MAG - Pod UK Horror Panel

Hi everyone, Alex here, with a short bit of context ahead of today’s episode. This panel on audio in horror was recorded live in late 2019 at the Pod UK Festival, with raw audio kindly provided by Pod UK.

That’s all for now. We hope you enjoy the episode.

[Music]

Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the horror panel. um this is less a panel, more a cartographic expedition, within which myself and my elite colleagues over here will attempt to map for you some of the more interesting and innovative elements of modern podcast audio horror. And the best possible thing we can do at the top of every doomed expedition is, of course, take the photo. You know, the one where people get crossed out is the polar bear see them

[Laughter]

see, same wavelength. Um, so what we’re going to start off with is introductions, and I’ll have all of us explain who we are and what we do and what kind of shows we work on. I’ll start. I’m Alasdair, your moderator for this evening. Uh, I co-own the Escape Artist Podcast Network, along with my partner Margaret Kenner. We produce four shows: Escape Pod, which does science fiction; PseudoPod, which does horror; Cast of Wonders, which does YA; and PodCastle, that does fantasy. I host PseudoPod the horror show for a frankly horrifying amount of time, seriously, I don’t want to think about it. I think there’s a – I think I’m on the Bayeux Tapestry recording, episode 49. In addition to all of that, I also write about the genre a fair amount, and I’ve turned up in several other voice acting capacities – most recently, uh, as Peter Lukas, who is the unsung hero of the Magnus Archives and I’m on film I’m on film doing this song percy who’s queen um who if everyone had listened to nothing bad would have happened not that anything bad happens at the end of the magna soccer season four and speaking of the Magnus Archives, Alex.

Hi, um, so I’m the CEO of Rusty Quill Limited, which is a podcast production company and podcast network. And we generate a large number of shows, the most relevant of which to this panel is called Magnus Archives, which is a horror series that pretends to be an anthology but it’s not. Um, and basically I think that’s as succinct as I can really get, so I’ll hand over.

Hi, I’m Gemma, I’m the CEO of nothing. Um, I write for – I write for a number of horror podcasts. I write for the NoSleep Podcast, um, I co-write and voice act in a horror comedy show starring Kate Siegel, called Calling Darkness. I am also in Season 2 of Shadows at the Door, which Mr Ault is involved in, and various other scary spooky shows hiding on the Internet. Um, I’m also a writer, I write books and novels and various other things. So that’s me, this is David.

Thank you very much. Yeah, as Gemma said, I am David, uh, David Ault. I am a voice actor in the NoSleep Podcast. Uh, just 48 hours ago came back off tour for – the European tour – so I don’t quite know what day it is or where I am. Uh, but I’m also the co-host of Shadows at the Door with Mr Mark Nixon here, um, and we do ghost stories. M.R. James style horror, with old, uh, stuff that has been adapted and new stuff from writers, like, general moore. Um, I’m also on The White Vault and various other things. So, uh, yes, that’s right. I’m also Byron in the Byron Chronicles, which has been going since 2006. It’s me. I know, yes, I was fresh out of university and this American guy said, “Would you like a podcast?” Yes, that’s free? Oh, yeah!

[Laughter]

then they get you hooked oh we’re gonna be fine they’re all free. So this is your elite team of completely doomed scientists who are going to walk up to the big squamous rugos blob of horror, poke it, and see what happens. And the the first question I want to ask everybody – and I’m going to start the other end and work back this time – is what brings you to genre – to horror as a genre in particular.

Hoo. I think I arrived at horror via sci-fi. Probably one of the reasons I got into voice acting all those many, many years ago was Doctor Who. Um, I was, it was in the, the wilderness years between 1989 and 2005, where there was no Doctor Who on TV

it’s a lot of things it was it was a long long time um and the BBC started doing audio dramas of, uh, with the old Doctors, and I, I really enjoyed those. And I thought, “Oh, are there any other people doing Doctor audio dramas?” Found some people online, uh, listened to their work, listened to others. And then I’ve always liked ghost stories, so yes I got involved with darker projects then uh pendant audio and basically it’s sort of gone from there. But it’s a deep-seated love of ghost stories and, uh, coming in via sci-fi.

Um, I, I think I came to horror, probably, via fantasy first. I’m a – my first in biding love is fantasy. Um, I grew up on a diet of Robert Jordan and the Wheel of Time and the Point Horror books as well when I was a teenager, and I’ve just always been – as a writer in particular, I’m drawn to making up things because you don’t have to follow the rules, so. Which is why I will never write a procedural crime drama, because you have to know stuff and everything has to be based in an element of truth, and with horror you can pretty much invent your own landscape, invent your own world. So yeah, that’s me. Um, I mostly came to horror through convenience.

that is the single most used

Okay, so, um, for me and horror, I, I suppose I have most experience on the sci-fi side as well, actually, but in terms of horror as as a medium, it is one that’s interested me because I think it simultaneously – people think it’s the easiest one to get into because, you know, it’s just like, are the tropes they’re there you do you do the tropes and you’ve done a horror. But at the same time, it also leaves you very little wiggle room between good horror and hot garbage, which I quite like that – like operating in that space. But I have recently been made aware that the things I make that aren’t horror are still nightmare fuel, and – which is news to me, I wasn’t aware that’s a thing. Now I know, and so as a result I can, I can work with that.

