r/AudioDrama's Favourite Fiction Podcasts
The podcasts that r/AudioDrama pick as their favourite in my yearly poll.
(Click each year to open/close the relevant table.)
2024
Position | Votes | Title | Description |
---|---|---|---|
1 | 17 | Malevolent | Malevolent follows Arkham Investigator Arthur Lester as he unravels the mysterious circumstances that have befallen him. Malevolent heavily features the horrors of Lovecraft as well as the mechanics of Chaosium’s famous system without the inclusion of rolls. The series, available publicly, is an edited version of the Patreon exclusive show. Each episode is the same as our Patreon show; comprised of 5 of the 10-15 minute narrative-driven episodes that are released weekly save on major difference; in our Patreon show; YOU make the choices. |
2 | 15 | Modes of Thought in Anterran Literature | Modes of Thought in Anterran Literature – Second Year Classics, C667, Professor [REDACTED]. This course discusses the Anterran Civilization, examining the available evidence regarding all aspects of the culture. The recent archeological discovery uncovered at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean will be explored to provide opportunities for analysis of the writings of the earliest human society, [REDACTED] years older than previously known to exist. Topics include literature, religion, and philosophy. Wednesdays, Room 014 Brussels Hall, Harbridge University. |
3 | 13 | The Magnus Archives | “Make your statement, face your fear.” A weekly horror fiction podcast examining what lurks in the archives of the Magnus Institute, an organisation dedicated to researching the esoteric and the weird. Join Jonathan Sims as he explores the archive, but be be warned, as he looks into its depths something starts to look back… New episodes every Thursday produced by Rusty Quill, featuring guest actors, short stories, serial plots and more. |
4 | 11 | Midnight Burger | When Gloria took a waitressing job at a diner outside of Phoenix, she didn't realize she was now an employee of Midnight Burger, a time-traveling, dimension-spanning diner. Every day Midnight Burger appears somewhere new in the cosmos along with it's staff: a galactic drifter, a rogue theoretical physicist, a sentient old-timey radio, and some guy named Caspar. No one knows who built Midnight Burger or how it works, but when it appears there's always someone around who could really use a cup of coffee. At the nexus of all things, there is a diner. We open at 6. |
5 | 9 | The Lovecraft Investigations | An investigation into witchcraft, the occult and secret government operations. From H.P. Lovecraft. |
6 | 8 | Welcome to Night Vale | Twice-monthly community updates for the small desert town of Night Vale, where every conspiracy theory is true. Turn on your radio and hide. Never listened before? It's an ongoing radio show. Start with the current episode, and you'll catch on in no time. Or, go right to Episode 1 if you wanna binge-listen. |
6 | 8 | Wooden Overcoats | Rudyard Funn and his equally miserable sister Antigone run their family’s failing funeral parlour, where they get the body in the coffin in the ground on time. But one day they find everyone enjoying themselves at the funerals of a new competitor – the impossibly perfect Eric Chapman! With their dogsbody Georgie, and a mouse called Madeleine, the Funns are taking drastic steps to stay in business… |
8 | 7 | Deviser | DEVISER is a Sci-Fi Horror Audio Drama, created by Harlan Guthrie. In this series Son wakes up aboard a spaceship bound for earth in an effort to recolonize. What he discovers however will change everything he knows about his world and himself |
8 | 7 | Wolf 359 | Life's not easy for Doug Eiffel, the communications officer for the U.S.S. Hephaestus Research Station, currently on Day 448 of its orbit around red dwarf star Wolf 359. He's stuck on a scientific survey mission of indeterminate length, 7.8 light years from Earth. His only company on board the station are stern mission chief Minkowski, insane science officer Hilbert, and Hephaestus Station's sentient, often malfunctioning operating system Hera. He doesn't have much to do for his job other than monitoring static and intercepting the occasional decades-old radio broadcast from Earth, so he spends most of his time creating extensive audio logs about the ordinary, day-to-day happenings within the station. But the Hephaestus is an odd place, and life in extremely isolated, zero gravity conditions has a way of doing funny things to people's minds. Even the simplest of tasks can turn into a gargantuan struggle, and the most ordinary-seeming things have a way of turning into anything but that. Wolf 359 is a radio drama in the tradition of Golden Age of Radio shows. Take one part space-faring adventure, add one part character drama, and mix in one part absurdist sitcom, and you get Wolf 359. New episodes are released every two weeks. |
