108 episodes listed below
Classic horror, read aloud by a rotating fireside cast.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias gives classic horror stories to a rotating company of readers and spreads them across successive nights. Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan and William Hope Hodgson's The Horse of the Invisible are both told this way, opened with fireside welcomes and closed with thanks to the cast.
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The Good Friends of Jackson Elias treats a horror story as something to be read out loud, in parts, by a company of voices. Its festive fireside tale of The Great God Pan, by Arthur Machen, runs to four installments across successive nights, with Scott presenting and a changing cast reading the text. Scott introduces it as a classic of psychological and cosmic horror, set where rational science runs into ancient pagan forces. The chapters bear that out. A doctor named Raymond conducts an experiment, a sleeper dreams of a darkness beyond the stars, and a girl of about seventeen is brought into the laboratory. Later, Villiers hears about a death the doctors cannot account for: no poison, no real sign of violence, only a few slight bruises. There is Lord Argentine, whose dinners become famous, a mysterious house on Ashley Street, and a walk from bright Piccadilly into a dull street where the sunshine seems to give out. Each opening sets the room first. Listeners are invited to pour something warming, dim the lights, grab a blanket, or throw another log on the fire. The reading company shifts from night to night. Sarah Dovey, Mike Percival-Maxwell, Brian Murphy, Jen Friday, Sue Savage, Andy Goodman, Graham Wormsley and Anthony Lee Dudley are among the voices. Scott's sign-offs are a small comedy of their own, since he closes each night with some version of still appearing to be himself, at least for now. The final part ends by wishing everyone safe travels home on a cold, dark December night. William Hope Hodgson's The Horse of the Invisible gets the same treatment in two parts. These are billed as special episodes and organized by Mike Percival-Maxwell, who introduces the readers. The story comes from the casebooks of Hodgson's ghost finder, and a family curse and an approaching wedding supply the stakes. Its narrator gives a little sermon on common sense versus hysteria, and then a hoof sounds in the dark billiard room the party has just left. By the second part the house is full of gunfire, with a double barrel, a revolver and a gobbling neigh at close quarters. The first part's sign-off stumbles, stops and tries again, and the stumble stays in. The second part closes by thanking readers from earlier nights and giving one reader room to mention the scenarios they write and their other work. Across both stories the cast clearly enjoys the material, and the presenting stays light enough that the ceremony never turns stiff.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants classic ghost stories and cosmic horror performed by a cast rather than a single narrator, and who is happy to take a story in nightly installments with a warm, slightly playful host holding it together.
What sets it apart: Each story is split among a rotating company of readers instead of one narrator. Every night opens with fireside hospitality, and the sign-offs keep their fumbles and running jokes.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias
A Barbarian death gets Call of Cthulhu damage dice; your horror-film brain has found its people.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A festive final chapter where bright Piccadilly gives way to a Soho street shadowed by old unease.
The final instalment of The Great God Pan returns Austin to Villiers three weeks after the night on Ashley Street, as memoranda on Mrs. Beaumont and Crashaw draw the mystery back into view.
A Piccadilly conversation opens onto ruined lives, social glamour, and a house that keeps its worst answer hidden.
A quiet walk along Piccadilly draws Austin and Villiers toward Herbert's ruined life, the unresolved fate of his wife, and a mysterious house that seems to demand investigation.
A chance meeting, a puzzling death, and Helen Vaughan's name draw a fireside reading into deeper unease.
The Great God Pan frames Villiers' meeting with his old college friend Herbert as a troubling chain of half-known facts: a dead man, a suspect house, and rumors that keep stopping short of proof.
A measured fireside reading turns a scientific experiment into a threshold for cosmic dread.
The first part of The Great God Pan frames its horror as a fireside reading, drawing Dr. Raymond, Clark, Mary, and the green phial into a scene where scientific confidence begins to feel dangerously thin.
A Christmas ghost story reading that drives toward gunfire, a monstrous disguise, and a clean unmasking.
