The Dark Mind Podcast

In this episode, Vincent Midgard sits down with horror author Michael Boulerice to discuss his novella Inhalation. Michael talks about writing the book as a tribute to his late father-in-law and how hospice, cancer, autonomy, and grief shaped the heart of the story. The conversation explores the abandoned New England house at the center of the book, Catholic guilt, corrupted faith, family trauma,...

On this episode, philosopher and author Charlene Elsby joins the show to discuss her novel Poor Damned Souls. The book follows a nameless narrator who works behind the glass at a payday loan business called The Money Store and lives with her partner, Scott. When she begins to suspect Scott is cheating, she investigates and uncovers something far worse than another woman. Rather than running, she i...

Cleo Ballard joins the show to discuss her new psychological thriller, This Is a Lie. The novel follows Penn, a former PhD candidate who traded her dissertation for a curated suburban life that detonates when her marriage, friendships, and her teenage daughter's trust all collapse. In the wreckage, Penn returns to her abandoned work and builds Aletheia, an AI designed to detect lies and tell only...

Mark Mustian joins The Dark Mind Podcast to discuss his newest novel, Boy With Wings. The book follows Johnny Cruel, a boy born different in a world desperate to call him angel, devil, freak, miracle, or monster. Together, we explore Southern Gothic fiction, literal wings, freak shows, turpentine camps, Jim Crow racism, religious fear, and the brutal cost of being seen as spectacle before being un...

CJ Leede joins The Dark Mind Podcast to discuss her new novel Headlights, a slow burn supernatural thriller set in the high country of Colorado. We explore serial murder by proxy, violence as a contagious force, and the terrifying loss of control at the center of the story. CJ talks about grief, death, trauma, home, and why Headlights became one of her most hopeful books. The conversation moves th...

Brian Sepanzyk joins the show to discuss his short film Defile and the way empathy can curdle into survival horror. The conversation explores remote cabin dread, moral gray zones, relationship collapse, and the fear that begins when your alarm bells go off too late. Brian talks about building unease before violence, using the woods as a boundary between the ordinary and the monstrous, and deciding...

In this episode, Vincent sits down with author Ben Young to discuss his new novel Ride the Spiral. Ben talks about turning real life grief, parenting struggles, and the search for answers into cosmic horror. The conversation explores neurodivergence, desperation, mental health, string theory, absurdism, and the terror of not being able to fix the people you love. Ben also discusses the influence o...

Kathleen Rhodes joins The Dark Mind Podcast to discuss her new novel Vampire Missionaries. We talk about Mormon missionaries, vampires, religious pressure, dark comedy, and the horror of questioning what you were raised to believe. Kathleen also shares how her background in psychiatric mental health shaped the way she writes trauma, identity, resilience, and characters at their rawest. We also dis...

Ian Domowitz joins The Dark Mind Podcast to discuss Initial Condition, the third novella in his dark fantasy series The Mechanic’s Diary. The conversation explores Hanzi Boss, a being bred through a 16th century alchemical recipe and taught language like a machine learning to speak. Ian and Vincent dig into golems, homunculi, Jewish mysticism, artificial intelligence, consciousness, and the terrif...

Erin Louis joins The Dark Mind Podcast to discuss her grounded horror thriller There's No Grave Like Home. The novel follows Georgia, a former exotic dancer in her mid-forties forced to return to the rural hometown she fled decades ago after inheriting her estranged father's house. Erin opens up about how growing up as an outsider in a small town shaped the antagonists and the atmosphere of the bo...

Andrew Adams returns to The Dark Mind Podcast to discuss his new Cemetery Dance Publications novel, Crossroads, Inc. The book is set in the dying backwoods town of Glanton, where the air is toxic, the water is undrinkable, and the people have been forgotten. When a life insurance company called Crossroads, Inc. rolls into town offering cash advances on policies repaid in severed body parts, what b...

In this episode of The Dark Mind Podcast, Vincent Midgard sits down with author Daniel Grace. They discuss Grace’s debut novel, In the Wake of Golgotha, a dark literary thriller that reimagines Judas Iscariot and Pontius Pilate in modern New York. The conversation explores guilt, reincarnation, capital punishment, faith, betrayal, and the psychological weight of history. Grace also talks about the...

