Anthology of Horror

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Tonight’s episode delivered a tight, unnerving ride: I Was Kidnapped by My Doppelgänger, courtesy of our friend Woundlicker. The piece asks a simple, destabilizing question about identity and agency and then spends its short run time turning that question inside out. The pacing kept the tension taut—no frills, no padding—so the uncanny work its slow, precise erosion on the listener. It’s the kind of story that leaves you replaying small moments in your head long after the episode ends.

On the production side, this one was clean and deliberate. The narration leaned into restraint rather than melodrama, letting the story’s weirdness do the heavy lifting while the delivery kept the listener hooked. Empress provided the musical backbone—subtle cues where needed, an unsettling undercurrent that never shouted but always suggested the wrongness behind the surface. Mickie Eberz held the whole thing together in the edit, so it reads and sounds like the finished product you expect.

If you liked tonight, a couple quick ways to help: rate and review the show, share the episode with someone who likes being kept up past their bedtime, and consider subscribing to Premium for the archive and the raffle. The winner for the raffle is pulled from the premium email list, so if you want your name in the hat make sure your subscription is registered correctly.

Credits: Produced by Mickie Eberz. Narrated by Spring Heeled Jack (Anthony Landis). Story by Woundlicker. All original music written and performed by Empress.
Closing song: The Moor by Empress.

Thanks for listening — we’ll be back tomorrow at midnight with another episode.

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Tonight’s episode centers on With Graveyard Weeds and Wolfsbane Seeds by Seanan McGuire, delivered straight from my throat to your headphones. This installment keeps the pace tight and the tone intimate — less theatrical scare, more the slow, personal kind of unease that settles in your chest and won’t leave until the lights are back on. It’s the sort of story that thrives in a small room with a single lamp, and tonight we let it breathe without dressing it up.

On the production side: the music tonight is all original, written and performed by Empress — I keep saying it because it’s true: their output and professionalism on this run has been flat-out impressive. Mickie Eberz produced the episode and stitched everything together so this whole madness sounds like an actual show instead of me shouting into a mic. I narrate as Spring Heeled Jack (Anthony Landis), and as always the goal was to serve the story cleanly and keep the listening experience tight.

If you liked tonight, help keep the lights on: rate and review the show on your app of choice, share the episode with someone who likes being kept awake, and consider subscribing to Premium (the raffle winner will be drawn from the premium email list). You can also follow me on Instagram at dukelandis17 for show notes, updates, and the occasional bit of chaos.

Credits: Produced by Mickie Eberz. Narration by Spring Heeled Jack (Anthony Landis). Story by Seanan McGuire. All original music written and performed by Empress. Thanks for listening — check back tomorrow at midnight for the next episode.

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Tonight’s episode drifts in on a slow, steady wind: The Haunted Trailer, a lean, precise story by Robert Arthur that refuses to do anything flashy. It’s not about rattling chains or sudden shrieks so much as the patient, corrosive way a place can keep score. The trailer in this tale collects the small offenses of living—old arguments, unpaid debts, the way neighbors glance away—and over time those tiny things accrete into something that behaves like memory and then like malice. The horror here is domestic and stubborn; it sneaks through the floorboards and lingers in the pattern of a cracked windowpane. Listen close and the ordinary noises start to sound like evidence.

I read it tonight with the kind of low, tired attention the story asks for: not because it needs to be shouted at you, but because the pressure works better that way. The story finds its power in accumulation—details piled on details until the house (or trailer, in this case) becomes not merely setting but actor. It’s a reminder that the places we live in are not neutral, that architecture keeps grudges, and that sometimes what haunts you is simply what you left unfinished.

Musically, this episode is underpinned by the new sound of the run: Empress, who signed on at the end of the summer and have already shaped the way these nights feel. Their compositions here are spare where they need to be spare, and insistent where the story tightens its grip. Producer Mickie Eberz is responsible for patching all of this together—booking, editing, and turning my chaos into something that sounds like a finished show. If you enjoyed tonight’s mood, tip your hat to Mickie and to Empress; they’re the reason this series sounds like anything at all.

