Scary stories, read closely for the real history inside.
Ghouls Next Door treats a scary story as evidence: Gabe and Kae trace colonial violence through a Stephen Graham Jones book and Jim Crow through a reformatory in a Tananarive Due story. Anime and cartoons face the same scrutiny, from fan-service camera angles to the K-pop idol industry, with jokes throughout.
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Ghouls Next Door starts from a plain premise: the things that frighten people on the page and screen are built out of real history, and it is worth finding out which history. Gabe and Kae lead the conversation, and their episodes start the same way. Names first, then the promise of spooky stuff, then a quick swerve into the real subject. Sometimes that is trauma, sometimes puberty, sometimes the history and future of America, followed by a quick aside about what a country it is. Even the show's statement of purpose bends to fit, with the list of influences it traces picking up words like generational, body or animated depending on the material. The frame stays fixed; the lens adjusts. Book episodes show the method at full stretch. With Stephen Graham Jones, the talk turns to a history of violence that has seeped into the country's soil, and to a supernatural force of retribution arriving a few centuries late. With Tananarive Due, the focus is a reformatory and the society that makes it possible: a facility that pays the county for every boy sent there, a family with a long record of profiting from injustice, Jim Crow standing where slavery once stood. The fandom is warm and unguarded. One of the pair hopes Stephen Graham Jones might record a kind word for them to frame, and one of them hit a turn in Due's book while reading at the gym at 5am, and was not ready for it. The animation episodes apply the same scrutiny to material that looks lighter. On Dandadan, the pair question camera angles that fix on bodies while the action happens elsewhere, and credit Momo with powers that are hers alone in a genre usually built around boys. Kpop Demon Hunters, which left one of them sobbing, becomes a study of an idol industry that corrupts young performers, with a note on the Korean grim reaper figure behind the Saja Boys' name. Its closing thoughts turn to parenting, and a blunt view that anyone unsure they could love a child's true self should think twice about having one. Seoul Station is weighed against Train to Busan, one confined to train cars, the other roaming neighborhoods, tunnels and a police station, with characters who have nowhere to call home. The pair also wonder whether the film's lack of homeless children reflects how Korean statistics count them. At least one episode changes hands: the Invincible discussion is voiced by Isaiah and Mike, who name Debbie Grayson the realest character and follow the violence as it escalates. They flag the gore plainly and suggest tender viewers not watch right before bed. And across voices, a running joke of a sign-off about marriage and children survives as tradition. What a listener gets is loose, funny talk that keeps arriving at serious readings, where an animated zombie film and a K-pop cartoon earn the same care as the books.
Made for: Suits a listener who enjoys horror and animation but wants the conversation to reach history, race, industry and family, with plenty of jokes along the way. Also a fit for readers of Stephen Graham Jones or Tananarive Due who want a close, affectionate discussion of their books.
What sets it apart: It brings a horror-and-history reading to material beyond straight horror, from anime and a K-pop cartoon to superhero animation, and ties each story to concrete systems such as Jim Crow, colonial violence or how homelessness gets counted. Its statement of purpose changes a word to fit each subject, which shows how the frame bends to the material.
Award-winning media literacy podcast from a horror lens. Gabe & Kae discuss real-life influences on our cinematic fears every Wednesday.
A juke joint full of sinners, and suddenly your vampire rewatch needs a theory of capitalism.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Gabe and Kay read Stephen Graham Jones's horror through colonial violence, inherited harm, and the fragile hope of ending a cycle.
Gabe and Kay close their It Is Written series with Stephen Graham Jones, treating his horror as restless, generous to the genre, and charged by more than shock.
Ghouls Next Door follows the buried history inside Due's horror into Gracetown's restless spirits.
Ghouls Next Door returns to its It Is Written series with Tananarive Due as the path into horror built from buried history. Gabe and Kay follow Robbie's institutionalization, Gloria's fight with the legal system, and the way Gracetown's wealth is bound up with slavery, Jim Crow,…
The Saja boys turn idol culture's pressure into a grim-reaper reading of fame.
The Ghouls Next Door wrap their animated series with a horror-minded reading of Kpop Demon Hunters, framing its pop spectacle as a story about trauma, self-acceptance, and generational pressure.
A lively Dandadan review about fan service, puberty horror, and Momo as the story's center.
Dandadan is read through some of its rowdiest material: fan service, puberty, supernatural danger, and the question of who gets treated as the hero.
A horror-minded Invincible discussion that makes the show's blood, power, and family damage feel physical.
The episode reads Invincible as superhero spectacle pushed into bodily, psychological, and existential horror, while keeping Debbie Grayson in view as one of the show's clearest emotional anchors.
Serialized pulp radio drama: Red Panda battles android-army supervillain Captain Clockwork in 1930s Toronto.
The hosts discuss the first season of Interview with the Vampire, exploring real-life influences and emotional monsters in the context of their Monstrous Love series.
The Ghouls Next Door episode centers on Stephen Graham Jones's The Only Good Indians and Buffalo Hunter Hunter as linked studies in horror, history, and revenge.
Gabe and Kay frame Tananarive Due as a horror writer they keep recommending, from The Good House to The Reformatory and Horror Noir.
Ghouls Next Door reviews Kpop Demon Hunters as a 2025 animated film about Huntrix, a K-pop trio that hunts demons while trying to seal the Han Moon.
Gabe and Kay frame Dandadan as a horror-lens discussion of puberty, objectification, and supernatural body change.
Isaiah, Mike, and June use Invincible to compare Robert Kirkman's comic with the animated series, treating Mark Grayson, Nolan Grayson, and the Viltrumites as a family-and-legacy problem.