Um, I, I came to horror in a slightly weird part one very similar to David’s, in many ways, in that most of my entry point was science fiction, coupled with the fact that I was, from a relatively young age, uh, perpetrating an elaborate genetic con. Um, I was about six – that was, about six foot – by the time I was 13, and my voice broke really early. And that was useful, especially in a small rural community with a single-screen cinema and the nice old lady behind the counter who at no appointment “You’re 18, aren’t you, sonny?” “Yes.” And she just kind of assumed, and so I, I saw a frankly ridiculous amount of movies I had no business seeing at least five years early, and it left marks in very much a good way. Horror, it horribly traumatizes you, but in a good way.

This explains so much.

Oh, and it’s also partially Paul Daniels’s fault. Uh, those of you who don’t know, Paul Daniels was kind of the, the avatar of TV stage magic in the UK for a really long time. And he is one half of a very curious binary experiment with horror that the BBC carried out and which went very well, and as a result they were terrified and never did it again.

Um, was this Wizbit?

Yeah. Wizbit is is the thing of the demon realms and not to be brought forth like youtube and we’re not sorry we’re not sorry. Okay, um, Paul Daniels famously won – famously did a Halloween special in the very early 1990s, where he, he finished with an elaborate escape which was supposed to be him getting out of an Iron Maiden, which is not him having the band fired at him at high velocity, but rather a very large spiky cupboard which shot him and apparently killed him, and they just didn’t mention anything about it for, like, two hours. And of course, being terribly British, my family – I watched this, I went fairly certainly we’ve just seen a man die. Do you want a cup of tea? And, and this, this landed in a very similar kind of period of time to Ghostwatch. Ghostwatch, for those of you who haven’t seen it, is terrifying. Terrifying. And it’s terrifying in an insidious and really evil way. It is presented as a terrible early 90s live TV event, it’s presented by the exact people you think would present a terrible early 1990s live TV event, and then about half an hour in, very slowly, it starts to go to hell. And the final sequence, which involves these words in various stages of combination – TV studio, flames, demonic voice, talk show host – seed themselves into my brain. So the whole time I’m going along, obviously I’m a science fiction guy because I like spaceships and nuns from hell, you know, and PseudoPod has finally let me realize that I was a horror guy wearing a spacey and it’s kind of where I am

So I’m going to jump around a little bit in in order and ask Gemma my next question, uh, which is: what keeps you in horror?

I think the license to be as imaginative as you can. You can do anything with horror, and I love that, and – and I was talking to somebody, um, at the stand earlier on today. So my jam is, um, people-based horror. I write about people first and foremost, and my main concern when I sit down and write anything is how the character’s feeling. What are their main motivations, how do they go through their lives and why, and the decisions and the stories grow up around the people and sometimes the horror is almost incidental. It’s something that happens around them. But with horror, you can just – it’s just free license to let your imagination run, right, and I think that’s what keeps me there. And I do dip into sci-fi, and I do dip into the more kind of psychological thriller side of things, but I like ghosts and ghoulies and monsters and things that go bump in the night because you can just let your imagination go. And, yeah, that keeps me, keeps me firmly grounded.

Absolutely. Well everything that Gemma just said, um, but also I, the thing with, uh, horror and especially with ghost stories, is that they are timeless. They, they don’t have – they can be absolutely present-day, but they can be so yeah timeless which I don’t need to explain the word, um, but that’s – but horror and especially audio horror, uh, I, I love the audio medium simply because it leaves all of the details to your imagination. It is all there, and you are painting your own pictures and you can scare yourself as much as you want to with, uh, what you’re listening to, or if it’s on a book, what you’re, what you’re reading. And so that that’s, that’s what I like it. It becomes a lot more personal to you as the, as the the devourer of the horror if you like that’s that’s my yeah yeah

