Weekly Spooky: Scary Stories and Horror Fun Every Week!

Dracula, The Hills Have Eyes, Nope, Maximum Overdrive, and Deep Blue Sea headline this episode of This Week in Horror History, covering July 20 through July 26. Summer horror gets seductive, sun-scorched, mechanical, extraterrestrial, and shark-infested as we explore gothic vampires, desert survival horror, reverse-horror gaming, Jordan Peele’s terrifying vision of spectacle, Stephen King’s killer-machine apocalypse, and genetically engineered sharks loose inside an underwater laboratory.

  Inside this episode:
July 20, 1979 — Dracula releases in the United States
Frank Langella gives Count Dracula a dangerous combination of gothic romance, theatrical charm, and supernatural menace. This version of Bram Stoker’s vampire proves that evil does not always need to force its way through the door. Sometimes it gets invited inside.
July 22, 1977 — The Hills Have Eyes premieres in Tucson, Arizona
Wes Craven turns an ordinary family road trip into a brutal desert survival nightmare. When a shortcut leaves the Carter family stranded far from civilization, the open landscape becomes a trap filled with heat, isolation, violence, and another family watching from the hills.
July 23, 2020 — Carrion releases
This reverse-horror video game flips the familiar monster formula by letting players become the creature. A growing mass of teeth, tendrils, and hunger escapes through a research facility while terrified scientists and guards discover that containment has completely failed.
July 22, 2022 — Nope releases in U.S. theaters
Jordan Peele turns the sky into a haunted house in a strange and ambitious collision of UFO horror, creature-feature spectacle, Hollywood exploitation, western imagery, animal behavior, and the dangerous human need to capture the impossible on camera.

Deep-Cut Spotlight — Maximum Overdrive
Stephen King steps behind the camera for one of the loudest and most gloriously unhinged killer-machine movies of the 1980s. After Earth passes through the tail of a comet, trucks, vending machines, arcade games, lawn equipment, and other everyday technology suddenly turn against humanity. At the Dixie Boy truck stop, a group of survivors becomes trapped by eighteen-wheelers that appear to have developed personalities, grudges, and a deep hatred of human beings. With a goblin-faced truck, massive explosions, diner panic, homicidal machinery, and AC/DC blasting through the chaos, Maximum Overdrive remains a greasy, absurd, and unforgettable piece of Stephen King horror history.

Horror Birthdays This Week: 
Diana Rigg, Josh Hartnett, Willem Dafoe, and Lynda Carter enter the birthday roll, bringing connections to Theatre of Blood, Last Night in Soho, Halloween H20, The Faculty, 30 Days of Night, Trap, Shadow of the Vampire, The Lighthouse, Nosferatu, and The Initiation of Sarah.

Weekly Recommendation — Deep Blue Sea Researchers inside an isolated underwater facility genetically engineer mako sharks while searching for a medical breakthrough. Unfortunately, making enormous predators more intelligent turns out to be a catastrophically bad idea. Packed with violent storms, flooding corridors, underwater laboratories, corporate hubris, giant sharks, and one of the most memorable shock moments in 1990s horror, Deep Blue Sea remains a fast, fun, and wonderfully ridiculous summer creature feature. From Dracula and The Hills Have Eyes to Carrion, Nope, Maximum Overdrive, and Deep Blue Sea, this week in horror history proves that summer terror can wait inside a gothic mansion, watch from the desert hills, escape from a laboratory, descend from the sky, take control of an eighteen-wheeler, or circle silently beneath the water.

🎧 LISTEN NOW and subscribe for spine-tingling horror stories every week!

🎉 Unlock exclusive bonus episodes and support the show on Patreon!
👉 WeeklySpooky.com/Join

📬 Contact Us / Submit Your Horror Story!

