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Mark McNease’s Fearsome Fiction Podcast: The Southwest Chamber, by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (includes YouTube)
There’s a particular kind of horror that doesn’t announce itself with screams or spectacle. It arrives slowly—a thought that isn’t yours, a memory you couldn’t possibly have, a garment that reappears where it shouldn’t be. Mary E. Wilkins Freeman knew this kind of horror intimately, and in “The Southwest Chamber,” first published in 1903, she deployed it to devastating effect.
The story follows the Gill sisters, who inherit a New England boarding house along with one deeply problematic room—the southwest chamber, formerly occupied by a recently deceased and apparently still-present aunt. One by one, guests are installed in the room, and one by one they flee it, shaken by experiences they can barely articulate. Freeman, one of the finest American ghost story writers of her era, understood that the most frightening hauntings aren’t about what a ghost does to you—they’re about what it makes you feel.
This episode of Fearsome Fiction brings you Freeman’s full story, read aloud and ready to unsettle your afternoon.
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The Twist Podcast Pride Spectacular! Prance’s New ‘Worst In Show’ Feature, and an Interview with ‘Small Town Rage’ Author David Hylan
Welcome to The Twist and our annual Pride Spectacular. Mark and Rick pull out all the stops for this one. We’ve got news, we’ve got joy, we’ve got Prance Thunderbottom joining the show with his ‘Worst in Show’ feature.
And later, Rick interviews author David Hylan to talk about his new book Small Town Rage — which, based on the title alone, we feel deeply in our souls. David joins us to talk about what happens when the darkness underneath ordinary American life stops being polite and starts getting honest. It is a conversation you do not want to miss.
But first — it is Pride, it is June, the rainbow flags are flying from here to the Delaware and back, and Mark and Rick have things to say about all of it.
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Mark McNease’s Fearsome Fiction Podcast: Night Flight to Murder Town – A Marshall James Thriller (Chapters 37 – 53 / The End)
You’ve been with Marshall James through all of it.
The suspicion. The fear. The slow unraveling of everything he thought he knew about the people around him — and about himself. You followed him into the dark and waited with him there while the truth fought its way to the surface.
Now we’re here. The final chapters of Night Flight to Murder Town.
Marshall gets his life back. The cloud that’s followed him, the whispers and the doubt and the weight of being the man everyone suspected — it lifts. He is vindicated. And standing on the other side of all of it, he gets to ask the question we all ask when the worst is finally over: now what?
The answer, it turns out, is New York City. A new beginning. A life rebuilt from the wreckage of the old one. And beside him through all of it — Boo. His husband. His anchor. The reason the new life is worth building at all.
But New York, as it happens, is not the last chapter. It’s just the one before the last chapter. Because Marshall and Boo are leaving the city now, trading its noise and its energy and its beautiful relentlessness for something quieter. Something on the water. A town called Lambertville, on the banks of the Delaware, where a different kind of life is waiting.
Some of you may know that town. Some of you may even know that stretch of river.
This is where Marshall James lands. This is where his story, for now, comes to rest.
These are the final episodes of Night Flight to Murder Town: A Marshall James Thriller.
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True Crime Tuesdays – A Fearsome Fiction Feature: The Many Victims of Randy Steven Kraft, the Scorecard Killer
He looked like your neighbor. He worked as a computer programmer. He threw dinner parties for friends. But from 1971 to 1983, Randy Steven Kraft prowled the freeways of Southern California — and beyond — leaving a trail of young men’s bodies in his wake. When police finally caught him, they found something almost no one expected: a coded list. Sixty-one cryptic entries, each one believed to represent a life he had taken. Investigators called it the Scorecard.
More than fifty years later, victims are still being identified — and the case is still growing. This week on True Crime Tuesdays, we go deep into one of America’s most prolific and least-known serial killers: the man police called the Scorecard Killer, the Freeway Killer, and the Southern California Strangler. And we ask the question that haunts investigators to this day: how many names are still on that list?
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The Twist Podcast 329: Mad for the Middling Podcast, Great American State Fair Fail, and an Interview with Courtney Cordova
This week on The Twist, Mark and Rick cut their losses and ditch their tickets to the Great American State Fair — and they have thoughts. Then it’s all good news as they share their enthusiasm for Eden Sher and Brock Ciarlelli’s Middling podcast, the irresistible rewatch show for fans of The Middle. Plus Rick sits down with Courtney Cordova of Madison’s Henry Vilas Zoo for a conversation about the animals, the mission, and what makes this beloved institution one of the best free zoos in the country. All that and the usual twists on Episode 329.
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Mark McNease’s Fearsome Fiction Podcast: Night Flight to Murder Town – A Marshall James Thriller (Chapters 34 – 36)
Fasten your headphones for another three chapters of Night Flight to Murder Town: A Marshall James Thriller by Mark McNease. Narration provided by Wondervox.
When we left Marshall James, he was in the middle of a very bad few days in New York City. His friend Trent is dead, the murder scene has been suspiciously cleaned up, and someone has apparently lifted Marshall’s driver’s license — which has now turned up in a dead senator’s apartment.
In Chapter Thirty-Four, Marshall and Colin pay a visit to Rhonda — Colin’s neighbor two floors down — to use her computer and finally open the disk that Trent died for. What they find on it is a spreadsheet of cities, money, and names that make everything a great deal more dangerous.
Chapter Thirty-Five takes us back to the present in Lambertville, New Jersey, where his husband Boo has been gently lobbying for a change of scenery. He wakes up in a bed and breakfast, comes downstairs to coffee and conversation, and meets Kyle Callahan and his husband Danny Durban — hosts, innkeepers, and, as we’ll come to see, people who know something about starting over in a new town.
Chapter Thirty-Six continues that morning, as Marshall begins to take the measure of this quieter life and wonder whether he might actually belong in it.
