You’ve found the world’s premier horror fiction podcast. Pseudopod brings you the best short horror in audio form, to take with you anywhere.

WARNING: This is a podcast of horror fiction. The stories presented here are intended to disturb. They are likely to contain death, graphic violence, explicit sex (including sexual violence), hate crimes, blasphemy, or other themes and images that hook deep into your psyche. We do not provide ratings or content warnings. We assume by your listening that you wish to be disturbed for your entertainment. If there are any themes that you cannot deal with in fiction, that are too strongly personal to you, please do not listen.

Pseudopod is for mature audiences only. Hardly any story on Pseudopod is suitable for children. We mean this very seriously.

by Thomas Owen

Translated by Edward Gauvin

This story first appeared in the 1972 collection LA TRUIE (THE SOW). This translation appeared in late February in the first issue of The Dr. T.J. Eckleburg Review (formerly The Moon Milk Review). It can be read here

Thomas Owen (real name Gérald Bertot) (1910-2002) worked all his life in the management of the same flour-milling factory. He held a doctorate in criminology, and a side career in art criticism under the pseudonym Stéphane Rey. Spared service in World War II, he turned to writing mysteries for money, with the encouragement of Stanislas-André Steeman, a celebrated craftsman of Belgian noir. In TONIGHT AT EIGHT (from 1941), he introduced the police commissioner Thomas Owen—a character whose name he liked so much he later took it as his own when he embarked on what he has called his true calling, his career as a fantasist. An existential dread, one that Thomas Ligotti correctly identified (in a blurb where he name-checked Owen) as “the nightmare of being alive”, emanates from Owen’s oeuvre of several hundred stories - the best word for Owen’s fiction is unsettling. The 1984 volume THE DESOLATE PRESENCE draws from six of Owen’s seven major collections for its 22 tales, and was the only current English translation of Owen’s work available, and is currently out of print. Both of those details may soon change.

Edward Gauvin is the winner of the John Dryden Translation prize, a Clarion graduate, he has received fellowships from the NEA, the Fulbright Program, and the American Literary Translators’ Association. His volume of Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud’s selected stories, A Life on Paper (Small Beer, 2010) won the Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Award. Other publications have appeared in F&SF, Podcastle, Postscripts, Conjunctions, Subtropics, and Tin House. He translates comics for Top Shelf, Self-Made Hero, Archaia, and Lerner. He also writes a monthly column on “the Weird in translation” for the VanderMeers’ Weird Fiction Review. He would also like to mention this graphic novel, Billy Fog and the Gift of Trouble Sight for lovers of the macabre “I think of it as Edward Gorey meets Calvin and Hobbes. If you like it, sequels are forthcoming!”.

Your reader this week is Pete Milan who does a lot of voice work with Pendant Audio, on their fan shows (we do a series of DC Comics-based audio dramas) and originals (I’m a writer and performer on their sci-fi serial, The Kingery, among others)…

“‘Do you know that woman?’ he asked the waiter.

The man didn’t insist. He was too happy to have escaped the evil spell.”

 

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by John Haggerty

This story first appeared in Shock Totem #3, published a year ago.

John Haggerty is a writer living in Northern California. His stories have appeared in Confrontation, The Los Angeles Review and The Santa Monica Review, among others. He is currently at work on a novel about greed, gambling, religion, sex and death set in the deserts of Nevada. It’s a comedy!

Your reader this week is Corson Bremer. Corson has been in the business of communication for almost thirty years, spanning two continents, and as a stage actor, writer, director and voice talent, he has participated in more than 100 stage plays, readings and radio drama productions. These skills also fueled a 9-year career in radio as a presenter and as a writer, producer and voice talent for commercials, branding, audio books and video games (including RED STEEL 2).

He would like interested parties to check out the Voice Artists United Network (VAU) website (click name for link - also on Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace), where he’s an admin. It’s dedicated to very serious VO professionals. That doesn’t mean just “stars” or the very experienced VO’s, it’s for people who have already made and/or are making a real effort to break into the industry. We welcome people as members if they have a “web presence” showing that they work in or are MAKING A BIG EFFORT to work in VO (like their own voice acting website or profile on the web… even if it’s just a free one on Voice123.com or Voices.com or Bodalgo.com). Check it out and tell your friends!

“Dmitri laughed in my face. ‘Who is going to stop me? I do what I want.’ He looked out into the drizzly evening. ‘I can get you out of here. Do you want to go?’

I looked back out at the forest. It wavered in and out of focus in the rain, gray and silent. When I turned back around, Dmitri was already gone.”

 

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by Jaelithe Ingold

This story was first published in Arcane Magazine (later renamed Arcane Sampler) in March of 2011. Jaelithe Ingold is a dark fantasy writer living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She used to prepare fossils for display at the Carnegie Museum and is now a retail manager. Her work has appeared in Shock Totem, Abyss & Apex and Dark Recesses.

