Five seasons of secrets and bloodshed beneath a small town.
Tunnels is an independent, serialized audio drama set in the passages under a small Georgia town, where a sibling conspiracy, an asylum, a hospital with a contested past and creatures from a forgotten place all meet. Stabbings, gunpoint standoffs and dark wisecracks carry the story into a fifth season that its writer and producer, Robert, announced as the last.
PRESS PLAY
Tunnels is an independent, serialized audio drama set around the passages under a small Georgia town. The tunnels are the fixed point: characters circle them, hide in them and get left for dead in them. Scenes play out as dialogue under pressure. In one, two people search dark woods for a woman who knows the ground better than they do, and one of them gets hit with a thrown rock. In another, a standoff hinges on a fifteen-second countdown and a promised bullet. A character questions a captured creature, asking whether it can understand what is happening or only runs on instinct, and whether it would warn the others if released. Beneath all this sits a family conspiracy. A brother was locked in an asylum while his sister, who believed in his grand plans, spent those years hiding in plain sight, going as far as marrying to keep her cover. One reveal, that Tatum is a character's sister, comes with a jab about how long it took everyone else to notice. The mystery also reaches back in time. 'A Better Idea' includes a journalist's recorded interview dated March 19, 1979, in which a widow, Mrs. Cotton, denies knowing anything about the tunnels and is told flatly that she is lying. Elsewhere, a hospital is described as a sore subject that cost people their positions of power, and one character suspects the newspaper kept quiet to avoid making the wrong enemies. Talk of wards that are no longer in place, creatures dismissed as vermin from a lost time and a passing mention of an elder god take the story past a local cover-up and into the supernatural. The characters keep a sense of humor, however dark. Even in a hospital bed after a stabbing, Tara has a joke ready about Barnabas botching the job. Robert, who writes and produces the series, has said the idea came to him on a morning drive to work. He introduced the fifth season as the final one, so the serial has an ending rather than an open-ended run. The cast includes Shannon, who voices Molly Madison. The feed also carries 'Ghosts of Griffin - Dear Santa', a Christmas episode released to everyone from a patron-only anthology series made by the Haunted Griffin team. It unfolds through a child's letters to Santa, with a fire coming up between complaints about getting the wrong video game console. Characters and grudges carry over from one episode to the next, so the show works best heard in order.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants a horror mystery told through tense dialogue scenes, with a declared final season, and who is comfortable with stabbings, gunpoint standoffs and rough language.
What sets it apart: Ghosts of Griffin, the team's patron-only series, is an anthology. Tunnels instead builds one continuing story in one place across five seasons, and it mixes a 1979 interview recording and a hospital with a contested past into its supernatural threat.
The Tunnels is a serialized docudrama about the mysterious tunnels that can be found underneath a small town in Georgia. What are they? What is their history? What are those mysterious sounds heard within them? Find out what's just below the surface of the town, because if you look underneath, there is so much more.
A door hidden in the ground leads down; your 'one more scene' promise follows.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A planned series finale pairs a personal goodbye with a tense reckoning in the woods.
All Things End has the shape and weight of a planned series finale. It begins with the host looking back to the first idea for the podcast, from a commute a little over five years earlier through wedding planning, haunted-house work, and teaching middle schoolers, before…
A hospital hunch points to a hidden door and a very bad plan.
A journalist's final interview with Mrs. Cotton slips from denial into something stranger, as talk of the tunnels gives way to witches, fire, and an invitation to burn.
A tunnel assault leads into hospital fallout and a cautious search for the rules behind an old supernatural threat.
Uncharted Territories makes its tunnel fight feel less like a set piece than a hard lesson in what the survivors still do not know. Barnabas misreads the people closing in around Peter, while Cade's skill and Ms.
A fractured season opener turns family loyalty and survival into weapons.
Nightmares opens Tunnels' fifth and final season with possession, a vessel, and warnings that the world may break apart. A bright flash and Cade's scream leave the survivors circling a brutal question: did they abandon someone who still had a chance?
A buried war resurfaces in Griffin as brotherly loyalties turn the tunnel into a battleground.
Stories begins in Griffin with an old war between Aramon and Elder, ending with Aramon thrown down, buried deep, and presumed dead. From there, the episode tightens around a tunnel near the buried sanatorium site, where several figures gather around the vessel and Cinder, the…
Classic clues, quick deaths, sharper deductions.
["Tunnels ends with Ahriman, the wards under Dundee Lake, and a last push back toward the Institute.", "The finale is framed by an unnamed narrator and Charlie, who had already decided in season three that season five would be the ending.", "Locke\u2019s explosion leaves Ahriman\u2019s vessel damaged, so Ezekiel, Robert, Mae, Tatum, Bowman, Karen, Erica, and Sheriff Floyd Burke race through the last confrontation.", "A postscript checks the lake, the tunnels, and the aftermath for the surviving cast, then closes with Haunted Griffin Entertainment credits."]
At the old hospital, Locke's allies arrive to confront Mae's group, but a gunshot turns their planned ambush into a van-side firefight.
Nathan Burke's interview with Annabelle Cotton opens on 'Burn with me,' as she denies the tunnel story while describing it as 'horribly beautiful nightmares.' Robert and Tara then pivot to George Locke, deciding the hospital is the smartest place to hide because it has protection, exits, and tunnel access.
Tunnels: Uncharted Territories follows Griffin investigators as they connect a kidnapped podcast host, old newspaper archives, and a missing story about tunnels beneath the city.
The Tunnels’ fifth-season premiere, “Nightmares,” follows Peter Davis and the remaining group after Cinder’s death, Cade’s apparent death, and a burst of energy connected to Peter.
Griffin's buried tunnels, an ancient war between Aramon and Elder, and a sealed sanatorium access point make Tunnels: Stories a supernatural tunnel siege.
Carrie argues that Ahriman weakened for generations after an Indigenous intervention held him beneath the land, until construction of the asylum disturbed that restraint.
Two people visit a hospital to see a man who was held prisoner for six months, but are denied access by police.
The season 4 premiere of a fictional docudrama about mysterious tunnels under a Georgia town, featuring a conversation about lunch interrupted by an earthquake-like event.
A detective and his team mobilize to capture a dangerous fugitive who has been spotted in their small Georgia town.
A serialized docudrama exploring mysterious tunnels under a Georgia town, blending narrative storytelling with investigative elements.
An investigative reporter confronts a source about why Annabel chose him, while researching mysterious tunnels and a prisoner named George Lock.
A detective receives voicemails about a mysterious newspaper article and a compound incident, setting up a serialized mystery.