15 Aug Invisible Episode 145

Part I

I’m not normally a conspiracy guy. I mean, yeah, I’ll click on the occasional “top ten unexplained mysteries” YouTube video when I’m bored, but I’ve never been the type to go down rabbit holes.

But boredom does weird things to you, especially when your life’s already a mess.

At the time this all started, I was about as low as I’d ever been. I’d just turned twenty-six, my girlfriend of three years had packed her stuff and left without much more than “I can’t do this anymore,” and I’d been out of work for going on five months. I was behind on rent, my car was a rusted-out piece of junk I couldn’t afford to fix, and I’d been living primarily on boxed macaroni and the leftover condiments in my fridge. Days and nights bled together. I spent most of them in my apartment, sitting in front of my laptop with the blinds drawn, mindlessly scrolling through Reddit or watching old TV shows on YouTube.

That’s how I stumbled across Sunny Time Station.

The channel name was VCRKing92, one of those niche uploaders who seem to live for digging up old VHS tapes from thrift stores and flea markets. His uploads were mostly forgotten cartoons and weird local commercials from the eighties and nineties. I’d clicked on one of his “Saturday Morning 1989” compilations, just to have some background noise while I was sorting through job listings I wasn’t actually going to apply for.

Then I heard the Sunny Time Station theme song.

It hit me like a smell from your childhood—you don’t even remember it until it’s right there in front of you, and suddenly you’re five years old again. The melody was soft and sing-songy, layered over what sounded like a toy piano. It was like every memory of a rainy day spent watching PBS had just woken up in my head.

Here’s the thing: I’d completely forgotten this show existed. Not just “hadn’t thought about it in years” forgotten. I mean gone, like someone had erased it from my brain. But seeing it again? It was like it had been there all along, just under the surface.

The show itself was… weird. It was low-budget, filmed on a set that looked like some strange halfway point between a train station and a puppet theater. There were human actors— cheery “station staff”—and these puppet characters, which I vaguely remembered finding either hilarious or terrifying, depending on the day.

I let the episode play all the way through. Then another. And another.

That’s when I noticed something odd in the video titles.

The episodes were numbered in the file names—Episode 141, Episode 142, Episode 143, Episode 144… and then it jumped straight to Episode 146.

There was no 145.

I thought maybe VCRKing92 just hadn’t found that one yet, but when I scrolled down, the numbering kept going—147, 148, 149. Always one missing.

I clicked into the comments, thinking maybe someone had already asked. They were disabled, which was weird for a channel like his. After all, half the fun for these nostalgia uploads is the people chiming in with “I remember this!” or “My cousin was on this show!”

I backed out and started Googling. Old TV listings confirmed that, yes, there was an Episode 145, which aired exactly once in early March 1991, but there was no description of its plot, no stills, nothing.

I got curious enough to message VCRKing92 directly.

I typed: “Hey, man, loving these uploads. Do you have Episode 145 of Sunny Time Station? Can’t find it anywhere.”

It took about a day before I got a reply.

It simply said: “Don’t look for it. It’s not lost—it’s locked away.”

And that was it. I never got any follow-up or further explanation.

Which, of course, meant I was absolutely going to start looking for it.

* * * * * *

After that message from VCRKing92, I told myself I wouldn’t make a big deal out of it.

That lasted maybe twelve hours.

By the next morning, I had a dozen tabs open—old TV archive sites, nostalgia blogs, half-broken fan pages from the early 2000s. Most of them had barely any info about Sunny Time Station, just the standard “anyone remember this show?” kind of posts. But I started noticing the same pattern: whenever Episode 145 came up, it was usually followed by the words weird, different, or creepy.

One archived forum thread from 2007 included a post from a user claiming that his uncle had worked on the crew. He wrote: “They all changed after that one. Even the kids. Like they’d been through something they didn’t understand but couldn’t stop thinking about.” Another thread mentioned a child actor disappearing from the cast around that time. There were no additional details or news links, only a username with no other posts following that one.

I finally turned up a name I didn’t recognize: Seth Trolstad. Apparently, he was the creator, head writer, and director for most of the show’s run. He had this slick, early-90s, soft-spoken children’s entertainer vibe—imagine a less awkward Mr. Rogers who’d been to L.A. a few too many times. But his career ended abruptly in ‘91, right around when Episode 145 would’ve aired.

The only solid info I could find was an old trade magazine snippet: “Production halted amid ongoing police inquiries.” There was no mention of what those inquiries were.