Gabe and Kat of Ghouls Next Door analyze Seoul Station, the 2016 animated prequel to Train to Busan, as a zombie story centered on Seoul's houseless population.
Ghouls Next Door examines the 2007 Spanish film REC through found-footage conventions, media literacy, and the ethics of recording people in danger.
Gabe and Kat of Ghouls Next Door revisit Jeff Barnaby’s 2019 film Blood Quantum, in which a zombie virus devastates the world while the Micmac community of Red Crow remains immune.
Ghouls Next Door examines the 2023 ZOM100 anime through media literacy, focusing on Akira’s escape from a three-year period of exploitative work.
Gabe and Kat of The Ghouls Next Door analyze Netflix’s 2022 series All of Us Are Dead, where a South Korean high school becomes ground zero for a zombie outbreak.
Kat and Gabe of Ghouls Next Door join guest Eric Bargan to analyze 28 Years Later (2025) through horror media literacy.
Gabe, Kat, and June review David F.
Ghouls Next Door examines Eli Craig’s 2025 film Clown in the Cornfield, adapted from Adam Caesar’s novel and centered on Quinn’s move from Philadelphia to Kettle Springs.
Gabe and Kat analyze Black Mirror’s 2023 episode “Joan Is Awful,” in which Joan Tate’s life becomes a Streamberry series starring Salma Hayek.
Ghouls Next Door analyzes Black Mirror’s 2025 episode Common People, in which school teacher Amanda receives RiverMind treatment for an inoperable brain tumor and becomes dependent on a monthly subscription.
Gabe and Kat of Ghouls Next Door review Companion, Drew Hancock's 2025 science-fiction horror romantic comedy about a remote-cabin getaway involving artificial intelligence and toxic relationships.
Kat and Gabie17 analyze Bong Joon-ho's 2025 film Mickey 17, in which a debt-trapped worker becomes an expendable cloned for dangerous experiments on an ice planet.
Ghouls Next Door analyzes Wicked through media literacy, focusing on how the Wizard of Oz uses propaganda and scapegoats talking animals.
Ghouls Next Door analyzes Ryan Coogler’s 2025 film Sinners as both a Jim Crow-era story about Smoke, Stack, and Sammy and a vampire narrative rooted in music, faith, and folklore.
Gabe and Kat of Ghouls Next Door analyze Severance season two through worker alienation, bodily autonomy, and the personhood of Lumen Industries' innies.
Ghouls Next Door’s Kat and Gabe analyze From as a horror series about travelers trapped in a nameless town where nighttime creatures hunt residents and talismans provide protection.
Gabe and Kat celebrate the 300th episode of Ghouls Next Door with a retrospective on their media-literacy approach and an analysis of Squid Game.
Ghouls Next Door’s episode on AMC’s Interview with the Vampire examines how Louis de Pointe du Lac’s identity as a Black queer man changes the story’s treatment of desire, power, and abuse.
Gabe and Kat of Ghouls Next Door analyze Robert Eggers’s 2024 Nosferatu as a gothic horror film about Orlock’s coercive pursuit of Ellen rather than a mutual romance.
Ghouls Next Door analyzes Caroline Lindy's 2024 film Your Monster, in which cancer patient and actress Laura Franco encounters a closet monster representing her suppressed rage.
The Ghouls Next Door examine Zelda Williams’s 2024 film Lisa Frankenstein, written by Diablo Cody, as a neon late-1980s horror comedy about an isolated teenager and a resurrected Victorian corpse.
Ghouls Next Door examines Guillermo del Toro's 2017 film The Shape of Water as a story about Elisa Esposito, a non-verbal janitor, and an amphibious creature held at a secret 1960s government facility.
Ghouls Next Door reviews Fede Alvarez’s Alien Romulus, a 2024 film set between Alien from 1979 and Aliens from 1986.
Kat and Gabe of Ghouls Next Door analyze The Substance (2024), a satirical body-horror film about Elizabeth Sparkle using a black-market drug to create Sue, a younger version of herself.
Gabe and Kat examine the 2023 Argentinian film When Evil Lurks through Ghouls Next Door's horror-lens analysis of religion, folklore, psychology, and real-world fear.
Sister Kat and Sister Gabe of Ghouls Next Door analyze Immaculate (2024), in which Cecilia enters an Italian convent and becomes pregnant without having had sex.
Gabe Delroy and Cap Gus of Ghouls Next Door analyze Late Night with the Devil, a 2024 film set during a 1977 Halloween broadcast built around ratings pressure, supernatural guests, and satanic panic.
Kat and Gabe Castro use Long Legs (2024) to examine Satanic Panic, girlhood, religious symbolism, and government responses to alleged satanic ritual abuse.
Ghouls Next Door examines Luca Guadagnino's 2018 Suspiria through dance, witchcraft, fascism, guilt, and Cold War-era Berlin in 1977.
Ghouls Next Door examines Ty West’s 2024 film Maxine, the 1980s-set conclusion to the trilogy following X and Pearl.
Ghouls Next Door revisits Robert Eggers's 2015 film The Witch as a media-literacy case study in satanic panic, Puritan belief, and family breakdown.
Ghouls Next Door examines Jane Schoenbrun’s 2024 film I Saw the TV Glow through Owen and Maddie’s attachment to the canceled supernatural series The Pink Opaque.
Gabe and Kat of The Ghouls Next Door revisit David Robert Mitchell’s 2014 film It Follows through media literacy, millennial horror, and the loss of innocence.
Ghouls Next Door examines Andrew Fleming’s 1996 film The Craft through teenage powerlessness, witchcraft, and women’s friendships.
The hosts discuss the horror film Infinity Pool, comparing it to White Lotus and exploring its themes of exploitation and murder.