Your reader this week is Pete Milan who does a lot of voice work with Pendant Audio, on their fan shows (we do a series of DC Comics-based audio dramas) and originals (I’m a writer and performer on their sci-fi serial, The Kingery, among others)…

“The roof of the gingerbread house has long been gone, and green mold covers the sides like a copper patina, but the air surrounding it is still sweet. Sugar gone bad with the passage of time and the death of its caretaker.

We haven’t been children for a very long time, but if I remember hard enough, the sensation remains. The taste still melts on my tongue.”

 

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by Michael J. DeLuca

This story originally appeared, simultaneously in French and English, at Onirismes.com in Spring 2011 (still available at the link). Sybaris was a real city, a wealthy Greek colony founded in Italy in the 8th century BC, destroyed by flood in the sixth century when its enemies diverted a river through the city’s streets in retribution for its citizens’ greed. From whence the word “sybaritic”, a very fine synonym for “self-indulgent”, has descended into modern English.

Michael J. DeLuca attended the Odyssey Writing Workshop in 2005, helps run the indie ebook site Weightless Books, has volunteered at Small Beer Press for longer than he cares to admit, and is a member of the Homeless Moon writers’ cabal. His short stories have appeared in Interfictions, Apex, Clockwork Phoenix and The Future Fire. If you like this story, you might try his series of centaur westerns, which are similarly Classics-infused and brutal, and can be found in the archives (some in audio form) at Beneath Ceaseless Skies. His website, The Mossy Skull, can be found at the link under his name at the top. Also check out Literary Beer at the Small Beer website and his profile at Writertopia for a list of previous work.

Your reader this week is Tina Connolly whose debut dark fantasy IRONSKIN is forthcoming this October from Tor. Not horror, but definitely dark. Also, be sure to check out Tina’s own weekly short fiction podcast at TOASTED CAKE.

“”Do you wonder, my brothers in service of death, what powers the prophet takes with her on her voyage down the Acheron? We all do, I suspect: all of us from Sybaris who felt the lash of her tongue. She told many bleak fates. We all wonder which she is waiting yet to fulfill–or else I suspect so many wouldn’t have come to bestow such gifts!” He cackled.

“Sheshet, astronomer priestess of Egypt, achieved deathly might through preservation. She took her own life by drowning, at the age of twenty-nine. Her cult preserved her flesh and organs whole in vats of lotus honey. It is said she left plans for her own resurrection, and any man who walks within miles of her tomb dies of fever before the next moonrise.”"

 

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by Nicole Cushing

This story is previously unpublished. The story is also available to read online at The Repository forum of Thomas Ligotti Online.

The anthology Werewolves & Shapeshifters: Encounters With The Beast Within includes Nicole’s short fiction (alongside stories by Neil Gaiman and George R.R. Martin). Her work also appears in the Cemetery Dance Richard Laymon tribute anthology In Laymon’s Terms.

Your reader this week is Jonathan Sullivan, who regularly reads for ESCAPE POD.

“It’s another cool April morning in Hell, and the hanging trees (just saplings, really) are starting to sprout fleshy, strangled buds that look like choking fetuses caught up in tiny, umbilical nooses.

I am not, after all, a monster – even if I am in the employ of Hell. Even if (as my fellow laborers predict) some of the fruit will grow up to call me “Demon”, this is an absurd epithet. I do not want to be in this position. But my cares, my wants, my sense of being an individual with free will – these are things of the past. Shams more easily harbored during a lifetime marinated in the sweet sauce of ignorance.”

 

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by Nicky Drayden

This story originally saw publication on the Daily Science Fiction website in 2011 and can still read there at this link.

Nicky Drayden is a Systems Analyst who dabbles in prose when she’s not buried in code. She resides in Austin, Texas where being weird is highly encouraged, if not required. To see more of her work, click the link under her name, above.

Your reader this week is Laurice White. Click her name to visit her website or check her out at Voice123.

Non-audio produced version of the story is available as the second option below.

” With a fine bone knife I make my incision, cutting back the sticky membrane of Our Tjeng’s hull. I slip my hand inside and carefully widen the tear until it’s big enough for me to step through. Our Tjeng has blessed Kae and me with gills to breathe within his walls. The viscous liquid is clear and burns my eyes, tart and slick on my tongue.

We’re civil. There’s too much at stake not to be. The flock cannot afford to lose another fathership, and Our Tjeng needs us caretakers to keep him functioning.’”

“Our Drunken Tjeng” used the following sounds from Freesound to make the Fathership soundscape.

