(The podcast starts with Saskia Jones' trademark opening jingle and Saskia's voice introducing the podcast. As usual, laughter fades out the intro.)

(Music plays faintly in the background, then stops. There is the sound of something muffling the microphone and the creak of a chair. Saskia coughs lightly to clear her throat.)

Um... right. How do I even begin to sum up the past few days? I don't even know where to start with it all.

(She sniffs, which threatens to break into a sob, and then she exhales low and deep, as if she's trying to steady her breathing.)

(When she is calmer, she adopts her blogger voice, but there's a nervous edge to it. This isn't the confident, social media personality we met at the beginning.)

Okay. Here we go. This is Saskia Jones, your host for A Whole Lot of Sass. If you're just catching up, this podcast is now investigating the disappearance of a local girl, Amelia Austen.

Through interviews with people who knew her, I am attempting to discover what really happened to the bright and friendly amateur photographer – a girl who went, by her own mother's account, from being a normal high school teenager to a girl they didn't recognise anymore. A troubled girl who not only committed a supposedly unprovoked attack on the Reverend of her Church, but who went on to be admitted to the Collindale Psych Unit where she attacked a fellow patient and friend, and who also partially blinded her psychologist, Dr. Edward Kinghorne.

Following her eventual release from Collindale, Amelia disappeared. There is seemingly no evidence of foul play. No crime has been identified. She just became a missing person. That's it. Gone. And no one has seen or heard from her since, until apparently now.

I'm here to ask questions. The questions those who cared for her should have been asking.

How does a person change so significantly in such a short space of time that they commit such violent acts? What was it that Amelia was so terrified of? Matty Burgess says he knows, but can he really be believed? Chief Inspector Austen says Matty is a compulsive liar. Did Matty play me? Did he feed me with lies and stories to make me think there is something more sinister going on?

And who sent me the email that kicked off this whole thing?

(She sighs and whistles sharply.)

There's a lot to unpack here, but first I want to start with yesterday.

Yesterday was... unsettling. I don't even know how else to describe it, but I want it on record that I never intended to distress or anger the Austens in the way it all played out. To be honest, I was surprised that they even considered meeting with me and the Chief Inspector, well, he was prickly from the start. I think it was his wife who pushed to meet. I don't think he wanted to, but maybe he was telling the truth in what he said – maybe he thought that if they spoke to me, it would clear up a lot of shit, but it didn't go the way that they hoped.

Some of you – quite a few actually – have reached out to the podcast since I aired the episode and you're angry. Okay, I get it. You think this is some big mission of mine to become famous. You believe the Chief Inspector – I mean, he's a cop, right? Yeah, I know the podcast has received a whole ton of subscriptions since this thing started and my follower count has sky-rocketed, but that's because I'm onto something here. That's because people want to know the truth. The truth, okay?

(Her tone becomes angry.) 

It's not my fault that people are more interested in the disappearance of a girl who had her whole life ahead of her, than all the stupid, pointless shit I was doing before. Isn't that the way it should be? Young people get accused all the time of wasting energy on frivolous, meaningless stuff. We get told to get a job. Study hard. Make money through hard graft. Blah, blah blah. Well, I say the older generations don't understand this world has changed. People get jobs doing all sorts of things that weren't available to the older generations when they were young. The world has moved on. Innovations in technology mean we have different opportunities now. What does it matter if that's a podcast or an IG account or whatever?

Look, all I'm saying is that what the Chief Inspector said about me is categorically untrue.

The only agenda I have here is Amelia Austen.

(There is a muffled bang and Saskia gasps and pauses. The seconds of radio silence tick by and we can hear her breathing harder again.)

The only agenda I have here is to ask those questions. To ask the questions that no one else dared to ask. And yes, it might be difficult. Someone or something out there might not want me to ask these questions, but someone has to help her, okay? Someone has to do something. When did we become a society where we let a troubled girl like Amelia – a girl who by all accounts, was terrified of something – just disappear? Is that what we do now? Do we just accept it when young people disappear? Do we just blame social media and contemporary culture and say, oh well, she had mental health issues, so blah blah blah, it's sad but it's life?

(Saskia whistles). Phew. Breathe, Sass, breathe. Sorry, listeners, I'm getting a bit carried away, I know.

Okay. Let's keep going. Let's look at the evidence so far.

Matty Burgess told me that he didn't care about what Amelia did to him. All he cared about was why she did it. All he cared about was her. He said that Amelia's father wouldn't be happy about me digging into all of this. Well, he was right about that, wasn't he? Matty told me about some dodgy stuff going on at Collindale. He accused Dr. Kinghorne of being involved in some ploy to keep Amelia incarcerated so she would not continue to bring embarrassment on the family reputation. I mean, that's pretty huge, if that's the case.

Then there's his story that Amelia believed when her sister came to visit, the young girl in that room with her, was not really her sister. That's some delusion. That's some scary, crazy shit. Matty himself seemed particularly agitated when we spoke about the photograph.

The Chief Inspector, on the other hand, says Matty is a compulsive liar. I checked into what he said and his story fits. Matty did commit arson. So, is Amelia's father right about him? Is Matty nothing but a talented actor and charlatan, controlling the story? Did he send me the email, creating a fake Amelia account just to send me that photo and kick this whole thing off?

