As you swap your jack-o-lanterns for turkey decorations, The Scene recommends these five podcasts for those who want to prolong the Halloween spirit.
Here Be Monsters
This podcast’s name draws inspiration from a medieval tradition of mapmakers, who’d offer a warning of potential danger by writing “Here there be monsters” on unchartered territory. And Here Be Monsters brings us podcasts about things that scare us and the unknown. The podcast covers a little of everything: fears regarding science, medicine, drugs, death, religion and politics.
Here Be Monsters began in 2012 by the help of a fellowship grant from Soundcloud and was named 2012’s third best podcast by The Daily Dot. Jeff Emtman works as the lead producer and host, but guest hosts occasionally read stories. Here Be Monsters is available for free on Itunes, Stitcher, Soundcloud and their official website.
Lore
In this bi-weekly podcast, creator and host Aaron Mahnke takes a break from his day job to bring to us the history of scary stories and spooky folklore. Previous episodes of the podcast have covered a variety of subjects, including the origins of witches, speculations on elves and historical instances of cannibalism. In his relay of research, Mahnke shows that oftentimes history is scarier than the fiction.
The first podcast aired in March of this year, and since then, Mahnke and his team have produced 17 total episodes. You can listen to Lore on Itunes or at their official website.
Welcome to Nightvale
What if there was a town where all conspiracy theories proved to be true? Welcome to Nightvale, where hooded figures lurk in the park, the sheriff has a secret police and a giant “glow cloud” rains dead animals on the town. This podcast brilliantly gives comical audio community updates for the fictional desert town of Nightvale.
Host Cecil Baldwin dramatically reads off local news updates, announcements and advertisements in arguably one the most comical podcast on this list. Welcome to Nightvale serves as a perfect example of creepy tomfoolery art.
Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor created the biweekly podcast in 2012, and you can listen to it on Itunes or the official website.
Limetown
Spooky enticing, Limetown is a fictional podcast about journalist Lia Haddock as she investigates what exactly happened in a Tennessean town a decade previously, when over 300 people disappeared without a trace, without explanation. As she delves deeper into her research, we find that this town was far from ordinary.
Limetown’s first episode aired July 2015, and will be a seven part podcast. It was produced by Two-Up Productions, and can be listened to on Itunes, Youtube, Soundcloud or their official website.
No Sleep Podcast
By far the scariest on this list, No Sleep Podcast is a series of dramatic readings of posts from the NoSleep forum on Reddit. The subreddit first appeared in 2010, where people anonymously posted scary stories they wrote as though they were telling spooky stories around a campfire. The stories are read by volunteers, and cover all types of subjects: ghosts, ghouls, demons and murderers. These can be genuinely scary and disturbing, so each episode lists trigger warnings one might want to hear about first.
David Cummings is the host and producer of this bi-weekly podcast. You can listen on Itunes and their official website.
