The Oddcast: Tales of the Occult, Weird, and Arcane
Activity Overview
Episode publication activity over the past year
Episodes
Episode 45: The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs
07 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
First published in 1902 by Harper's Monthly and reprinted in his third collection of short stories The Lady of the Barge (also, 1902). The Monkey's Pa...
Episode 44: Midsummer by Arthur Machen
05 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Arthur Machen, the pen-name of Arthur Llewellyn Jones, was a Welsh author and mystic of the 1890s and early 20th century. He has garnered a reputation...
Episode 43: Terra Incognita by Vladimir Nabokov
10 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
First published in the émigré journal Posledniya Novosti in Paris in 1931. Translated by the author and his son, the story was published in English ...
Episode 42: The Beautiful Suit by H.G. Wells
29 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Originally published under the title "A Moonlight Fable" in the April 10, 1909, number of Collier's Weekly. A young man acquires a hand-woven sui...
Episode 41: The Awakening by Arthur C. Clarke
02 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
First published in Zenith in February 1942 and later revised and published in Future in January of 1952. Collected in The Best of Arthur C. Clarke 193...
Episode 40: The Guide by Ellis Peters
06 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Ellis Peters (nom de plume of Edith Pargeter) was an English writer, and the short story (originally titled Guide to Doom) was first published in Alfr...
Episode 39: Gateway of the Mind by Anonymous
18 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Originally posted on Creepypasta on November 23, 2009 by an anonymous author. An experiment in the early 80s attempts to establish contact with G...
Episode 38: The Writing of the God by Jorge Luis Borges
13 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Original Spanish title: "La escritura del dios"First published in the literary magazine Sur in 1949, and later reprinted in The Aleph. An incarce...
Episode 37: They're Made Out of Meat by Terry Bisson
01 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Originally published in 1991 through OMNI magazine. Two multidimensional aliens deliberate over contacting the human race once they realize their...
Episode 36: An Inhabitant of Carcosa by Ambrose Bierce
20 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
First published in the San Francisco Newsletter of December 25, 1886 and was later reprinted as part of Bierce's collections Tales of Soldiers and Civ...
Episode 35: 2BR02B by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
31 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Published in the January 1962 in the Worlds of "If" Science Fiction magazine. A painter in the Chicago Lying-In Hospital witnesses an absurd scen...
Episode 34: Leiningen Versus the Ants by Carl Stephenson
06 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Originally published in the December 1938 edition of Esquire. It is a translation, probably by Stephenson himself, of "Leiningens Kampf mit den Ameise...
Episode 33: Darkness by Lord Byron
01 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Written in July of 1816 and inspired by "The Year Without Summer", the aftermath of the eruption of Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies the previou...
Episode 32: In the Court of the Dragon by Robert W. Chambers
24 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
First published in his collection The King in Yellow in 1895. An unnamed narrator attends an afternoon mass at the church St. Barnabe and has sev...
Episode 31: The Black Meat by Eric Dean
24 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Published on Monologging.org, on S.H. Roddey’s Haunted Head, and in Literati Presents #5 by Literati Press. The original audio version, hosted on yo...
Episode 30: The Boarded Window by Ambrose Bierce
30 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
First published in the San Francisco Examiner on April 12, 1891 and reprinted in Bierce's collection Tales of Soldiers and Civilians the same year.&nb...
Episode 29: The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin
13 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Originally published in the October edition of New Dimensions 3 in 1973. The story was nominated for the Locust Award for Best Short Fiction in 1974 a...
Episode 27: The Screwfly Solution by Raccoona Sheldon
09 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Originally published in the anthology "Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact" (June, 1977) the novelette went on to win the Nebula Award that year under...
Episode 26: Orientation by Daniel Orozco
28 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Originally published in The Seattle Review and subsequently in The Best American Short Stories 1995.A new office employee is given orientation on the ...
Episode 25: The Mirror by Haruki Murakami
17 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Written in 1981/2 and published in 1983 in an undisclosed Japanese periodical. Later added to his short story collection Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman ...
Episode 24: The Secret Miracle by Jorge Luis Borges
16 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
First published in the magazine Sur in 1943. Failed playwrite Jaromir Hladik is captured during the Nazi occupation of Prague in the early stages...
