People’s Guide to the Cthulhu Mythos: Horror Stories, Weird Fiction, and Film Reviews

Season 23 Movies & Stories

1. Sinners (2025)

Story: “The Music of Erich Zann,” H. P. Lovecraft

Music becomes a weapon, a barrier, and an opening into something beyond the human world.
Complete YouTube reading

2. Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Story: “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” Nathaniel Hawthorne

A scientist transforms his daughter into something beautiful, deadly, and isolated from ordinary human intimacy. The created woman is treated simultaneously as experiment, daughter, monster, and possible lover.

3. Ready or Not (2019)

Story: “The Most Dangerous Game,” Richard Connell

Wealthy predators turn the hunting of a human being into sport and tradition.

4. Blade II (2002)

Story: “The Room in the Tower,” E. F. Benson

A recurring nightmare leads to a room occupied by a ravenous female vampire.
Complete YouTube reading

5. Obsession (2026)

Story: “The Birth-Mark,” Nathaniel Hawthorne

Love curdles into the conviction that another person must be altered and perfected.
Complete YouTube reading

6. RoboCop (1987)

Story: “The Man That Was Used Up,” Edgar Allan Poe

A celebrated military hero is gradually revealed to be an assemblage of manufactured replacement parts. Prosthetic reconstruction, militarism, masculine propaganda, and brutal satire.

7. Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

Story: “A Logic Named Joe,” Murray Leinster

Information technology becomes dangerously helpful, invasive, and impossible to contain.
Complete YouTube audiobook

8. Strange Days (1995)

Story: “The Crystal Egg,” H. G. Wells

A mysterious device allows its owner to watch another world—and may allow that world to watch him. The voyeurism, addictive looking, and technologically mediated experience.

9. Brainstorm (1983)

Story: “The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham,” H. G. Wells

A wealthy old scientist finds a way to transfer his consciousness into a young man’s body. It turns recorded experience and technological immortality into an intimate identity nightmare.

10. Burst City (1982)

Story: “The Machine Stops,” E. M. Forster

A society has surrendered its bodies, relationships, and environment to an enormous technological system.
Complete YouTube reading

11. Neo Tokyo (1987)

Story: “The City of the Singing Flame,” Clark Ashton Smith

A traveller discovers a magnificent alternate city whose alien music and architecture exert an increasingly irresistible pull.
Complete YouTube reading

12. Total Recall (1990)

Story: “The Defenders,” Philip K. Dick

Humanity’s understanding of its war and surrounding reality has been deliberately manufactured.

13. Sorry to Bother You (2018)

Story: “The Business Man,” Edgar Allan Poe

A self-satisfied entrepreneur explains his increasingly violent career as though criminal ingenuity were merely sound business practice.

14. Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

Story: “The Flowering of the Strange Orchid,” H. G. Wells

A mild collector brings home an exotic plant that proves predatory. Carnivorous botany, human loneliness, and the inability to recognize danger until it is wrapped around your throat.

15. Slither (2006)

Story: “The Derelict,” William Hope Hodgson

An explorer returns from an ancient ruin carrying something that has taken root inside his body.
Complete YouTube reading

16. Swiss Army Man (2016)

Story: “The Story of the Inexperienced Ghost,” H. G. Wells

A lonely, ineffectual dead man cannot remember how to leave the living world, and an overconfident living man attempts to help him.

17. Happy Death Day (2017)

Story: “The Clock That Went Backward,” Edward Page Mitchell

A clock literally carries its characters backwards through time.

18. The Gorge (2025)

Story: “The People of the Pit,” A. Merritt

An isolated traveller discovers an abyss containing an ancient, inhuman civilization and something that calls irresistibly from below.
Complete YouTube reading

19. The Fourth Kind (2009)

Story: “The Hanging Stranger,” Philip K. Dick

An ordinary man notices an impossible event that everyone else accepts, then discovers that his community may no longer be human.

20. Dark City (1998)

Story: “The Street That Wasn’t There,” Clifford D. Simak and Carl Jacobi

Familiar pieces of a city begin disappearing as reality is quietly revised around its inhabitants.
Complete YouTube reading

21. Stir of Echoes (1999)

Story: “The Beckoning Fair One,” Oliver Onions

A man living alone becomes increasingly dominated by an unseen female presence whose influence may be supernatural, psychological, or both.

https://www.amazon.com/stores/DB-Spitzer/author/B0DQFR6HYF Check out this link to buy DB's Books[link]

Oct 23, 2026 42 min

The Horla, Part 2 Guy de Maupassant Bonus

Season 23, Episode 35

Show notes

Story

Author

Synopsis

Foreword

Joseph Lewis French

An introduction to the anthology and its selection of classic tales of horror and suspense.

The Horla, Part 1

Guy de Maupassant

A French gentleman experiences increasingly disturbing sensations and unexplained occurrences in his home. He begins to suspect that an invisible being is watching him and exerting control over his life.

The Horla, Part 2

Guy de Maupassant

The narrator's obsession with the unseen entity intensifies as he searches for proof of its existence. His attempts to escape its influence lead him toward increasingly desperate and destructive decisions.

A Terrible Night

William Clark Russell

A voyage at sea becomes a terrifying experience when violent weather and extraordinary natural phenomena threaten the passengers and crew.

The Torture by Hope

Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam

A prisoner condemned by the Spanish Inquisition discovers what appears to be an opportunity to escape. His desperate pursuit of freedom reveals a particularly cruel form of psychological torture.

What Was It?

Fitz-James O'Brien

A man sleeping in a supposedly haunted boardinghouse is attacked by an invisible creature. After capturing the mysterious assailant, he and his companions attempt to understand what they have discovered.

The Mark of the Beast

Rudyard Kipling

An Englishman in colonial India desecrates a religious shrine and suffers an apparently supernatural curse. His companions struggle to reverse his horrifying transformation.

The Temple of Isis

Richard Marsh

An encounter with a mysterious woman leads into a frightening world of ancient Egyptian religion, secret rituals, and supernatural danger. An excerpt from The Beetle.