• Twitter: @WeeklySpooky
• Facebook: facebook.com/WeeklySpooky
• Email: [email protected]

🎵 Music by Ray Mattis 👉 Check out Ray’s incredible work here !
👨‍💼 Executive Producers: Rob Fields, Bobbletopia.com
🎥 Produced by: Daniel Wilder
🌐 Explore more terrifying tales at: WeeklySpooky.com

The murder of Brian Barrett became one of the most disturbing true crime cases of the early internet age: a deadly online love triangle built on catfishing, fake identities, chatroom deception, jealousy, and obsession.

In 2006, 22-year-old Brian Barrett was shot and killed outside Dynabrade Corporation in Clarence, New York, near Buffalo. At first, the murder seemed almost motiveless. Brian was a college student, athlete, Little League coach, and future teacher with no obvious enemies. But investigators soon uncovered a digital trail involving Pogo chatrooms, Yahoo instant messages, online romance, and a username that would become infamous: TalHotBlond.

This episode of Terrifying & True investigates the real story behind the Brian Barrett murder, the TalHotBlond case, and the online deception that led to violence. Thomas Montgomery, a 46-year-old married father, had been posing online as an 18-year-old Marine sniper named Tommy. Mary Shieler, a 45-year-old mother in West Virginia, was posing as her own teenage daughter, using the girl’s photos and voice to maintain the fantasy. Brian Barrett entered the situation as himself — a real 22-year-old man caught between two adults hiding behind fake ide

As the lies unraveled, Montgomery became consumed by jealousy, humiliation, and obsession. The online rivalry moved from Pogo games and instant messages into the workplace, where Brian and Thomas both worked. Then, on September 15, 2006, Brian walked to his pickup truck after his shift and was ambushed with a .30-caliber rifle.

We examine the evidence against Thomas Montgomery, the DNA on the peach pit, the missing rifle, the chat logs, the TalHotBlond deception, Mary Shieler’s role, and why the case became known as the internet love triangle murder. But at the center of the story is not a screen name, a scandal, or a twist. It is Brian Barrett — a son, brother, friend, coach, student, and future teacher whose life was stolen by obsession.

We’re telling that story tonight.

🎧 LISTEN NOW and subscribe for spine-tingling horror stories every week!

🎉 Unlock exclusive bonus episodes and support the show on Patreon!
👉 WeeklySpooky.com/Join

📬 Contact Us / Submit Your Horror Story!

• Twitter: @WeeklySpooky
• Facebook: facebook.com/WeeklySpooky
• Email: [email protected]

🎵 Music by Ray Mattis 👉 Check out Ray’s incredible work here !
👨‍💼 Executive Producers: Rob Fields, Bobbletopia.com
🎥 Produced by: Daniel Wilder
🌐 Explore more terrifying tales at: WeeklySpooky.com

Unknown Broadcast returns with a full night of horror fiction anthology classics: CBS Radio Mystery Theater, Escape, Suspense, and The Whistler. Four eerie stories of supernatural mystery, impossible apparitions, and noir crime spanning the Golden Age of radio drama. Immersive vintage suspense for late-night listening.

Tonight’s eerie OTR lineup includes “The Walls of Jericho,” “Three Good Witnesses,” “The Singing Walls,” and “The Avengers” — four strange stories of impossible apparitions, wartime murder, hidden bodies, haunted walls, stolen gold, ghostly revenge, and crimes that refuse to stay buried.

🔥 “The Walls of Jericho” — CBS Radio Mystery Theater
A supernatural old-time radio mystery about impossible predictions, strange apparitions, psychic terror, and a private club where the impossible starts becoming real.
🚂 “Three Good Witnesses” — EscapeA
 classic radio espionage thriller set aboard the Taurus Express, filled with wartime danger, forged papers, murder, spies, and deadly secrets.
🎶 “The Singing Walls” — Suspense
A noir-style vintage radio suspense story involving amnesia, blood, a strange hotel room, music behind the walls, and a mystery that grows darker with every clue.
⛏️ “The Avengers” — The Whistler
A haunting radio crime drama about stolen gold, brotherly betrayal, murder, guilt, ghostly revenge, and the terrible price of greed.

