Summary: Peyton Farquhar, a plantation owner in his mid-thirties, is being prepared for execution by hanging from an Alabama railroad bridge during the American Civil War.

Background Info: Originally published by The San Francisco Examiner on July 13, 1890, it was first collected in Bierce's 1891 book Tales of Soldiers and Civilians. The story, which is set during the Civil War, is famous for its irregular time sequence. Bierce's abandonment of strict linear narration in favor of the internal mind of the protagonist is considered an early example of experimentation with stream of consciousness.

Narration, Sound Design, and Music by Jon Fredette.

Additional voices by Tony Wolf and Megan McIver.

Summary: In the 1940s, Russian scientists kept 5 men awake for 15 straight days. The results were horrifying.

Background Information: This story was taken from the horror site Creepy Pasta, and is one of the more celebrated stories on the site. To my knowledge, the author is still unknown to this day.

Narration and Sound Design by Jon Fredette.

I'm back after a year and a half off. Here is the introduction to to the series, updates, future, and some silly stuff. Just skip this episode if you could care less about anything but the stories.

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 was a merchant marine officer and adrift on the open ocean.

Written in July 1917, one of the first stories HP Lovecraft wrote as an adult. It was first published in the November 1919 edition of The Vagrant (Issue #11).

Narration and Sound Design by Jon Fredette.

Summary: A man encounters a terrific monster and believes it to be an omen of his own death.

Background Information: "The Sphinx" was only published once, in Philadelphia's Arthur's Ladies Magazine during January of 1846. The story takes place right outside of New York City, where Poe was living with Virginia at the time. The story is set fourteen years into the past in 1832, when a terrible epidemic of cholera had indeed infected the people of New York City. This is a historical fact, and thousands of people died as a result. The relevance to Poe's time is that, in 1846, a new sort of epidemic had infected the populace, principally his very wife, Virginia. The horror that the narrator reflects throughout his tale for his dying friends no doubt reveals Poe's own fears about the imminent death that is soon to claim Virginia's life, which shall be taken a year later on January 30, 1847.

Narrated by and Sound Design by Jon Fredette.

(orig. German Der Geier) Written sometime between 1917 and 1923, shortly after Kafka's diagnosis with tuberculosis. A vulture slowly eats a man alive as he contemplates his salvation and the inevitable end.

Read by Tony Wolf.

"The Gentleman" and Sound Design by Jon Fredette.

Originally written in 1916. Published posthumously in Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer (Berlin, 1931). A bridge, personified, tells of its existence, purpose, and demise. Read by Jon Fredette. Sound Design by Jon Fredette.

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 Fredette. Sound Design by Jon Fredette.