10 horror podcasts you haven’t heard yet

9. Point Mystic

What if you’re more or less fine with your strange town, though? Maybe you would tune in to your local public radio station, dutifully reporting on widespread strangeness with the dulcet, slightly bored tones of an NPR reporter.

The fiction podcast Point Mystic may initially seem like a riff on the very well-known and excellent Welcome to Night Vale. Yet, where Welcome to Night Vale delights in a kind of surreal humor, Point Mystic is somehow more realistic. Sure, they’re reporting on ominous things like secret societies, mysterious beings and, in the first episode, an epidemic known as “dragonscale.” However, that doesn’t seem to pull the rug out from host Christopher Reynaga.

Don’t think Point Mystic is all humdrum, though. There are plenty of spine-tingling moments, made all the more eerie by the format of the show. Think children getting lost in the woods and encountering possibly evil, definitely scary creatures, for one. You’ll also encounter plenty of long-form story as well, so be prepared to dig in.

Horror superfans who pay good attention might also spot a special guest in the first episode. “The Fireman” features a character played by Joe Hill, horror novelist and son to genre legend Stephen King. He’s interviewed as one of those unfortunates newly infected by the dragonscale disease, before things apparently go very, very far south.