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]]>That’s one reason why podcasts are, if you’ll pardon the pun, the perfect medium for spooky stories. Without special effects, latex masks or wringing out an eighth sequel from some IP that should’ve been left alone two decades ago, podcasters can conjure up haunting soundscapes and engrossing stories so well precisely because you have to bring them to life yourself.
Whether it’s new fiction using the storytelling possibilities of audio, film fans delving into the history of horror cinema, retellings of shocking true crime or investigations into the paranormal, there’s absolutely tons of podcasts out there that’ll give you what MR James, the master of the ghost story, called “a pleasing terror”. Try not to have nightmares.
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Uncanny
The podcaster who’s done more than most to bring spooky listening to the mainstream is Danny Robins. The Battersea Poltergeist was a blockbuster investigation of one of Britain’s most famous hauntings; Uncanny is the ongoing follow-up, which takes on a different case each time. With new interviews by the people at the centres of the stories and on the ground investigations to see how much of the story stands up, the ever-likeable Robins is a wide-eyed and empathetic guide. It’s gone on to a live tour and TV version. Listen on your podcast app >>
Last Podcast on the Left
The horror buff’s horror podcast, this one has been going for more than a decade and pretty much set the template for many scary podcasts to follow. Each time there’s a different mystery, conspiracy, ghost story, alien abduction, historic disaster or true crime intrigue to learn about, and Ben Kissel, Marcus Parks and Henry Zebrowski stand ready to both recognise how horrible they are and try to neutralise the horror with their own kind of daft nonsense. Not one for those of a particularly sensitive disposition though.. Listen on your podcast app >>
Welcome to Night Vale
This was one of the very first fiction podcasts to make it really, really big. The hook is that we’re listening to radio broadcasts to a small community somewhere in America – adverts for carnivals, local election reminders, that sort of thing. Except the carnival sounds horrific and the only vote in the election comes from disembodied voices in a hidden gorge. Both funny ha-ha and funny peculiar. Listen on your podcast app >>
Alice Isn’t Dead
Rather appropriately, this podcast is sort of undead: the main series ran from 2016 to 2018, but very occasional new episodes have been known to claw their way up through the cold earth. It’s a horror-leaning thriller from Welcome to Night Vale’s co-author Joseph Fink, and follows a lonely trucker as she traverses America on the search for her wife, who’s gone missing. Their relationship isn’t straightforward, but then neither is this America: it’s full of ghostly no-places lost in time, not-quite-human serial killers and, at its heart, a sprawling conspiracy. Listen on your podcast app >>
A Podcast to the Curious
This one started out as an exploration of the life and work of MR James, the master of the English ghost story. It’s literary rather than alarming, digging into the context and the story of how each story was written as well as dissecting the tales themselves. They’ve tip-toed into the dimly lit library of other English ghost stories too, from Dickens to writers who followed James’ lead. Listen on your podcast app >>
They Walk Among Us
To these British ears, there’s something quite distant about American true crime podcasts. No matter how gruesome or sad, there’s always the sense of relief that nothing so outlandish could happen in the dull old UK. They Walk Among Us, though, shows that there is terror out there in the mundanity. Each time husband and wife duo Benjamin and Rosanna Fitton retell a British true crime story with a forensic but empathetic eye, exhuming the strange and the sad and reminding you that it could happen to you too. Listen on your podcast app >>
The No Sleep Podcast
The tradition of the anthology horror movie has found a modern home in podcasting, and few places do it as well as this one. Each time there are new, original stories drawn from listener submissions – a couple for free listeners, six or seven for paid subscribers – with some performed by a narrator and some by a full voice cast, with subtle sound design to ramp up the creepiness. We’re knocking on for 500 episodes of scary short stories now after nearly 12 years, and some writers have gone on to launch successful writing careers off the back of it. Listen on your podcast app >>
The Harrowing
The frame of this audio drama is a police investigation into a mysterious tragedy on a remote island off the west coast of Scotland called Toll Mòr. A growling stranger walks into a church warning of doomsday and demons, and local police sergeant Jackie O’Hara (Downton Abbey’s Joanne Froggatt) arrives just as a huge storm rolls in. Listen on your podcast app >>
Lore
Though the horror pod wave has been driven by mixtures of fact and faction, some of the most spine-tingling are those like Lore, which meticulously research true scary stories which inspire folklore. Each time there’s a different theme – opportunity, confidence, music – which are explored by the tales different cultures tell each other about them. There’s a truly vast back catalogue of nearly 200 episodes here to creep into. Listen on your podcast app >>
Can’t get enough scary podcasts? Make sure you check out Pod Bible’s Horrible Halloween playlist for the ULTIMATE list of scary shows…
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]]>The post Jackie The Ripper is a hilarious new audio drama, just in time for Halloween appeared first on POD BIBLE.