The Pit and the Pendulum

Edgar Allan Poe

A prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition awakens in a dungeon where elaborate instruments of torture threaten his life. He must overcome terror and exhaustion to survive.

The Vampire

Bram Stoker

In an excerpt from Dracula, the dying Renfield reveals his connection to Count Dracula and the vampire's terrifying influence, exposing the danger facing Mina Harker.

The Avengers, Part I

Arthur Conan Doyle

A man and a young girl, stranded in the American wilderness, are rescued by members of a religious community. Their survival comes at the price of accepting a new life under strict religious authority.

The Avengers, Parts II & III

Arthur Conan Doyle

Years later, the young woman's love for an outsider comes into conflict with the demands of her community. Religious pressure, threats, and forced marriage threaten to destroy her future.

The Avengers, Parts IV & V

Arthur Conan Doyle

The consequences of persecution and betrayal culminate in tragedy. A survivor undertakes a relentless campaign of vengeance against those responsible.

Oct 14, 2026 39 min

The Horla, Part 1 by Guy de Maupassant Bonus

Season 23, Episode 34

Show notes

https://www.amazon.com/stores/DB-Spitzer/author/B0DQFR6HYF Check out this link to buy DB's Books[link]

Story

Author

Synopsis

Foreword

Joseph Lewis French

An introduction to the anthology and its selection of classic tales of horror and suspense.

The Horla, Part 1

Guy de Maupassant

A French gentleman experiences increasingly disturbing sensations and unexplained occurrences in his home. He begins to suspect that an invisible being is watching him and exerting control over his life.

The Horla, Part 2

Guy de Maupassant

The narrator's obsession with the unseen entity intensifies as he searches for proof of its existence. His attempts to escape its influence lead him toward increasingly desperate and destructive decisions.

A Terrible Night

William Clark Russell

A voyage at sea becomes a terrifying experience when violent weather and extraordinary natural phenomena threaten the passengers and crew.

The Torture by Hope

Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam

A prisoner condemned by the Spanish Inquisition discovers what appears to be an opportunity to escape. His desperate pursuit of freedom reveals a particularly cruel form of psychological torture.

What Was It?

Fitz-James O'Brien

A man sleeping in a supposedly haunted boardinghouse is attacked by an invisible creature. After capturing the mysterious assailant, he and his companions attempt to understand what they have discovered.

The Mark of the Beast

Rudyard Kipling

An Englishman in colonial India desecrates a religious shrine and suffers an apparently supernatural curse. His companions struggle to reverse his horrifying transformation.

The Temple of Isis

Richard Marsh

An encounter with a mysterious woman leads into a frightening world of ancient Egyptian religion, secret rituals, and supernatural danger. An excerpt from The Beetle.

The Pit and the Pendulum

Edgar Allan Poe

A prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition awakens in a dungeon where elaborate instruments of torture threaten his life. He must overcome terror and exhaustion to survive.

The Vampire

Bram Stoker

In an excerpt from Dracula, the dying Renfield reveals his connection to Count Dracula and the vampire's terrifying influence, exposing the danger facing Mina Harker.

The Avengers, Part I

Arthur Conan Doyle

A man and a young girl, stranded in the American wilderness, are rescued by members of a religious community. Their survival comes at the price of accepting a new life under strict religious authority.

The Avengers, Parts II & III

Arthur Conan Doyle

Years later, the young woman's love for an outsider comes into conflict with the demands of her community. Religious pressure, threats, and forced marriage threaten to destroy her future.

The Avengers, Parts IV & V

Arthur Conan Doyle

The consequences of persecution and betrayal culminate in tragedy. A survivor undertakes a relentless campaign of vengeance against those responsible.

Oct 13, 2026 31 min

Forward Bonus

Season 23, Episode 33

Show notes

https://www.amazon.com/stores/DB-Spitzer/author/B0DQFR6HYF Check out this link to buy DB's Books[link]

Story

Author

Synopsis

Foreword

Joseph Lewis French

An introduction to the anthology and its selection of classic tales of horror and suspense.

The Horla, Part 1

Guy de Maupassant

A French gentleman experiences increasingly disturbing sensations and unexplained occurrences in his home. He begins to suspect that an invisible being is watching him and exerting control over his life.

The Horla, Part 2

Guy de Maupassant

The narrator's obsession with the unseen entity intensifies as he searches for proof of its existence. His attempts to escape its influence lead him toward increasingly desperate and destructive decisions.

A Terrible Night

William Clark Russell

A voyage at sea becomes a terrifying experience when violent weather and extraordinary natural phenomena threaten the passengers and crew.

The Torture by Hope

Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam

A prisoner condemned by the Spanish Inquisition discovers what appears to be an opportunity to escape. His desperate pursuit of freedom reveals a particularly cruel form of psychological torture.

What Was It?

Fitz-James O'Brien

A man sleeping in a supposedly haunted boardinghouse is attacked by an invisible creature. After capturing the mysterious assailant, he and his companions attempt to understand what they have discovered.

The Mark of the Beast

Rudyard Kipling

An Englishman in colonial India desecrates a religious shrine and suffers an apparently supernatural curse. His companions struggle to reverse his horrifying transformation.

The Temple of Isis

Richard Marsh

An encounter with a mysterious woman leads into a frightening world of ancient Egyptian religion, secret rituals, and supernatural danger. An excerpt from The Beetle.

The Pit and the Pendulum

Edgar Allan Poe

A prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition awakens in a dungeon where elaborate instruments of torture threaten his life. He must overcome terror and exhaustion to survive.

The Vampire

Bram Stoker

In an excerpt from Dracula, the dying Renfield reveals his connection to Count Dracula and the vampire's terrifying influence, exposing the danger facing Mina Harker.

The Avengers, Part I

Arthur Conan Doyle

A man and a young girl, stranded in the American wilderness, are rescued by members of a religious community. Their survival comes at the price of accepting a new life under strict religious authority.

