Image: Radio Rental podcast logo
The sensation of tapping into terror can became an obsession—even an addiction—and few mediums allow you to do so quite as readily as podcasts. The intimacy of the medium—just you, your earbuds, and your cortisol response—can be a portal into the places that scare us the most, whether they are real or entirely imagined.
The podcast space is, if anything, oversaturated with scary content (and I’m not talking about true crime); wading through all of it can be frightening on its own. To combat that particular monstrous task, I’ve rounded up a dozen shows that will absolutely scare you (and sometimes make you laugh, too.) Via haunting soundscapes, spine-tingling tales both real and invented, and immersive narration, these shows will take you to dark places. I’ve ranked them from least to most scary, so you can turn the fear dial up by moving to the next recommendation.
