Episodes

We talk about rats en masse, a forgotten bomb in a front yard, ghosts that commit assault and we write an improvised horror story! Masses of rats turn a familiar city animal into a swarm; an unexploded or forgotten bomb in a front yard makes buried history physically dangerous; and reports of ghosts committing assault challenge the idea that a haunting is only a noise or glimpse. The episode then changes mode as the hosts build an improvised horror story from scratch. That creative segment giv...

“A Christmas Carol” leads five vintage Christmas radio dramas about haunted memory, desperate choices, wartime mystery, and unexpected redemption. E. G. Marshall performs Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” in the CBS Radio Mystery Theater version adapted by Ian Martin. Ebenezer Scrooge’s encounters with the spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come remain the supernatural center of the collection. Greer Garson stars in the Suspense drama “’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” while D...

Christmas Eve finds former serial killer Raige Devereux serving her sentence at Glennview Correctional Facility. Once known as the Angel of Death, She is trying to live with the crimes that brought her there when a figure from her past returns with fangs. The locked prison offers nowhere to escape as old vendettas, vampire hunger, and Raige’s own violent instincts collide. Surviving the holiday may require her to become the killer she is supposed to have left behind—without surrendering the hu...

Arial Mirren buys a forgotten virtual-reality console for Christmas and becomes the vessel of Queen Arcadia, a sentient game ruler determined to invade the real world. Madelyne “Mouse” Donnerly refuses to build a game system for Arial’s cousin, sending Arial to Tinker’s in search of a bargain. The mysterious Virtua console contains Christmas Arcadia, an immersive village whose queen gradually takes control of Arial’s body. Carter Cross, Bailey Downs, Mona Ables, and Mouse enter the game to resc...

After his only child dies due to an incompetent babysitter, Patton Moore establishes Camp Care. Seven sitters attend the prestigious camp. His graduates are highly sought after, and candidates will do anything for a spot at Camp Care. But this time, they’ll wish they hadn’t! Someone’s brought some extra baggage for the stay, and it’s up to Macey and the other unhappy campers to figure out who’s behind the string of gruesome killings while being stalked through an unforgiving wilderness full of ...

A rogue elf steals Santa’s Naughty List and begins rewarding the world’s worst children, forcing Peppermint Ray into a bloody Christmas mission at a prison island. Candy Pain believes giving every naughty child exactly what they want will destroy Santa’s moral order. His plan leads to KILL YOU Island, an Illinois youth-offender facility holding murderers, cultists, and Robby Mocker—the Kinder Cannibal. Santa sends his most ruthless operative, Peppermint Ray, and the carnivorous reindeer Brute C...

A former Green Beret assigned to protect Santa Claus faces renegade elves during a Christmas appearance—and watches Saint Nick die on a department-store roof. John Copeland has spent years providing security for the real Santa, whose public visits continue despite enemies hidden among the thousands of holiday impersonators. At Cooper’s Department Store, members of the protective team vanish, armed elves infiltrate the aisles, and John must evacuate families while fighting his way toward a rooft...

Four twisted Christmas horror stories bring a hometown Santa killer, Krampus possession, murderous androids, and a sword-wielding elf. Morgan Moore’s “Santa Claus Is Killin’ the Town” sends Janice and her girlfriend Molly to Decatur for a reunion at an old inn and a hoped-for marriage proposal. Cozy nostalgia gives way to a local legend in a red suit stalking the holiday guest list. In Rob Fields’s “Krampus Is Comin’,” Kathy Betcher buys her younger sister a Krampus snow globe on Christmas Eve...

Bailey Downs returns to her childhood orphanage for Christmas, where a Krampus snow globe turns a strict assistant director into a horned punisher. Bailey and her Strickfield friends Mona, Mouse, Horton, and Chunker travel to Pendleton to help Mrs. Emma Gibson with the Home Sweet Home Orphanage’s holiday celebration. For Bailey, the visit is personal: she lived there until Monty and Vera Downs adopted her at seven. The reunion begins warmly, but assistant director Helga Stanlen resents the curr...

Four vintage radio dramas summon an incubus in Scotland, revisit Paul Revere’s ride, unleash living darkness, and place Lucille Ball inside a murder plot. “Speak of the Devil” brings Mary Ellen and Michael to Aunt Jeannie’s home near Scotland’s Solway Firth. A séance and an experiment with the occult draw something ancient into the household, turning folklore about the incubus into intimate supernatural danger. Stephen Vincent Benét’s “A Tooth for Paul Revere” enters a strange wizard’s worksho...

A bitter department-store Santa recruits a mysterious little girl with clicking teeth—and watches her turn a town Christmas event into revenge. Ronnie Baxley has played Santa in Burnet Town, South Carolina, for a decade. The pay is poor, his truck is failing, and the families who line up along Highway 421 offer pity or ridicule rather than help. On Christmas Eve, his usual elf is absent and a cold-skinned child named Sarah appears ready to manage the line. Sarah can sense cruelty. Her smile re...

In the post-apocalyptic winter of 2099, Cassillia Taibon defends Pendleton Way Station from a murderous undead Santa Claus and his monstrous reindeer. The Hellweaver Holocaust has broken Earth’s seasons, devastated civilization, and transformed the once-jolly Santa into a Christmas raider who attacks surviving settlements. Cassillia—a sentient machine carrying the memories, appearance, and powers of a vampire-Treilaunder hybrid—arrives at Pendleton seeking a Psionic Warp Displacer needed for he...

