Arts & Culture
With Halloween just around the corner, it’s time to get spooky with my top picks of the very best Halloween podcasts!
By Polly Coleman
If it bleeds, it leads
Hosted by Prof. David Wilson (the world’s leading professor in criminology) and Emilia Fox (Silent Witness), this brand-new podcast delves into the true crime world, investigating and answering our burning questions… How real are police dramas? Why is there a stigma around women who kill? Are men more wired to commit crime? What would motivate someone to accept a contact to kill for just a few hundred pounds? What separates the way you think, from the criminal mind? Listen to never-before-heard fascinating interviews with the police, experts, investigators and the offenders themselves to gain a unique insight into the world of true-crime.
Frequency: Weekly
The No Sleep Podcast
As the sleepless hours tick past brace yourself for… The No Sleep Podcast. A multi-award-winning anthology series, showcasing original horror tales to frighten and disturb. Featuring a cast of talented voice actors, rich atmospheric music and sound effects to enhance the frightening tales. This long-standing fiction podcast (now in its sixteenth season) is a must for spooky story-lovers.
Frequency: Weekly
Welcome to Night Vale
Presented in the style of a fictional radio show giving regular community updates, Welcome to Night Vale reports on the strange events that occur within the fictional desert town of Night Vale. Featuring news announcements, talks about the mysterious lights in the sky and dark hooded figures with unknown powers. The series was created in 2012 by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor and it has over 150 episodes, seven recorded live shows, two novels and four script collections. A lot of the episodes also work as stand-alone short stories, so don’t feel overwhelmed with starting an already-established podcast!
Frequency: Twice a month
The Magnus Archives
Jonathan Sims is both our host and the main character in this eerie horror drama.
The fictional London-based Magnus Institute is dedicated to paranormal research and our host, Jon, is the newly appointed Head Archivist. The podcast is arranged as a series of recorded statements intended for internal paranormal research use within the fictional institute. However, those who end up recording statements tend to lapse into some sort of trance-like state, like they are reliving the event as they narrate it. The massively popular podcast has five seasons containing over two-hundred episodes and receives over four million downloads a month.
Frequency: Weekly
Lore
Award-winning, critically acclaimed podcast Lore is a must for fans of scary stories! Each episode tells a terrifyingly true tale in a ‘sitting around a campfire’ style format. Episodes range in lengths from 17 to 45 minutes and since it started in 2015, the podcast has had over 310 million listens. Sometimes the truth is more frightening than fiction…
Frequency: Every other Monday