The deeper I dug, the stranger it got. I found a link to a half-dead GeoCities site for something called “Sunny Time Forever.” Most of the images were broken, but there was one working clip from a convention panel in the late ‘90s. It featured two of the former child actors on stage, both of whom were clearly uncomfortable answering fan questions.

One of them was Vickie Kimball.

The name pinged something in my head—she’d played “Conductor Annie,” one of the most recognizable characters on the show. I remembered her oversized train conductor’s hat and the way she’d always carry a little stuffed rabbit on set.

In the clip, a fan asked about her favorite episode to film. She smiled politely, but when someone shouted “One-forty-five!” from the audience, she froze. Then she said, “Next question,” without looking up.

I don’t know why, but I felt the need to talk to her.

It took me two hours of scrolling through Facebook and LinkedIn to find a profile that matched her age and hometown. She runs a dog grooming business now, about three states over. I sent her a message that I thought was casual enough: “Hi, Vickie, I was a big fan of Sunny Time Station growing up and was wondering if you’d be open to answering a couple questions about the show.”

I didn’t mention 145 in the first message.

She replied within an hour: “What do you want to know?”

I went for it: “Specifically, I’m curious about Episode 145. I saw you were on the panel years ago, and someone brought it up.”

The three dots that show someone’s typing appeared… and then disappeared.

Ten minutes later, another message came through: “Don’t talk to me about 145. If you do, you’ll start seeing him. And if you see him, you won’t want to stop.”

I stared at that for a long time, wondering if she was screwing with me. Then, two days later, I did see him. It happened in the checkout line at the grocery store. I was glancing around, bored, when my eyes flicked to the freezer section’s glass door. In the reflection, just over my shoulder, was a tall, thin figure, with shoulders hunched forward and his head cocked slightly to the side. I turned around instantly.

No one was there.

The hairs on my arms stood straight up.

I told myself it was my brain filling in shapes, like when you think you see a face in a curtain pattern. But later, walking home, I caught sight of the same figure in the darkened window of a closed pawn shop, with an identical posture and the same cocked head.

It was only there when I wasn’t looking directly at it.

By the time I got home, I couldn’t shake the thought that maybe Vickie was right. Maybe whatever was tied to that episode was… aware.

And maybe it had noticed me.

* * * * * *

Vickie ignored my next two messages.

I tried to keep it light—sent her a “Sorry if I overstepped,” and even threw in a “No worries if you don’t want to talk about it.” She never replied.

Then, almost a week later, I woke up to a one-line reply: “We can meet. Public place. Afternoon.”

She sent an address to a café in her town, about a three-hour drive from me. I debated it for all of five minutes before deciding to go.

The café was the kind of place that sold scones the size of your hand and played soft jazz at a volume that made you feel guilty for talking too loudly. Vickie was already there when I arrived, sitting at a corner table with a latte she hadn’t touched.

She didn’t look anything like the bright-eyed kid from the show. She was now in her early forties, and had her hair pulled back in a loose braid; deep lines were etched around her eyes. When she saw me, she gave the faintest nod.

“You’re Jeremy,” she said.

I sat down, trying not to sound too eager. “Thanks for meeting me. I know it’s… probably not your favorite subject.”

“You shouldn’t be digging into it,” she said immediately. “If you care about your sanity, you’ll stop right now.”

“I just want to understand,” I said. “What happened with 145?”

Her gaze dropped to her untouched latte. “Do you remember Seth Trolstad?”

I nodded. “The guy who ran the show, right?”

“He didn’t just run it,” she said. “He controlled it. The cast, the crew… especially us kids. He had these ‘games’ he’d make us play between takes. Blindfolding. Binding our wrists with scarves. Making us chant these… words.” She glanced up at me. “We thought it was gibberish. Later, I learned it was a kind of Sumerian. Twisted, but still… close enough.”

My skin prickled. “Why?”

“He believed in something,” she said, lowering her voice, “something he called Lag’reth. Said it lived ‘in the colors.’ I didn’t understand it at the time. I still don’t. But Episode 145 was supposed to be its big moment, the thing we’d been rehearsing for without knowing it.”

She swallowed hard. “They never aired it because something went wrong. I don’t know what exactly. Just that after filming, everything got weird on set. People got sick. One of the kids had a seizure. And Seth—he just smiled, like that’s exactly what he’d wanted.”

I thought about the figure I’d seen in the reflections, the way it leaned toward me without moving. “What happened to him?”

“Disappeared. Police came around, asked questions. Next thing I knew, the show was shut down.” She finally took a sip of her latte, like telling me her story had taken something out of her.