Four classic radio dramas. Four rooms where the walls are listening. Tonight, the devil comes down the chimney, spies ride the Taurus Express, music whispers through hotel walls, and the dead return for revenge.

🎧 LISTEN NOW and subscribe for spine-tingling horror stories every week!

🎉 Unlock exclusive bonus episodes and support the show on Patreon!
👉 WeeklySpooky.com/Join

📬 Contact Us / Submit Your Horror Story!

• Twitter: @WeeklySpooky
• Facebook: facebook.com/WeeklySpooky
• Email: [email protected]

🎵 Music by Ray Mattis 👉 Check out Ray’s incredible work here !
👨‍💼 Executive Producers: Rob Fields, Bobbletopia.com
🎥 Produced by: Daniel Wilder
🌐 Explore more terrifying tales at: WeeklySpooky.com

Demons, Satanic cults, and supernatural revenge collide in this horror fiction anthology. A runaway discovers a forbidden book devoted to an imprisoned goddess. A mercenary raids an asylum to film a cult. A cursed man awakens to humiliation and dark magic. Four tales of demonic possession, occult rituals, and vampire mythology—expertly narrated with dark comedy and spine-tingling twists. Perfect late-night horror for spooky season enthusiasts.

“Sin” — by Rob Fields
A murderous runaway hiding inside a Catholic academy discovers a forbidden scripture devoted to Hellweaver—and begins a bloody ritual to become the imprisoned demon goddess’s devoted daughter.
“Gamble with the Devil” — by David O’Hanlon
A delusional soldier of fortune hires a desperate cameraman to film his promotional reel, then drags him into an abandoned asylum for a heavily armed assault on a Satanic cult whose rituals have summoned something horrifyingly real.
“Breaking the Seal” — by Douglas Waltz
After a drunken encounter with a practicing witch, a hungover man awakens with a bloody pentagram on his chest and an unstoppable bodily curse that only the woman he insulted can remove.
“The Bad Schoolgirl” — by Rob Fields
A foul-mouthed, daywalking Master Vampire enters Strickfield High and follows a squad of vampire cheerleaders into the woods, where stolen souls are being used to power their supernatural jewelry.

🎧 LISTEN NOW and subscribe for spine-tingling horror stories every week!

🎉 Unlock exclusive bonus episodes and support the show on Patreon!
👉 WeeklySpooky.com/Join

📬 Contact Us / Submit Your Horror Story!

• Twitter: @WeeklySpooky
• Facebook: facebook.com/WeeklySpooky
• Email: [email protected]

🎵 Music by Ray Mattis 👉 Check out Ray’s incredible work here !
👨‍💼 Executive Producers: Rob Fields, Bobbletopia.com
🎥 Produced by: Daniel Wilder
🌐 Explore more terrifying tales at: WeeklySpooky.com

What could be worse than dying? Waking up after everyone has already buried you.
Weekly Spooky presents a complete reading of “The Premature Burial” by Edgar Allan Poe, a claustrophobic gothic horror story built around one of humanity’s oldest and most terrifying fears: being buried alive.

Tormented by a medical condition that can make him appear dead, a man becomes consumed by accounts of premature burial. He studies coffins, graves, crypts, and horrifying cases of people awakening beneath the earth. As his obsession grows, he takes increasingly desperate precautions to ensure that he will never open his eyes inside a sealed coffin.
But fear has a way of following us into the darkness.

This classic Edgar Allan Poe audiobook is perfect for listeners searching for buried alive horror stories, gothic horror, classic scary stories, macabre fiction, claustrophobic horror, literary horror, and complete Edgar Allan Poe readings.

Tonight, the most terrifying place imaginable is not a haunted house.
It is six feet underground.

🎧 LISTEN NOW and subscribe for spine-tingling horror stories every week!

🎉 Unlock exclusive bonus episodes and support the show on Patreon!
👉 WeeklySpooky.com/Join

📬 Contact Us / Submit Your Horror Story!

