Murder cases, staged with a wicked grin.
The Original Deadtime Stories blends true-crime storytelling with acted scenes, personal asides, and a sharp narrator’s sense of irony. Its recent chapters move through Florida, Charleston, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, New Orleans, and other case settings without losing the feel of a campfire story gone wrong.
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The Original Deadtime Stories frames murder cases as chapters in a performed true-crime anthology. It is not a dry case-summary feed. The excerpts lean on narration, acted dialogue, scene resets, and a closing roll call of voices, which gives the show the feel of a scripted crime story being staged for audio. The voice is conversational and irreverent. It can start with a joke about social-media challenges, a childhood trip to Cedar Point, reality television, Beverly Hills lockdown walks, or a Charleston ghost tour before pulling the listener into violence, suspicion, and aftermath. That contrast is central to the show’s appeal. The ordinary world is never far from the crime story. Recent material ranges across Florida, Washington, D.C., Charleston, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and New York references, with the show explicitly describing a murder road trip across America. The cases named in the excerpts include “Happy Birthday, Florida Man,” “Murder at the Midway,” “Love like a Hurricane,” “Megan Wants a Murderer,” “Legends Never Die,” and “I Did Not Have Sexual Relations With That Woman.” The show uses reenacted conflict heavily. Arguments, interrogations, doctor visits, prison exchanges, bar scenes, and police moments appear as dialogue rather than simple summary. It also makes room for show-business scaffolding: social links, Patreon notes, cast acknowledgments, theme-music credits, and occasional personal updates. That backstage presence keeps the production personable even when the material turns severe. The humor is sharp, but the stories include murder, attacks, domestic abuse, sexual abuse references, and threats toward children. The result is true crime for someone who prefers heightened storytelling over minimalism. It suits a listener who wants case narratives with momentum, character voices, and a narrator willing to interrupt the darkness with a sideways comment.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants true crime told with theatrical dialogue, dark humor, and a strong narrator’s presence. It is a better fit for someone comfortable with graphic case material than for someone seeking quiet investigative reporting.
What sets it apart: The show’s edge comes from its chapter-like structure and dramatized scenes, which turn case material into audio storytelling without making it feel like a courtroom brief. Its recurring road-trip framing gives recent episodes a recognizable map of American crime stories.
The Original Deadtime Stories: bringing murderous tales to life in the fashion of a modern day radio drama since June 2018. Created by writer, researcher, and true crime junkie Schuyler Fastenau.
A ghost tour gets corrected at the bar; your taste for theatrical crime gets its wish.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A strange path from viral challenge lore to prison violence gives the episode its uneasy, concrete edge.
The episode starts in the odd half-life of social-media challenges, using cinnamon challenge rumors as a way into bigger questions about how stories of harm spread.
A doctor's warning turns a family crisis into a disturbing 1893 disappearance.
Frank's thoughts of harming his daughter Maggie pull the episode into its bleakest territory, turning a private family fear into a doctor's urgent warning and then a Sunday morning disappearance in 1893.
A grief-marked episode that turns Zach and Addie's barroom meeting into a grounded story of damage and tentative connection.
Skylar Fastenow Jones opens by mourning Tracy Zales, who created the Dead Time Stories theme music, then shifts into Zach's spiral after the army gives him a general discharge under honorable conditions.
A reality-TV romance curdles into a volatile marriage story with consequences that arrive fast.
Reality television sells love as a shortcut to glamour, but this episode lets that fantasy sour fast. Jasmine and Ryan go from a drunken kiss to a confrontation that leaves her in a pool and him facing a police report.
A ghost-tour correction turns Lavinia's legend into a comic sift through tea, trapdoors, and a stolen cow.
A Charleston ghost tour becomes a brisk fact-check of the Fisher family legend after Skylar Fastenal pushes back on Katie's version of Lavinia's alleged crimes.
Local beer, weird history, real nightmares.
ABC Audio's Theranos fraud series that also introduces its other true-crime podcasts.
LA Times reporter Christopher Goffard traces con man John Meehan's fraud, abuse, and its Bravo TV adaptation.
The Original Deadtime Stories chapter "Happy Birthday, Florida Man" starts with Skylar Fastenow Jones comparing the cinnamon challenge, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, and the way social-media dares spread through Facebook and TikTok.
The Original Deadtime Stories' Chapter 67: Murder at the Midway (Rebroadcast) follows Frank Sheffield from a Palmer Street School bell injury to the Rocky Point killing of Maggie Sheffield.
["Skylar Fastenow Jones opens the episode by mourning Tracy Zales, the theme-music writer for Dead Time Stories and Cocktail Ballerina, and says her death hit his family hard.", "The rebroadcast follows Zach Bowen from his awkward New Orleans bartending years through his marriage to Lana Shupak, the birth of Jackson and Lily, and his Army service in Gie\u00dfen, Kosovo, and Iraq.", "Hurricane Katrina strands Zach and Addie Hall in the French Quarter, where Ray Nagin's evacuation warnings give way to a deserted neighborhood, stolen supplies, and escalating fights.", "The story returns to the Omni Royal Orleans rooftop fall, the Rampart Street apartment, and the police investigation that grows out of Zach's written confession."]
The Original Deadtime Stories chapter "Megan Wants a Murderer" follows Megan Hauserman, Ryan Jenkins, and Jasmine Fiore through VH1's reality-TV casting pipeline.
The Original Deadtime Stories chapter "Legends Never Die" opens with Skylar Fastenal’s fifth-grade group-project story and then pivots to Charleston’s Old City Jail, where Katie links the 1802 building and the 1886 earthquake to ghost activity.
Roy Schuster, a 1920s vaudeville tap dancer, lost work during the Depression and struggled to pay Amy $40 a week in alimony.
A true crime radio drama episode about a string of attacks and a murder in Washington D.C., with a trigger warning about recent domestic terror.
A true crime podcast episode about a string of attacks and a murder in Washington D.C., presented as a modern radio drama.
The episode opens with a commercial for British Gas and a smart meter ad, then transitions into a true crime narrative about an eccentric neighbor in Los Angeles.