“Vickie…” I hesitated. “Since we messaged, I’ve been seeing something. Tall. Hunched. Only in reflections. Is that—”

“Stop,” she said sharply. Her eyes locked on mine. “Don’t describe it. Don’t acknowledge it. Every time you do, it pulls you closer.” Her voice was trembling now. “If you keep looking for 145, you’re not going to find it. It’s going to find you.”

We sat in silence for a moment, the jazz track warbling softly in the background. Then she stood, left a few bills on the table, and walked out without another word.

That night, I had a dream about Sunny Time Station. In it, the set was the same as I half-remembered it—painted cardboard props, colorful banners, the puppet stage—but everything was wet. Water dripped from the rafters. The floor squelched under my shoes. The air smelled like rust and salt. And the puppets weren’t speaking English. Instead, they spoke that same guttural, rolling language Vickie had mentioned… and I understood every word.

One of the characters, with bright yellow felt, big floppy ears, turned toward me and said, “The door opens when you agree.”

Behind it, in the shadows of the puppet stage, something shifted.

And then I woke up with my heart pounding and my mouth dry, the sound of dripping still in my ears.

* * * * * *

After meeting Vickie, I told myself I’d take her advice.

I lasted about two days.

It wasn’t that I didn’t believe her. I did. It just couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d said—about Seth Trolstad, the “games,” and the door opening when you agreed. It was like she’d given me a puzzle piece that only made the empty space in my head feel bigger.

The dream didn’t help. Every time I closed my eyes, I was back on that flooded, sagging set, the puppets mumbling in their warped Sumerian tongue, something massive waiting just behind the curtain.

I started spending my nights on VHS collector forums, obscure nostalgia Discord servers, and anywhere people traded rare or lost media. Most of the time, if I even mentioned 145, the thread would go silent. Sometimes, though, I’d get a reply—always vague, always deleted within a few hours.

One guy claimed he’d had a copy once. He said it “made his girlfriend sick” and that he’d destroyed it with a hammer. Another told me the episode was “part of a private archive” that no one sane would try to access. The strangest was an anonymous message I received on one of the forums: “If you’re looking for the Invisible Episode, it’s already looking for you.”

Around that time, I stopped keeping track of bills. I’d been applying to jobs in halfhearted bursts, but now my whole day revolved around the search. Meals became whatever I could microwave in under a minute. My laundry piled up until I was re-wearing shirts I’d already sweated through.

It didn’t feel like losing control. It felt… freeing. The more I read about Lag’reth, piecing scraps together from paranormal boards, old Usenet archives, and fringe blogs, the more I started to think maybe he should be in control.

Look around: everything’s a mess. The economy’s garbage. People treat each other like trash. Politicians are just reality show contestants in suits. What would be so bad about handing the reins over to something older than all of it? Something that wasn’t human enough to be corrupt in the same way?

One night, I came home from a trip to the corner store to find a padded envelope sitting on my welcome mat. It had no return address, just my name written in shaky black marker.

Inside was a VHS tape.

The label on it was plain white, and on its face, “145” was written in the same shaky marker.

I hooked my VCR up to the TV I’d been using as a second monitor and popped it in. At first, I saw nothing but static. I fast-forwarded through the whole thing—nothing but snow and hiss. I felt strangely disappointed, like I’d been promised something and had been cheated out of it. I nearly threw it away.

That night, I woke up to the sound of children laughing in my living room. The voices were faint but layered, like half a dozen kids were whispering jokes to each other.

There was just one problem: The TV was off. Which meant the sound wasn’t coming from outside—it was in the room.

I stood frozen in the doorway until it stopped.

When I finally went back to bed, the dream came again. This time in it, Seth Trolstad was there, standing behind the puppet stage. He was smiling, not the warm smile I’d seen in old clips, but something unnaturally wide and predatory, all his teeth showing.

In his hands was a marionette.

The strings didn’t lead to its limbs.

They led to my wrists.

Part II

The first time I noticed the guy in a dark hoodie, he was standing on the far side of the street while I was coming out of the grocery store, turned just enough that I couldn’t see his face. I didn’t think much of him at first.

Two days later, I saw him again, this time leaning against the bus stop outside my apartment building, wearing the same hoodie and maintaining the same posture. Still, I thought it was a coincidence.

By the third time, when I spotted him watching from across the park while I cut through on my way home, I decided to do something about it. I didn’t think it through, however. I just walked straight toward him, trying to look like I had the upper hand.

“Hey! Why are you following me?” I demanded.