The Avengers, Parts II & III

Arthur Conan Doyle

Years later, the young woman's love for an outsider comes into conflict with the demands of her community. Religious pressure, threats, and forced marriage threaten to destroy her future.

The Avengers, Parts IV & V

Arthur Conan Doyle

The consequences of persecution and betrayal culminate in tragedy. A survivor undertakes a relentless campaign of vengeance against those responsible.

Oct 12, 2026 1 min

Were-Wolves of DetroitCharles M. Skinner Bonus

Season 23, Episode 32

Show notes

https://www.amazon.com/stores/DB-Spitzer/author/B0DQFR6HYF Check out this link to buy DB's Books[link]

Chapter

Author

Description

Algernon Blackwood

A traveler encounters a mysterious old man who invites him into a lonely wood said to receive those who are about to die. A quiet, dreamlike ghost story about death, compassion, and the thin boundary between the living and the dead.

Ambrose Bierce

On a freezing night in an abandoned mining camp, a lonely man welcomes a strange visitor and begins recounting the unsettling history of Deadman's Gulch. Bierce mixes ghost-story dread with his characteristic grim humor and irony.

Seven men hide from a terrible plague, drinking beside the body of a dead companion, when an impossible shadow appears among them. A brief, intensely atmospheric meditation on mortality and the inevitability of death.

A visitor to an old estate in Brittany encounters a silent pack of mysterious dogs and discovers the tragic history of the house. Wharton's gothic tale combines an abusive marriage, murder, and supernatural revenge.

Alone in his chemical plant, Asa Gregg records a confession concerning a murder he thought he had successfully concealed. Something inside the factory, however, appears determined to undo both the crime and the laws of nature. Originally published in Weird Tales in 1936.

A young fiddler accepts a job as caretaker of the lonely and reputedly haunted Printz Hall near Chester, Pennsylvania. His night in the abandoned mansion becomes considerably stranger once the music begins.

An ominous portrait hangs in Boston's old Province House and is said to reveal its dreadful face before disasters. The figure is Edward Randolph, remembered by colonial legend as a betrayer of Massachusetts' liberties.

Strange lights, witches, apparitions, and a headless figure haunt the folklore surrounding Swamptown, Rhode Island. Skinner collects several grisly local legends centered on a particularly unsettling human skull.

Old Detroit legends tell of witches, forbidden bargains, and men transformed into loups-garous. One tale follows a rejected suitor who turns to witchcraft in an attempt to carry away the woman he desires.

Oct 9, 2026 3 min

The Most Dangerous Game/Ready or Not(2019)

Season 23, Episode 3

Show notes

Season 23 Movies & Stories

1. Sinners (2025)

Story: “The Music of Erich Zann,” H. P. Lovecraft

Music becomes a weapon, a barrier, and an opening into something beyond the human world.
Complete YouTube reading

2. Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Story: “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” Nathaniel Hawthorne

A scientist transforms his daughter into something beautiful, deadly, and isolated from ordinary human intimacy. The created woman is treated simultaneously as experiment, daughter, monster, and possible lover.

3. Ready or Not (2019)

Story: “The Most Dangerous Game,” Richard Connell

Wealthy predators turn the hunting of a human being into sport and tradition.

4. Blade II (2002)

Story: “The Room in the Tower,” E. F. Benson

A recurring nightmare leads to a room occupied by a ravenous female vampire.
Complete YouTube reading

5. Obsession (2026)

Story: “The Birth-Mark,” Nathaniel Hawthorne

Love curdles into the conviction that another person must be altered and perfected.
Complete YouTube reading

6. RoboCop (1987)

Story: “The Man That Was Used Up,” Edgar Allan Poe

A celebrated military hero is gradually revealed to be an assemblage of manufactured replacement parts. Prosthetic reconstruction, militarism, masculine propaganda, and brutal satire.

7. Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

Story: “A Logic Named Joe,” Murray Leinster

Information technology becomes dangerously helpful, invasive, and impossible to contain.
Complete YouTube audiobook

8. Strange Days (1995)

Story: “The Crystal Egg,” H. G. Wells

A mysterious device allows its owner to watch another world—and may allow that world to watch him. The voyeurism, addictive looking, and technologically mediated experience.

9. Brainstorm (1983)

Story: “The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham,” H. G. Wells

A wealthy old scientist finds a way to transfer his consciousness into a young man’s body. It turns recorded experience and technological immortality into an intimate identity nightmare.

10. Burst City (1982)

Story: “The Machine Stops,” E. M. Forster

A society has surrendered its bodies, relationships, and environment to an enormous technological system.
Complete YouTube reading

11. Neo Tokyo (1987)

Story: “The City of the Singing Flame,” Clark Ashton Smith

A traveller discovers a magnificent alternate city whose alien music and architecture exert an increasingly irresistible pull.
Complete YouTube reading

12. Total Recall (1990)

Story: “The Defenders,” Philip K. Dick

Humanity’s understanding of its war and surrounding reality has been deliberately manufactured.

13. Sorry to Bother You (2018)

Story: “The Business Man,” Edgar Allan Poe

A self-satisfied entrepreneur explains his increasingly violent career as though criminal ingenuity were merely sound business practice.

14. Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

Story: “The Flowering of the Strange Orchid,” H. G. Wells

A mild collector brings home an exotic plant that proves predatory. Carnivorous botany, human loneliness, and the inability to recognize danger until it is wrapped around your throat.

15. Slither (2006)

Story: “The Derelict,” William Hope Hodgson

An explorer returns from an ancient ruin carrying something that has taken root inside his body.
Complete YouTube reading

16. Swiss Army Man (2016)

Story: “The Story of the Inexperienced Ghost,” H. G. Wells

A lonely, ineffectual dead man cannot remember how to leave the living world, and an overconfident living man attempts to help him.

17. Happy Death Day (2017)

Story: “The Clock That Went Backward,” Edward Page Mitchell

A clock literally carries its characters backwards through time.

