Grim case files, gallows jokes and a conspiracy corner.
Jan works through cases such as Albert Fish, Sylvia Likens and JonBenet Ramsey in close, unsparing detail, with Les alongside and the banter loose and crude. A separate Conspiracy Corner series turns to JFK and RFK, from the Gemstone Files to the number of shots fired the night RFK was killed.
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Enter The Dark is a true crime show with two moods running side by side, and it makes no effort to keep them apart. On one side sits the case material, read in close and often harrowing detail. On the other sit Jan and Les, whose banter is crude, profane and cheerfully inappropriate. Jan calls himself the guide in one episode, opening with a theatrical welcome to 'wanderers of the shadows' before dropping straight into jokes about Les moving house. Les is there 'as always', cast by Jan as a 'manservant', and his new home down south gets compared to the Shire from Lord of the Rings, only with fewer shops. The cases test the stomach. The Albert Fish episode reads out graphic first-person descriptions of cannibalism. 'The Torture and Murder of Sylvia Likens' sets out Gertrude's abuse in unsparing specifics, and its cold open carries a warning about child abuse, sexual abuse and torture. It is also a remake: the pair returned to the case because the audio on the original, recorded when they first started, was poor. The JonBenet Ramsey episode follows investigators to a notepad in the Ramsey home holding what looked like a first draft of the ransom note, which let police argue the note was written inside the house. The humour does not pause for any of it, and that same episode is jokingly billed as 'a nice little fun one for Christmas Day'. Some case episodes begin with a short scene-setting teaser before the greeting. 'The Corpsewood Manor Murders' starts with Charles Scudder and Joseph Odom leaving Chicago in 1975 to build a home in the Chattahoochee National Forest, and later walks through the manor itself: an image of Baphomet, a ritual cabinet filled with teddy bears, a stained-glass window with a Medusa-like skull. Midway through, the pair drift into talk of a doll-filled site under Edinburgh they would like to visit. The second strand is Conspiracy Corner, a series Jan traces back to a childhood of buying a conspiracy magazine and derailing family gatherings with what was in it. 'Conspiracy Corner - The Gemstone Files - Did Onassis kill JFK?' lays out the alleged Onassis story, with oil cartels, the Rockefellers and a Washington Post purchase woven in, all framed as allegation. The RFK episode is more forensic, setting the eight-round capacity of Sirhan's revolver against an analysis counting at least eleven bullets, and a coroner's finding of a shot from inches behind against witnesses who placed Sirhan in front. Jan also flags MKUltra as ground the series intends to cover at length. The Gemstone Files sign-off, a reminder to keep the tinfoil helmet on, sums up the attitude: interested, entertained and not especially solemn. The case episodes close on the same line, 'I've been Jan. He's been Les', along with an open invitation for comments, blunt ones included, and suggestions for cases.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants notorious cases told in full, unsoftened detail and does not mind crude jokes and swearing in between, with the occasional detour into JFK and RFK conspiracy theories.
What sets it apart: It puts unflinching, detail-heavy case reading right next to crude, jokey banter between Jan and Les, and runs a separate Conspiracy Corner series that moves from murder files to the Kennedy assassinations.
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A bloody goose head sparks a goose debate; you may have found your true-crime duo.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A loose, grim Fish episode where grotesque source material meets Jan and Les's uneasy dark humor.
Albert Fish comes into focus through aliases, grisly detail, and the hosts' bleak shorthand for his public mythology: the Grey Man, the werewolf of Westeros, and the Brooklyn Vampire.
A harrowing redo brings clearer focus to Sylvia Likens' case, with her warning to Jenny as its human center.
The episode returns to the murder of Sylvia Likens with a cleaner, more deliberate account of the abuse she suffered in Gertrude's home. Jan and Les frame the revisit as a corrective to an earlier version whose audio, editing, and script did not meet their standard, then move…
A secluded dream home becomes a murder story shadowed by artwork that seems to know what is coming.
The Corpsewood Manor Murders traces Charles Scudder and Joseph Odom from Chicago to the Chattahoochee National Forest, where a secluded home built as a private refuge becomes the center of a brutal killing.
A German farm, a missing family, and a wounded dog make ordinary warnings feel quietly unnerving.
A farm in Germany turns ominous through the smallest signs: a missing family, smoke still rising from the chimney, and a man with a flashlight near the property.
Podcast discovery from the Sherpa Chalet.
Witchy banter with glorious detours.
Female crime, told with grave attention.
Albert Fish is framed as the Grey Man, the Brooklyn Vampire, and the subject of child murder, cannibal feasts, and self-mutilation from the opening minute.
Enter the Dark revisits Sylvia Likens after calling the case possibly the worst it has covered, with child abuse, rape, sexual abuse, and torture flagged up front.
Enter the Dark traces Charles Lee Scudder, born in Milwaukee on October 6, 1926, from the University of Wisconsin and Loyola University to a 1964 PhD in pharmacology.
Enter The Dark’s JonBenet Ramsey episode focuses on the Christmas morning case in Boulder, Colorado, and the ransom note demanding $118,000.
["Enter The Dark covers the 1922 Hinterkaifeck Farm murders on an isolated German farm about 40 miles north of Munich, where the nearest neighbor was a quarter-mile away.", "Jan and Les trace Andreas Gruber's abuse of Victoria Gabriel, the incest charges that sent Andreas to prison for 12 months and Victoria for one month, and the later paternity fight with Lorenz Schlittenbauer over Joseph.", "Spring 1922 adds missing keys, an unexplained Munich newspaper, attic footsteps, a man in military uniform at the woods, and the arrival of maid Maria Baumgardner on March 31.", "The episode then walks through the bodies found in the barn and house, the attic evidence of someone hiding there, the heads sent to Munich for a seance, and suspect theories about Carl Gabriel, Schlittenbauer, and Adolf Gump."]
Enter the Dark frames Hans Schmidt as a German Catholic priest whose childhood mixes prayer, blood, and a rooster head on his penis.
Enter The Dark hosts Yam and Les recount Israel Keys’s January 7, 1979 birth in Richmond, Utah, and his upbringing near Colville, Washington.
Jan and Leisure K examine the Chicago Ripper Crew, a four-man group linked in the episode to murders in Chicago during the early 1980s.
Two hosts discuss the case of Richard Chase, the Vampire of Sacramento, with dark humor and irreverent commentary.
Two hosts discuss the Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs, a pair of Ukrainian teenagers who made a snuff film and went on a killing spree in 2007.
Two hosts introduce the case of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, a couple who kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and murdered young women, with dark humor and banter.
Two hosts introduce a true crime case about Randy Stare, the Danny Phantom Killer, with humorous banter and promotion of their Patreon and merchandise.