10 Indie Horror Fiction Podcasts for a Diverse Halloween
The podcast landscape is exploding, especially in the independent production realm, and fiction podcasts are getting more attention both from the press and from major production companies. It can be hard to navigate if you aren’t sure what you’re looking for, and when it comes to podcast lists, I tend to see the same names recommended repeatedly—usually podcasts with major financial backing or huge audiences—and not a lot of the diversity that actually exists in the space.
One thing is for sure: Horror is rampant in audio. Audio horror means you don’t need a budget for special effects or costuming, but instead a focus on terrifying sound effects, lush music, and enrapturing performances.
So, this list is not going to include the Limetowns, Magnus Archives, and Archive 81s of the world. Those are brilliant works of audio horror, and you should definitely check them out, but there are smaller, independent podcasts that exemplify this diverse, representative, and exploratory space whose development we’re witnessing.
1. Point Mystic
There’s certainly an overall plan, with some scripting and editing handled by Croft, but these are real improvised discussions about topics like colonialism, racism, and injustice, drawn from such personal, real memories that it becomes hard to remember that this is fictional.
2. Nightlight: The Black Horror Podcast
3. Mabel
The voicemails morph as Anna feels confusion, fear, and wonder while encountering the unusual world behind the façade of this ghost-ridden house. Created by two Latinas, Becca de la Rosa and a mysterious second creator who only goes by Mabel Martin, it was important to them to have characters that represent their identities.
If you’re looking for a horror podcast that has beautiful writing and a queer romance that effectively twists the knife, Mabel will send you there.
The “psychedelic” part is no joke: Sound designer Alexander Danner goes hard for that weird, sonically rich, and occasionally disturbing audio, aided by the improvisations from their diverse cast. The experience includes fake, 1940s-style ads for in-universe products that are dark satires and commentary on topics like gender politics, the meaning of patriotism, and toxic masculinity.
5. Station Blue
The extreme dedication Ellis has put into the sound design and writing and performance, as well as the risks he likes to take with them, has catapulted Station Blue into my favorites list.
They have hired many great performers to bring them to life, as well as a variety of sound engineers, which means each episode is its own distinct experience. One of my favorites is episode 6, “Journeys,” which features the audio fiction “Swipe Left for Zombies,” about a Grindr date that ends up in the zombie apocalypse.
7. The Comet by W.E.B. Du Bois
If you need something shorter than the other options on this list, The Comet is just one half-hour episode, arranged in twenty days and performed live, including the sound effects and music, designed and curated by Keisha Dutes. You’ll be filled with fear when Davis reacts to the world he sees when he exits his building, and that fear embeds itself further as the story goes the exit from a city strewn with the dead.
8. Gone
Like much of Moraine’s work, this story deals with mental illness without ableism and from personal experience, and the performance is chilling.
9. Aftershocks
There’s rarely a question for the listener as to what’s real or not, even if Riley herself doubts it, because this is a podcast that takes mental illness representation seriously rather than using it as a gimmick.
10. Rose Drive
This is a polished soundscape from creator Raul Vega, following a flawed and unreliable narrator.
(featured image: Andrew Boldizsar on Usplash)
Elena Fernández-Collins is a podcast reviewer and forensic sociolinguist living in Portland, OR. She writes about podcasts for her own website, about audio fiction for The Bello Collective, and curates her own newsletter, Audio Dramatic. You can find her spending too much time on Twitter @ShoMarq, where she would probably like to to talk to you about having a press kit and transcripts for your podcast.
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