming, and profanity; a number of the talks include segments that took the form of ineffective exorcism attempts using a variety of occult-derived techniques.
Most listeners will hear only the interviewers' voices; the interviewers (identified only as "Mari", "David", and "Nathan") speak in English (with accents common to Northampton, England). A few psychically sensitive listeners - or listeners exposed to specially enhanced versions of the recording - will also hear hear the distorted and inhuman voice of Bradley, who speaks in a variety of languages including English, Latin, Aklo, Ancient Sumerian, and Dutch.
The content is occult and religious in nature; a typical interrogation session might consist of an interview with "Bradley" consisting of a number of basic questions about its immediate surroundings (apparently a suburban basement) to establish a "baseline", followed by questions testing its clairvoyant and remote viewing capabilities and knowledge of past and future events, followed by questions of a more esoteric nature concerning other planes of reality, occult entities, and rituals and spells. Many of Bradley's responses are deceptive, omitting important details or outright lying to the interviewers, suggesting that Bradley is testing the interviewers' knowledge of the occult and of information and events that might be implied to be of some importance to Bradley; some (but not all) of these deceptive responses account for the less amicable interviews. Many sessions end with exorcism attempts derived from Qaballic, esoteric, and Satanic sources, as well as a few from Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, and other sources; Bradley's responses sometimes seem variously to be amusement, disgust, or apathy, punctuated with violence and other extreme reactions, sometimes staged to give the interviewers the impression that the exorcisms are actually making progress. Some of the sessions begin or otherwise contain segments in which the interviewers torture Bradley in various ways in apparent attempts to break its will and force cooperation and submission, with little or no noticeable progress toward those goals; these sessions involving torture account for some (but not all) of the other difficult sessions with Bradley (this entity appears sometimes to have begun sessions with irrational outbursts of rage and other strong emotions for the purpose of manipulating or playing with the interviewers, or for other reasons of its own.)
Original Recordings
Language: English, Latin, Aklo, Ancient Sumerian, Dutch, and other languages
Physical Description: Recordings on a mixture of cassette tapes and digital files, amounting to hundreds of hours; not well-cataloged. Listening to a selection of these recordings over a couple of hours would provide enough for the equivalent of an Initial Reading of a tome.
General Content: The content is occult and religious in nature, consisting (for most listeners) of interviews/interrogations in English, with answers that are only audible to some listeners under normal circumstances (though the recordings can be enhanced with techniques applied by a dedicated sound engineer).
Number of known copies (if rare): only one original copy
Last known location of surviving copies (if rare): last seen in the hands of amateur occultists in Milton Keynes, England, ca. 2013
Mythos Content
Suggested Spells: Dominate, Command Animal
- Study: 1 month.
- Sanity loss: 1D6
- Cthulhu Mythos: +2% Initial, +4% Full Study.
- Mythos Rating: 18
Handwritten Transcript
Language: English, with the Latin, Dutch, and some other such languages poorly translated into English
Physical Description: a hand-written transcript of the recordings, omitting unflattering and/or incriminating details about the interviewers.
General Content: The content is occult and religious in nature, consisting (for most listeners) of interviews/interrogations between three interviewers (identified only as "Mari", "David", and "Nathan"), and an occult entity (identified here only as "It"), whose answers in many cases are foreign languages translated imperfectly into English; many other passages are marked as "Indistinct", with speculative translations apparently derived during later seances with other spirits conducted by the interviewers.
Number of known copies (if rare): only one original copy
Last known location of surviving copies (if rare): last seen in the hands of amateur occultists in Milton Keynes, England, ca. 2013
Mythos Content
Suggested Spells: Dominate, Command Animal
- Study: 1 month.
- Sanity loss: 1D6
- Cthulhu Mythos: +2% Initial, +4% Full Study.
- Mythos Rating: 18
Data Transcript (dmonlolz.zip)
Language: English
Physical Description: A word-processor text file version of the handwritten transcript accompanied by MP3 versions of some of the milder interrogations, as well as (possibly fake) JPG images allegedly taken during the sessions, distributed by email and sometimes on USB storage media (stick memory). Internet video versions of varying quality have also been adapted.
General Content: The content is similar to the manuscript transcription, except that it includes some embellishments such as text annotations and framing stories, translation corrections, and multimedia sound and image files of varying quality and mixed origins (some of the additions are almost certainly fake, some - such as the MP3 recordings, are real).
Number of known copies (if rare): unknown
Last known location of surviving copies (if rare): copies of the Bradley Recordings regularly appear in occult and satanic websites
Mythos Content
Suggested Spells: Dominate, Command Animal
- Study: 1 month.
- Sanity loss: 1D6
- Cthulhu Mythos: +2% Initial, +4% Full Study.
- Mythos Rating: 18
"The Bradley Sessions"
Langugage: Usually English, sometimes others
Content: An incomplete and heavily edited/elaborated text versions, followed by internet video website adaptations, have begun appearing, with some sound effects and imagery derived from the file attachments from the data file (and others from stock horror images and sound effects), the video adaptations usually accompanied by narration in a typically monotone voice, or generated by text-to-speech engines. The content is sometimes presented as original fiction, sometimes as a true story that happened to the poster's "little brother" or some other family member, or to a "friend of a friend". Most of these versions are based on only the interviewers' side of the conversation, with "Bradley's" side supplied as pure fiction (though fiction apparently informed by a novice understanding of the Cthulhu Mythos); these adaptations almost always contain a moralistic framing story about curious internet users digging too deeply into the "Bradley Legend", until Bradley, empowered by their belief, appears in person - during a power outage - and "marks" the victim for some nameless doom. The basic story is well-known in the amateur horror fiction community as simply "Bradley", and has variously appeared under titles such as "The Bradley Sessions", "Bradley's Sessions", "Don't Talk to Demons", and "Demon LOLs", among others. The original "creepo-pasta" version of the story has also begun to attain urban legend status among internet youth subcultures, with many young internet users able to recount the most common portions of the basic story by rote memory.
Number of known copies (if rare): unknown
Last know location of surviving copies (if rare): embellished adaptations of the interviewers' side of the conversation have routinely appeared on "creepo-pasta" amateur fiction websites with a fabricated (but suspiciously knowledgeable) version of "Bradley's" half of the conversation since the mid-2010s, followed very recently on internet video websites in a watered-down amateur "audio book" form. The fake "Bradley" passages sometimes include some accurate but sketchy Mythos content, different from that found in the real transcripts, and apparently supplied by someone with a novice's understanding of the Cthulhu Mythos. A number of "sequels", "prequels", and "spin-offs" of (at best) dubious value have also been produced by the internet community and added in various combinations to the original content, contributing to almost infinite variations on this format of the original recordings, most of which have been confused with the more rarely-seen original data transcript, making the search for the original "pure" version extremely difficult.
NOTE: A low-budget made-for-TV film adaptation of this watered-down and embellished version of the recordings has been set to start filming in Romania with American writers, directors, and crew, but has been delayed in "development hell" for most of the late 2010s consequent to a number of budgetary and red-tape related difficulties, and has begun to develop a reputation as a "cursed" project due to a rumored string of mysterious deaths and other problems associated with the pre-production.
Mythos Content
- Study: 1 to 3 days, depending on the versions.
- Sanity loss: none/negligible
- Cthulhu Mythos: negligible
Quotes
Appearances
- Call of Cthulhu Scenario: "The Moonchild" by Paul Fricker
Heresies and Controversies
- Alternative_theory. (source) -->
