It’s no secret that we love curling up with a dark thriller. But October calls for frightening all the senses — and listening to fictional, spooky podcasts can be even scarier than reading. Need proof? Here are seven spooky podcasts that will give you the creeps — no matter what time of the year you start them.
By Brandon Miller
Limetown (Two-Up Productions)
Limetown is now a novel and an online television series, but it all started with a chilling and mysterious six-part podcast. The suspense builds the farther you get into this fictional tale of 326 people disappearing from a small Tennessee town.
Welcome to Night Vale (Night Vale Presents)
Like many unnerving podcasts, Welcome to Night Vale is set in a small, desolate town — but with a twist. This eerie podcast comes in the form of community updates from the sherriff’s secret police, by which listeners receive details about every shadow, spook, and unexplainable event in town. The unsettling series extends beyond podcasts to albums and books, as well.
The Black Tapes (Pacific Northwest Stories)
The Black Tapesis a serial docudrama based upon a fictional journalist’s search for truth. Expect ghosts, spirits, and everything supernatural. In other words, this is the perfect frightening, peculiar podcast to haunt your dreams this month (and beyond).
Alice Isn’t Dead (Night Vale Presents)
In this disturbing podcast, a truck driver named Keisha searches for her assumed-dead wife. But is she really dead? No, if the title is any indication. In her search for Alice, Keisha encounters unhuman serial murders and towns lost in time. This pod comes from Night Vale Presents, so it has their signature level of strangeness and horror.
Unwell (HartLife NFP)
Unwellisa gothic mystery podcast set in a small-town boarding house in Ohio. It deals with strange conspiracies and ominous ghosts, but also odd family dynamics. It will leave you feeling sleepless and, well, unwell — but in the best way.
Borrasca (QCode Media)
This menacing podcast stars and is produced by Riverdale’s Cole Sprouse, who knows a thing or two about spooky entertainment. Borrascais the story of disappearing people in the town of Drisking, Missouri, and their connection to a mysterious mountain just outside of town.
The Horror of Dolores Roach (Gimlet Media)
The Horror of Dolores Roachtakes place in an underground subway tunnel in New York City. And if that alone does not make your skin crawl, then the dark story will. Ex-convict Dolores has to flee to the tunnels when she finds herself wrapped up in a bloody mess above-ground (and no, she’s not alone down there). The macabre pod will soon be turned into an equally grim television series.