for me I’m gonna give a sort of shorter term answer, which is that for reasons beyond my understanding, but I’m happy to know, uh, cosmic horror is currently basically getting in vogue. Which is phenomenally useful but what that also means is – oh God Alex has just had a br I had a brain drop from like 10 years ago okay cool so we have emergent culture we have dominant culture and we have residual culture as Lovecraftian horror shifts from emergent to dominant one is left wondering what is emergent next? now what I’m getting at is yeah I just channeled a 10-year younger version of me who was a pompous art I’m very intimidated so what what is interesting to me is we all know now what’s currently interesting what’s kind of in vogue and what’s going there but for horror we are due something new and the same way that sort of the, the zombie trope came in and then kind of faded and so on we are now due one and a lot of the time what is due next is defined by what leaves public domain because that is what allows uh sorry what enters public domain because it allows experimentation within the space so it’s like okay cool this thing’s become public domain it’s fair game and in podcasting what we are as an industry is one enormous playground where people get to make things that no one in their right mind would ever option for anything else right up until it’s successful and go oh yes we were definitely thinking about that oh yes yes but what that means is would you right now we are due a big new thing and I don’t know what it is for horror combined with an industry that’s still able to just suddenly have ten thousand people go I think it’s this nine thousand to be wrong and everyone to still be having a good time and not care you know like that’s why I’m here right now if you know what I mean I’m i’m in horror because I really like jeff seeing with witness especially cultural ones I firmly believe horror is one of the most fundamentally hopeful genres of fiction there is and it’s hopeful I think in two very different ways there is the shade and freud element which is well at least that’s not happening to me yes and there’s also the survival element and I mean I this this is this is kind of an easy get but I I think an awful lot about cabin in the woods and about the moral dilemma that breaks down very starkly in the final 15 minutes of that and where various characters land and that idea that kind of visceral interaction with ethics is something which I think horror does I wouldn’t say no other type no other genre does it because I know lots of other people in those genres and I know where I live um but I think horror engages with it in a way that very few others do and I I really respond to that and i’ve in my dark days i’ve found tremendous strength in horror stories I think yeah to add to that I think for me personally as well I have been very open about mental health issues and my own experiences with them and I feel like horror is a safe space a safe space to explore that and I think a lot of horror fans are drawn to the genre for that reason they find actually scary stories quite comforting for their anxiety issues I know I do but also you can there is a lot of horror to be found in the everyday and in your own struggles and in your own story so I think that also keeps me in the genre because I write about those things those things interest me and I explore my own issues through the things that I write so yeah I think you’re yeah I I want to pick up something which alex mentioned which is the idea of the thing that’s coming um but two reasons firstly because my favorite definition of horror is william friedkins one of her true horror is seeing something approach and secondly because I’m curious it ties very neatly to one of the things I wanted to talk about which is why do we think horror audience is growing because it it is uh i’d be happy to take a stand please do um I take several um I think certainly one element is picking up on what gemma was just saying which is that horror is a very useful space for you to literalize uh issues both of the time and of a personal nature and stab them repeatedly and by which I mean yeah it’s really useful to have a space where allegory is not only encouraged but accepted and a bloody useful tool but what that means is shocker and in times of uncertainty horror tends to do well and it’s because what you are doing is at least what you can do this is not the only answer by any means is you can take the big questions you know are we all doomed maybe bit smaller um you know like um questions about economy questions about mental health genuinely anything that’s really gnawing at people the thing that you wake up in the morning and you have that thought again and go and then what it does is it allows you to transcribe that onto a landscape that has a a set of rules that you can navigate don’t open the door if you open the door you deserve it come on um don’t split up but my point is that these are knowable rules which help you codify this this weird scary idea that you’ve got into something that you can navigate because we all know how stories work so when a character is navigating that space you’re navigating it with them and then the additional thing is it makes them conquerable like um alice was saying about survivable is if your world is trying to kill your characters and your world is an enough is an allegory for whatever you want to explore if your character surviving that you’re taking that journey with them you’re surviving the thing you’re afraid of um I should stress that’s not the be all and end all of horror in fact that’s often not the way that I personally engage with horror but I think sort of culturally speaking that probably strikes a note with a decent number of people cool why are you people jumping I’m just trying to think of a way of phrasing it I I want to use the term humanist but I’m not sure that’s the right expression to me but it’s it’s the idea that um you know we’re all human and there are certain things in our lives that drive us from from the day we’re born to the day that we cease to be and they’re quite basic things and I think and in times of hardship for example you know been having a bit of a shitty time in this country lately and and people revert back to those humanist principles as things to sort of comfort themselves with I do if that makes does that make sense i’ve got I’m gabbling I gabble yeah it’s yeah and it’s it’s about it’s about something that you can relate to I think as a reader or a listener or a watcher or a consumer of any kind of media media and I think the popularity increases particularly in conjunction with things like netflix streaming and and looking for content and they want so much content that we’re now seeing much more prevalence with horror on things like tv and I think that that goes hand in hand with podcasting and everything else so I feel like it’s a a human driven thing like we want to watch and listen and consume things that remind us of ourselves is that which sci-fi perhaps you don’t it’s it’s grander isn’t it the scale is grander with sci-fi it’s