18. The Gorge (2025)

Story: “The People of the Pit,” A. Merritt

An isolated traveller discovers an abyss containing an ancient, inhuman civilization and something that calls irresistibly from below.
Complete YouTube reading

19. The Fourth Kind (2009)

Story: “The Hanging Stranger,” Philip K. Dick

An ordinary man notices an impossible event that everyone else accepts, then discovers that his community may no longer be human.

20. Dark City (1998)

Story: “The Street That Wasn’t There,” Clifford D. Simak and Carl Jacobi

Familiar pieces of a city begin disappearing as reality is quietly revised around its inhabitants.
Complete YouTube reading

21. Stir of Echoes (1999)

Story: “The Beckoning Fair One,” Oliver Onions

A man living alone becomes increasingly dominated by an unseen female presence whose influence may be supernatural, psychological, or both.

https://www.amazon.com/stores/DB-Spitzer/author/B0DQFR6HYF Check out this link to buy DB's Books[link]

Oct 9, 2026 43 min

The Headless Skeleton of Swamptown by Charles M. Skinner Bonus

Season 23, Episode 31

Show notes

Chapter

Author

Description

Algernon Blackwood

A traveler encounters a mysterious old man who invites him into a lonely wood said to receive those who are about to die. A quiet, dreamlike ghost story about death, compassion, and the thin boundary between the living and the dead.

Ambrose Bierce

On a freezing night in an abandoned mining camp, a lonely man welcomes a strange visitor and begins recounting the unsettling history of Deadman's Gulch. Bierce mixes ghost-story dread with his characteristic grim humor and irony.

Seven men hide from a terrible plague, drinking beside the body of a dead companion, when an impossible shadow appears among them. A brief, intensely atmospheric meditation on mortality and the inevitability of death.

A visitor to an old estate in Brittany encounters a silent pack of mysterious dogs and discovers the tragic history of the house. Wharton's gothic tale combines an abusive marriage, murder, and supernatural revenge.

Alone in his chemical plant, Asa Gregg records a confession concerning a murder he thought he had successfully concealed. Something inside the factory, however, appears determined to undo both the crime and the laws of nature. Originally published in Weird Tales in 1936.

A young fiddler accepts a job as caretaker of the lonely and reputedly haunted Printz Hall near Chester, Pennsylvania. His night in the abandoned mansion becomes considerably stranger once the music begins.

An ominous portrait hangs in Boston's old Province House and is said to reveal its dreadful face before disasters. The figure is Edward Randolph, remembered by colonial legend as a betrayer of Massachusetts' liberties.

Strange lights, witches, apparitions, and a headless figure haunt the folklore surrounding Swamptown, Rhode Island. Skinner collects several grisly local legends centered on a particularly unsettling human skull.

https://www.amazon.com/stores/DB-Spitzer/author/B0DQFR6HYF Check out this link to buy DB's Books[link]

Old Detroit legends tell of witches, forbidden bargains, and men transformed into loups-garous. One tale follows a rejected suitor who turns to witchcraft in an attempt to carry away the woman he desires.

Oct 8, 2026 3 min

Edward Randolph's Portrait Charles M. Skinner Bonus

Season 23, Episode 30

Show notes

Chapter

Author

Description

Algernon Blackwood

A traveler encounters a mysterious old man who invites him into a lonely wood said to receive those who are about to die. A quiet, dreamlike ghost story about death, compassion, and the thin boundary between the living and the dead.

Ambrose Bierce

On a freezing night in an abandoned mining camp, a lonely man welcomes a strange visitor and begins recounting the unsettling history of Deadman's Gulch. Bierce mixes ghost-story dread with his characteristic grim humor and irony.

Seven men hide from a terrible plague, drinking beside the body of a dead companion, when an impossible shadow appears among them. A brief, intensely atmospheric meditation on mortality and the inevitability of death.

A visitor to an old estate in Brittany encounters a silent pack of mysterious dogs and discovers the tragic history of the house. Wharton's gothic tale combines an abusive marriage, murder, and supernatural revenge.

Alone in his chemical plant, Asa Gregg records a confession concerning a murder he thought he had successfully concealed. Something inside the factory, however, appears determined to undo both the crime and the laws of nature. Originally published in Weird Tales in 1936.

A young fiddler accepts a job as caretaker of the lonely and reputedly haunted Printz Hall near Chester, Pennsylvania. His night in the abandoned mansion becomes considerably stranger once the music begins.

An ominous portrait hangs in Boston's old Province House and is said to reveal its dreadful face before disasters. The figure is Edward Randolph, remembered by colonial legend as a betrayer of Massachusetts' liberties.

Strange lights, witches, apparitions, and a headless figure haunt the folklore surrounding Swamptown, Rhode Island. Skinner collects several grisly local legends centered on a particularly unsettling human skull.

https://www.amazon.com/stores/DB-Spitzer/author/B0DQFR6HYF Check out this link to buy DB's Books[link]

Old Detroit legends tell of witches, forbidden bargains, and men transformed into loups-garous. One tale follows a rejected suitor who turns to witchcraft in an attempt to carry away the woman he desires.

Oct 7, 2026 4 min

The Last Revel in Printz Hall by Charles M. Skinner Bonus

Season 23, Episode 29

Show notes

Chapter

Author

Description

Algernon Blackwood

A traveler encounters a mysterious old man who invites him into a lonely wood said to receive those who are about to die. A quiet, dreamlike ghost story about death, compassion, and the thin boundary between the living and the dead.

Ambrose Bierce

On a freezing night in an abandoned mining camp, a lonely man welcomes a strange visitor and begins recounting the unsettling history of Deadman's Gulch. Bierce mixes ghost-story dread with his characteristic grim humor and irony.

Seven men hide from a terrible plague, drinking beside the body of a dead companion, when an impossible shadow appears among them. A brief, intensely atmospheric meditation on mortality and the inevitability of death.

A visitor to an old estate in Brittany encounters a silent pack of mysterious dogs and discovers the tragic history of the house. Wharton's gothic tale combines an abusive marriage, murder, and supernatural revenge.

