28 episodes listed below
Ghosts, floodwater and Boggle rules in small-town Ohio.
Unwell follows life in Mount Absalom, a small Ohio town with a yearly celery festival, a group called the Delphic Order and more than its share of ghosts. Its scenes range from Boggle disputes and flood evacuation maps to prophecy, sermons and Lily's grief over a mother who left.
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Unwell is an audio drama set in Mount Absalom, a small town in the middle of Ohio. Its narration draws the place with real affection: record stores, ice cream shops, a community that loves the night sky and holds a festival every year for its celery crop. By the same narration's account, it is also a town filled with ghosts. In one episode the narration starts a fairy tale about a girl lost in the woods, drops it mid-line, and begins again with the town instead. Lily, also addressed as Lillian, is the figure these scenes keep coming back to. Her story is about family as much as haunting. She describes a mother who left, a move to a new house with her father, and a childhood backyard of clovers that smelled like lemons. Elsewhere another voice remembers her as a girl who dragged her blankets into their room during storms, then stopped after the divorce. The cast around her is large and talkative. A Boggle game stalls over whether the official championship rules really require shaking the box for ten full seconds. Chester is told to work out whether anyone has the authority to build on Sinclair Knob. Asked how many dimly lit subterranean chambers the August Lodge of the Delphic Order holds, someone answers six. Hazel Gibbons, head of the Delphic Order, records a message meant for Chester alone, saying she owes him two apologies. The darker material speaks in another voice entirely. Reverend Lodge arrives with dogs named Moloch and Abaddon, and to him the town hall is the Western Well. A figure named Silas, reminded of shared walks, persimmon brandy and a Thanksgiving invitation, answers with a parable: you can name a wolf, feed it and let it into the house, and it will still do what is in its nature. A storm and flood run through several recent episodes. People read a map to see what is underwater, weigh old Route 30 against the new one, and spend hours shoring up soil so a graveyard does not send coffins across the road. A leaking ceiling turns into a logic puzzle because, for the moment, the basement storage room is the attic. In one of the most human scenes, Jamie rages over a maze the water has washed away, and someone tells him his big feelings cannot scare them off. Titles from this stretch, among them 'Elevation', 'The Chasm' and 'The Water, The Stars', return again and again to height, depth and water. Episodes are numbered and their threads run from one to the next, so the story rewards listening in order.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants serialized supernatural fiction with a big small-town cast, where family grief and town squabbles get as much room as the ghosts.
What sets it apart: Unwell takes the everyday life of its town as seriously as its hauntings: evacuation maps, Boggle disputes and a celery festival share space with prophetic sermons and a house whose rooms will not stay put.
Unwell, a Midwestern Gothic Mystery is a new audio drama from HartLife NFP. Lillian Harper moves to the small town of Mt. Absalom, Ohio, to care for her estranged mother Dorothy after an injury. Living in the town's boarding house which has been run by her family for generations, she discovers conspiracies, ghosts, and a new family in the house's strange assortment of residents.
The basement becomes the attic; you get a family argument with your architectural impossibility.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Mount Absalom turns a supernatural basement door and a Boggle board into equally revealing trouble.
Mount Absalom's ghosts are gone, and the Ohio town is left sorting through consequences that feel cosmic and stubbornly local. Lily comes back from behind a supernatural basement door, Fenwood has "shuffled," and civic attention drifts toward the town in the sky, Sinclair Knob,…
A confused house turns ordinary disarray into an ominous maze.
The house has stopped agreeing with itself. Water comes through the living room ceiling, the basement storage room turns up where the attic should be, and the stairs keep suggesting they may lead somewhere else.
A storm, an absent Lily, and a sermon book pull Hazel Gibbons toward the Western Well.
The episode begins with Hazel Gibbons's recorded statement, then moves Chester and Dot into a storm where a broken umbrella, Lily's absence, and a worried casserole question sit uncomfortably beside fear and apology.
A thoughtful look at normalizing queerness and questioning whose history a fictional town chooses to keep.
Unwell settles into a focused conversation about inclusive world-building and the value of letting queerness exist without making it the whole point.
A job interview at a dimension-spanning diner becomes a backward escape through Arizona with cosmic danger outside the booth.
Midnight Burger opens on a nicely plain premise: Gloria answers a job ad and steps into a diner that travels through time and dimensions. That ordinary setup does not stay ordinary for long.
A thoughtful look at inclusive world building, accessible storytelling, and the craft behind audio fiction.
Inclusive world building is framed as a design responsibility, not just a matter of representation. The discussion connects queer inclusion to systems of power and to communities that have been marginalized by design, but its most useful turns come when the ideas move into…
Dice, divine mysteries, and the trouble with good intentions.
Unwell, a Midwestern Gothic Mystery closes on Mount Absalom after the ghosts, Blooms, and floodwater recede, leaving Chester to decide what kind of town remains.
As Thinwood Creek crests at 23 feet, Lily Harper ignores her father's warning and continues looking for Blooms.
After Chester Lopez resigns, Lily Warren becomes acting mayor of flood-threatened Mount Absalom and sets out evacuation routes and fortification plans.
["Episode 5.9, Echo Chamber, opens with Pando, the roughly 47,000 Aspen trees that behave like one organism, then turns that image into a leaking house with an attic reached through the basement.", "Lily, Wes, and Joey move toward the observatory ruins while wolves, rain, and a collapsing roof keep the town on edge.", "Joey says she misses Spikes and resents being stuck at 16, while Lily argues that change can happen slowly instead of all at once.", "Silas answers with the boy-with-two-faces parable and a long speech about loss, identity, and rot, pushing the confrontation toward a sharper identity question."]
Unwell, a Midwestern Gothic Mystery episode 5.7, "The Chasm," centers on Hazel Gibbons' cassette apology and a meeting at the Western Well.
Welcomed by Design's Part 2 of its Queer Horror Week special has Lynn Priestley and the Unwell team arguing that horror lands on control, not on queer or neurodivergent identities.
Jeffrey opens a Fable and Folly feed drop for Midnight Burger, a comedy fiction podcast about a time-traveling, dimension-spanning diner.
Welcomed by Design's 'Welcomed By Design and Unwell Part 1' focuses on how Lynn Priestley, Teddy Thavari, and Dr.
A woman moves to a small town to care for her estranged mother and discovers conspiracies, ghosts, and a new family in the boarding house.