i have no idea how obvious this is, but i think i figured out what johns tapes are but im too tired to say it better. like the tapes, the spirals doors, and the coffin are all in the same area of “spooky gateways into another realm that are beneficial to work with if youre aligned with them”. i think theyre just among the most pure versions of the entities. i mean, the tapes appear whenever john needs them, the doors appear whenever helen needs them, etc. helens more powerful than micheal because she uses her doors better to feed, and lives in them, and uses them as a transportation, theyre a part of her in more than just that they are both the spiral (micheal seems to teleport or something. also helen spent months in the spiral before she becamse the distortion, micheal spent like maybe an hour). John is powerful because he uses his tapes to collect information to keep and to feed and uses them as a safety net. john and helen are heavy parallels, and this is one of them, but i am too tired to collect all my reasoning for why theyre not just a different aspect of the same power, but like direct links to the actual powers.