Tales to Terrify 740 Douglas Smith & Joshua Ramey-Renk

April 3, 2026·42 min·3 clips

First-time guest host Douglas Willem reveals he's an uninvited house guest who crept into Tales to Terrify.

First, the show asks for support. The request is simple enough, but it sits next to an opening chant about shadow, sleeplessness, and the darker corners that keep calling. Douglas Willem steps in as a first-time guest host, an editor, and a Bram Stoker Award-nominated author with a history around the show. He introduces Douglas Smith with real ceremony, including Library Journal, Canadian speculative fiction, major genre markets, and The Dream Riders Saga. Then the story takes over. The guide says the jack-o'-lanterns in the church windows are not blasphemy, since the building began on Halloween. The town history sounds well practiced: old man Knickerbocker's coffin business, his calm around fire, and his odd duties to trees and pumpkin patches. Then one word changes the temperature. The patches were not just tended, they were fed. The tour tightens into an alley, and the guide counts everyone forward with the calm of someone who knows the only way out is through. The graveyard is waiting. Town council permission does not make the warning about broken necks, old stones, and convenient burials any friendlier. The joke is dry enough to hurt. When a child balks, the guide rolls that discomfort back into the tour and keeps moving toward the Knickerbocker crypt. Stone angels stay put. By the center, the pumpkins and the family crypt sit close together, and the town's Halloween charm starts to look less harmless.

As heard by us

A slow Halloween tour that builds unease through place, ritual, and a carefully controlled pace.

The episode leans into its Halloween setting without overplaying it. An old church, a narrow alley, and the Knickerbocker graveyard give the tour a fixed sense of place, while candles, pumpkins, crypts, and the town council's permission keep the unease grounded in the ordinary…

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Why you'd press play

A Halloween tour that moves from a church to an old graveyard and the Knickerbocker family crypt.

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