Alone in his chemical plant, Asa Gregg records a confession concerning a murder he thought he had successfully concealed. Something inside the factory, however, appears determined to undo both the crime and the laws of nature. Originally published in Weird Tales in 1936.

A young fiddler accepts a job as caretaker of the lonely and reputedly haunted Printz Hall near Chester, Pennsylvania. His night in the abandoned mansion becomes considerably stranger once the music begins.

An ominous portrait hangs in Boston's old Province House and is said to reveal its dreadful face before disasters. The figure is Edward Randolph, remembered by colonial legend as a betrayer of Massachusetts' liberties.

Strange lights, witches, apparitions, and a headless figure haunt the folklore surrounding Swamptown, Rhode Island. Skinner collects several grisly local legends centered on a particularly unsettling human skull.

https://www.amazon.com/stores/DB-Spitzer/author/B0DQFR6HYF Check out this link to buy DB's Books[link]

Old Detroit legends tell of witches, forbidden bargains, and men transformed into loups-garous. One tale follows a rejected suitor who turns to witchcraft in an attempt to carry away the woman he desires.

Oct 6, 2026 7 min

In the Dark Ronal Kayser Bonus

Season 23, Episode 28

Show notes

Chapter

Author

Description

Algernon Blackwood

A traveler encounters a mysterious old man who invites him into a lonely wood said to receive those who are about to die. A quiet, dreamlike ghost story about death, compassion, and the thin boundary between the living and the dead.

Ambrose Bierce

On a freezing night in an abandoned mining camp, a lonely man welcomes a strange visitor and begins recounting the unsettling history of Deadman's Gulch. Bierce mixes ghost-story dread with his characteristic grim humor and irony.

Seven men hide from a terrible plague, drinking beside the body of a dead companion, when an impossible shadow appears among them. A brief, intensely atmospheric meditation on mortality and the inevitability of death.

A visitor to an old estate in Brittany encounters a silent pack of mysterious dogs and discovers the tragic history of the house. Wharton's gothic tale combines an abusive marriage, murder, and supernatural revenge.

Alone in his chemical plant, Asa Gregg records a confession concerning a murder he thought he had successfully concealed. Something inside the factory, however, appears determined to undo both the crime and the laws of nature. Originally published in Weird Tales in 1936.

A young fiddler accepts a job as caretaker of the lonely and reputedly haunted Printz Hall near Chester, Pennsylvania. His night in the abandoned mansion becomes considerably stranger once the music begins.

An ominous portrait hangs in Boston's old Province House and is said to reveal its dreadful face before disasters. The figure is Edward Randolph, remembered by colonial legend as a betrayer of Massachusetts' liberties.

Strange lights, witches, apparitions, and a headless figure haunt the folklore surrounding Swamptown, Rhode Island. Skinner collects several grisly local legends centered on a particularly unsettling human skull.

https://www.amazon.com/stores/DB-Spitzer/author/B0DQFR6HYF Check out this link to buy DB's Books[link]

Old Detroit legends tell of witches, forbidden bargains, and men transformed into loups-garous. One tale follows a rejected suitor who turns to witchcraft in an attempt to carry away the woman he desires.

Oct 5, 2026 14 min

Kerfol Edith Wharton

Season 23, Episode 27

Show notes

Chapter

Author

Description

Algernon Blackwood

A traveler encounters a mysterious old man who invites him into a lonely wood said to receive those who are about to die. A quiet, dreamlike ghost story about death, compassion, and the thin boundary between the living and the dead.

Ambrose Bierce

On a freezing night in an abandoned mining camp, a lonely man welcomes a strange visitor and begins recounting the unsettling history of Deadman's Gulch. Bierce mixes ghost-story dread with his characteristic grim humor and irony.

Seven men hide from a terrible plague, drinking beside the body of a dead companion, when an impossible shadow appears among them. A brief, intensely atmospheric meditation on mortality and the inevitability of death.

A visitor to an old estate in Brittany encounters a silent pack of mysterious dogs and discovers the tragic history of the house. Wharton's gothic tale combines an abusive marriage, murder, and supernatural revenge.

Alone in his chemical plant, Asa Gregg records a confession concerning a murder he thought he had successfully concealed. Something inside the factory, however, appears determined to undo both the crime and the laws of nature. Originally published in Weird Tales in 1936.

A young fiddler accepts a job as caretaker of the lonely and reputedly haunted Printz Hall near Chester, Pennsylvania. His night in the abandoned mansion becomes considerably stranger once the music begins.

An ominous portrait hangs in Boston's old Province House and is said to reveal its dreadful face before disasters. The figure is Edward Randolph, remembered by colonial legend as a betrayer of Massachusetts' liberties.

Strange lights, witches, apparitions, and a headless figure haunt the folklore surrounding Swamptown, Rhode Island. Skinner collects several grisly local legends centered on a particularly unsettling human skull.

https://www.amazon.com/stores/DB-Spitzer/author/B0DQFR6HYF Check out this link to buy DB's Books[link]

Old Detroit legends tell of witches, forbidden bargains, and men transformed into loups-garous. One tale follows a rejected suitor who turns to witchcraft in an attempt to carry away the woman he desires.

Oct 4, 2026 53 min

Shadow – A Parable Edgar Allan Poe

Season 23, Episode 26

Show notes

Chapter

Author

Description

Algernon Blackwood

A traveler encounters a mysterious old man who invites him into a lonely wood said to receive those who are about to die. A quiet, dreamlike ghost story about death, compassion, and the thin boundary between the living and the dead.

Ambrose Bierce

On a freezing night in an abandoned mining camp, a lonely man welcomes a strange visitor and begins recounting the unsettling history of Deadman's Gulch. Bierce mixes ghost-story dread with his characteristic grim humor and irony.

Seven men hide from a terrible plague, drinking beside the body of a dead companion, when an impossible shadow appears among them. A brief, intensely atmospheric meditation on mortality and the inevitability of death.

A visitor to an old estate in Brittany encounters a silent pack of mysterious dogs and discovers the tragic history of the house. Wharton's gothic tale combines an abusive marriage, murder, and supernatural revenge.