I spoke to another source, a source I cannot name here as they asked me not to publish the interview on the podcast. God, I wish I could, but I made a promise. I have integrity to my sources. But that source told me they too tried to investigate Amelia's disappearance but were told, in the strongest of terms, that they had to drop it. There was even a suggestion that the instruction came from within the Chief Inspector's police force.

Why would that be? Are we really talking here about a man in a prominent position of power who was trying to save his family from the shame and embarrassment of having a daughter who committed violent acts against others? In the eyes of the law, Amelia Austen was a criminal. She attacked three other people. Was Chief Inspector Austen trying to save his own reputation? Was Amelia collateral damage? Was her disappearance properly investigated, or was the case allowed to fade into obscurity because it was better that way?

And now, we have this unsettling connection between two of the men who Amelia attacked. Ever since the Austens told me about that, I can't get it out of my head. It seems like a missing link to me. What do you guys think? I mean, how can it be a mere coincidence that Reverend Wallis recommended an old family friend as her psychologist, Dr. Kinghorne, the man who would go on to treat Amelia in Collindale? The man who, as Matty claims, was employed to keep Amelia in the psych unit and who allegedly conspired to trigger her violent outbursts. Something about that stinks to high heaven. She attacked them both. Why? What was the connection? Sure, she attacked Matty too, and the only connection he had was being treated by the same doctor in the same institution, but this Reverend-Doctor thing is suspicious to me. Something's not quite right about that.

We have a whole line of people here queuing up with possible reasons for wanting Amelia Austen to remain gone. To disappear forever.

And then there's this damn photograph. (She exhales deeply) This awful, terrifying photograph.

This photograph supposedly sent to me by Amelia herself. Did you send me it, Amelia? Are you out there somewhere controlling this whole thing? Is it a message?

I'm even writing more questions as I talk, listeners. That's how many possibilities we have here.

(There is the sound of a pen tapping against a hard surface. Once, twice, three times... then a fourth.)

Two people I have spoken to have both told me they have, at some point, seen the same photograph. They both seemed terrified of it. Matty even seemed to suggest that it was a bad omen for me, or something. He said that Amelia's own sister snuck it into the psych unit so that it would trigger Amelia. Why? What possible reason would there be? Unless of course, Amelia's sister had no idea the photo was even concealed within the pages of the book? Unless someone else put it there, knowing the effect it would have.

Chief Inspector Austen, in contrast, says the photograph is a fake. A hoax created by his own daughter to scare people. He says she learned how to do camera trickery and photoshop and whatever, so that she could create what? An urban myth? Is that what this is? Is it one of those things, that gets passed from person to person, causing death and madness wherever it goes, getting into people's heads until nobody knows what to believe?

Is this Amelia's gift to the world? Is this her art? Did she give us a new version of The Ring, you know, that old movie where people died seven days after receiving the scary videotape of the girl with the long black hair climbing out of the well?

(Saskia laughs to herself, but it sounds cold and humourless.)

Okay, so far, two of my sources and I have all seen the photograph and no creepy kid from a well has crept out of the TV screen to kill us, but...

(The audio cuts out briefly. There's a faint buzz of static and a strange noise, like a brief two-second audio of a voice screaming.)

But, God, I can't believe I'm even saying this. It's just that, I have this odd feeling, you know? I can't shake it. If you ever have that feeling that someone's looking at you, but you can't see who it is and all you know is that your skin feels like you have bugs crawling underneath the surface – well, that's exactly how I have been feeling. I'm still feeling it and right now, I'm at home in my bedroom recording this episode. This is my safe space, damn it. At least, it did feel safe, once.

I know how crazy I must sound. I feel crazy. It is crazy.

My anonymous source told me that they dropped the case, not simply because they were told to, but because they didn't want to know what was behind them.

Listeners, I didn't know what they meant at the time. It seemed like super paranoia to me, you know?

But now, I get it. I understand.

I... I can't shake the same feeling. I know the logical evidence is right there. There's so many questions. So many leads left unfollowed. And yet...

(Saskia's breathing becomes faster, shallower. It sounds like she is trying to stifle a sob.)

And yet, I too can't stop looking behind me. I'm jumping at every sound. When I left the interview with the Austens yesterday, I felt as if... Oh hell, Sass, how are you even saying these things? But yeah, I'm going to say it.

I felt as if someone followed me all the way home.

I kept looking over my shoulder. I couldn't stop myself. Couple of times, I even thought someone's hand was there, you know? It was like I could feel their touch. And it didn't feel good, listeners.

It didn't feel good at all.

(Saskia laughs again, but it's clear she's crying now.)

(The audio picks up a tapping noise again. It sounds like a pen being tapped against a hard surface four times.)

Anyway, I'm not going to stop.

I'm going to see this through until the very end.

No matter what it will take.

So, that's me, listeners. Signing off. You're not going to want to miss the next interview, so stay tuned. Hit that subscribe button. 

This is Saskia Jones. Until next time.

(Audio ends).