Everyone knows that scary movies are a great way to get into the Halloween spirit, but not many consider listening to podcasts. Here’s a list of four amazing podcast options to listen to this season.

4. Night Vale Presents

Night Vale Presents is a podcast network that produces many different podcasts, and three of their fictional ones are great listens for this spooky month.

First, there’s Welcome to Night Vale, a radio station that reports on the events of the unusual town of Night Vale. There’s Alice isn’t Dead, the recordings of a truck driver as she searches for her supposedly dead wife. Then there’s Within the Wires, which uses guided relaxation and audio museum tours as formats to slowly drop hints of a horrifying underlying plot. 

One of Night Vale Presents’s strengths is in the imagery it’s able to create. From the bizarre descriptions of the dog park that doesn’t allow dogs in Night Vale, to the gripping antagonist and action in Alice isn’t Dead, to Within the Wire’s calming narrators saying things that are just off enough to make you uneasy. 

3.Limetown

Limetown is a fictional podcast that uses the format of real-life investigative journalist podcasts like Serial to tell the tale of journalist Lia Haddock as she investigates the mysterious disappearance of 300 people at the research facility Limetown. 

One of the main strengths of this show, aside from the story, is the amazing production quality. The sound effects, music, voice acting, everything about it makes it feel incredibly real, as if you’re listening to an actual journalistic podcast instead of something fictional. For instance, there are interview clips where Lia’s voice is clear but the other person actually sounds like they’re talking over the phone. Those little touches make a big difference when you’re listening.

2.Lore

Lore is a bi-weekly, nonfiction podcast about real-life stories, from accidents to mysterious disappearances. This is a great podcast for listeners who don’t want to commit to hours of listening since every episode stands alone. 

Lore’s strength comes from the work of Arron Mahnke. The amazing scripts and his smooth, measured voice make listening to it a unique and immersive experience. Many of the stories Mahnke tells need a fair amount of context, but he does a great job of this setup, making it easy to understand but still chilling. 

Something unique to Lore is that it’s a nonfiction podcast. The fact that you can confirm the validity of each story with a quick google search, that what happened actually occurred, adds a layer of reality that none of the other podcasts on this list have. 

1.The Magnus Archives

The Magnus Archives is a weekly fictional horror podcast that centers around the Magnus Institute, a research facility where people come to recount horrifying events they’ve witnessed. The story begins when Johnathan Sims, the head archivist, decides to organize some of these statements by recording himself reading them aloud.

The “statements” the episodes focus around are, for lack of a better word, horrifying. Often what you’re supposed to be scared of is never completely described, forcing your mind to fill in the blanks. Many episodes also lack closure or an explanation, which makes the fear linger.

While it seems at the start that the Magnus Institute is just a way to explain the source of these statements, as the podcast progresses it’s clear that there’s more going on. Statements start unconnected with Sims only breaking off-topic to give context or his opinion at the end. However, as episodes go by connections start to form, Sims’s musings reveal more and more, and additional employees of the Magnus Institute make their appearances.

Aside from the story, the technical side of the podcast is incredible. From eerie background music to well-timed sound effects to amazing voice acting performances, this podcast is sure to give you goosebumps every time.