Seasonal Podcast Recommendation: The Lovecraft Investigations

To my great surprise, I've never recommended Julian Simpson's trilogy of Lovecraft reworkings that go under the umbrella title of "The Lovecraft Investigations". They are using the old "fake true mystery podcast" format to mix elements of HPL's original tales, occult history, all kinds of forteana, and certain recurring motifs of Simpson's audioplay work in delightful ways.

But listen for yourself:

Let's start October with some old-timey spookiness.

Featuring Vincent Price and Ida Lupino.

Audiodrama Recommendation: Apocalypse Songs

I more or less stumbled upon this fine, five-part audiodrama from New Zealand that seems to have made little splash even in the world of non-corporate audiodrama in podcast form.

It mixes a lot of elements that are very much catnip to me: the fake documentary format, the traces of a one cassette "outsider artist"-type musician, strange prophecy through music, mental illness, and the weight of the past on people responsible for very little of it; hauntings without ghosts.

It's very well realized too, with mostly sharp and effective writing that never tries to do too much or too little with its material, and a highly effective soundscape, where the sound itself of old tapes becomes rather important.

Plus, the music we hear does actually sound and feel a lot like what it is supposed to be, providing an extra layer of reality to the story.

Old(ish) Time Radio: The Book of Hell

Thanks to podcasts and a lot of creative people professional and amateur, the horror audiodrama (and really, all other kinds as well) have been having something of a well-deserved boom for a couple of years now.

In the 80s, things weren't quite that rosy outside of German cassette audiodrama theoretically made for children that included lots of adaptations of German "Heftromane" (sort of like pulps, but less free in content and format, and very German) as well as tapes based on the Nightmare on Elm Street films that were my first encounter with the franchise.

In Canada, there were three seasons of one of the best horror anthology series ever made, Nightfall.

Just listen to this:

In some regards, it's a rather successful ghost hunt

Because it is that kind of week, let me point any weird fiction friends among my imaginary readers towards Jim Moon's (of Hypnogoria Podcast fame) wonderful adaptation of the classic H.R. Wakefield story, whose content quite clearly demonstrates that media ghost hunting isn't an invention of some Americans in tacky shirts:

Well-calculated and with Necronomicon included

This week in my "whatever takes my fancy" corner, have something rather special, namely a 1945 episode of the great, classic audiodrama show SUSPENSE (bold caps brought to you by DRAMA) adapting Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror".

Apart from being a Lovecraft adaptation having been made decades before the real Lovecraft renaissance, this is also an early example of what I like to call POV horror (you may go with found footage, of course), pretending to be an actual newscast, though a very peculiar one. It's not the first one of its kind, obviously, at least Welles's "War of the Worlds" did this sort of thing earlier and more straight-faced.

Add Ronald Colman (I probably should call him RC) to the mix of HPL, POV and one of the best old time radio shows, and you my kind of catnip.

If you don't already know the adaptation, why not give it a listen here:

Audiodrama, Classics of the Weird Edition