almost the payoff between pragmatism and realism you said that much more efficiently without you that took me ten minutes of going around the houses and you got there in like one second and I think it also it also gives people control over um what is what is going on in in the horror uh because as we’ve been saying we’ve not been having a fun time recently anywhere in the world really um and that can be very it can give a lot of people a lot of anxiety about especially where you you can’t do anything about it we’re fed [Music] uh news with with a a theme tune which is like a heartbeat and we’re conditioned to on to take in this news and and be filled with this horror that is happening out there and we can’t do anything about it we’re given the option once every well two years for the last four years but once every five years to even have a go at doing something and that puts us in a really it’s a bind isn’t it it is it’s it’s horribly I kind of helpless place so having the opportunity either to to write horror and externalize or to watch it and go along with it but also be able to stop it yeah gives us that control over over some aspect of this emotional stimulus absolutely absolutely um yeah those are all amazingly great answers I’m actually just letting all of that sink in for for a second all of this seems to be building up to something which we’ve all touched on which is the sense of there is something coming next in the field and I’m curious before we get into the kind of nitty-gritty of the logistics of voice acting and still and kind of soliciting work and script writing and being an arch lich nemesis genius child and all of that um what do we think is next for the field I think you’ll see more genre blending I think so for example cosmic horror folk horror cosmic folk horror that kind of genre crossover that’s the answer coming soon from rusty quill this is copyrighted now to me um but you know like I think people are getting much more adventurous and also unique ideas are kind of few and far between now in the field there’s no such thing as a unique idea everything’s been done before that’s why we have tropes and tropes are enjoyable for that reason and we’ll be getting to them yeah but uh you can do uh having you take on an old-fashioned trope and one of the ways of doing that is by blending the genre and I think that’s when we’ll go I think we’ll see a lot more crossover between like I said those kind of sub genres if that makes sense I’m certainly thinking armageddon just in general just as general yeah and possibly also in fiction and also yes possibly um yeah I I think that the with with films like midsummer and uh what was the other one hereditary that’s the one uh sort of bringing back wicker man style id yeah i’d go along with the folk horror but I’m just thinking what’s in what’s out there in the world today how can that be reflected because it was about 10 years ago that there was that huge swell of um like weather films then suddenly everything was being destroyed by cold or wind or tornadoes or something and there’s just a huge swell at the time and and I’m just yeah as we look at the world today I think probably more personal horror plague stories plague stories but uh yeah I think personal slash folk slash slash but everything cycles as well yeah cycle and you you’ll have like david said you’ll have a spate of disaster movies and then a spate of something else disaster I think we’ll all just go through the various cycles and then come back to slashes probably in about 10 years time if you’re talking movies yeah there is there is one thing i’ve seen a little bit of evidence for and I think this would be fascinating which is this might we might actually be in the time period where um lovecraft is successfully contextualized his corpse separated from its bones those bones salted and buried in multiple locations across the earth western race again um we are a couple of weeks out I think from the release of a movie adaptation of the color out of space which is one of the genuinely very good lovecraft stories directed by richard stanley who directed hardware which is a film which feels like you have contracted a fever while you’re watching it um and starring nicholas cage [Music] we we might be off to the races here my friends uh all all joking aside there are multiple projects we seem to be approaching lovecraft in a in a very kind of clear ride or in gay display wild eyed and hasn’t slept for two weeks which are engaging with the very negative elements of his past and his beliefs and finding something positive that they can tear off those bits to get to and I would as one of those core frustrations of this field I I often find is that it’s its tendency to feel the very strong gravitational pull of lovecraft in particular and I I like new things I I like things which have been created by people who don’t look like they could conceivably be my brother or the other uncle that we really don’t like to talk to I like old stuff as well I just like new things a lot too and I would be really interested I’m very hopeful to see the field kind of go in that direction I think that’s a good point as well to mention representation in horror yes um and horror diversifying through for example women in horror much more obvious movement now of women writing horror doing very well um and all sorts of different diverse voices latinx horror the full works and if you hang out on twitter at all you’ll see various different hashtags and things trending and I think that will influence the genre as well hugely as we move forward and even better because there’s always a tendency with with um foreign language material to assume it’s terribly worthy and it’s not it’s all there are just as many greasy cheeseburgers with foreign language subtitles on them as there aren’t there’s a netflix show called diableros which is literally supernatural just in mexico and is exactly as much fun as that sounds so there’s so much great stuff out there and one of the upsides of the late stage capitalist consumer culture we are all trapped in is it’s much easier to get to so yeah if I may I know we want to move on but you know me I can’t show up um I think with at the risk of sounding like I’m trying to devalue horror I’m not that there is a reactionary element to horror as well which is one of the ways that you can see the shape of things to come in terms of horror is you look at the way of the shape of yeah what’s what’s big at the moment and horror is going to deliberately try and do something different to that or underwhelm that or break it apart into little bits so take a look around you what what you’re seeing a lot of at the moment what’s that disney owns the world and it’s all superheroes as far as the eye can see my instincts say that as much as I would love a brand new monster it’s not gonna happen that’s not the way it works but what we’re realistically I think you’re gonna start seeing is the more that we lean into this homogenized model of storytelling where um people rejected stuff like the dark universe you know the tom cruise one where basically they were cool