A reminder: the Halloween special is running every night at midnight for the month—at least thirty-one episodes. We’re also running a raffle; the winner will be drawn from the email list of premium subscribers. If you want your name in the hat, sign up for premium and make sure your subscription registered correctly (and if you’re having trouble on Spotify, check the sign-up email for alternate listening instructions).

Credits for tonight: produced by Mickie Eberz; narrated by Spring Heeled Jack (Anthony Landis); story by Robert Arthur; all original music written and performed by Empress. Closing track for this episode is If I Were Dead by Empress.

Thanks for listening. Turn the lights down, give the track a listen, and we’ll meet back here tomorrow at midnight for the next story. Stay spooky.

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Tonight’s installment brought us into the cool, aching sorrow of “Funeral Birds” by M. Rickert, a story that feels like a single long, haunted breath. Rickert’s prose moves slow and deliberate, folding small, intimate details into an ever-widening sense of loss until the landscape itself seems to remember grief. The tale follows characters whose lives are quietly eroded by absence and memory; birds arrive and behave like elegies, ordinary things become uncanny, and the reader slides effortlessly from the domestic into the uncanny without a shove. It’s not horror that screams—it's horror that lingers in the margins, in the sound of wings at dusk and in the way people carry the weight of what they cannot say aloud.

The narrative’s power is in its accumulation: a sequence of domestic fragments that, when stitched together, reveal an emotional logic as inevitable and terrible as a tide. Rickert is working in the small motions—gestures, rituals, a funeral procession, the way neighbors glance away—and those small motions swell into meaning. The atmosphere is elegiac rather than lurid; the fear Rickert conjures is the old kind, the one that sits beside you at the table and refuses to leave. Listeners who came expecting jump-scares will find something subtler and deeper: a slow, unavoidable ache that turns ordinary birds into portent and ordinary grief into something almost mythic.

Tonally, the story fits the Halloween special not by offering gore or spectacle but by demonstrating another face of the season: the way endings gather around us like migrating flocks, how memory and mortality can coalesce into a kind of cold, beautiful terror. It’s a night-walking story, best heard with the lights low and the windows shut, the kind that leaves you thinking about neighbors, about little civic rituals, and about how closely tenderness and menace can sit together. The emotional tail of the piece doesn't resolve into tidy catharsis; instead it leaves a residue—an image, a sound, a bird’s cry—that will hang in the mind long after the episode ends.

This was a beautifully restrained piece for tonight’s run—quiet, aching, and precise—an invitation to sit with sorrow rather than outrun it. If you liked the atmosphere here, come back tomorrow for another night’s offering; this series is built to show horror’s many faces, from the grotesque to the heartbreakingly ordinary.

Credits: This episode was produced by Mickie Eberz and narrated by Spring Heeled Jack (Anthony Landis). The story, “Funeral Birds,” is by M. Rickert. All original music for tonight’s episode was written and performed by Empress. Closing track: “Sometimes When I Walk Through Tall Trees, I Want to Hang Myself From Them,” written and performed by Empress.

Thanks for listening—make sure you check back tomorrow at midnight for the next story. Stay spooky.

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In tonight’s story, we journey into the untamed wilderness with The Valley of the Beasts, written by Algernon Blackwood. Here, nature is not a backdrop but a living, breathing force—one that watches, waits, and punishes those who dare to tread too far into its shadowed heart. This haunting tale reminds us, as Aldo Leopold once wrote, of “a fierce green fire dying in her eyes”—that strange, eternal knowledge belonging only to the wolf and the mountain.

Credits
Produced by Mickie Eberz
Narrated by Spring Heeled Jack (Anthony Landis)
Story by Algernon Blackwood
All original music written and performed by Empress
Closing track: I Fucked the Devil Once by Empress

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In tonight’s story, we meet Miss Emmeline, a seemingly ordinary old woman whose quiet, predictable life takes a strange turn when she uncovers long-buried powers. As shadows gather and whispers grow louder, Emmeline learns that her twilight years are anything but ordinary. With new strength, she discovers that age is no barrier to the uncanny—and that sometimes the most unexpected people can take flight.