Henrique Couto and Cameron Chaney of Library Macabre recommend Christmas horror books for readers who prefer ghosts and blood beside the tree. Their conversation ranges across holiday-themed horror fiction and Cameron’s novel “Autumncrow High: Fresh Hell,” pairing practical reading suggestions with a look at why Christmas and terror fit so well together. The recommendations treat Christmas horror as a broad reading mood rather than a single kind of story. Ghostly traditions, winter isolation, ...

A killer wearing a Santa suit traps Caleb and the other patients inside Sumpter Behavioral Health Center on a snowbound Christmas Eve. Caleb has spent weeks in the psychiatric ward after a suicide attempt and expects to be released soon, but he does not intend to survive the holiday. Snow keeps his parents away, the facility’s decorations feel hollow, and the year’s losses have convinced him that nothing ahead is worth enduring. Another patient has planned a different kind of death. Marc has s...

A mysterious movie disc turns a Christmas slumber party into a portal to an alternate Strickfield where nearly everyone is a starving vampire. Madelyne “Mouse” Donnerly joins Arial Mirren, Mona Ables, and Bailey Downs for holiday movies at Arial’s house. Mona brings an unknown film called “Doorway to Horror,” a title with no online record. After they watch it, the girls find the house damaged, the sky locked in darkness, and their hometown emptied of ordinary human life. Mouse recognizes the n...

Ronald Gene Simmons turned Christmas 1987 into one of America’s most devastating family massacres, killing 16 people across several days in Arkansas. Terrifying & True examines the history behind the violence: Simmons’s military career, allegations of abuse within his household, the family’s isolated move to Pope County, and the resentments he carried toward relatives and former coworkers. Beginning December 22, he killed 14 members of his own family at their home, including children and grandc...

Four vintage radio dramas explore a disputed death, a sea captain’s dangerous habits, a midnight killer, and an accused man’s missing fortune. “Cold Storage” brings a visitor to Westerley, an old Maryland estate shadowed by a wealthy woman’s apparent death, a contested inheritance, and fears that a body may not remain safely in its grave. The mystery turns family greed and medical uncertainty into Gothic suspense. In “Habit,” Captain Weatherfield’s absolute devotion to routine shapes every dec...

Donny returns north for his first family Christmas in nearly a decade and becomes the unwilling donor in a brutal holiday organ-harvesting scheme. He fled home for Fort Lauderdale, became addicted to heroin, and spent years homeless before rebuilding his life. Shame kept him from calling the people he left behind. Now sober enough to make the drive, Donny crosses into a snowy homecoming with equal parts hope and dread—until strangers intercept him before he can face his family. The captors are...

Henrique Couto and Rachael Redolfi dissect “Silent Night, Deadly Night” (1984), the notorious Christmas slasher built around trauma and a killer Santa. The discussion follows the film’s plot, subtext, controversy, and enduring cult appeal, examining how Billy’s childhood terror is transformed into holiday violence and why the movie still divides horror audiences. Billy’s story begins with childhood terror and an association between Christmas punishment, sexuality, and violence that the adults ...

Henrique Couto and movie fan David Denoyer build a Christmas horror watchlist ranging from family-friendly and mainstream films to dark underground discoveries. The discussion is organized as practical seasonal viewing guidance, covering different intensities and styles so listeners can find killer Santas, holiday monsters, and winter chills that fit their mood. David’s list is meant to be used, not merely admired. The range allows a household to begin with accessible seasonal fun, move throug...

Forced to decorate Strickfield Towne Centre overnight, Arial Mirren, Carter Cross, Mouse Donnerly, and their friends discover a seven-foot vampire monster stalking the closed mall. A public fight between Arial and Carter leaves the group at the mercy of mall owner Harmony Mirren, who threatens to call the police unless they spend Saturday hanging Christmas decorations. After the doors are locked, a chalk-white creature called the Creation emerges from hiding, abducts Brian “Chunker” Chunk, and ...

A killer stalks 1980s London and murders anyone dressed as Santa Claus in Don’t Open Till Christmas, the sleazy and unpredictable 1984 British holiday slasher. In this featured episode of Do You Even Movie?, Henrique Couto and David Denoyer unwrap a Christmas horror favorite packed with suspicious characters, brutal Santa-themed killings, and production choices as strange as the mystery itself. They discuss the film’s grimy Euro-slasher atmosphere, its conspicuous suspects, and the chaotic ener...

In 1976, human remains were discovered in an abandoned Oklahoma City property—so horrifying that police first dismissed the report as an April Fool’s prank. The victim, later identified as Kathy Lynn Shackleford, was young, Native American, and brutally mutilated. Three years later, another Native American woman, Arley Bell Killian, was found dismembered nearby. Then in 1986, Tina Marsha Sanders became the third linked victim. Investigators believed a serial killer was targeting vulnerable Nati...

Four vintage radio dramas bring an occult curse, a future built on suppressed violence, a writer’s living monster, and a murder statement under pressure. M. R. James’s “Casting the Runes” follows a scholar marked by a slip of paper bearing forbidden symbols. The runes carry a deadline and a supernatural sentence, turning research and skepticism into a race to return the curse before it is fulfilled. “Resident Killer” imagines a future society determined to eliminate aggression, where Commander...