we’ll make horror the way that we make all the other stuff that we make and everyone nope hate it don’t do that and I think that as a result if you just take whatever’s there an inverter you’re at least gonna start getting the shape of things I think which means that I totally agree with you in that I think you’re gonna start seeing probably a schism if I’m honest where I think you’re going to see a lot of people still pushing for the huge scale like you know I sneezed in the world ended explore um but also that real nitty gritty grounded focused one and bringing in some of the the more older styles like you said things coming back into circle where it’s like it is a very tight family drama where one of the characters was dead all along or whatever my point being that it’s far more focused rather than the huge sprawling stuff which is everywhere all the time I think less so perhaps with podcasting though and with audio drama you you have much more uh diverse material that tends to reach your ears before things reach your eyes on the screen that makes sense yeah definitely and further to that I’m curious as to what tropes in audio in audio horror make the panel kind of sit up and pay attention audio specifically audio specifically well I mean from my perspective probably from david’s we we are no sleep people and we we are big lovers of the creepypasta so creepypasta trope I guess is a trope explain that just in case any of your audience don’t um so for anybody that doesn’t know what creepypastas are they’re short internet-based stories um and the no-sleep podcast in particular started by adapting uh the subreddit so there’s a subreddit with a load of very short creepy stories written by whoever wanted to upload one and it grew from there so I think um from my perspective I am very fond of a creepypasta I’m fond of a campfire story and I think that is a trope that will never die um and you can see it with the multitude of youtube channels dedicated to it hundreds of podcasts out there that all do that kind of let’s tell a scary story around the campfire it’s a gleeful refusal to contextualize it’s just here is a horrible thing that’s happened yeah the end yep pretty much yeah and it’s usually first person as well so I went to the store and somebody chopped my head off the end and it’s like and that’s that’s actually really enjoyable because you can relate to it and it’s very easy and quick to digest and and you can have fun with it so I think that’s my favorite that was was that the question my favorite trait yeah there we go I got that on the flip side uh the long form claustrophobic atmospheric slow burn uh ghost story that or horror that builds up over time uh which is definitely the jamesian style of shadows at the door that we enjoy but the white vault and things like that is is a very claustrophobic slow but it’s a bit like the thing but even longer so that that’s that’s one of the things the long thing yes [Laughter] we’re being filmed gemma [Laughter] so yes that’s um I was actually just about to say I’m really glad you brought that up [Laughter] come again maybe later um I’m getting hot here it’s been a long day there’s actually a new version of the thing being is that really yeah another name which means one of two things it will either be the equivalent of a three-minute guitar solo which is what really good bluehouse movies tend to be or it’ll be the equivalent of three minutes of lift music guitar solo which is what the other bloomhouse movies tend to be um very skeptical okay okay uh so tropes in audio that okay here’s one that I I personally like playing to type a little bit which is on the sound design side so let’s go let’s go into the audio bit hard I really like so I don’t it’s easy to say why I don’t like it then come back from there so what I don’t like is grossly overproduced you know I went up to the door I stepped across the floor it’s like great but fabulous you found a foley kit cool sorry me just there are no specific culprits I have to mine there but all I mean though is that people who feel that you know it tends to come with jump scares you know you know open the door and there’s a monster back I like a good jump scare see I don’t especially with audio but I like like art force you know when you’re okay I don’t what I don’t like is you know welcome to the black oh yeah scare me like one of your french girls but what I do like a lot is when people put the effort in and make something very calm very measured very grounded and they treat the audio the same way that you treat the actual horror content itself which is the audio is perfectly normal in every way apart from this one little thing weird thing and as this noise hypothetically yeah and as the story progresses that one weird thing grows more prevalent much like the ghost in the room you know the mr james thing if you take the thing in the background you slowly make the background overwhelm the foreground that in sound I love it where I listen to something and go that sounds kind of real and then I forget that I’m listening to horror for at least 15 minutes and then stuff gets weird and I realized it was weird for the last 10 minutes that’s what I like I think but that’s a very me it’s a answer one um I I mean in in terms of kind of horror tropes that that excited me that any of you who were in your audience this morning know that any story which involves letters a undersea monster I’m dying happy frankly um in terms of stuff which uh audio drama or her podcasts do very well um honestly everything that people on this panel produce has something in it which I really really respond to no sleep’s wonderful ability to not only commit to creepy pastors and aesthetic as an approach and the way that they use that to filter the lens of old-school 1950s ec horror comics you know where again it’s just that here’s a horrible thing can we stop it no oh that was the shoe at 20 20. that’s your takeaway for this panel uh the white vault which is genuinely one of the best slow burn horror stories i’ve ever encountered where you get to the end of the first season and go I’m terrified five things have happened but I’m terrified it’s an amazing show calling darkness which yeah we kind of take all of those tropes and gleefully stuff them into every single episode as many as we can get in so that we can make fun of them you have a self-aware narrator as well we do have as a kid who grew up watching danger mouse self-aware narrators are are here for me they’re just so great [Music] did you never see the old school danger I do it’s just of all the choices we don’t have time to explain how danger mouse is an archetypal piece of late 20th century horror leave it with me uh also emma james I mean I I know I was busting an old dead white guys earlier well lovecraft because lovecraft’s scream um but emma yeah emma james is if you’re gonna if you’re gonna do horror stories do I mr james for ghost stories from do ammo james for god’s sake because he wrote hundreds of them and they’re all great you know and those those four shows and the one I do because I also do a horror show uh do a really