Alone in his chemical plant, Asa Gregg records a confession concerning a murder he thought he had successfully concealed. Something inside the factory, however, appears determined to undo both the crime and the laws of nature. Originally published in Weird Tales in 1936.

A young fiddler accepts a job as caretaker of the lonely and reputedly haunted Printz Hall near Chester, Pennsylvania. His night in the abandoned mansion becomes considerably stranger once the music begins.

An ominous portrait hangs in Boston's old Province House and is said to reveal its dreadful face before disasters. The figure is Edward Randolph, remembered by colonial legend as a betrayer of Massachusetts' liberties.

Strange lights, witches, apparitions, and a headless figure haunt the folklore surrounding Swamptown, Rhode Island. Skinner collects several grisly local legends centered on a particularly unsettling human skull.

https://www.amazon.com/stores/DB-Spitzer/author/B0DQFR6HYF
Check Out John @ john-houlihan.net/ Check out this link to buy DB's Books[link]

Old Detroit legends tell of witches, forbidden bargains, and men transformed into loups-garous. One tale follows a rejected suitor who turns to witchcraft in an attempt to carry away the woman he desires.

Oct 3, 2026 7 min

John Houlihan Interview 2026 Bonus

Season 23, Episode 300

Show notes

Oct 2, 2026 20 min

The Night-Doings at "Deadman's" by Ambrose Bierce Bonus

Season 23, Episode 25

Show notes

https://www.amazon.com/stores/DB-Spitzer/author/B0DQFR6HYF Check out this link to buy DB's Books[link]

Chapter

Author

Description

Algernon Blackwood

A traveler encounters a mysterious old man who invites him into a lonely wood said to receive those who are about to die. A quiet, dreamlike ghost story about death, compassion, and the thin boundary between the living and the dead.

Ambrose Bierce

On a freezing night in an abandoned mining camp, a lonely man welcomes a strange visitor and begins recounting the unsettling history of Deadman's Gulch. Bierce mixes ghost-story dread with his characteristic grim humor and irony.

Seven men hide from a terrible plague, drinking beside the body of a dead companion, when an impossible shadow appears among them. A brief, intensely atmospheric meditation on mortality and the inevitability of death.

A visitor to an old estate in Brittany encounters a silent pack of mysterious dogs and discovers the tragic history of the house. Wharton's gothic tale combines an abusive marriage, murder, and supernatural revenge.

Alone in his chemical plant, Asa Gregg records a confession concerning a murder he thought he had successfully concealed. Something inside the factory, however, appears determined to undo both the crime and the laws of nature. Originally published in Weird Tales in 1936.

A young fiddler accepts a job as caretaker of the lonely and reputedly haunted Printz Hall near Chester, Pennsylvania. His night in the abandoned mansion becomes considerably stranger once the music begins.

An ominous portrait hangs in Boston's old Province House and is said to reveal its dreadful face before disasters. The figure is Edward Randolph, remembered by colonial legend as a betrayer of Massachusetts' liberties.

Strange lights, witches, apparitions, and a headless figure haunt the folklore surrounding Swamptown, Rhode Island. Skinner collects several grisly local legends centered on a particularly unsettling human skull.

Introduction. The Fascination of the Ghost Story, by Arthur B. Reeve

Old Detroit legends tell of witches, forbidden bargains, and men transformed into loups-garous. One tale follows a rejected suitor who turns to witchcraft in an attempt to carry away the woman he desires.

Oct 1, 2026 20 min

Grimdark's Grandparents 2: Space Marines(Adeptus Astartes)

Season 23, Episode 2

Show notes

Check out this link to buy DB's Books[link]
Upcoming Episodes Grimdark Grandparents: Warhammer 40,000 and Its Pulp DNA

0. What’s a W.H.40.K? — An introduction to Warhammer 40,000’s immense science-fantasy horror setting, where a corpse-worshipping human empire fights aliens, daemons, ancient machines, and its own terrible history.

1. The Imperium of Man — From Dune, Foundation, Roman decline, and medieval Christendom comes a galactic empire where the future is not progress but a dead civilization kept moving through faith, fear, and paperwork.

2. Space Marines — The Imperium’s iconic super-soldiers combine power armor and military science fiction with crusading knights, Spartan myth, warrior monks, kidnapped children, and the seductive imagery of authoritarian heroism.

3. Astra Militarum / Imperial Guard — Drawing from trench literature, British war comics, Kipling, and future-war fiction, the Guard are ordinary people sent into cosmic horror with little more than courage and a lasgun.

4. Adeptus Mechanicus — Frankenstein, Metropolis, invention pulp, and lost-technology stories meet in a machine cult where science survives, understanding does not, and repairs are performed like religious rites.

5. Adepta Sororitas / Ecclesiarchy — Gothic convents, martyr legends, Joan of Arc, witchfinders, and Hammer horror become armored saints who turn faith, suffering, and flamethrowers into instruments of Imperial power.

6. The Inquisition — The occult detective and witch-hunter become one terrifying Imperial investigator who may uncover the truth only to burn every witness, building, and planet touched by it.

7. Rogue Traders — Planetary romance, colonial adventure fiction, space opera, pirates, and merchant princes combine in explorers licensed to discover strange worlds, trade with them, rob them, or claim them for the Imperium.

8. Adeptus Custodes — Ancient palace guards, sacred kingship, Achilles, and Gilgamesh stand behind the Emperor’s golden companions: philosopher-warriors created to protect a god who is already dead.

9. Adeptus Titanicus / Titan Legions — Giant robots descend from Martian tripods, dreadnoughts, siege engines, golems, and war gods to become walking cathedrals capable of teaching entire cities to kneel.

10. The Horus Heresy — Warhammer’s great betrayal myth draws from Lucifer, Cain and Abel, Arthur and Mordred, Roman civil wars, and fallen-hero stories to explain how the Emperor’s favored son broke the human future from within.

11. Chaos Space Marines — Fallen angels, Byronic rebels, cursed champions, and Milton’s Satan become immortal super-soldiers whose genuine grievances have curdled into rebellion, bitterness, and damnation.