]]>With the first episode launching this Monday 25th October, Jackie The Ripper is a five-part audio comedy drama podcast which offers an absolutely hilarious, gruesome and timely reimagining of the Jack the Ripper murders. In this retelling, we see a ruthless female serial killer terrorising male victims while teasing her killing spree on social media. From the makers of hysterical spoof comedy podcast, The Offensive, this brand-new audio drama follows the woman-hunt of Whitechapel, with sharp, satirical dialogue from voice-over actors from Mumbai to New Zealand.
Number 1 in the Apple Podcast Fiction Charts today, Pod Bible caught up with writer Joel Emery and director Adam Jarrell to discuss the intricacies of making a hit podcast and much more!
Could you describe the concept behind Jackie The Ripper and what it was like establishing a comedic spin on such an infamous story?
This is a retelling. We’ve kept the finer details, victim’s names are similar, dates are the same, locations are precise – however, we’ve tweaked two things… It’s modern day – and the killer is a woman and she’s going for the men of Whitechapel. True crime is one of the most popular genres across all media at the moment, and has been for some time. We’ve become accustomed to putting comedic spins on tough subjects throughout our three years on The Offensive, and with the gender roles being reversed from the original events, it allowed us the artistic license to get creative with the “gory details”. There’ll be a serious moment in the postmortem, broken by a character saying the word ‘knob’ once too often.
What importance do these dates have on the release of the series?
It’s Halloween week! For some reason we all find Halloween quite fun, so the nature of Jack The Ripper fits it well with late October, a chance for a little scare here and there, but mostly laughs at the expense of our protagonists and a few de-bollocked victims. The boring answer to that was a few international football breaks, meaning the occasional week off from our weekly show ‘The Offensive’, and allowing ourselves to dive head first into Whitechapel.
Was the female characterisation of Jack The Ripper simply part of the comedic agenda or do you feel it takes on more of a social importance?
If you research 1888 and Jack the Ripper and what he did to Mary Ann, Annie, Liz, Catherine and Mary Jane… And you don’t come out the other end of that a feminist – then you’ve got something wrong with you. Neither of us know the reality of being a woman, so while feminism remains a strong theme in the show – it would be disingenuous and obnoxious to present the show to the world as purely how us blokes see it. Other themes are in there, social cohesion (or lack there of), masculinity crisis, loss and pride. Ultimately we build from the comedy first and foremost. It’s embarrassing to admit that knobs and balls being chopped off is still funny to us. And we know it’s funny to people older and much wiser than we are. It just is.
Already Scheduled for March 2022, series two of Jackie The Ripper will be released! What do the listeners have to look forwards to in the upcoming sequel!?
Well, historically we know that Jack the Ripper committed AT LEAST five murders, and without giving away any spoilers, each season consists of five episodes, and you can bet we’re not doing an episode per murder. The already fleshed out (no pun intended) characters have a long journey ahead of them, and with this being such an ensemble piece, there’s more than meets the eye (ear) on quite a few of them. As I say, no spoilers, as they’re no fun at all, but you’re in for quite a ride.
Jackie The Ripper, a Stak production, is
available on all podcast platforms now!
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]]>The post 6 Spooky podcasts for Halloween appeared first on POD BIBLE.
]]>Sorry. But puns aside, they really are. The magic of hearing a ghost story isn’t in what’s being said as such, but in the images being conjured up. Your brain is capable of forming terrors far more terrible than anything you could actually see, and around the virtual campfire those images are that much more vivid with artfully deployed sound design.
We’ve been living through a mini-golden age of audio horror lately too. Led by the megahit The Battersea Poltergeist, a strain of podcasts which mix real-life spookiness with dramatic reimaginings has hit a nerve with listeners, and more and more producers and writers are taking advantage of the uniquely chilling atmosphere that they can create in sound.
As well as that, though, there’s long been a vibrant line-up of paranormally inclined shows which follow the My Favourite Murder format of hosts chatting amiably about something horrific. However you want to be chilled this Halloween, there’s a lot out there for you.
The Battersea Poltergeist
It’s not often that a Radio 4 drama-doc becomes so vast that it gets its own live show, but The Battersea Poltergeist is exactly that Radio 4 drama-doc. Part paranormal cold case, part dramatic reconstruction, it follows Danny Robins and his team as they go back to 63 Wycliffe Road in south London to investigate a haunting which gripped the UK in the fifties.