In this episode of The Dark Mind Podcast, Vincent Midgard sits down with filmmaker Erich Cannon to discuss his feature film His Monster. They explore the film’s roots in Japanese folklore, its addiction allegory, and the emotional terrain of grief, denial, and spiritual drowning that drives the story. Erich also talks about practical creature effects, the influence of The X-Files, writing from per...

In this episode, I’m joined by author Lee Stackhouse to discuss Diary of a Damsel Dame, a dark psychological horror novel about obsession, projection, love, and violence. We talk about Delilah Vale as both predator and wounded inner child, and why readers can feel repulsed by her while still wanting to protect her. Lee opens up about writing from trauma, using the diary format to capture a secret...

Andrew Najberg returns to The Dark Mind Podcast to discuss his new novel, Eat the Light. The book follows two young sisters, Alyssa and Tabitha, who are locked in a fallout shelter by their father and left to survive alone when they emerge into a world that no longer exists. The streets are empty, the rain corrodes everything it touches, and glowing figures known as the Shimmer People stalk the ru...

In this episode of The Dark Mind Podcast, Vincent Midgard sits down with filmmaker Jethro Waters to discuss his surreal southern gothic feature Gunfighter Paradise.​They explore the film’s collision of religion, grief, guns, greed, and dark humor, and how Waters sees it as an expression of the American psychosis.​Waters breaks down how his upbringing in the rural South, his father’s background as...

Tamika Thompson returns to The Dark Mind Podcast to discuss her debut novel The Curse of Hester Gardens, a Black Gothic horror story rooted in grief, motherhood, faith, and survival. ​ In this episode, we explore how haunted public housing transforms the classic haunted house framework into something inescapable, where economics, danger, and the supernatural are all bound together. ​ Tamika talks...

Death metal guitarist, horror novelist, and accidental publisher Jeremy Wagner joins The Dark Mind Podcast to discuss his savage new novel Wretch. Set in Chicago during the hottest summer on record, Wretch follows three men on a collision course: a hard-boiled detective tracking a killer who should not exist, a mob boss running on grief and vengeance, and Derek Hoffman, a steroid-abusing sociopath...

N.J. Gallegos returns to The Dark Mind Podcast. She is an Emergency Medicine physician, horror author, and co-host of the Scream Kings Horror Podcast. Her new novella, Eat Your Heart Out, is published by Black Hare Press and releases March 14, 2026. The book follows Jules, a first-year medical student with an exceptional mind for anatomy and a carefully controlled emotional life. That control shat...

In 1990, two men disguised as Boston police officers stole 13 priceless works of art from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in what became the largest art heist in history, valued at over $1 billion. FBI Special Agent Geoffrey Kelly spent 28 years as one of the founding members of the FBI Art Crime Team, and in 2002 inherited this cold case. Rather than working it as a standard property crime, K...

In this episode, author Blaine Daigle returns to discuss his latest novel, Porcelain Lullaby. The book follows two estranged brothers, Jake and Nate Shepherd, whose childhood ended in violence when they woke to find their parents dead. Twenty years later, they receive a message from their long-dead mother calling them to Meadowland, an abandoned orphanage in rural Pennsylvania. We explore how the...

In this episode, filmmaker Alex Domenici joins us to discuss his horror short Never Let You Go. The film follows a woman whose abusive ex-boyfriend reaches from beyond the grave to bind them together through an occult ritual. Alex shares how he invested most of his life savings into the production, building elaborate sets and shooting in real caves outside Los Angeles. We explore the film's themes...

Jon Cohn returns to The Dark Mind Podcast to discuss his latest novel, The Creed Falls Massacres, a genre-bending collision of 80s slasher horror and cosmic body horror. Seventeen years after the Camp Creed massacre, final girl Jamie Campbell faces a town divided over whether she is a hero or a murderer. When a meteor crashes on the anniversary of the killings and the Silver Fox killer returns, Ja...

Radar DeBoard joins The Dark Mind Podcast to discuss his visceral novella Everything But the Skin, published by Uncomfortably Dark. Set in the cursed town of Shallow Root, the story follows a young girl named Sophia who finds herself psychically connected to an ancient evil hunting children. We explore how Radar blends body horror with supernatural elements to create what he calls comfort horror s...

P.M. Raymond joins The Dark Mind Podcast to discuss her debut collection Things Are As They Should Be and Other Words To Die For. This New Orleans-inspired noir-horror exploration examines revenge, consequence, and the violence that seeps into the soil of communities. Raymond discusses blending crime noir's moral agency with psychological horror's supernatural consequences. We explore the...