He didn’t flinch or even look surprised. Up close, I could see he was older than me—early forties maybe, with dark stubble and tired eyes. He kept his hands in his pockets.

“You’re Jeremy Blake,” he said.

I hesitated. “…Yeah. And you are?”

“Cameron Epsmuth.” His voice was flat, as if he were reading it off a form. “I’ve been trying to keep you alive.”

I almost laughed. “By stalking me?”

“By making sure you don’t find what you’re looking for.”

That stopped me cold.

“You know about—”

“I know about 145,” he said, cutting me off. “I’ve been tracking it for over thirty years. Every time it surfaces, I destroy it. Every copy, every backup, every scrap of it. I’ve buried more tapes than you can imagine.”

I tried to sound skeptical, but my throat felt tight. “Why? What’s on it?”

He glanced over my shoulder, scanning the sidewalk like someone might be listening. “It’s not what’s on it. It’s what it does. Trolstad made it to feed Lag’reth. The ritual’s baked into the visuals, into the sound. Watching it is like putting your signature on a contract you didn’t read.”

I swallowed. “And you think it’s… looking for me?”

“I don’t think,” he said. “I know. It’s been manipulating you for months, probably longer. Pulling threads, pushing people out of your life, setting you up so that when it found you, you’d be empty enough to say yes.”

The words landed harder than I wanted them to, because deep down, I’d already been thinking the same thing.

He stepped closer. “I’ve got the last known intact copy, and it has to be destroyed. If you care about living to see thirty, you’ll help me burn it.”

There was something in the way he said last known that made me uneasy, as if he were daring me to ask if he was sure. And I wasn’t sure I believed him. If Cameron really had been hunting this thing for decades, what made him so sure he was the good guy? For all I knew, he wanted the episode for himself. Maybe he was just another pawn, another puppet pulling strings for someone else.

A thought came to me: He’s lying to you. He doesn’t want you to see it because it’s rightfully yours.

I didn’t say anything, just nodded like I was considering his offer.

Cameron studied me for a long second, then turned and walked away without another word. I watched him go, hands in his hoodie pockets, until he vanished around the corner. And all I could think was that if he really had the last copy, I needed to know where he was keeping it.

* * * * * *

I followed Cameron for three days before I figured out where he was staying.

It wasn’t hard. He wasn’t the kind of guy who blended in. The motel was one of those roadside ones with peeling paint, a flickering vacancy sign, and rooms that still smelled like cigarettes from the ‘80s. His car, a faded green Taurus, was always parked at the far end of the lot.

I waited until early evening, when I saw him leave on foot, hood up, moving fast like he had somewhere to be.

The door to his room wasn’t exactly a challenge. I’d seen enough YouTube tutorials to know how to pop the latch with a plastic card. It clicked open on the first try.

Inside, the air was stale, heavy with dust and the scent of something metallic. The curtains were drawn, light bleeding through in thin orange lines from the setting sun.

I went straight to the bed, which was covered with bags, clothes, and notebooks, all tossed around like Cameron had never fully unpacked. In the corner, there was a battered metal case with a combination lock. It wasn’t even locked.

Inside, wrapped in an old towel, was an unmarked VHS tape. The shell was scratched and worn, but I could feel my pulse jump just holding it.

Underneath the tape were stacks of Polaroids. Some showed the Sunny Time Station set, but not the cheerful version from my memories. These were dimly lit, the props water-stained, the actors standing too still, staring at something out of frame.

Then there were the other photos. Photos of bodies. They’d been left where they’d fallen. Different ages, different places. Some looked decades old, with faded colors. And in almost every shot, Cameron was there, in the background. Sometimes he was looking at the camera. Other times, he was looking away. I didn’t know what to make of it. Part of me thought they had to be fake. Staged props, possibly. But part of me wondered if these were the “copies” he’d been destroying—not the tapes, but the people who’d seen them.

I didn’t hear the door open.

“What the hell are you doing?”

His voice was low but sharp enough to freeze me. I turned. Cameron stood in the doorway, hood down, his eyes locked on the tape in my hands.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” he said.

I tried to think of something to say, but my brain was stuck between excuses and lies.

“Put it back,” he said, stepping inside and shutting the door behind him.

It was then the whisper came again, not from him, or from anywhere I could point to: He’ll take it from you. He’ll keep it. It’s yours.

Cameron took another step toward me. “You don’t know what you’re holding. If you play it—”

“I’m not giving it back,” I said, my voice louder than I expected.

For a moment, he just stared at me, as if he were deciding what to do. Then he moved fast, crossing the space between us in moments, reaching for the tape.