The Harrowing
The frame of this audio drama is a police investigation into a mysterious tragedy on a remote island off the west coast of Scotland called Toll Mòr. A growling stranger walks into a church warning of doomsday and demons, and local police sergeant Jackie O’Hara (Downton Abbey’s Joanne Froggatt) arrives just as a huge storm rolls in.
Welcome to Night Vale
This was one of the very first fiction podcasts to make it really, really big. The hook is that we’re listening to radio broadcasts to a small community somewhere in America – adverts for carnivals, local election reminders, that sort of thing. Except the carnival sounds horrific and the only vote in the election comes from disembodied voices in a hidden gorge. Both funny ha-ha and funny peculiar.
Alice Isn’t Dead
This horror-leaning thriller from Welcome to Night Vale’s co-author Joseph Fink follows a lonely trucker as she traverses America on the search for her wife, who’s gone missing. Their relationship isn’t straightforward, but then neither is this America: it’s full of ghostly no-places lost in time, not-quite-human serial killers and, at its heart, a sprawling conspiracy.
Lore
Though the horror pod wave has been driven by mixtures of fact and faction, some of the most spine-tingling are those like Lore, which meticulously research true scary stories which inspire folklore. Each time there’s a different theme – opportunity, confidence, music – which are explored by the tales different cultures tell each other about them. There’s a truly vast back catalogue of nearly 200 episodes here to creep into.
A Podcast to the Curious
This one started out as an exploration of the life and work of MR James, the master of the English ghost story. It’s literary rather than alarming, digging into the context and the story of how each story was written as well as dissecting the tales themselves. They’ve tip-toed into the dimly lit library of other English ghost stories too, from Dickens to writers who followed James’ lead.
Did we miss your favourite podcast? Let us know on Twitter!
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In the summer of 2019, Clash Of The Titles (Stakhanov’s first film podcast) was born. Twice a week, Alex Zane, Vicky Crompton and Chris Tilly thrust a pair of films with a connection into the arena of combat with only one emerging as the winner! Remakes Vs Originals, Alien Rip Off Vs Alien Rip Off, Massive Ruddy Volcano Movie Vs Massive Ruddy Volcano Movie. In the year since its inception, Clash Of The Titles has seen great success – amassing over 62,000 listens a month. And this October, with the advent of a quarantine Halloween, Clash Of The Titles is throwing a proper Spooktacular! In the weeks leading up to All Hallow’s Eve, the trio battle out spooky favourites on the air. “All three of us love horror, so we’re really excited about our month of scary movies to celebrate Halloween,” Chris enthuses.
Shocktober kicked off with the original Wicker Man – one of the weirdest, wildest and most disturbing movies you are ever likely to see – pitted against the disastrous and unintentionally hilarious Nicolas Cage remake. The episode also featured FrightFest founder and Wicker Man super-fan, Paul McEvoy. “It wasn’t really a fair fight,” admits Chris, “But it did give us an excuse to properly analyse that infamous scene with the bees.” Next, the Clash trio followed that up with a pair of classic slasher movies, with A Nightmare on Elm Street and Freddy Krueger’s razor-sharp glove doing battle with Candyman’s deadly hook. The third matchup of the season is Scream and The Cabin in the Woods, and James Moran – writer of Severance and Cockneys vs Zombies – will be coming into the arena to help Alex, Chris and Vicky with both deep dives. As for the last films of the month, each member of the team picked a pair of witch movies, and the listeners voted for their favourite online. The choices were The Wizard of Oz v Bedknobs and Broomsticks (Chris), Teen Witch v The Craft (Vicky), or The Witches v Hocus Pocus (Alex). The latter was the runaway winner, so Clash’s Halloween shows will feature Angelica Huston’s witch going toe-to-toe with Bette Midler’s!
Finally, if you’re looking for other great Halloween flicks to put on this fall – I asked each Clasher for some spooky recommendations for the season. Alex suggests romantic horror The Fly – which Clash Of The Titles discussed back in February in ‘The Fly (1986) vs Hellraiser (1987).’
As for Vicky, she recommends a more heroic horror film in the shape of The Crow, which the trio analysed back in August in ‘Darkman vs The Crow.’
Finally, Chris wants you to have some laughs with your scares, so his pick is Shaun of the Dead, which Clash Of The Titles covered last Halloween in ‘Shaun of the Dead (2004) vs Zombieland (2009).’
Even though this year we cannot leave our houses to celebrate Halloween the proper way, the Clash Of The Titles trio are here to keep the festivities going! So why not spend this season curled up on the couch with some hot chocolate, watching (and listening!) your way through the Clash Of The Titles’ Shocktober Spooktacular?
Listen to Clash Of The Titles every Monday and Thursday via Spotify, Acast, or Apple Podcasts.
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