“They come in twos.
Welcome to Night Vale, episode 19A, the Sandstorm
You come in twos.
You and you.
Kill your double.”
Welcome to Night Vale is a horror/mystery/fantasy podcast set in “A friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep” (WTNV Episode One). The show was created by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor in 2015, and it has run successfully for over 200 episodes, each airing at about thirty minutes long including ads. It presents itself as a radio broadcast to the small town, narrated by loveable radio host Cecil Palmer (voiced by Cecil Baldwin), and it follows individual stories, many of which build to a bigger narrative although some are simply silly side-stories. The town of Night Vale is located in an unknown desert in America (seemingly in our world), and while it may claim to be a very normal small town, it is the host of all kinds of paranormal events, disasters, weather phenomenons, mysteries, government conspiracies, murders, strange ceremonies, odd business strategies, powerful corporations, long-forgotten gods, and more. The episodes we will be discussing today are episodes 19A and 19B, both aptly titled “The Sandstorm”. (However, I definitely recommend giving the entire series a listen if you enjoy this genre. It’s very good! There’s also no way I can cover everything from the two episodes, so if you’re interested in a quick work about doppelgängers, I highly recommend these two episodes.)
Episode 19A opens how any WTNV listener would expect. Cecil informs the audience of a terrible sandstorm that the City Council forgot to warn them about sooner. He informs the audience that if they are not already inside, it is likely too late. In typical Cecil fashion, he quickly moves on from this, discussing an upcoming baseball game. He has several choice words about the terrible team they’ll be playing, and then he moves on to traffic. There is a pileup on one of the highways, and an onlooker has reported that drivers are leaving their cars and fighting… someone… in the middle of the road. He reports that the people each seem to be fighting someone of the same height, build, strength, and wearing the same clothing. The fights are apparently quite violent and are breaking out all over town. People are dying. Cecil advocates against the violence, saying “Should you see yourself, I cannot condone murdering yourself… Make peace with your double… we can get along.”
The townspeople are not the only ones having this issue. Mayor Pamela Winchell holds one of her famous press conferences, but she offers several pieces of contradictory advice. The discrepancy is quickly cleared up as one of the people being her double through Mayor Winchell’s statement “This is my press conference, you replicant clown!” Wise words from the mayor, as usual.
The issue escalates to Cecil’s intern Dana Cardinal. Cecil sees Dana fighting herself in the other room. He steps in to help, sending the listeners to an ominous ad about incompletion, but he is too late! Dana is standing over herself with a broken stapler, a newly-printed email in her other hand, her double dead on the ground. We learn in later episodes that Dana is unsure whether she is the original, or she is the double, and we never find out the truth.
Toward the climax of the episode, a black almost indigo vortex appears in the broadcasting studio. Cecil enters, and after a pause, another man exits. He is lost but unafraid. He introduces himself as Kevin and says the studio is older and dryer than it ought to be. He sees a photograph of Cecil on the desk and comments on his similarity in appearance. He leaves back through the vortex, and a terrified Cecil returns, saying he met and nearly killed his double in the vortex, but he decided against it after remembering his previous advice to make peace. The episode ends.
The real twist? The two episodes are doubles of each other.
19B opens with Kevin speaking to Desert Bluffs, a small town in the desert. He mentions Night Vale. He talks about their own amazing baseball team who will be playing Night Vale this weekend. He announces the sandstorm calmly, only noting that it may delay productivity. He also calls it “a two morning day, a rebirth, a reawakening”. He says people are meeting their doubles and working with them, hugging, making angels in the sand. His own advice to listeners is “So make friends with your mirrored colleagues, Desert Bluffs! Think of what we could accomplish if there were two of all of us!”
Kevin’s intern Vanessa also meets her double and starts to work with her, but through a rather unclear chain of events (and after another ominous ad, this one about feeling unfulfilled), Vanessa’s double also dies. Vanessa is standing over her with a staple gun and an email.
Kevin enters a white, almost pink vortex. Cecil takes his place. He is terrified as he describes the room. The studio is entirely covered in blood. Animal viscera covers the soundboard, and there are teeth scattered across the floor. One of the walls is coated in skin with a chunk of hair hanging from a piece of broken glass. Cecil describes a photograph on the desk in horror, saying it looks like him, but the eyes are obsidian black, and the smile… “that is not a smile”. He returns through the vortex, and Kevin says he met his double inside, and that the two men hugged. He finishes the episode with the quote “There must be more to us than just us, and that there is another place, another time, where things could’ve been different. Better. Worse.”
The episodes reference each other in many ways, some identical, some opposites. 19A mentions the dangers of baby raccoons, and 19B mentions keeping them as pets. Both episodes feature a kind old woman, one named Old Woman Josie, one named Grandma Josephine, and both of these woman made a Facebook post about the sandstorm featuring the same cat video. 19A claims the storm was likely created by the government while 19B says they don’t know who made it, perhaps God, or a wealthy corporation. Both have an uncomfortable ad and a strange story about a little boy that is apparently relevant to the stock market. Most importantly, Desert Bluffs’ citizens attempt to team-up with their doubles, but Night Vale’s residents kill theirs.
The Sandstorm episodes are haunting examples of doubles, reminiscent of the doubles in Us by Jordan Peele (which was made after) and many other horror stories. The doubling aspects are fascinating and complex, and the episodes offer a complete, cohesive story while also laying groundwork for future episodes and plots. It is the first work I thought of when I decided to take this class, and it is easily my favorite work of doubles/doppelgänger media.
I leave you with a quote from Cecil Palmer, episode 19A.
“Somehow, I am happy he is alive, that I am alive, that you are alive, that we are alive. Outside, the winds are subsiding, the sun sweeping away our pains. I am sure there is blood staining the streets, the graffiti of our sins, the writings of an immoral but necessary battle, I presume. The bodies of some replaced by others who were, we were, all the same to begin with, and we are healing. Those of us, whoever we are, that survived, those others of us, whoever we are, who conquered. Whoever you are now, you are home.”