12. Chaos Daemons — Medieval demonology, grimoires, occult pulp, weird fiction, and nightmare cinema become psychic entities made from mortal rage, despair, ambition, obsession, and desire.

13. World Eaters / Khorne — Sword-and-sorcery pulp, berserker sagas, gladiator spectacle, and revenge tragedy create warriors who reduce every political, emotional, and moral problem to an axe blow.

14. Death Guard / Nurgle — Plague literature, danse macabre, zombie films, body horror, and graveyard humor meet in rotting soldiers who have surrendered to decay and discovered that the joke is that they are happy.

15. Thousand Sons / Tzeentch — Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, mummy fiction, occult scholarship, and forbidden-book stories become sorcerers who sought perfect knowledge only to discover that the book was reading them back.

16. Emperor’s Children / Slaanesh — Decadent literature, Gothic aristocrats, glam horror, cursed art, and The Picture of Dorian Gray shape warriors who pursued perfection until beauty became an endlessly hungry mouth.

17. Chaos / Imperial Knights — Haunted castles, ancestral armor, chivalric romance, feudal bloodlines, and giant-robot fiction become seventy-foot war machines carrying generations of family pride, duty, resentment, and curses.

18. Orks — Fantasy orcs, Mad Max, British hooligan comedy, fungus horror, and invasive-species stories combine in a joyful alien ecosystem where killing the enemy may only plant the next war.

19. Tyranids — Alien, The Thing, bug-war fiction, parasite horror, and cosmic naturalism become an extragalactic appetite that does not hate humanity because hatred would interfere with digestion.

20. Genestealer Cults — Body-snatcher films, changeling folklore, secret-cult pulp, family curses, and invasion paranoia create an alien uprising that begins not in the sky but at the dinner table.

21. Necrons — Killer robots and artificial-labor nightmares combine with mummy curses, tomb kings, and cursed archaeology to produce immortal metal dynasties waking from the grave with better weapons than the living.

22. Aeldari / Drukhari — Elves, cruel fairy courts, dying-earth fiction, lost civilizations, decadent aristocrats, and vampire cities become two responses to apocalypse: mourning the fall or continuing the party forever.

23. Night Lords — Batman, slashers, serial killers, Gothic villains, Grand Guignol, and public-execution culture become terror troops who transform punishment into theatre and fear into government.

24. T’au Empire and Leagues of Votann — The T’au combine utopian science fiction, anime mecha, and benevolent imperialism, while the Votann draw from mining frontiers, company towns, clone labor, ancestor cults, and corporate survivalism.

25. [REDACTED] — ▀▀▀ thrillers, ▀▀▀▀▀▀ societies, ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀▀▀, invasion ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀, Dr. ▀▀▀▀▀▀, and ▀▀▀▀▀ mythology become a Space Marine legion so committed to ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ that truth itself is rendered operationally ▀▀▀▀▀▀.

Audio Book Stories

01

02

The Apparition of Mrs. Veal by Daniel Defoe

03

Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book by M. R. James

04

The Haunted and the Haunters by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

05

The Silent Woman by Leopold Kompert

06

Banshees

07

The Man Who Went Too Far by E. F. Benson

08

The Woman's Ghost Story by Algernon Blackwood

09

The Rival Ghosts by Brander Matthews

11

The Damned Thing by Ambrose Bierce

12

The Interval by Vincent O'Sullivan

13

Some Real American Ghosts Part 1

14

Some Real American Ghosts Part 2

PGttCM Season 23 Order(all episodes will be recorded

1. Sinners (2025) August week 4

Story: “The Music of Erich Zann,” H. P. Lovecraft

Music becomes a weapon, a barrier, and an opening into something beyond the human world.
Complete YouTube reading

2. Bride of Frankenstein (1935) September week 1

Story: “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” Nathaniel Hawthorne

A scientist transforms his daughter into something beautiful, deadly, and isolated from ordinary human intimacy. The created woman is treated simultaneously as experiment, daughter, monster, and possible lover.

3. Ready or Not (2019) September week 2

Story: “The Most Dangerous Game,” Richard Connell

Wealthy predators turn the hunting of a human being into sport and tradition.

4. Blade II (2002) September week 3

Story: “The Room in the Tower,” E. F. Benson

A recurring nightmare leads to a room occupied by a ravenous female vampire.
Complete YouTube reading

5. Obsession (2026) September week 4

Story: “The Birth-Mark,” Nathaniel Hawthorne

Love curdles into the conviction that another person must be altered and perfected.
Complete YouTube reading

6. RoboCop (1987) October week 1

Story: “The Man That Was Used Up,” Edgar Allan Poe

A celebrated military hero is gradually revealed to be an assemblage of manufactured replacement parts. Prosthetic reconstruction, militarism, masculine propaganda, and brutal satire.

7. Johnny Mnemonic (1995) October week 2

Story: “A Logic Named Joe,” Murray Leinster

Information technology becomes dangerously helpful, invasive, and impossible to contain.
Complete YouTube audiobook

8. Strange Days (1995) October week 3

Story: “The Crystal Egg,” H. G. Wells

A mysterious device allows its owner to watch another world—and may allow that world to watch him. The voyeurism, addictive looking, and technologically mediated experience.

9. Brainstorm (1983) October week 4

Story: “The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham,” H. G. Wells

A wealthy old scientist finds a way to transfer his consciousness into a young man’s body. It turns recorded experience and technological immortality into an intimate identity nightmare.

10. Burst City (1982) November week 1

Story: “The Machine Stops,” E. M. Forster

A society has surrendered its bodies, relationships, and environment to an enormous technological system.
Complete YouTube reading

11. Neo Tokyo (1987) November week 2

Story: “The City of the Singing Flame,” Clark Ashton Smith

A traveller discovers a magnificent alternate city whose alien music and architecture exert an increasingly irresistible pull.
Complete YouTube reading

12. Total Recall (1990) November week 3

Story: “The Defenders,” Philip K. Dick

Humanity’s understanding of its war and surrounding reality has been deliberately manufactured.