really good job of kind of exploiting some of the really interesting and positive elements of the field and doing in fun and very and varied ways and I mean I if you don’t if there are any of these shows that you don’t listen to and you’re remotely interested in the field you really should because you’ll find something incredibly different to what you already encounter and some of it you’ll hate and some of it will lead you down roads you never thought you’d go down and you’ll find out much more about your tastes and I love that stuff as a journalist and as a podcaster it’s an endlessly positive experience for me and that leads me on to one of my last questions which is I’m going to put my panel on the spot a little spot a little bit here and ask them to talk about one or two of the shows they listen to but not all of them and why they like them and mr Newall has thinking finger which leads me to believe he’s imminent so oh no don’t mind me okay audio specifically ideally audio specifically and horror specific wow uh horror specific if possible if we could stick to what if if we could stick to audio drama it’s kind of the outer boundary that would be great oh and we’re going to do questions throughout the last 10 15 minutes if anyone has it I was a big black tapes fan before anything else so black tapes was a long form single story and you can really and every episode had a new layer and a new scary element to it we won’t talk about the ending but we will talk about the fact that they re-released the last series uh and renamed the last episode the mid-season finale so there is hope there’s more of it yeah there’s like six more yeah are they out now yeah they dropped it basically happy days um so I I mean I i’ve listened to so many podcasts it’s impossible for me to talk about all of them but um I’m a huge no-sleep podcast fan actually like I write for the show but I I was a fan first and foremost and there’s thousands of hours of content that I weighed through I listened to shadows at the door um I listen to the white vault I listen to magnus I listen to pseudopod I listen to pretty much all those names that you know and love I also a non-horror one which really influences me which I know we’re not supposed to talk about is a little show by ian chilag called everything is alive which is a series of interviews with inanimate objects and the first episode is about a can of coke called louie and his main desire in life is to be drunk he’s been kept in the back of the cupboard for 20 years or something and it’s the most existential stuff I think i’ve ever listened to and actually I like to diversify because I think horror should be informed by different genres and stuff as well so that’s me getting myself out of the way I think I have like 1.1 bear with me on this one follow me um so for the one it’s an easy one although it feels like a try answer for a panel which is um pseudopod because I was listening to pseudopods before i’d ever made anything um and pseudopod does one thing specifically really really well better than anyone which is curation specifically and what that means is if you’re interested in the field you can just tune in and pick a random smorgasbord of the pseudopod stories and go that’s interesting i’ve not seen that I know that I know that oh what’s that but my point is is that it is someone going out there and going you should see this you should see this it’s like having your own dedicated personal librarian for the genre that’s cool I liked that I also enjoy making aleister awkward so I will continue um but it is what’s useful is because of the very nature of the the format that anthology of shorter fictions and the occasional slightly longer it exposes you to far more very quickly uh so if I’m being brutally honest in a way he doesn’t know I learned horror from him and pseudopod the point yeah the trick is to look this way and my my point one is going to be one where I think people would be shocked to notice of me I found the very initial stages of welcome to night vale very interesting and I think as it progressed as any project does when it progresses over a certain length of time it begins to um what’s the word uh like I’m trying to say it in a way that doesn’t sound horrible like fossil light that’s not all right thank you yeah what it does is it goes this works so that comes up again and then that comes up again but the longer that you run you run out of options unless you grab two things smash them together and hope that something comes out but very early night vale where it didn’t really know what it wanted to be yet tried a far more interesting line for me and it took some real hard turns so I was like I’m happy I’m happy I’m happy everything’s terrible and it was just like yeah whoa especially genuinely like the first five or so genuinely I was like oh what are you excellent and there was a british version of that called gallo tree welcome to tree which is still going now but it’s it is the british version of night vale it certainly started that way uh I had to get my ipod out just to look through my podcast list and the one that i’ve i’ve sort of zoned in on is called down below the reservoir which is a good choice it’s beautiful it is horror and poetry smashed together with a gorgeous irish brogue so it’s it is the most poetic podcast that does horror so that’s that that would be my my suggestion the caledonian gothic was similar for for the scots um but down below the reservoir was would actually would absolutely be my my choice um just having looked through unseen hour which is horror plus the goon show which is fantastic um yeah darkest night because darkest night was brilliant um yeah blah blah blah hidden frequencies which is uh kind of yeah uh that’s oh what is it yes it’s mick but what what’s the oh it’s yeah the hidden tv versions like to highlight zones twilight zone yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah excellent I I have a couple um there are two produced by the same company uh with this one named zoom doom uh one is a show called mirrors which is initially a ghost story and it’s a ghost story set in three different time periods with the 1960s 2080 and 2019 with three different women being haunted by the identical ghosts and the second season does one of the best jobs of unpacking and exploring and rebuilding a premise i’ve ever encountered it’s extraordinarily good and zoom doom have this incredible capability to take a very simple premise and do unbelievable stuff with it the other show is a thing called the six disappearances of ella mcrae and it’s about um a young woman on a family holiday and she steps they go out for a hike she steps up onto a rock and she dies or she disappears or suddenly they’re in a desert and she’s walked off or she’s abducted by someone or suddenly they’re in a new york street and she’s run over and killed and six people witnessed her disappear at the same time none of them can agree on what happened and it is the closest to a modern version of picnic at hanging rock I have ever encountered it has that monolithic sense of something completely supernatural and