Karl van Sant

An aspirational Tanis Runner who was killed because he was attracting Tanis enthusiasts. It is likely that Karl was killed by someone connected to Parzavala Communications. Karl’s death was made to appear like a suicide. He was found hanged with a belt, about one month before the release of episode 2 in late 2015.

Karl was in search of Tanis. He had his brother Geoff van Sant place an original Craigslist ad that read “Seeking Tanis. Runner Available.” (Karl had been previously arrested for computer hacking and legally prohibited from using a computer.) The ad was deleted by someone 1/6 of a second after it was posted. Karl was not a true Runner, although he may have sincerely believed himself to be one. But he advertised his services as a Runner. A Seeker named Vincent Pardo attempted to hire Karl. The day after Geoff posted the ad was when Karl died. Pardo himself died shortly after.

Karl lived in Geoff’s basement suite where he collected approximately 90,000 cassette tapes and hundreds of radios of all kinds. The tapes contained recorded radio broadcasts from all around the world, but the broadcasts are of someone simply reading a long list of numbers. Meerkat equated the broadcasts to a “numbers station,” a type of shortwave radio station characterized by readings of lists of numbers or incomprehensible coded messages. Meerkat also discovered that the portion of the cassette tape Nic played for her in episode 102 was also embedded with Morse Code that signaled the same numbers that were spoken on the tape. After Karl’s death, Cameron Ellis purchased all of Karl’s cassette tapes, radios, and other material from Geoff for a substantial sum, using the material from these tapes in TeslaNova’s ongoing research. Before this sale, Nic had brought a few of Karl’s cassette tapes back with him to Pacific Northwest Studios. However, the information in these tapes were erased through an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack near his studio. It’s unclear who launched this attack. Cameron Ellis denies it was him.

While it was thought Karl died by suicide, according to the coroner who performed his autopsy, his cause of death was “inconclusive.” It’s not clear why his death certificate marks his death as suicide.

After his death, someone hacked into karl’s email account and sent Geoff a link to Nic’s Craigslist ad, and then deleted nearly all the messages in the account. Meerkat described it as “a perfect source reset” as if Karl’s email account had never been used. Karl had also been a regular contributor to the Fish and Tackle bulletin board.

After his death, Geoff also discovered that Karl kept a P.O. Box at a local post office (in addition to his residential mailing address) where he found copies of a magazine called the Fortean Times. Karl also received several magazines in his residential address but they mysteriously stopped following his death. Through this P.O. Box it was also discovered that Karl had been in contact with Levity Elks, who Karl asked about how a person could know that they are a runner.

Prior to his involvement with Tanis, Karl was a former U.S. naval communications officer who was stationed for a period of time in Russia. He was divorced. His ex-wife kicked him out because of his obsession with Tanis. Karl and Geoff had been living on different floors of the same house for twelve years—since Karl’s divorce.

(From http://www.podcastenthusiast.com/tanis/)