13. Sorry to Bother You (2018) November week 4

Story: “The Business Man,” Edgar Allan Poe

A self-satisfied entrepreneur explains his increasingly violent career as though criminal ingenuity were merely sound business practice.

14. Little Shop of Horrors (1986) December week 1

Story: “The Flowering of the Strange Orchid,” H. G. Wells

A mild collector brings home an exotic plant that proves predatory. Carnivorous botany, human loneliness, and the inability to recognize danger until it is wrapped around your throat.

15. Slither (2006) December week 2

Story: “The Derelict,” William Hope Hodgson

An explorer returns from an ancient ruin carrying something that has taken root inside his body.
Complete YouTube reading

16. Swiss Army Man (2016) December week 3

Story: “The Story of the Inexperienced Ghost,” H. G. Wells

A lonely, ineffectual dead man cannot remember how to leave the living world, and an overconfident living man attempts to help him.

17. Happy Death Day (2017) December week 4

Story: “The Clock That Went Backward,” Edward Page Mitchell

A clock literally carries its characters backwards through time.

18. The Gorge (2025) January week 1

Story: “The People of the Pit,” A. Merritt

An isolated traveller discovers an abyss containing an ancient, inhuman civilization and something that calls irresistibly from below.
Complete YouTube reading

Reality Comes Apart January week 2

19. The Fourth Kind (2009)

Story: “The Hanging Stranger,” Philip K. Dick

An ordinary man notices an impossible event that everyone else accepts, then discovers that his community may no longer be human.

20. Dark City (1998) January week 3

Story: “The Street That Wasn’t There,” Clifford D. Simak and Carl Jacobi

Familiar pieces of a city begin disappearing as reality is quietly revised around its inhabitants.
Complete YouTube reading

21. Stir of Echoes (1999) January week 4

Story: “The Beckoning Fair One,” Oliver Onions

A man living alone becomes increasingly dominated by an unseen female presence whose influence may be supernatural, psychological, or both.

https://www.amazon.com/stores/DB-Spitzer/author/B0DQFR6HYF Check out this link to buy DB's Books[link]

Sep 30, 2026 19 min

The Wood of the Dead by Algernon Blackwood Bonus

Season 23, Episode 24

Show notes

Chapter

Author

Description

Algernon Blackwood

A traveler encounters a mysterious old man who invites him into a lonely wood said to receive those who are about to die. A quiet, dreamlike ghost story about death, compassion, and the thin boundary between the living and the dead.

Ambrose Bierce

On a freezing night in an abandoned mining camp, a lonely man welcomes a strange visitor and begins recounting the unsettling history of Deadman's Gulch. Bierce mixes ghost-story dread with his characteristic grim humor and irony.

Seven men hide from a terrible plague, drinking beside the body of a dead companion, when an impossible shadow appears among them. A brief, intensely atmospheric meditation on mortality and the inevitability of death.

A visitor to an old estate in Brittany encounters a silent pack of mysterious dogs and discovers the tragic history of the house. Wharton's gothic tale combines an abusive marriage, murder, and supernatural revenge.

Alone in his chemical plant, Asa Gregg records a confession concerning a murder he thought he had successfully concealed. Something inside the factory, however, appears determined to undo both the crime and the laws of nature. Originally published in Weird Tales in 1936.

A young fiddler accepts a job as caretaker of the lonely and reputedly haunted Printz Hall near Chester, Pennsylvania. His night in the abandoned mansion becomes considerably stranger once the music begins.

An ominous portrait hangs in Boston's old Province House and is said to reveal its dreadful face before disasters. The figure is Edward Randolph, remembered by colonial legend as a betrayer of Massachusetts' liberties.

Strange lights, witches, apparitions, and a headless figure haunt the folklore surrounding Swamptown, Rhode Island. Skinner collects several grisly local legends centered on a particularly unsettling human skull.

Old Detroit legends tell of witches, forbidden bargains, and men transformed into loups-garous. One tale follows a rejected suitor who turns to witchcraft in an attempt to carry away the woman he desires.

Sep 29, 2026 28 min

Warning from the Stars by Ron Cocking Bonus

Season 23, Episode 23

Show notes

#

Story

Author

Brief description

01

The 4D Doodler

Graph Waldeyer

A researcher’s idle doodling attracts the attention of a fourth-dimensional intelligence, producing increasingly strange and dangerous consequences.

02

Bread Overhead

Fritz Leiber

An experiment in producing lighter bread goes spectacularly wrong, filling the skies with floating loaves and creating a satirical technological crisis.

03

Image of the Gods

Alan E. Nourse

Human colonists resist authoritarian interference from Earth and discover unexpected allies among their planet’s indigenous inhabitants.

04

Martian V.F.W.

G. L. Vandenburg

Giant Martian ants appear at a New York parade claiming to represent extraterrestrial war veterans, but their participation conceals a darker purpose.

05

One Shot

James B. Blish

Intelligence officials investigating a mysterious object in New York Harbor turn to an exceptional gambler when millions of lives depend on one decision.

06

Out Around Rigel

Robert H. Wilson

Two travelers undertake an ambitious interstellar voyage, confronting jealousy, alien dangers, and the devastating consequences of time dilation.

07

Pygmalion’s Spectacles

Stanley G. Weinbaum

An experimental pair of spectacles transports its wearer into an immersive artificial world where simulated experiences become intensely personal.

08

The Repairman

Harry Harrison

An interstellar mechanic must repair a malfunctioning hyperspace beacon concealed within a sacred alien structure.

09

Toy Shop

Harry Harrison

A seemingly impossible toy rocket catches the attention of military researchers and hints at an unexpected scientific breakthrough.

10

Warning from the Stars

Ron Cocking

A message from a supposedly dead scientist reveals extraterrestrial intervention aimed at preventing humanity’s nuclear self-destruction.

Sep 28, 2026 43 min

Toy Shop by Harry Harrison Bonus

Season 23, Episode 22

Show notes