Audio stories let your mind conjure up SCARES
Podcasts deliver creepy dramas, disturbing true tales, horror film recaps
There’s an adage about horror movies, often attributed to Alfred Hitchcock: What you don’t see is more frightening than what you do. This makes audio dramas excellent vehicles for the horror genre because the absence of visual storytelling forces listeners to fill in the gaps. Whatever the mind conjures up, custom-made for unique neuroses and fears, may well be scarier than any tangible monster or ghoul.
These shows take advantage of this in different ways, delivering disturbing true stories of everyday horror, lively recaps of scary movies for those too scared to watch the real thing, and gloriously creepy scripted dramas about the supernatural.
‘Alice Isn’t Dead’: As much as the open road is a symbol of freedom in American fiction, it also represents danger, especially if you’re a woman traveling alone. That type of peril underlies every moment of Joseph Fink’s enthralling, disturbing series, which follows a female truck driver on a cross-country quest to uncover the truth about her wife’s supposed death. Fink and lead voice actor Jasika Nicole deftly capture that psychological experience, the half-formed glimpses of towns you pass through, and the strange, stream-of-consciousness thoughts that arise after too much time alone. Consisting of audio journals and dramatic scenes set at roadside diners and rest stops, “Alice Isn’t Dead” is — like a lot of the best horror stories — more about sadness than fear, exploring the feeling of an incomprehensible loss through the supernatural.
Starter episode: “Omelet”
‘Too Scary, Didn’t Watch’: Have you ever read the Wikipedia page for a horror movie you’re interested in, but too afraid to watch? You’re not alone — this one-degree-removed method of horror consumption is common, and it’s the linchpin of this fun and addictive recap podcast. Sammy Smart is a horror aficionado who watches the movies so her more fearful co-hosts, Emily Gonzalez and Henley Cox, don’t have to. Over more than 200 episodes, the trio have covered modern classics like Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” and Ari Aster’s “Hereditary,” mainstays like “The Shining” and, so-bad-they’regood gems, like the baffling 2006 remake of “The Wicker Man” starring Nicolas Cage. Like many podcasts of this ilk, it’s the chemistry among the three hosts that makes “Too Scary, Didn’t Watch” so appealing — the trio will soon begin to feel like your parasocial best friends, hiding behind the couch cushions with you.
Starter episode: “Midsommar Revisited”
‘Let’s Not Meet’: In the glut of truecrime podcasts, this self-described “true horror” show finds its lane by exploring the more subtle and insidious examples of everyday fear. Host Andy Tate narrates several stories, in which listeners describe unsettling encounters with people whom they hope never to run into again. While some are overtly violent — featuring attempted murders or assaults — many of the most disturbing ones are more ambiguous, leaving the listener with an unresolved, unnameable sense that something is deeply wrong. The show is deliberately minimalistic, with limited music and sound cues, and that stripped-back style adds to the sense of paranoia and dread.
Starter episode: “Hotel”
‘Dr. Death’: Not for the faint of heart
(or stomach), this mind-boggling true story of a dangerously incompetent neurosurgeon is a spiritual companion to “Dirty John,” another early hit from the podcast network Wondery. Hosted by science journalist Laura Beil, the seven-episode season chronicles how Dr. Christopher Duntsch, a seemingly talented surgeon with glowing reviews from his former patients, wound up maiming or severely injuring more than 30 people over the course of a yearslong spree at multiple Texas hospitals. Aside from the visceral body horror, the most terrifying aspect of this story is the systemic one: how red flags were either missed or ignored by the authorities who should have intervened. Duntsch’s story is the focus of Season 1, while subsequent seasons (available only on Wondery’s paid tier) chronicle similarly sprawling cases of medical malpractice and fraud. ‘The NoSleep Podcast’: NoSleep, long one of the biggest forums on Reddit, bills itself as a place to share “scary personal experiences.” It’s a tongue-incheek description, of course because