• Twitter: @WeeklySpooky
• Facebook: facebook.com/WeeklySpooky
• Email: [email protected]

🎵 Music by Ray Mattis 👉 Check out Ray’s incredible work here !
👨‍💼 Executive Producers: Rob Fields, Bobbletopia.com
🎥 Produced by: Daniel Wilder
🌐 Explore more terrifying tales at: WeeklySpooky.com

Cartoon Cat is one of the creepiest viral horror monsters to crawl out of internet folklore. In this episode of Thursday Thrills, we dive into the Cartoon Cat urban legend, explore its origins in modern internet horror, and talk about why old cartoon imagery feels so unsettling when it turns sinister.

From rubber-hose animation and creepy vintage cartoon aesthetics to internet monster lore, creepypasta-style fear, and the strange power of distorted childhood nostalgia, this episode explores why Cartoon Cat has become such a memorable modern horror icon.

We’ll look at the legend, the style, the nightmare fuel behind the character, and an eerie original story about what happens when something impossible starts moving inside an abandoned mall after dark.

If you love internet horror, creepypasta, urban legends, creepy cartoons, analog-style nightmare imagery, Trevor Henderson-style monsters, and spooky campfire storytelling, this ride into Cartoon Cat territory is for you.

🎧 LISTEN NOW and subscribe for spine-tingling horror stories every week!

🎉 Unlock exclusive bonus episodes and support the show on Patreon!
👉 WeeklySpooky.com/Join

📬 Contact Us / Submit Your Horror Story!

• Twitter: @WeeklySpooky
• Facebook: facebook.com/WeeklySpooky
• Email: [email protected]

🎵 Music by Ray Mattis 👉 Check out Ray’s incredible work here !
👨‍💼 Executive Producers: Rob Fields, Bobbletopia.com
🎥 Produced by: Daniel Wilder
🌐 Explore more terrifying tales at: WeeklySpooky.com

A truck driver’s terrifying nightmare begins coming true in this supernatural highway horror story about prophetic dreams, a demonic roadside creature, and a daughter who knows something is waiting for her father in the dark.

After dreaming that a towering monster tears him from his delivery truck and drags him into the woods, an ordinary car-parts driver tries to convince himself it was only a nightmare. Then he reaches the same bridge from his dream. He sees something enormous watching from the trees—and his eight-year-old daughter Angeline already knows exactly what he saw.

As Angeline’s psychic dreams become increasingly urgent, every late delivery run brings her father closer to the creature lurking beside the highway. Is the nightmare a warning that can still save him, or a vision of something that has already decided his fate?

“Driving a Truck Can Be a Nightmare, Literally” by Michael Kelso is a suspenseful scary story blending truck driver horror, road horror, shared nightmares, psychic premonitions, family terror, creature-feature suspense, and a frightening supernatural monster encounter. Fans of horror stories, highway legends, demon stories, cryptid fiction, dark-road encounters, psychological suspense, and immersive audio fiction will want to keep their doors locked for this one.

Tonight on the Weekly Spooky horror podcast, one father must decide whether his daughter’s nightmares are childish fears—or warnings from something real waiting beside the road.

You can purchase books from this author here: https://geni.us/michaelkelsoauthor

🎧 LISTEN NOW and subscribe for spine-tingling horror stories every week!

🎉 Unlock exclusive bonus episodes and support the show on Patreon!
👉 WeeklySpooky.com/Join

📬 Contact Us / Submit Your Horror Story!

• Twitter: @WeeklySpooky
• Facebook: facebook.com/WeeklySpooky
• Email: [email protected]

🎵 Music by Ray Mattis 👉 Check out Ray’s incredible work here !
👨‍💼 Executive Producers: Rob Fields, Bobbletopia.com
🎥 Produced by: Daniel Wilder
🌐 Explore more terrifying tales at: WeeklySpooky.com

Mid-July horror gets mutated, vengeful, infectious, and lost in the woods in this episode of This Week in Horror History, covering the week of July 13 through July 19. This time, we’re digging into mad-scientist island nightmares, supernatural revenge literature, one extremely angry killer whale, a science-fiction body-horror classic, biological vampires, and the tiny independent movie that changed horror marketing forever.