Part two of William Hope Hodgson's The Horse of the Invisible pushes Karnacki's house-bound inquiry from careful experiment into full panic. The photographs point him toward the cellars, and Beaumont, Parsket, Miss Hiskins, and the rest are pulled into darkness, gunfire,…
Patient tales from the uneasy dark.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias examine Frank Belknap Long’s 1929 Weird Tales story “The Hounds of Tindalos” as an example of time travel gone wrong.
Paul Fricker, Scott Olbert, and Matt Sanderson examine Robert Bloch’s connection to H.P.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias compares Yig and Ghatanathoa, two Mythos deities introduced through H.P.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias answer listener questions about GM-less games, epistolary play, building RPG groups, and learning rules.
Paul Fricker, Scott Goldwood, and Matt Sanderson analyze Zach Krieger's 2022 American horror film Barbarian, including its $4 million budget, Detroit setting, and word-of-mouth marketing.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias presents Frank Belknap Long Jr.'s "The Hounds of Tindalos," read by Mike Perceval-Maxwell and Scott Dorward.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias revisits listener questions from November 2022, beginning with Jordan Peele's Nope and its relationship to cosmic horror.
Paul Fricker, Scott Dolwood, and Matt Sanderson examine Guillermo del Toro's 2021 adaptation of Nightmare Alley, comparing it with William Lindsay Gresham's 1946 novel and the 1947 film starring Tyrone Power.
Paul Fricker, Scott Dorwood, and Matt Sanderson examine how Call of Cthulhu uses delusions after Sanity loss, including the distinction between sensory hallucinations and the interpretations attached to them.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias marks its 10th anniversary by examining time travel in Call of Cthulhu, the Cthulhu Mythos, fiction, film, and tabletop play.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias begin a panel discussion of The Shadow Over Innsmouth, comparing its cultural influence with The Call of Cthulhu and its Deep Ones.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias examine Robert Olmstead’s meeting with Zadok Allen in The Shadow Over Innsmouth Part Three, focusing on Innsmouth’s history under Obed Marsh.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias presents the first part of its 2024 Christmas reading of William Hope Hodgson’s “The Searcher of the End House.” Karnacki’s case follows Thomas and his mother after unexplained knocks, opening doors, a foul smell, and nighttime disturbances begin in their house near Appledorn.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias examine Cyäegha and Byatis, two mythos deities developed across stories by Eddie C.
Paul Fricker, Scott Talbot, and Matt Sanderson examine psychological horror in Call of Cthulhu through mental deterioration, unreliable perception, memory loss, and internal fears taking external form.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias examines Shud-Mel, Yib-Tstll, and Bug-Shash, three Call of Cthulhu deities created or developed by Brian Lumley.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias presents the second part of its Christmas reading of Jerome K.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias presents part one of William Hope Hodgson's “The Horse of the Invisible,” read as a Christmas ghost story from the casebooks of Karnacki the Ghost Finder.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias examines how H.P.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias examine Robert Olmsted’s attempt to leave Innsmouth after Zadok Allen’s revelations, including a bus failure that Lovecraft’s notes identify as a deliberate ruse.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias sorts listener suggestions from Discord and Twitter into short answers and possible future episodes, continuing work begun in episodes 255 and 259.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias presents Chapter 3, “The City of Resurrections,” and Chapter 4, “The Discovery in Paul’s Street,” from Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias examine Edgar Cayce, the “Sleeping Prophet,” whose trance readings reportedly supplied medical diagnoses and later visions of past lives and the Akashic Records.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias presents the third reading of Arthur Machen’s “The Great God Pan,” covering “The Letter of Advice” and “The Suicides.” Villiers and Austin connect Herbert’s destruction, Arthur Merrick’s drawings, and a portrait of Mrs.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias review Rebecca McKendry's 2022 film Glorious, in which Wes encounters the voice of Gatanathoa in a rest-stop bathroom.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias presents the second part of William Hope Hodgson’s “The Searcher of the End House,” completing a Christmas reading from Karnacki’s casebook.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias presents the final installment of its festive reading of Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan, covering Chapter 7, “The Encounter in Soho.” Scott Dorwood introduces readers Anthony Lee Dudley, Brian Murphy, Mike Percival-Maxwell, Sue Savage, Sarah Dovey, and Jen Friday.
