Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

The end of The Hairy Hand

La Mano Peluda ("The Hairy Hand") was a popular Mexican horror story radio program.  It started in 1995, and ran until shutdown this year.  The format sounds a bit like old Art Bell, with call in speakers telling weird stories.

As The Economist describes it,

AS MIDNIGHT neared, five nights a week Mexicans with a taste for the macabre would switch on their radios to hear the latest spooky story, called in by their fellow listeners. There was the tale of the bloodied boots, which kept reappearing in a family’s basement, driving the wife to seek psychiatric treatment. Once, the station that carried the show, XEDF-FM, mysteriously went off the air during a devil-worshipper’s phone-in. Most famous of all was the story told by Josué Velázquez, who said he had suffocated his grandmother to keep his end of a bargain with the devil (doctors said she had died of natural causes).

Here's the last show.

Creepy audio theater: The Stroma Sessions

"The Stroma Sessions" is a new BBC audioplay, and recommended to Infocult readers.

The plot concerns a music group that repairs to a remote island for creative recording work, and how things go ... wrong, and weird.  You might get a Blair Witch vibe from the start, but it goes in interesting directions very quickly.

'The Blackletter Quartet', a new music ensemble, had an idea: to write and record an album on Stroma, an abandoned island off the north coast of Scotland.

Five years after the Quartet's disappearance, 'The Stroma Sessions' - a series of audio files charting the musicians time on the island and the music they created there - were discovered on the internet.

Stroma was abandoned in the early 1960s: its few remaining buildings stand dilapidated, battered by the North Sea. The four musicians sought inspiration in the ruined houses and unforgiving weather. They wanted to make music in a ghost town. The evidence suggests they found what they were looking for.

(via MetaFilter)

Two nice creepy audio tracks

A recent broadcast from WFMU's Noise and Syrup show contains two nicely creepy and Infocultish audio tracks.

The show is long, a little over three hours, but you can click through to the tracks in question from the playlist page.

The first one is a spoken word piece, "Isle of the Dead" by Willem De Ridder (from his Snuff album).  It starts almost exactly at 1:00, ends around 1:21, and is a weird story about a man exploring a town in search of... well, listen. There are echoes of Ligotti and Cortazar.

The second is an intro to EVP, a recording called Ghost Orchid.  There's a history and sketch of the EVP field, followed by some samples.  It starts around 2:01, and goes on for a while.

The rest of the >3 hours program is also worth listening to, but is mostly music, rather than spoken word.  Those tracks should set the mood nicely.

Terrific audio versions of two Lovecraft stories

Two H.P. Lovecraft stories receive splendid audio treatment in a recent production. The Duke St Workshop and Laurence R. Harvey perform "From Beyond" and "The Hound", combining spoken word, electronica, and fine soundscaping.

These aren't full readings, but impressionistic mixes, using excerpts from the stories to anchor audio brooding.  

Get into your isolation tanks, at Matt Howarth used to say, and listen:

 

Madness rides the star-wind . . . claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses . . . dripping death astride a Bacchanale of bats from night-black ruins of buried temples of Belial. . . . Now, as the baying of that dead, fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder, and the stealthy whirring and flapping of those accursed web-wings circles closer and closer, I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my only refuge from the unnamed and unnamable.

(thanks to Mark Wardecker!)

A new Stone Tape on BBC audio

The BBC hosted a remake of a classic 1970s work of haunted media. The Stone Tape (1972), written by the great Nigel Kneale, took place in an old haunted mansion.  An innovation-hungry engineering team figures out how to use the building's stones as an audio-visual storage medium.  Things... don't turn out well.

So this year the BBC asked up and coming director Peter Strickland to reimagine the tale for audio. The results follow Kneale's tale closely, set in the period.  The plot follows the original, as well.

In 1979, a team of scientists moves into a new laboratory in a Victorian mansion. When Jill Greely hears a strange disembodied scream, the team decides to analyse the phenomenon, which appears to be a psychic impression trapped in the wall. The scientists begin to realise that their work has disturbed something hidden beneath the stone, something ancient and malevolent.

Period audio effects have a powerful effect, combining setting with creepiness.  The conclusion is more cryptic than the original; listeners will have to determine for themselves if that's an improvement or error.

For those Infocult readers not in the UK, you can't listen from the BBC site linked above, but you can enjoy this YouTube copy.

