Ding Dong Darkness Time

Back in October of 2021, before the dawn of the Darkness Time, Allison visited the 80s High podcast to talk with Ben and Chris about Stephen King's mega-monster of a tome, IT. We also dove into the movie franchises, the origins of clowns-as-horror-tropes, HP Lovecraft, and so much more. This is not only a great opportunity to stuff your head full of knowledge on one of Stephen King's mos...

It's the finale of Season 2: Stephen King Boogaloo! Chris and Allison have packed this thing to the gills doing a full exploration of the piece of storytelling that made Stephen King a triple threat: Author, Screenwriter, Feature Film Director. We begin with King's short story, Trucks. Featured in the collection Night Shift, it's a chilling vignette of big rigs turned autonomous and...

This week, Allison is joined by author and poet Jaclyn Youhana Garver to discuss one of Stephen King's most under-read books, Hearts in Atlantis. This mosaic of five stories circles around a cast of characters who grew up in the incredibly tumultuous 1960s, and either went off to Vietnam, or joined the protests against it as young adults. The most well-known story from this collection, Low Me...

This week Allison sits down with post-apocalyptic fiction author David Kazzie to discuss what is largely considered Stephen King's most epic and consequential work, The Stand. Apart from talking about the story's origins, we consider how it holds up in the current era. What's it like lining up a fictional pandemic against a real one? How does King manage to make such a story origina...

This week's Stephen King discussion intersects with our love of true crime. And because our special guest, Kate Jenkins, happens to be a lawyer, we wasted no opportunity to discuss one of our favorite novellas and movies in the realm of an actual murder case. Would Andy Dufresne have actually been convicted of the double murder that sent him to Shawshank State Prison? Could he have ever had h...

In the second part of our episode on The Body and Stand By Me, Allison, Chris, and Kate dive to the depths of the emotional core of this tale and all its characters, as well as rehash some of its best moments and how they resonated with us on a personal level. How did Rob Reiner get such great performances out of his young actors? How can it be that a parent who completely ignores you is almost wo...

This week, Allison, Chris, and special guest Kate Jenkins set out on a journey to explore Stephen King's best known coming of age tale, The Body, as well as the Rob Reiner film adaptation, Stand By Me. Although it's set in 1959 rural Maine, a very different world from today, this story seems to resonate through the ages, and we're here to pick apart all the reasons why. This is part...

Picking right back up where we left off in Part 1 (please listen to that one first if you haven't!), Allison and James D.F. Hannah delve into the darkest and most horrific parts of Stephen King's novel, Pet Sematary. And then things lighten up a tad when they discuss Mary Lambert's 1989 film adaptation, which gets about as much wrong as it does right. We're not saying James has...

This week, crime author James D.F. Hannah comes on to discuss Stephen King's most terrifying novel, Pet Sematary, a book that King himself thinks was too dark, even for him. We introduce the Creed family, and their friendly neighbors across the very dangerous road, and we discuss King's overall meditation on family, secrets, death, and grief. And much like the book itself, we dose you wi...

Join Allison and her special guest, author and teacher Terri Lynn Coop, as they dissect pretty much every single story in Stephen King's legendary debut collection of short stories, Night Shift. Highlights are Children of the Corn, The Ledge, Battleground, The Mangler, Quitters Inc, and so much more. Terri also gives her insights as a teacher offering up some of these works to her high school...

Our journey into the heart of Stephen King's darkness takes a distinct Lovecraftian turn. And joining us for the discussion this week is the always splendid Brett from the hit true crime podcast, The Prosecutors! Brett has always been a big fan of horror, particularly the cosmic variety, and we are so thrilled he joined us to give his very astute viewpoints on one of King's most horrifyi...

Welcome to the premier of Season 2! We're devoting this entire season to the works of Stephen King, and right out of the gate, we have Allison and Chris, joined by Josh and Kelly from Press Play and Scream, to discuss the story that made them number one fans. What makes this claustrophobic tale so special? What does it say about the possibly redemptive power of art? Is this the origin story o...

In this bonus episode that was originally intended to be part of Haunting Architecture, Allison and Chris talk about their adventure in the sweltering summer of 2006, when they visited the once abandoned mental health facility known as Ashmore Estates in central Illinois. Nowadays, it is very much not abandoned and serves as a beacon for budding paranormal researchers, but on the day they explored...

This week, Allison and Chris dig deep into their own shared love and education in psychology to talk about the Dancing Plague of 1518, one of many such mass hysteria events that occurred during medieval Europe. In doing so, they also relate those events to the current day, where humanity remains no stranger to psychogenic illnesses. Why did so many people choose to dance themselves to death? Was i...

We're joined on this episode by two of the coolest cats in the movie podcasting realm, Joshua and Kelly from Press Play and Scream, to dissect and discuss not only the Twilight Zone movie, but the tragic on-set disaster that killed one of the film's stars along with two young children.  Additionally, we walk the odd, visceral, and sometimes cringey landscape of each of the film's se...

Bust out the oils, canvases, doilies, existential dread, and brawling swords, because it's time to talk about dark paintings and painters! First, Allison breaks apart all the details and subtext in Jan Van Eyck's haunting Arnolfini Portrait. Then Chris dives into the story surrounding one of the most famous scary paintings of all time, Edvard Munch's The Scream. Then they converge o...

Bathed in searing cobalt blue paint and gazing at the world through glaring red eyes, the 30-foot tall horse statue known as Mustang (or Blucifer to the locals) has welcomed travelers to the American West via the Denver International airport for more than a decade. But there is a lot more to the story of this horse than its striking looks. It comes with a melancholy and deadly history all its own,...

Allison and Chris take an expansive journey to some of the human built structures that have haunted their minds. Beginning in California with the Winchester Mystery House, learn the story of Sarah Winchester, who inherited a large chunk of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company after the death of her husband, and used that fortune to build a sprawling, surreal mansion whose mystifying (and some say...

For the first episode of our season on the dark arts (no Harry Potter), join Allison and Chris as they literally and figuratively set the tone for this show and discuss a piece of musical theory known as the Devil's Interval. More formally known as the tritone, this discordant series of notes has added a unique flavor to music throughout the centuries, and according to some historians, was ban...