I swung without thinking, my hand closing around the motel’s heavy brass lamp. The base connected with the side of his head with a dull, wet crack.

He staggered, one knee hitting the carpet, and I hit him again. And again.

By the time I stopped, my arms ached and my breathing was ragged. And before me, Cameron lay still, his eyes half-open, blood pooling under his head.

The tape was still in my other hand, my fingers pressed so tightly against the plastic I could feel the edges cutting into my skin.

I should have felt horror or shock. Anything. Instead, I felt relieved, like I’d just done something I’d been waiting my whole life to do.

* * * * * *

I didn’t remember leaving the motel. One minute, I was standing over Cameron’s body, and the next I was unlocking my apartment door with the tape still in my hand. I didn’t even put it down at first, just walked inside and sat on the couch, still holding it like it might dissolve if I let go.

It sat on my coffee table for hours. I kept telling myself I was just thinking, that I needed to weigh the risks, but the truth was, I was arguing with myself. Half of me wanted to smash it, to be done with all of this before it could pull me any further in. The other half… well, the other half wanted to know. Because if this truly was the last copy, then this was my one chance to see what Seth Trolstad had made. My one chance to see him.

At some point, the light in the room changed. The colors went flat, as if someone had drained the life from the walls, and I heard movement in the corner of the room.

It was Seth, sitting on my couch.

He looked exactly like he had in the old episodes—beige cardigan, pressed slacks, hair perfectly combed. Everything looked the same… except for his smile. It was wider than it should have been, his teeth small and too many.

“You’re ready now,” he said, as if we’d been in the middle of a conversation.

My peripheral vision shimmered, and behind Seth, in the space where the shadows pooled deepest, something was moving.

I don’t know how long I sat there, just staring. The voice in my head kept whispering: You’ve come this far. You deserve to see it. One look won’t hurt.

I picked up the tape and slid it into the VCR. My thumb hovered over the play button. That’s when another image hit me—Vickie’s face at the café, tight with fear. Cameron’s voice telling me I was being shaped for this. The Polaroids in his case, all those people who’d stared into whatever was on this tape and never come back.

The whisper changed tone. It was less coaxing now, and more… pleading. Don’t ruin this. You’re mine.

I screamed—it just ripped out of me—and before I could second-guess it, I grabbed the VCR and yanked the tape back out.

I slammed it against the coffee table until the shell cracked, then pulled the reel out in long, metallic-smelling tangles. I stuffed the strips into my bathtub, poured lighter fluid over them, and dropped in a match.

The plastic warped, the smoke curling upward in a strange, oily gray. It stung my eyes and left a penny-like taste in my mouth. I didn’t stop watching until every inch of the tape had curled in on itself, black and useless.

When it was over, the colors in the room returned to normal. But I still felt the thread inside me, tight and twitching, like something on the other end was testing to see if I was still there.

* * * * * *

I’m writing this from a payphone outside the police station.

I didn’t think they still had these things, but here it is, bolted to the brick wall, the receiver sticky with God-knows-what. I can see the station doors from here, glass catching the orange glow of the streetlight.

All I have to do is walk in and tell them everything. That I killed Cameron Epsmuth. That I broke into his motel room, stole what he’d been guarding for decades, and burned it. That I think he was right.

The truth is, I don’t know what they’ll do with me. Prison, maybe. Some padded cell somewhere. But whatever it is, it has to be better than staying out here with… this.

I can still feel it. A thread remains inside me, thin and invisible, twitching just enough to let me know it’s there. It’s not pulling as hard anymore, not yet, but it’s patient. It’s been waiting for longer than I’ve been alive.

I keep thinking about the way it felt when Cameron hit the floor, and how my first thought wasn’t, ’Oh my God, what have I done?’ but ‘Finally.’

That wasn’t me… or maybe it was. Maybe it’s been me all along.

I’ve been trying to convince myself that destroying the tape meant I won, that it can’t use me now. But in the quiet moments, I remember something Vickie said: If you see him, you won’t want to stop.

I have seen him. And she was right—I don’t know if I want to stop. Or if I even can.

So I’m going to walk into that station and tell them what I did. If I’m behind bars, maybe the thing on the other end of that thread won’t have as much leverage. Maybe you’ll all finally be safe.

The truth is, I’m not telling this story for my sake. I’m telling it for yours.

Don’t look up Sunny Time Station. Don’t ask about Episode 145. And if you ever hear the name Lag’reth, don’t go any further.

It’s not gone.

It’s just waiting for someone else to remember it.