Retro Radio: Old Time Radio in the Dark

A nuclear test deep beneath the Nevada desert stirs something that should have died out two hundred thousand years ago, and when two old colleagues climb into the mountains to find it, only one of them grasps what it will cost to bring a living giant back down. Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of...

At her own party, a wealthy widow watches her trusted investment counselor's fingers close around a small copper idol — the Queen of Thieves — as if the little goddess had reached out of the shadows and chosen him for her own. Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://...

Thirteen years after The Empire Strikes Back, the long-delayed finale arrived in 1996 — six episodes that brought the original trilogy to a close. Funding cuts had stalled production for more than a decade, but the conclusion was completed at last, with Anthony Daniels returning one final time as C-3PO, joined by Brock Peters as Darth Vader, John Lithgow's Yoda, and Ed Asner as Jabba the Hutt. Sti...

A dying woman swears there's a prowler downstairs, but what her husband finds in the dark kitchen is a timid little ghost who can't remember why he's come. Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approxi...

In 1983, the team behind NPR's record-breaking Star Wars returned for the darker, colder middle chapter — The Empire Strikes Back, told across ten episodes. Mark Hamill and Anthony Daniels were back as Luke and C-3PO, Billy Dee Williams reprised Lando Calrissian from the film, and a young John Lithgow voiced Yoda, all set to the original sound effects and John Williams' score. From the frozen wast...

In 1981, National Public Radio turned the biggest movie in the world into a thirteen-episode radio epic that went on to break the network's listening records. George Lucas sold the rights for a single dollar and handed over the original sound effects and John Williams' score, letting a full cast bring the galaxy to life in sound alone. Mark Hamill and Anthony Daniels reprised Luke Skywalker and C-...

“The Enchanted Child”: A polite little boy keeps pushing away his favorite dessert at Sunday dinner — and every time he does, somebody in the family doesn't live to see Monday. Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR CHAPTERS & TIME STAM...

A skeptical census taker's idle curiosity about a mystic who can summon the dead draws his old friend's beautiful, restless daughter into the stranger's orbit — and she may never come back. Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR CHAPTERS &a...

Twenty years after she was locked away for taking a hatchet to her own sister, fragile Ann Pettigrew comes home obsessed with one desire — and on a storm-lit night, with candles burning and a circle drawn on the floor, she works a forbidden rite to summon back the only man she ever loved, no matter what comes walking up the veranda steps to answer. Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,...

A scheming wife and her spineless lover pull off the perfect murder of her wealthy husband — until the dead man starts turning up in the snow, at the bar, waiting in the shadows, and refuses to stay buried. Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here:  https://weirddarkness.tiny....

Two wealthy couples settle in for a lavish Christmas dinner at a lovingly restored country cottage, until the lights die, the wine turns to blood, and the house itself seals them inside with something that remembers what once happened within its walls. Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free lis...

A betrothal feast turns to terror when the man who comes courting Lady Margaret may be the same Earl of Dunbar who was stabbed to death on the road to claim her — and a Highland prophecy that the last of her line would be the bride of death seems to be coming true. Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a lis...

A young geologist drilling four miles into a Rocky Mountain ridge breaks through into a sealed chamber and finds something impossible: a fully furnished modern house, twelve billion years old, holding a library that has already written the history of a world exactly like ours — including the volume that tells how it ends. Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music...

“Hands of Death”: A wheelchair-bound collector of murder relics decides the only things missing from his macabre collection are a murderer and a victim — so he engineers his own killer brother's downfall to acquire both. But the dead don't always stay in their boxes, and a pair of severed hands may yet keep a promise of vengeance. Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Ama...

“Brothers of the Angle”: A grieving widow believes a stranger can carry messages from her dead husband — messages only the couple could have known. But in a story about baiting hooks and landing fortunes, the real question is who's fishing, and who's the catch. Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of...

A young Long Island couple discovers that the knife-wielding ghost stalking their cellar and terrorizing their four-year-old son may not be the threat they assumed. Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Time...

In Nazi-occupied France, German officers repeatedly try to execute a young French woman by hanging — but each time, she returns alive. The woman becomes less a normal person than an allegorical embodiment of France/liberty/resistance: the Nazis can murder bodies, but they cannot kill the spirit they are fighting. Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora...

Two American relic hunters ignore every warning and dig their way into a flooded Yucatán cavern the locals swear belongs to the dead — who, as it turns out, keep very careful inventory. Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR CHAPTERS &...

A friendship gift from across the Iron Curtain rode into orbit with five American astronauts, and the only thing that came back was the teddy bear. Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)… 0...

Manhattan was bought from the Indians for twenty-four dollars, and now something in the widow Soames's mansion has come back to renegotiate the deal. Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…...

Thirteen drops of blood spilled on three-hundred-year-old bones, and a footstep in the dark with only one foot to make it — the kind of Friday the thirteenth that earns the date its bad name. Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR CHAPTERS...

In a city of three million where every window glows with the flicker of a television screen, one man steps outside to walk the empty streets — and discovers that in 2053, a simple stroll after dark is enough to draw the attention of the law. Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps...

Jack, Doc, and Reggie encounter a frightened young woman, Sunny Richards, who believes she is doomed by an old family curse tied to murder, money, and the Richards family fortune. The boys try to prove the “curse” is human-made, not supernatural, while the case spirals into attempted murder, desert danger, hidden motives, and a criminal plot behind the supposed curse.  Look for this podcast on App...

“A Point of Time”: When a 90-year-old physicist is dragged away by the secret police of a dystopian regime, his frail sister pays a "harmless" visit to the dictator who ordered the arrest — armed with a single handshake that could rewrite history itself. Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free l...

A Tale of Two Worlds: When a twenty-year-old soap opera actor learns his character is being killed off after thirteen years on the show, the line between the role he's played since childhood and the empty life waiting for him outside the studio begins to dissolve in dangerous ways. Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcas...