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An old box of randomly labelled cassette tapes is liberated from a garage sale and into the hands of a journalist who begins sifting through the contents and discovers random interviews with the citizens of a remote town known only as Bootstuck, a distant former military base in Ontario's northernmost region. The characters that occupy this abandoned outpost are colourful to be polite, unstable, unpredictable, or erratic to be direct but have all bypassed their obvious intellectual shortcomi ...
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Send us a text Just when I think I might be closing in on something concrete, Bootstuck takes a sharp turn back into the absurd. Tape 12 introduces us to Terrence, a man who apparently lives in a place called Nearby, which—naturally—is not nearby at all. It’s 70 kilometers away or, as Dave puts it, “seven songs,” depending on his mood and fuel leve…
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Send us a text Just when I thought we’d peaked with snuggle-based heating (see Tape 10), Tape 11 drags us even deeper into the metaphysical swamp that is Bootstuck. Our slow-talking friend—last heard counting snowflakes by the bucket in Tape 6—calls Dave (still wrapped in lights, I presume) from what he claims is a burnt-out Dodge. No explanation. …
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Send us a text This tape gives us a rare seasonal snapshot: winter in Bootstuck. And, true to form, it’s not exactly what you’d call conventional. Dave is apparently wrapped in Christmas lights—possibly by accident, possibly as a coping mechanism—and the others decide to just leave him like that. As a display. A living, blinking reminder that Boots…
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Send us a text Tape 9—or at least what’s left of it—is mostly static, warped and broken. But somewhere in the noise, a voice punches through, crackling out what sounds like call letters: "JEAN." Maybe it's just interference, maybe I'm reading too much into it—but it feels intentional. And in Bootstuck, that’s enough to set my mind racing. Once the …
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Send us a text In this episode, we uncover a curious new detail: Bootstuck has a radio station. That might explain some things—and raise a few more questions. Our notoriously unreliable informant, Hat Guy, returns with another garbled news update, making it tough to pin down what’s actually happening in this mysterious place. There's a mention of a…
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TAPE 7 - Boob Tubes, Murder and the meaning of Whoop!
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Send us a text Tape 7 brings us a double feature: two interviews spliced together, each raising more questions than answers. First up is Don who’s starting to sound less like a local and more like someone with real pull in town. Then it’s the return of Hat Guy, ever the unreliable narrator of all things Bootstuck. The two of them discuss a place ca…
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Send us a text Tape 5 takes a surprising turn. What started as a handful of strange voices in a foggy fishing village now hints at something more structured—dare I say organized. This is the longest, most revealing recording yet, and for once, we get a name. Meet Don. He’s the previously unnamed voice from Tape 4, and apparently, he’s got some sway…
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Send us a text Tape 6 opens with our familiar slow-talking, low-voiced Bootstuck resident and an enlightening—if baffling—discussion about snowfall measurement. Their method? Buckets. Literal buckets. They count the flakes. Allegedly. Before long, Hat Guy stirs from what sounds like a nap and jumps right into, you guessed it, another story about ha…
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Send us a text Tape 4 drifts away from interviews and into what sounds like an unscripted, unfiltered conversation between Hat Guy and a new, unnamed voice. No introductions, no explanations—just two minds meeting in the middle of nowhere. The topic? Microwaves. Specifically, how to use one properly… or, in Hat Guy’s case, how to absolutely not. Hi…
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Send us a text Tape 2 is mostly a wash of static—until Hat Guy cuts through the noise. Twice. Both interviews offer little in terms of geography but reveal flickers of life in Bootstuck. One conversation unfolds over what sounds like a farm—roosters in the background, maybe?—and, true to form, it shifts quickly back to hats. No surprise there. Stil…
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Send us a text Tape 3 opens with... well, let’s call it an atmospheric conversation. There’s a lot of background noise—some of it suspiciously gastrointestinal—and once again, the subject is hats. This time, Hat Guy pitches his latest invention: a hat vending machine. Naturally. We’re introduced to a new voice, a slow-talking man with a thick south…
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Send us a text Every mystery starts somewhere—and for Bootstuck, it begins with a box of old tapes from an estate sale in Sudbury, Ontario. Some are labeled, some barely scratched with cryptic scrawls, and others completely blank. Most are in rough shape, but this one feels like the starting point. The voice on the recording—unidentified, possibly …
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