Episode 23: The Kraken by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
01 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
First published in Tennyson's first solo collection, "Poems, Chiefly Lyrical" (1830) when he was around 20 years old. One of the few sonnets Tennyson ...
Episode 22: The Daughters of the Moon by Italo Calvino
14 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
A modern folktale which takes place in a parallel-universe New York City; mysterious lunar women are hypnotized by the moon's influence and converge a...
Episode 21: The Continuity of Parks by Julio Cortazar
12 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
"Continuidad de los parques" was originally written in Spanish and first published within the Editorial Sudamericana in 1964. Summary: A man sett...
Episode 20: The Sect of the Idiot by Thomas Ligotti
15 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
First published in Crypt of Cthulhu in 1988. A man visits a nameless town and questions his existence as reality transforms into nightmare around...
Episode 19: The Moon-Bog by H.P. Lovecraft
16 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
First written around March 1921, the story was first published in the June 1926 issue of the pulp magazine Weird Tales.Summary: a man visits an isolat...
Episode 18: The Star by H.G. Wells
28 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
First published in the Christmas number of The Graphic in 1897. It is credited with the creation of the subgenre depicting the "impact event" of scien...
Episode 17: The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allen Poe
18 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The story was first published in May 1842 in Graham's Magazine and has since been adapted in many different forms, including a 1964 film starring Vinc...
Episode 16: Memento Mori by Jonathan Nolan
11 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Originally published in the March 2001 edition of Esquire magazine. It was the basis for the film Memento directed by Christopher Nolan. A man wi...
Episode 15: The Circular Ruins by Jorge Luis Borges
04 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Originally "Las ruinas circulares". First published in the literary journal Sur in December 1940. It was first published in English in View (Series V,...
Episode 14: Men Without Bones by Gerald Kersh
17 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Originally published by Esquire in 1954. Summary: While at dock, a passenger of a banana boat encounters a mad, weary traveller seeking passage a...
Episode 13: A Madman by Maurice Level
21 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Summary: A psychopath finds brief reprieve from a prolonged depression in a Parisian daredevil's act. The Cyclist played by Tony Wolf. Narration,...
Episode 12: Sredni Vashtar by Saki
15 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Summary: With his imagination, a sickly boy creates his own religion, worshipping a merciless and vengeful god, to help him cope with his dull, depres...
Episode 11: Aborted Mother by Mark Slade
27 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Summary: A baby and her mother are visited at home by a gift-bearing stranger in a post-apocalyptic dystopia. Mark Slade has appeared in numerous...
Episode 10: The Hidden Beast by J.D. Beresford
23 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Summary: A man encounters an isolated stranger who lives at the edge of his village and discovers there is more to the stranger than he first surmised...
Episode 9: The Vector by Jon Fredette
14 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Summary: The fate of humankind hinges on informational broadcasts from the Emergency Alert System about an unknown pathogen outbreak. I decided t...
Episode 8: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce
15 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Summary: Peyton Farquhar, a plantation owner in his mid-thirties, is being prepared for execution by hanging from an Alabama railroad bridge during th...
Episode 7: The Russian Sleep Experiment by An Unknown Author
28 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Summary: In the 1940s, Russian scientists kept 5 men awake for 15 straight days. The results were horrifying. Background Information: This story ...
Episode 5: Dagon by HP Lovecraft
06 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Summary: the testament of a tortured, morphine-addicted man who plans to commit suicide over an incident that occurred early on in World War I when he...
Episode 4: The Sphinx by Edgar Allen Poe
30 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Summary: A man encounters a terrific monster and believes it to be an omen of his own death. Background Information: "The Sphinx" was only publis...
Episode 3: The Vulture by Franz Kafka
09 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
(orig. German Der Geier) Written sometime between 1917 and 1923, shortly after Kafka's diagnosis with tuberculosis. A vulture slowly eats a man alive ...
Episode 2: The Bridge by Franz Kafka
25 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Originally written in 1916. Published posthumously in Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer (Berlin, 1931). A bridge, personified, tells of its existence, p...
Episode 1: Nyarlathotep by HP Lovecraft
27 Jun 2014
Contributed by Lukas
First published in 1920 to the November edition of The United Amateur. The arrival of an unknown evil alters the path of humanity forever. Read by Jon...