“earthscan1″ by irad

“deep pulse_02.L-Joined” by martian

“Ambient Darkness” by DJ Chronos

“Single Heartbeat HQ_BeatSmith” by Lunardrive

“heartbeat regular” by zimm

 

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by M.R. James

One of the masters of ghost story writing - he codified the subgenre of “the antiquarian ghost story”. Click the link under his name to read more. Almost all of his works are now in the public domain. This tale was written in 1927 to be read ’round the campfire to Scouts at their summer camp. It can be read online here

“Two ingredients most valuable in the concocting of a ghost story are the atmosphere and the nicely managed crescendo.… Let us, then, be introduced to the actors in a placid way; let us see them going about their ordinary business, undisturbed by forebodings, pleased with their surroundings; and into this calm environment let the ominous thing put out its head, unobtrusively at first, and then more insistently, until it holds the stage. Another requisite, in my opinion, is that the ghost should be malevolent or odious: amiable and helpful apparitions are all very well in fairy tales or in local legends, but I have no use for them in a fictitious ghost story.’”

Your reader this week is David Moore - click his name to visit his Livejournal page. David works for Solaris and Abaddon Books, reads stories for DARK FICTION audio magazine (check out some stories he’s narrated here, here & here) and has a story coming up in the April 4th released anthology PANDEMONIUM: STORIES IN THE SMOKE, in which Charles Dickens is given the genre treatment. He has earned the gentle ministrations of our tentacles and our unending gratitude for a late-game save!

“‘I don’t know as there’s anything much wrong with the water,’ said the shepherd. ‘All I know is, my old dog wouldn’t go through that field, let alone me or anyone else that’s got a morsel of brains in their heads.’

‘More fool them,’ said Stanley Judkins, at once rudely and ungrammatically. ‘Who ever took any harm going there?’ he added.

‘Three women and a man,’ said the shepherd gravely. ‘Now just you listen to me. I know these ’ere parts and you don’t, and I can tell you this much: for these ten years last past there ain’t been a sheep fed in that field, nor a crop raised off of it — and it’s good land, too. You can pretty well see from here what a state it’s got into with brambles and suckers and trash of all kinds. You’ve got a glass, young gentleman,’ he said to Wilfred Pipsqueak, ‘you can tell with that anyway.’

‘Yes,’ said Wilfred, ‘but I see there’s tracks in it. Someone must go through it sometimes.’

‘Tracks!’ said the shepherd. ‘I believe you I see four tracks: three women and a man.’

‘There’s some p’r’aps could tell you who they was,’ said the shepherd, ‘but it was afore my time they come by their end. And why they goes there still is more than the children of men can tell: except I’ve heard they was all bad ‘uns when they was alive.””

 

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by Neil John Buchanan

“The God Complex” was originally published in the Terminal Earth anthology by Poundlit Press.

Neil John Buchanan (click his name above for his website) lives in the south-west of England with three manic cats, two small children and a long-suffering, sympathetic wife. He is a horror fiction writer with work published in various online and print venues such as Pseudopod, Drabblecast, Necrotic Tissue and Morpheus Tales. He also writes for STARBURST magazine and he’s in the final editing stages of a steampunk/fantasy/horror mash-up novella entitled CLOCKWORK KNIGHTS.

Your reader this week is Rashida Smith - click her name to visit Eddygirl!

“She recognized an Echo drone when she saw one. Probably a scout sent to investigate the crash.

‘I am God,’ it pronounced. ‘Do you come in love?’”

 

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by William Butler Yeats

This story was originally published in 1897 in THE SECRET ROSE. It is available to read online in a number of spots including here

Yeats (1865-1939) was winner of the Nobel Prize and Ireland’s greatest poet and dramatist. The son of a renowned Dublin artist, he was educated partly in Ireland and partly in London and during this time formed an interest in occultism. Later, drawing on his experiences with his relatives in Sligo, he began to write on folklore, the first results being published in 1893 as THE CELTIC TWILIGHT. This title was subsequently used to label a school of writing that attempted a renaissance of ancient Irish culture. Yeats’ style in prose - like in his poetry - is gloriously varied: from light, beautiful tales of unworldly fantasy to grim and horrifying parables of death and cruelty.

Read for us by the redoubtable Wilson Fowlie (begorra!)

“His eyes strayed from the Abbey tower of the White Friars and the town battlements to a row of crosses which stood out against the sky upon a hill a little to the eastward of the town, and he clenched his fist, and shook it at the crosses. He knew they were not empty, for the birds were fluttering about them; and he thought how, as like as not, just such another vagabond as himself was hanged on one of them; and he muttered: ‘If it were hanging or bowstringing, or stoning or beheading, it would be bad enough. But to have the birds pecking your eyes and the wolves eating your feet! I would that the red wind of the Druids had withered in his cradle the soldier of Dathi, who brought the tree of death out of barbarous lands, or that the lightning, when it smote Dathi at the foot of the mountain, had smitten him also, or that his grave had been dug by the green-haired and green-toothed merrows deep at the roots of the deep sea.’”

 

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