Inside this episode:
July 13, 1977 — The Island of Dr. Moreau opens in U.S. theaters
Burt Lancaster brings H.G. Wells’ nightmare of science without conscience to the screen in a sweaty, pulpy story filled with animal-human mutations, unchecked authority, and a scientist convinced that nature would be better if he personally rearranged it.
July 14, 2020 — The Only Good Indians is published
Stephen Graham Jones delivers one of modern horror literature’s sharpest supernatural reckonings as four Blackfeet men discover that something from their past has memory, purpose, and antlers waiting in the dark.
July 15, 1977 — Orca opens in New York
The post-Jaws creature-feature wave gets stranger, angrier, and surprisingly tragic when a killer whale driven by grief, intelligence, and patience begins pursuing the human responsible for an unforgivable act.
July 16, 1958 — The Fly releases in the United States
A scientist, a teleportation machine, and one tiny insect create one of science-fiction horror’s most unforgettable transformations, turning a dream of human progress into a cruel nightmare of mixed bodies and irreversible mistakes.

Deep-Cut Spotlight — The Strain
Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan drag vampires out of the velvet cape and into the quarantine zone as a passenger plane lands at JFK filled with the dead. What follows treats vampirism like a biological outbreak capable of spreading through New York while officials argue, deny, and react too late.

Horror Birthdays This Week:
Patrick Stewart, Larry Cohen, Corey Feldman, and James Brolin enter the birthday roll, bringing connections to Lifeforce, Green Room, It’s Alive, Q, The Stuff, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, The Lost Boys, Gremlins, and The Amityville Horror.

Weekly Recommendation — The Blair Witch Project
Three student filmmakers enter the Maryland woods with cameras, recording equipment, and a local legend, creating a landmark of found-footage horror built from darkness, disorientation, improvised performances, and the terrifying possibility that the footage might be real.Plus, Weekly Spooky returns Wednesday with another fresh original horror story, followed by more terrifying history, strange mysteries, movie talk, and unexplained broadcasts throughout the week.

From The Island of Dr. Moreau and The Only Good Indians to Orca, The Fly, The Strain, and The Blair Witch Project, this week in horror history proves that terror can spread through laboratories, guilty memories, dark water, crowded cities, and one cursed corner of the internet.

🎧 LISTEN NOW and subscribe for spine-tingling horror stories every week!

🎉 Unlock exclusive bonus episodes and support the show on Patreon!
👉 WeeklySpooky.com/Join

📬 Contact Us / Submit Your Horror Story!

• Twitter: @WeeklySpooky
• Facebook: facebook.com/WeeklySpooky
• Email: [email protected]

🎵 Music by Ray Mattis 👉 Check out Ray’s incredible work here !
👨‍💼 Executive Producers: Rob Fields, Bobbletopia.com
🎥 Produced by: Daniel Wilder
🌐 Explore more terrifying tales at: WeeklySpooky.com

The Taos Hum is one of America’s strangest unexplained sound mysteries: a low-frequency noise heard by only a small percentage of people, often described as a distant diesel engine, electrical drone, vibration, or pulsing hum with no visible source.

In this episode of Terrifying & True, we investigate the mystery of the Taos Hum in northern New Mexico, where residents including Steve Walters, Bob and Catanya Saltzman, and K.C. Grams reported a persistent unexplained hum that disrupted sleep, concentration, balance, and daily life. Some heard it inside their homes. Some heard it outdoors. Some tried to escape it, only to wonder whether the sound had followed them.