 

"Otherwhere": fine scary audio storytelling

"Otherwhere" is a fine bit of audio horror. It starts off as a local public radio host interviewing one Dr. Arlen Childs about his new religion or psychic program. Childs is a channeler, and claims to have made contact with an unusual entity.  Saying anything more will spoil the delights.

Plus, the show has some fine art:

(thanks to Scott Danielson)

"Father Cares": an early Jonestown audio program

"Father Cares: The Last of Jonestown" is a 1981 NPR audio story about the Jonestown horror.  It's a powerful mix of fiction (an invented narrator), archival tape, and experimental structure.  This PRX podcast combines selections from "Father" with recent reflections.

Strongly recommended.

(picture via Wikipedia)

Save Tales To Terrify

Tales To Terrify is one of the best horror podcasts out there.  Ever since they launched in January 2012 hosts Larry Santoro (RIP) and Stephen Kilpatrick have produced 183 shows.   The content includes classic horror and current tales, ranging from poems to short stories, novellas to nonfiction audio essays on the horror genre and reviews.

But now Tales To Terrify is in trouble.  Financial trouble.  They need to pay for the usual podcast stuff (hosting, bandwidth) plus rates for writers.  If people don't make sacrifices, this fine and scary neighborhood of the District of Wonders could simply cease.

So please contribute to the TTT coffers.  Fill up their unnatural kitty.  Stuff their muttering dungeon will your ill-gotten gains.  Only flinging lucre will keep this monster at bay.

The Black Tapes, a fine new horror podcast

This is a good time for audio horror.  Podcasts like Tales to Terrify, No Sleep, and Pseudopod offer many dark delights for our collective earholes.

To that creepy company we can now add The Black Tapes, a new podcast with a handful (well, six) shows so far. It's excellent, and should appeal to Infocult readers.

The conceit is that of faux documentary, as two main characters investigate a creepy, real-seeming story each episode. The narrator, Alex Reagan, is an audio creator who's exploring people with unusual jobs.  In the first episode she looks into ghost hunters and demonologists, when she becomes fascinated by Richard Strand, a professional debunker.  Reagan finds that Strand has an extensive video library, with many tapes documenting his successful, skeptical approach to the apparently supernatural.  But some of those VHS cassettes have black covers.  Strand says they represent cases that haven't yet been debunked; Reagan wants to use them as the basis for her show.  

And so she does, with each episode grounded in these recordings. One concerns people followed by spectral creatures, which only appear in photographs and video.  Another deals with demonic possession and exorcism.  A third features a metal band's attempt to record a terrifying audio track.  A fourth concerns a Thomas Ligotti-like festival based on warped masks and facial torment.

It's all very well done.  Each horror tale unfolds somewhat unpredictably, with red herrings and dead ends.  Black Tapes prefers its horror to be quiet, understated, powerful by implication.  

Although each download is distinct, there are many arc aspects.  Episodes end with loose plot threads, some of which return to life in later ones.  Strand is a suspicious character (in both senses), and his backstory becomes a major plot element.  This first season is building nicely so far.

Black Tapes is also a loving tribute to, and satire of, This American Life-style NPR radio storytelling.  The podcast has fun with name checking Ira Glass and coming up with an NPR-like entity, who putatively sponsors them.  We get thoughtful musical interludes, Radiolab-like host banter and seeming informality, and a deep concern for other people's voices.  It's fine audio storytelling apart from the Gothic aspects.

Infocult readers will appreciate the way Black Tapes works with fearsome digital media.  There is a superbly creepy description of a seemingly benign Photoshop edit, a demonic audio track, unsettling video recordings, disturbing voicemails, and above all the growing menace of the titular tapes.

It's also very charming.  Alex and Mr. Strand (she's rarely Ms. Reagan) have a rich, almost Scully-and-Mulder-like rapport.  The sense of informality and near-improvisation nicely balances the serious subject matter.  

In short, The Black Tapes is a welcome addition to the world of horror podcasts.  Episodes are well written, creepy, and engaging.  Infocult looks forward to more!

 

More fine Lovecraftian audio from 19 Nocturne Blvd

Julie Hoverson is back with another fine podcasting of an HP Lovecraft story. Her crew of voice actors doing horror characters addresses an Infocult favorite, "The Haunter of the Dark" (1936).  Enjoy.

I have seen the dark universe yawning
Where the black planets roll without aim—
Where they roll in their horror unheeded,
Without knowledge or lustre or name.
—Nemesis.