9 | 6 | A Voice from Darkness | A Voice From Darkness is a horror audio drama in the form of a call-in radio show. Join parapsychologist Dr. Malcolm Ryder as he helps those who witness and suffer the supernatural and the strange. |
9 | 6 | Archive 81 | Archive 81 is a fiction podcast about horror, cities, and the subconscious. New episodes will be released every other Wednesday. Start from "01 - A Body In A New Place" |
9 | 6 | Desert Skies | On a lonely highway between life and the next life there's one last stop that we all have to make. Desert Skies Astral Plane Fuel and Service Station serves travelers as they embark on their journey through the celestial spheres. Meet the Attendant, the Mechanic, and C.A.S.H Register. Together, they'll make sure you're prepared for the ride. |
9 | 6 | The Amelia Project | The Amelia Project is a secret agency that fakes its clients' deaths, then lets them reappear with a brand new identity! A black comedy full of secrets, twists... and cocoa. The series starts as a succession of interviews with clients who want to fake their deaths, then slowly a larger narrative begins to emerge... Each episode tells its own story, but we recommend starting with Season 1. |
9 | 6 | The Deca Tapes | Recordings have been sent to us of ten people that are locked into the same space together. |
9 | 6 | The White Vault | Explore the far reaches of the world’s horrors in the audio drama podcast The White Vault. Follow the collected records of a repair team sent to Outpost Fristed in the vast white wastes of Svalbard and unravel what lies waiting in the ice below. This Fool and Scholar production is intended for mature audiences. |
9 | 6 | We're Alive | Listen to the entire epic series, which follows Survivors in Los Angeles after the world has been turned upside down. It begins with “A Story of Survival” which spans from Chapters 1-48. Our survivors band together, fortify a safe haven known as the Tower, and discover that the Infected are far from the biggest threat they will have to face. The adventure continues with two mini-series: “Lockdown” - A small group of inmates and prison guards are trapped in the T-block at Twin Towers Jail. They are forced to work together and find a way to escape while the rest of the world ends around them. “Goldrush” - Set 17 years after the main events of “A Story of Survival”, this is a recollection story that describes the efforts of the four Soldiers as they attempt a side mission to retrieve a suspected stash of gold bullion. Our newest season is “We’re Alive: Descendants”: The story of survival continues; the fight is not over. 18 years after the Outbreak, the world is starting to re-organize and rebuild, but many different forms of humanity are still struggling to survive in the aftermath. Nicholas Tink grew up in the shadow of his father- the late, great, Saul Tink. Little does he know that deep in the places where infected dwell, another descendant lies waiting. |
16 | 5 | ars Paradoxica | When an experiment in a time much like our own goes horribly awry, Dr. Sally Grissom finds herself stranded in the past and entrenched in the activities of a clandestine branch of the US government. Grissom and her team quickly learn that there's no safety net when toying with the fundamental logic of the universe. |
16 | 5 | Ghost Wax | Ghost Wax is a horror fiction podcast following the work of the last “reclaimer”, investigating a series of unnatural killings by raising the dead and committing their final statements to wax cylinder. |
16 | 5 | Old Gods of Appalachia | In the mountains of central Appalachia, blood runs as deep as these hollers and just as dark. Since before our kind knew these hills, hearts of unknowable hunger and madness have slumbered beneath them. These are the oldest mountains in the world. How dare we think we can break the skin of a god and dig out its heart without bringing forth blood and darkness? Old Gods of Appalachia is a horror-anthology podcast set in the shadows of an Alternate Appalachia, a place where digging to deep into the mines was just the first mistake. |
16 | 5 | Red Valley | Hypersleep. Stasis. Cryonic preservation. We've all enjoyed the benefits of suspended animation - it allows our favourite characters to travel the galaxy or be thrown into the distant future, all in peaceful, harmless hibernation. But no one asks how it works, or where it came from. Red Valley is a sci-fi audio drama about the creators of Hypersleep, and the bloody mess they left behind. |
16 | 5 | Sherlock & Co. | My name is Dr. John Watson, once of the British Army Northumberland Fusilier Regiment, now a true crime podcaster based in central London. I don't have much experience in criminology so this is mostly a record of how I met possibly the most brilliant and bizarre person I have ever, and will ever know. Join me, as I document the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. |