As reports spread, the Taos Hum became more than a local complaint. Congressman Bill Richardson pushed for answers, and investigators from the University of New Mexico, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, the Air Force’s Phillips Laboratory, and hearing researchers studied the phenomenon with microphones, antennas, magnetometers, geophones, low-frequency detectors, and public surveys.

Was the Taos Hum caused by industrial noise, power lines, electromagnetic fields, military experiments, extremely low-frequency transmissions, secret government technology, rare hearing sensitivity, or low-frequency tinnitus? Or is the truth even stranger: that “the Hum” may not be one mystery at all, but several different sound and perception phenomena gathered under one unforgettable name?

This episode explores the 1993 Taos Hum investigation, the science of low-frequency sound, tinnitus and auditory perception, government secrecy theories, New Mexico conspiracy fears, and why some mysteries remain terrifying even when the instruments record silence.

We’re telling that story tonight.

🎧 LISTEN NOW and subscribe for spine-tingling horror stories every week!

🎉 Unlock exclusive bonus episodes and support the show on Patreon!
👉 WeeklySpooky.com/Join

📬 Contact Us / Submit Your Horror Story!

• Twitter: @WeeklySpooky
• Facebook: facebook.com/WeeklySpooky
• Email: [email protected]

🎵 Music by Ray Mattis 👉 Check out Ray’s incredible work here !
👨‍💼 Executive Producers: Rob Fields, Bobbletopia.com
🎥 Produced by: Daniel Wilder
🌐 Explore more terrifying tales at: WeeklySpooky.com

Unknown Broadcast returns with four old-time radio horror stories, classic OTR suspense, vintage radio mystery, and eerie anthology drama pulled from somewhere beyond the static.

Tonight’s transmission begins aboard a deserted ghost ship, where the Annabella is found adrift with warm meals, a set table, and not a living soul on board. Then Escape invites us into a gentleman’s nightmare of cream tarts, secret clubs, death cards, and impossible exits. After that, Suspense takes us to a debt-ridden dude ranch where a missing guest, a forged check, and a body in a rumble seat turn yesterday’s confusion into tonight’s murder mystery. Finally, The Whistler follows a quiet bank teller whose perfect long-term theft becomes a perfect trap.

🔱 “Sea Fever” — CBS Radio Mystery Theater / Ian Martin
The Annabella should be an ordinary merchant ship, but bad luck clings to her from the start. A ruthless captain guards his mysterious wife, sailors vanish, whispers of mutiny rise, and the sea begins to feel less like water than judgment.🃏 “The Young Man with the Cream Tarts” — Escape / Robert Louis Stevenson
A bored prince follows a strange young man handing out cream tarts and discovers a hidden society where desperate men gamble with death. One card selects the victim. Another selects the killer.
🌙 “Last Night” — Suspense / Cornell Woolrich
Jacqueline and Gil Blaine are buried in debt at a dude ranch when a wealthy guest vanishes, money goes missing, and suspicion begins circling closer and closer. The answer is hidden in a car, a corpse, and one terrible night no one can quite explain.
💰 “Fool’s Gold” — The Whistler
Herbert Lang has spent years planning the perfect bank theft. He knows the dates, the money, the route, and the escape. But greed, murder, and one dead man’s secret turn his fortune into something he can chase forever and never find.

Four stories. Four impossible exits. Tonight, the dead are at sea, the cards are already dealt, and every fortune comes with a curse.

🎧 LISTEN NOW and subscribe for spine-tingling horror stories every week!

🎉 Unlock exclusive bonus episodes and support the show on Patreon!
👉 WeeklySpooky.com/Join

📬 Contact Us / Submit Your Horror Story!

• Twitter: @WeeklySpooky
• Facebook: facebook.com/WeeklySpooky
• Email: [email protected]

🎵 Music by Ray Mattis 👉 Check out Ray’s incredible work here !
👨‍💼 Executive Producers: Rob Fields, Bobbletopia.com
🎥 Produced by: Daniel Wilder
🌐 Explore more terrifying tales at: WeeklySpooky.com