Paul Fricker, Scott Talbot, and Matt Sanderson examine how an American spiritualist movement entered Victorian Britain through Maria B.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias return to H.P.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias interviews stage magician and mentalist Sean F.
Good Friends of Jackson Elias hosts Paul Fricker, Scott Tolwood, and Matt Sanderson compare recent horror media, including Dirty Harry, The Streets of San Francisco, Suitable Flesh, and True Detective: Night Country.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias examine Victorian Spiritualism as material for Call of Cthulhu scenarios, focusing on Britain in the Gaslight period and adding details from the United States.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias examine injury and disease in Call of Cthulhu, including seventh-edition major wounds, zero hit points, recovery, and narrative consequences.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias presents the second part of William Hope Hodgson's “The Horse of the Invisible,” featuring Carnacki's investigation of attacks on Miss Hiskins.
Paul Fricker, Scott Holwood, and Matt Sanderson examine sequels and adaptations of H.P.
Paul Fricker, Scott Dolbert, and Matt Sanderson continue their discussion of time travel in Call of Cthulhu, focusing on consciousness entering other bodies, past lives, and time loops.
Paul Fricker, Scott Dolbert, and Matt Sanderson examine Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 Psycho as an adaptation of Robert Bloch’s 1959 novel and a key work of psychological horror.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias hosts Matt Sanderson, Paul Fricker, and Scott Alwood discuss James Herbert's Lair and Domain, Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses, and Jonathan Carroll's fiction.
Paul Fricker, Scott Dolwood, and Matt Sanderson compare fictional séances with Victorian accounts collected by Catherine Berry in Experiences in Spiritualism, published in 1876.
Paul Fricker, Scott Dolwood, and Matt Sanderson respond to listener suggestions about low-mythos scenarios, time-travel horror, specific deities, folklore, dark endings, and sex at the gaming table.
Scott Dorwood hosts a reading of Arthur Machen’s “The Great God Pan,” with six readers presenting the first part’s experiments, forest incidents, and occult memoirs.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias examine the aftermath and ending of H.P.
Paul Fricker, Scott Talbot, and Matt Sanderson revive R'lyeh Roulette after almost seven years by randomly selecting spells from a 752-entry spreadsheet for Call of Cthulhu scenario ideas.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias conclude their discussion of H.P.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias finishes its festive reading of Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan with Chapter 7, The Encounter in Soho, and Chapter 8, The Fragments.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias presents chapter 5 and the start of chapter 6 of Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan, with Scott Dolwood introducing Brian Murphy, Mike Percival-Maxwell, Sue Savage, Sarah Dovey, and Anthony Lee Dudley as readers.
Part 2 of Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan opens with Villiers spotting Charles Herbert in Soho and hearing that Helen Vaughan 'corrupted my soul.' Austin later recounts the Paul Street case at number 20, where a gentleman of good family was found dead and a doctor said he died of 'sheer awful terror.' Villiers visits the empty house, feels an oppressive room on the first floor, and finds an old sketch among newspapers.
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The Good Friends of Jackson Elias wraps its festive ghost-story readings with part 2 of William Hope Hodgson's 'The Horse of the Invisible,' introduced as a Karnacki the Ghostfinder casebook reading.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias presents part one of William Hope Hodgson’s “The Horse of the Invisible,” read from the casebooks of Karnacki the Ghostfinder.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias presents the second part of William Hope Hodgson's The Searcher of the End House, continuing Carnacki's investigation of a cellar well, impossible footprints, and apparitions.
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias presents the first part of its 2024 Christmas reading of William Hope Hodgson's The Searcher of the End House.