alien just under the surface and I really respond to that there’s also a show which i’ve been frantically googling for the last five minutes and maddeningly that I can’t remember the name of i’ll i’ll put it on on my twitter feed and hashtag it with the the hashtag so hopefully you folks can find it which is um a canadian series about a small town with a local monster oh is that blackwood I believe it might be yeah now I listened to that that’s really very good um super production quality oh god yeah and again just unpacks itself so beautiful yeah really very nice it’s a tale of local teenage journalists kind of exploring the local monster yes um and it’s done brilliantly but I don’t actually think there’s a second series I’m not sure I will dig in because I might give you another one as well and we’ll we’ll put on the feed um I would like to thank my incredible panel for being as exactly as erudite and articulate and perceptive as I knew they would be and we’re going to throw the floor open to questions if for those of you who don’t know this is a throwable microphone it’s really hard and heavy it’s squishy and uh I I cover these things quite openly who would like to ask your question um I don’t do horror like my family my family were genuinely when I said oh I’m listening to the magnus archives my family went what’s that and I said it’s a horror podcast and they all went who are you and what have you done with kyle so what what do you think because because i’ve spoken to other people as well and they don’t they they don’t do they don’t touch like movies or tv that is horror but they found that they’ve really enjoyed things like magnus archives and then pseudopoly and other horror podcasts do you think do you think that there’s anything that in particular brings people into this specific way of of presenting horror or uh the number of people that have said that they fall asleep listening to the no sleep podcast is amazing even I fall asleep listening to the no sleep podcast it can be very chilly it’s very good exactly and and part of what you were saying earlier alex about um uh about the the audio production not being too um sort of smash or or too jarring it’s it’s basically like going back to childhood and um and having a story being read to you as as you go to sleep but um yeah that it was just amusing that I think there’s a lot to be said for how much control you have as a listener and I think when you’re watching a film where you’re in a movie a cinema watching a movie there are no trigger warnings there is no respect for your particular personal traumas or any of that you’re either in there or you’re not with with podcasting with audio drama you can choose to engage on whatever level you wish and I think a lot of people are able to access and consume horror uh in audio format more comfortably than they can in other mediums if that makes sense I think I also think the community the audio community cares a lot more about those sorts of things I know when we we do calling darkness um we we have a an intro that sort of states that there are some certain themes it’s a comedy show but there are still themes that you might not want to engage with and I think as a listener you should have as much control as you you need so that you enjoy what you’re doing instead of you know feeling unnecessarily unsettled or upset I think combined with that as well is he’s been brought up a few times today which is the podcasting is a medium is probably one of the most intimate entertainment products you can really engage with because it’s happening yeah um so as a result building what you just said what you have is control of the situation so you can bail take a break or skip chunks and it’ll be fine combined with the most one of the most immediate ways to engage in the genre and I think there’s some interesting stuff being done in vr in fairness which hits the same boat where you can just go nope i’ll go back to it and it’s still immediate but I think podcasting does that in a way that is doesn’t require an outlay of you know four thousand pounds um and I think it like a combination of those factors certainly make it a lot more accessible yeah i’d like to build on all all the other stuff the panelists have said and that in as well the fact that podcasting is there’s always a kind of very pleasingly subversive element to listening to a podcast because it’s both intimate and passive you can be doing something else as well and more than once with with certain shows i’ve got to not sure like this I’m going to take headphones off and concentrate on the washing up yeah and it becomes a as everyone said the control is very much in your hands all the way through I really dig that I think there’s also an element because it is uniquely visual in your own body does your own mind provide its own filter mechanism whereby the visual uh build et cetera you get shock horror study stability something that’s possibly a world and the kind of thing that you you know it’s being imposed upon you rather than you drawing it from within your own experience and it brings its own protections it hits it gives you that level of protection to the point you love all right just at the edge where you’re as uncomfortable as you want to be the volume control is always in your hand it’s kind of great who’s next um you said earlier about horror being kind of uh getting involved with other genres do you think in terms of audio drama there’s a chance that other mediums within the genre will kind of get involved like stuff like um rpg podcasts and like improv do you think there’s a chance obviously there’s a lot of uh horror elements in those especially obstacle gaming I guarantee I guarantee somebody is out there making that show right now who is or there’s I am aware I’m aware of at least one podcasting is so accessible it really really is you need a room full of friends or you can be a loan operator you need a halfway decent mic access to bip software as a starting point I’m not saying that those are the things that you should stay with throughout your podcasting career but it’s incredibly accessible it’s a lot easier to make a podcast than it is to go off and write a book trust me I know or to make a movie you know in terms of initial outlay and how you can teach yourself to do things so I guarantee yes there will be it’s because it’s so much more accessible it’s so much easier to experiment with those other mediums and and yeah there’s got to be at least 10 of those out there now though to play devil’s advocate on the flip side of the coin there is an aspect to consider which is I’m not a fan of horror okay cool so that means that let’s let’s assume I am not a fan of horror you’re not gonna listen to this thing I am not a fan of gaming therefore you’re not gonna listen to this thing the danger that always comes with the genre blend is the dream is oh the fans of this will engage with the fans of this great there is a dark side to that which is that your horror fans don’t like gaming so they don’t listen and you gave me fans they don’t like horror so they don’t listen and then you’re left with