Banshee Chapter 2013

James Hirsch, James Hirsch a young man, becomes obsessed with a government project tied to the infamous MKUltra experiments. With a friend filming his every move, he volunteers to try the experimental drug at the heart of the study, dimethyltryptamine-19 (DMT-19). An eerie soundtrack of strange music and displaced voices crackles from a nearby radio, and a shadowy figure closes in, leaving James with black, all-consuming eyes and a face that seems distorted beyond recognition.

Anne, a college-era friend turned reporter, grows increasingly worried about James’s disappearance. James’s friend vanishes in the days that follow after police question him, adding to a mounting sense of dread. Anne returns to James’s house and uncovers a trove of clues: a Betamax tape that documents the MKUltra experiments and a notebook filled with notes about the project. She learns that the broadcast she heard is a phantom radio station, one that can be picked up only in the desert at a precise hour of the night. Driven by curiosity and guilt, Anne drives into the night to hear the broadcast again, but she flees when a monstrous figure steps from the darkness.

In the notes, a throwaway line about “Friends in Colorado” points her toward the counter-culture writer Thomas Blackburn. Blackburn is infamous for his drug experimentation and unpredictable behavior, and Anne tracks him down, attempting to gain his trust by any means. She lies to get close, and Blackburn quickly reads through her deception, steering her toward a dangerous truth: Callie, Blackburn’s confidante, helped create DMT-19. When Anne is coerced into taking the drug herself, Callie begins to display the same disturbing changes and disfigurements that afflicted James. The phantom station’s music grows louder, and Anne ventures out to confront it, only to be assaulted by an otherworldly presence.

As the pair dig deeper, they realize that DMT-19 functions like a kind of “radio antenna,” allowing otherworldly entities to broadcast their signals into people who ingest the drug and to seize control of their bodies. They learn that the government never discovered the source of DMT-19 independently; instead, it appears to have been guided by forces beyond this world, and researchers added harvested material from the pineal gland of a female corpse—referred to as the “Primary Source”—who later reanimates during an experiment and assaults a doctor.

Anne concludes that the signal must originate from the very MKUltra laboratory they’ve been chasing. Thomas reveals that his earlier claims about giving her DMT-19 were part of a larger deception, but the danger is real and inescapable. With the entity relentlessly pursuing her, Anne resolves to end the broadcast once and for all. The two venture into the desert, uncover a laboratory tucked inside an abandoned fallout shelter, and arm themselves with a can of gasoline to destroy whatever they find inside.

Within the shelter, a room brimming with radio equipment surrounds a large tank. A pale, eyeless figure peers out from a small porthole—an implied form of the Primary Source. The equipment shoots to life, and the numbers station begins to chant its cold cadence. Anne races through the facility, hunting for the gasoline, while a grotesque figure closes in. Thomas bleeds from the eyes and collapses, then, in a final act of remorse, shoots himself. In a frantic moment, Anne smashes the porthole, pours gasoline into the tank, and hurls a lighter she salvaged from Thomas’s corpse. The ensuing explosion rocks the shelter, and she blacks out.

When she awakens, the hall outside bears the clothing once worn by James, lying discarded as if the creature chasing her had been wearing his skin. She is taken into police custody, and a fellow officer stops by for a conversation that reveals more about the tape Anne recovered. Although part of the footage was erased, a video-forensics company manages to retrieve it, offering crucial clues to the mystery. Anne discovers that the phantom broadcast can spread through touch, leaving her to confront the unsettling truth that she herself may have contracted the entity’s influence. A final reveal shows that a college-age Thomas Blackburn was a test subject within MKUltra, tying the past to the perilous present in a way that leaves the viewer unsettled and contemplative about what lies beyond the drug-induced signal.