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Dark Tome · Realm

A Journey with Strange Bedfellows, Part 1

October 7, 2022·34 min·3 clips
A clockwork dancing partner malfunctions at a birthday ball, crushing Annette to death and sparking pandemonium.
Why does true love keep wandering toward monsters? Fred Greenhalgh opens with that unease, asking why macabre stories still work across generations and why love so often drifts toward werewolves, vampires, and dark forests. The setup is formal but inviting. He presents A Journey with Strange Bedfellows as a miniseries once made with Jan C.J. Jones and Forest Rose Productions, now available as a free podcast. The source material comes from lesser-known stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bram Stoker, Jack London, Jerome K. Jerome, Wilkie Collins, and Hector H. Saki Munro. Then the room gets smaller. The episode moves from introduction into performed fiction, following Mr. Brown, Faith Geibel, and the small omen of a pink hair ribbon. Faith slips the ribbon into his coat pocket, talks about imperfection, and gives Mr. Brown the opening he needs to confess. Felix Wenzel then approaches old Geibel with plans for the mechanical marvel, thinking about profit while the clockwork man keeps dancing. The music stops, but Annette does not. Her strength gives out, her feet drag, and what looks like sleep becomes something much worse. Blood spreads through her dress. Panic takes over the room, and the men cannot stop the machine. Geibel rushes in, but his creation resists him, the slick floor sends him off balance, and an outstretched arm knocks him unconscious. The machine's embrace tightens until Mr. Brown climbs onto its back, finds the lever, and pulls. The terror feels romantic, mechanical, and staged like a ritual. Then the episode snaps into promotional fragments for other fiction podcasts, a jarring break after the bloody ballroom.

As heard by us

A gothic mini series that lets six literary stories breathe.

On a first pass, the mini series from the creator of The Dark Tome feels built around one clear question: why do macabre stories keep resurfacing across generations? Six lesser-known tales from Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bram Stoker, Jack London, Jerome K.

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Why you'd press play

Press play for old literary horrors with a slow, ceremonial chill.

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