10 horror podcasts you haven’t heard yet

10. Return Home

It’s not really a list of horror features without a mention of Lovecraft, right? For the uninitiated, H.P. Lovecraft was a writer who became famous for his tales of cosmic horror. Oftentimes, his work featured beings so vast and so powerful that humanity appears like insignificant ants in their long-lived views. These beings, from sleeping Cthulhu to Shub-Niggurath (“The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young”), don’t especially care what happens to us one way or the other.

Still, in these stories, people can’t help but get caught up in the mess. Some become devotees of eldritch horrors, while others run away as much as they can.

Jonathan Barker seems to be of the second group, at least at first. He’s been away from his home town of Melancholy Falls, New Jersey for five years at the beginning of Return Home. Some mysterious force or entity seems to be calling him back. Will Jonathan discover that his town has changed? Or have the dark forces infecting the conveniently-named Melancholy Falls always been there?

Admittedly, the first couple episodes of Return Home sound overly scripted. Give the podcast a bit of breathing room, however, and it soon begins to feel more natural and menacing. If you’re a fan of horror fiction with a good dose of cosmic dread, then this should be a good fit. Just be sure that your own hometown isn’t revealing its own horrible hidden nature while you’re listening.