gary and gary it’s lovely you know the the joy of podcasting is not everyone has to like it if you want to make a podcast for gary then go knock it out that’s how you want gary willa gary forever because you made the perfect show as well right nobody makes a podcast to make money or be famous come on that’s like that’s right so you make it because you love it you make it because it’s a passion project and that’s why you should pretty much do everything creative I think and so if you want to make that super niche thing then you know somebody will make it and yeah yes is the answer if no one in this room is using the term hat using the hashtag justiceforgary [Laughter] poor gary um so the bbc have belatedly got into horror outcasts have you listened to the case of child sex award and the whispering darkness and if so what did you think of them I i’ve listened to casey charles dexter ward and I really liked it um like I was saying earlier my my kind of entry level with with lovecraft is are you doing something strange with it which would probably have pissed him off and I I really liked its willingness to completely engage with a very modern storytelling framework and to with the kind of weird and lumpy bits of the story so yeah my initial thing was oh it’s it’s charles dick’s award again great and then I listened to it was very pleasantly surprised so yeah I really dug that I I very much enjoyed it uh but I also thought we’ve been doing this for years yeah I haven’t and I think my I’m so invested in indie podcasting and in um yeah independent producers and genres that I I I consume so many podcasts that it’s difficult sometimes to to go to the more commercially does that make sense like yeah I have to confess I also haven’t listened to it but not for any reason beyond I didn’t get around to listening to it and I’m quite disorganized in how I spend my leisure time so it’s also worth pointing out alex sleeps 15 minutes out of every 37 hours but recently achieved a high score in beat saber so my my work life balances um with the growth of things like the bbc murmurs podcasts where they’re seeking out independence do you think there’s a horror podcasting is influencing beyond the immediate genre or outside podcasting or with the big publishers yes alex I don’t know how to say that I think what some of the bigger players are starting to notice is that the interest is there and if the interest is not catered to it will cater to itself and that’s what’s been happening and gary really wanted that gaming horror show gary made that show turns out a lot of people wanted gary’s show gary does well um I think that it’s reached the point now where not just in horror but in other mediums as well genre of fiction in general i’d say is sort of hitting its stride really and certainly in terms of bouncing into into larger like production spaces um and I think it’s a case of let’s let’s all be horrible cynical skeptical bastards like me people like money successful things are more likely to make money as a result you can expect that if the thing that you like has become popular large entities are going to start getting more invested in it I should say that I’m kind of separating out bbc a little bit because it doesn’t really have the need for money in the same way it kind of survives on its own but certainly on the um the private side you’re going to start seeing more of like um bad example it’s not horrible you know like wolverine the long night and all of that kind of thing because because they they know that yeah they know the demand is there and you’re gonna start seeing bigger players starting to just make more of the shows that you would normally associate with indies and especially in podcasting and to some extent you’ve already seen that with luminary yeah um good example of a poor execution absolutely yeah yeah I agree I think I think if you’re a statistician and you’re looking at download figures and you look at some of the biggest shows out there and see that there are a lot of them are in the genre then it makes sense to cater to that in your own audience I don’t again I I’m hesitant because I’m not as experienced with the kind of the bbc side of audio um as i’d like to be but that’s yeah I agree we are two minutes off the end of our time david did you have an answer I was just gonna say yeah it seems like we are uh in in a way the sort of proof-of-concept stage for these bigger companies to come in and uh and make their money off it um so that was basically all I was going to say because you saw that was it remembered limetown made the jump from podcasting to to the tv to facebook yes to facebook but to sell one’s soul for power richard for wales but again it’s proof of concept it works it gets taken up yeah exactly it fails and law as well yeah and law yes which is done spectacularly so I think we have about um 75 seconds left so ella if your question is very short I got to catch it how would you characterize the relationship between comedy and horror please 75 seconds okay as a writer of a comedy horror show the relationship is incredibly important I think if you want to scare people making them laugh with five within five minute breath of scaring them is really really important you take them to the top and then you smash them down um I very much enjoy pointing my pointing poking fun at tropes and littering rude jokes with squishy sound effects it’s very effective and I think it’s an incredibly important relationship yeah that’s my quick answer uh I think they are two genres that both rely on uh form format structure and sort of theatrical grammar as in you know set up a beat and so on as a result they are simultaneously uh compatible and incompatible in that if those two formats are layered on top of one another and synced up correctly you will get something wonderful and normally a very black comedy will go oh really here however if you lay they’re not poorly and that theatrical grammar doesn’t line up what you end up with is set up set up beat beat beat set beat and it’s just like this is a garbage mess um and I think it’s one of those things where it’s wonderful if it goes well but you have to be very um structurally like deft to make it work I just say it’s all about timing that’s a way better way point [Laughter] and for me it’s still a symbol crash if the symbol is covered in blood [Music] why am I even here ladies and gentlemen and everybody else I’m delighted to inform you that not only have we finished on time but we have finished the end of one of the absolute highlights of my day thank you so much to my remarkable panel of ridiculously talented creatives this is where you upload them please audience who’ve given us some of the best questions we’ve had all day and alistair our fanta fantabulous erudite host unlike myself apparently [Applause] [Music] this episode is distributed by rusty quill and licensed under a creative commons attribution non-commercial share alike 4.0 international license for more information visit rustyquill.com tweet us at the rusty quill visit us on facebook or email us at mail at rustyquill.com thanks for listening