This episode marks the first entry in this year’s Halloween special—thirty-one nights of eerie tales, strange encounters, and unsettling folklore to carry you through October.

Credits
Produced by Mickie Eberz
Written and narrated by Spring Heeled Jack (Anthony Landis)
All original music written and performed by Empress

Closing track: Crimson Woods by Empress

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In this episode of Anthology of Horror, we dig deep into the haunted history of Colorado—a land as drenched in blood as it is crowned in beauty. From the sacred landscapes of the Ute, Cheyenne, and Arapaho, to the atrocities of Sand Creek and the retaliatory wars that followed, the story of Colorado is layered with tragedy and restless spirits. We move through the outlaw boomtowns of Leadville and Cripple Creek, where gambling debts were paid in blood and brothels left their shadows, down into the mines where Tommyknockers and curses echoed beneath the rock.

The 20th century brought new horrors: labor wars that left children and families dead at Ludlow, hospitals and prisons that turned suffering into industry, and the Stanley Hotel where ghosts still waltz in empty ballrooms. From haunted highways to skinwalker stories in the San Luis Valley, to the infernal reputation of Riverdale Road, Colorado emerges not just as a state, but as a monument of memory and death—where every ridge and gulch carries stories the living can’t forget and the dead won’t release.

This episode was produced by Mickie Eberz, with scoring and the closing song “Ghost Town” by Empress.

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In this episode of Anthology of Horror, we plunge into some of the darkest chapters of the twentieth century: the atrocities committed by Imperial Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese War. From the systematic slaughter and sexual violence of the Nanjing Massacre to the grotesque human experimentation carried out by Unit 731, this is a story of cruelty without parallel.

Told with unflinching honesty but delivered with solemn restraint, the episode paints a vivid historical picture of how Japan’s imperial ambitions turned ordinary men into monsters—and why denial and forgetting are just as dangerous as the crimes themselves.

Listener discretion is strongly advised. This episode contains descriptions of graphic violence, sexual violence, and crimes against humanity.

Cast & Credits

• Host: Spring-Heeled Jack
• Research Assistant: Kate (daughter of Steve)
• Producer: Mickie Eberz
• Special Thanks: Young Alex, for suggesting the topic and supporting the Mannings’ GoFundMe after the Eaton Fire

Episode Theme & Closing Song: Blood Engine by Empress

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Hosted by: Spring Heeled Jack
Produced by: Mickie Eberz
Closing Song: “Sleeping in Glass” by Empress

Episode Summary:

In this immersive deep-dive, Spring Heeled Jack peels back the carefully lacquered layers of Disneyland California to reveal the bloodstained foundation beneath the fantasy. From the early life of Walt Disney to the dark psychological mechanisms that guide your every step in the park, this episode is a narrative descent into the tragedies, conspiracies, forgotten attractions, and lingering spirits that the Mouse would rather you ignore.

You'll hear the gruesome details of confirmed deaths, the real ghost stories whispered by Cast Members, the attractions that were too disturbing to build, and the Orwellian surveillance infrastructure silently watching your every move. All woven together with California-native nostalgia and a cynical eye for the machinery of myth.

It’s not just about theme park history—it’s about how we build dreams atop graves, and what happens when we try to trap magic in a place that can't stop remembering the dead.

Enter the park.
Exit at your own risk.

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In this hauntingly emotional episode of Anthology of Horror, guest host Slutty Nicole returns from the void—after nearly a year of silence—to bring you a chilling original tale by long-time friend of the show, Woundlicker. What begins as a simple story of supernatural contact quickly unravels into a raw exploration of intergenerational trauma, family secrets, and the burdens we inherit whether we want them or not.

This isn’t your typical ghost story. It’s something deeper. Stranger. More human.

Produced by Mickie Eberz, Slutty Nicole, and Spring Heeled Jack—despite his best efforts to nap through production.

The episode closes with the atmospheric track “Shadows Ignite” by Empress, the new musical project from Slutty Nicole herself.

Turn off the lights, tune in, and get ready for a story that lingers long after the final word.

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