Moonlight Over a Ruined Village

            For tonight’s tale, we check in on the River Road, which is the cultural center of the ruined village. Though it is not without its own form of tortured beauty, it is plagued by trash. Yes, people still throw their trash on the ground. Usually it comes in the form of wrappers for dog snacks, cigarette butts, beer cans, and chicken bones. Or at least, people assume they are chicken bone...

            For tonight’s tale, we join a public servant on her first day at her government job. Typically, that would be the sort of thing to make her parents proud. This is especially true considering their humble expectations for their daughter. Armed with a liberal arts degree and a boundless imagination, her parents naturally expected very little from her. Those expectations were further dimi...

            For tonight’s tale, we find the ruined village in a precarious situation. The hapless inmates of the village have lived their lives in fear for too long. Mostly, they fear stepping in things that have no business being out in public. Too many dogs have walked amidst the spider azalea and have never returned.  The police have cowered in fear while the lawless elements have ruled over th...

            Tonight’s tale begins in a hole, dug deep into the earth by a creature that wants nothing to do with the world. The hole is merely a space in the earth for him to occupy until he passes from this world. For that is all this creature wants. He seeks oblivion.             Yet the outer world would still claim this creature’s time and labor. The creature is awakened from his wretched slum...

            For tonight’s tale, we join a doomed soul that has been locked away. He was first removed from society, and then from all sources of light. His sanity did not survive. The years he spent in his perpetually darkened cell could not be counted by his broken mind. He clawed at unforgiving walls and pulled at iron bars until his body failed him. He devoted his wretched life to vain attempts...

            Tonight is the night we conclude season four. It began with the cult of the Spider taking control of the ruined village. They assigned the River Road crew to punish Tomisaburo, deal with the Devil monk, assist the faceless man, and locate the weasel. Over the past season, they have taken bold steps to accomplish some of those tasks. Some of it may have even been intentional. However, t...

            For tonight’s tale, we join a lone stranger who fancies himself something of a celebrity. He has journeyed to a nearby resort town to investigate a strange incident. The employees of a local distillery claim mysterious entities have interfered with their production operations. The entities themselves defy explanation, as their actions are too erratic to be those of humans. However, the...

            For tonight’s tale, we find ourselves in the parking lot of an electronic store. The reputation of the store has always been negative. Yet the discovery of animate corpses on the second floor of the premises has damaged the store’s reputation beyond repair. These corpses were animated by the pedantic psychopath known as the Turkey. He has operated unopposed for so long that the situati...

            Tonight, we will visit a lonely second-hand electronics store. It was once the center of a criminal conspiracy that came close to destroying the ruined village, and its situation has not improved much since. The management has been replaced by a member of the River Road crew known as the Professor, who has a reputation for being the most sober member of the drunkest group in town. Assi...

            Tonight’s tale concerns a pitiful creature known as a weasel. It awakens to find itself surrounded by darkness, pain, and death. Venom is coursing through its body and threatening to wipe out the weasel’s mind. But there remains within it an undying worm of self-preservation that empowers the weasel to escape.              After a great deal of unpleasantness and a change of clothes, t...

            For tonight’s tale, we find ourselves beneath the ruined village. Our guide through this realm of unforgiving darkness is the ethereal Sachiko, the charming snake deity who has captured the hearts of the River Road crew. With her in the tunnels are the devil monk and the weasel. They are her unwilling guests as she unravels the mystery of why the faceless man now looks like Chico Marx....

            The world is falling down around us, and the situation does not seem to be improving. The streets are still congested, the sidewalks are more broken than they were before, and all public places are more crowded than they have any right to be. But there are a few remaining places we can go to escape the madness. For we still have our ruined village beneath the moonlight.             One...

            For tonight’s tale, we join Sachiko as she rides the bus to meet with her colleague. Since she is a snake deity, every interaction she has with the human world is strange to her. So she puts in the effort to understand the humans around her and the nature of their actions. Doing this enables her to move about amidst the humans largely unnoticed. Yet on this bus ride, she encounters som...

            For tonight’s tale, we find ourselves back in the ruined village. Strange events continue to occur there, and their grotesque players continue to lurk in the darkened corners of the village. Yet they are largely held in check by the efforts of them boys and their crew. Now the village can even pass for quaint on its better days. However, one strange figure still terrorizes the doomed i...

            For tonight’s tale, we join another solitary pilgrim who has the audacity to walk on the river road after nightfall. The night on which he chose to do this dangerous activity is the night of the Wild Hunt. Though this tradition is forgotten amidst the chaotic events that happen in the ruined village on a regular basis, the gods have not forgotten. This night is when supernatural denize...

            For tonight’s episode, I explain why there was a delay in the release of this episode. That involves me recounting a strange incident that occurred while I was conducting field work for the next episode. This episode will serve to give you an idea of the hardships and dangers I face to bring these episodes to you on a semi regular basis. Despite the informal nature of this episode, it...

            For tonight’s tale, we follow a lone fox as it emerges from its burrow. It has just healed from wounds dealt to it in the past, and it needs to hunt to regain its strength. So the fox ventures out to capture its prey. After a successful hunt, it returns to its burrow. It is that satisfied it has secured its survival for the immediate future.             However, the prey is far from no...

            For tonight’s tale we follow a lone IT specialist as he whiles away his life working for a pharmaceutical company. However, this is no normal pharmaceutical company. For it has government contracts to produce chemical weapons that can be used to remove the bones from the living. Fortunately for out IT specialist, he knows all about those contracts. In fact, he is not even an IT special...

            In this episode, I will talk to you like a normal person and give you some insight into what it’s like to do field work in these two ruined villages. Please be warned that I will resort to the use of course language to do so. I may also mention violence, occult activities, and antisocial behavior. For those reasons, and probably others that I am too far gone to even notice, listener di...

            For tonight’s tale, we revisit an incident that had a monumental impact on both the River Village and the Mountain Village. Yet we will not concern ourselves with that tale, for it was not true. Not only that, it was a shameful falsehood intended to cover up the folly of the wolves of the mountain. That had been charged with protecting the mountain, and they had been found lacking.    ...

            For tonight’s tale, I explain why this week’s episode is late. I also give you a bit of insight into how these episodes are made, and what it's like to deal with the denizens of these villages. Though this is not a full episode, I still managed to include profanity in it for some reason. Listener discretion is advised.

            For tonight’s tale, we look upon an abandoned house. It was the scene of a horrific attack on a family that left one dead and two wounded. The attack was so brutal and savage that the surviving brothers could live there no longer. At least, that’s was version of the story that was told to a lone priest, who had previously been content to passively observe the village around him. Howeve...

            I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you to the ruined village. If you’re new here, the flowers are beautiful this time of year, so you picked a great time to join us. Other than the flowers, the rest of the place is fairly ruined. It would be a good idea to watch where you step. In fact, go ahead and bring an extra pair of shoes. Shoes don’t tend to last long in the villag...

            Moonlight Over a Ruined Village is a Weird Fiction anthology podcast dedicated to weird and scary stories. These stories deal with people caught in the grasp of social decay and are based on accounts collected from the residents of a suburban village that has fallen into a state of ruin.             Though the names of the people and locations have been changed to protect the privacy o...

            For tonight’s tale, we meet the cult of the spider. Their leader has been lurking in the shadows of all of these tales. He watched the wolves move into the mountain village, and he did nothing. He watched the river village fall into a state of ruin, and he did nothing. He watched the demented followers of the wolf of the mountain perpetrate their sick bone removal ritual on a lonely tr...