16 | 5 | The Bright Sessions | Start with episode 101. Dr. Bright provides therapy for the strange and unusual; their sessions have been recorded for research purposes. Visit www.thebrightsessions.com for more information and additional content. Created by Lauren Shippen |
16 | 5 | The Left Right Game | Tessa Thompson stars as an idealistic young journalist tries to make a name for herself by following a group of paranormal explorers, obsessed with a seemingly harmless pastime known as the Left/Right Game. The journey takes her into a supernatural world that she and the other members of the expedition cannot handle or survive. |
16 | 5 | The Silt Verses | Carpenter and Faulkner, two worshippers of an outlawed god, travel up the length of their deity’s great black river, searching for holy revelations. As their pilgrimage lengthens and the river’s mysteries deepen, the two acolytes find themselves under threat from a police manhunt, but also come into conflict with the weirder gods that have flourished in these forgotten rural territories. |
16 | 5 | Tower 4 | Mike Archer is a newly appointed fire watcher in the Wyoming woods. While he's never done anything like this before, he needed something new after his mom passed. Now he hopes to spend his days in a tower above the trees looking for fires and working on his new book. But things aren't as quiet and peaceful as he hoped. Strange interference blasts over his radio at night and he starts seeing and hearing creepy noises in the woods. But are these odd occurrences actually happening or is he just going stir crazy? |
26 | 4 | Bridgewater | When a relic from his past is rediscovered, folklore professor Jeremy Bradshaw puts his life on hold to solve the mystery. Along the way, he’s helped by people who challenge everything he believes in, and ultimately tries to answer the question: can the past be rewritten? |
26 | 4 | Forbidden Cassettes: Consummation | Forbidden Cassettes: Consummation is an analog horror podcast created by Kevin Scott Joiner & Adrian Vanderbosch. Dov Kandel has spent the better part of two decades exposing vast government conspiracies and exploring unsettling paranormal phenomena on his popular, late-night talk radio program, KANDEL AGAINST THE DARK. After interviewing thousands of callers and guests, he’s certain he’s heard it all. His next guest will prove him wrong. Author and investigator Orson Libretti has joined Dov for an unprecedented two-night discussion to promote his new novel, CONSUMMATION. It is an apocalyptic tale of cosmic horror. But for Orson, this is no ordinary book tour. Defying his publisher’s demands that the book be marketed as fiction, he insists that it is based on actual events — a cataclysmic chain reaction that annihilated a parallel universe. A questionable claim, to be sure, if he didn’t have the tapes to prove it. |
26 | 4 | I Am In Eskew | Trapped in the horror-filled and impossible city of Eskew, a man makes endless recordings of his day-to-day experiences, hoping to reach the outside world.This show routinely contains body horror and other disturbing scenes. See the website for detailed warnings.iamineskew.com/episodes |
26 | 4 | Midst | When you're starting a new life for yourself on an otherworldly frontier, the last thing you need is for the moon to fall out of the sky, reality to eat itself alive, and heavily-armed interplanetary bureaucrats to decide to murder you. Unfortunately, it's just one of those days. Midst is an ongoing dramatic audio series performed for the enjoyment of your mind's eyes and your head's ears. New territory awaits. |
26 | 4 | Mirrors | Three women. Three centuries. One haunting. Mirrors is a sci-fi ghost story from ZoomDoom Stories. Find out more at https://www.mirrorspodcast.com/ |
26 | 4 | Nowhere, On Air | Semi-late night community radio broadcasts from a strange little town in the Crowsnest Pass, Alberta (aka, not just the middle of nowhere, but nowhere itself). Nothing ever happens here. Certainly nothing weird. Why would you even suggest that? If you like mysteries, conspiracies, the absurd, Canadians, and what is probably the podcast equivalent of a "b" movie, Braedon, Alberta might be the place for you! New episode every 10th and 21st. Listen close. Don't wander off. It's a long way to get where you're going. Especially out here. |
26 | 4 | Observable Radio | Observable Radio is a found footage anthology podcast of retro sci-fi and analog horror from Cameron Suey and Phil van Hest. When he discovers something beneath the static of the worlds’s communication network, an unnamed Observer begins to catalog and record the strange signals that should not exist… |
26 | 4 | The Program audio series | The Program is a historical podcast set in a future in which Money, State, and God became fused into a single entity called the Program. Each episode is a self-contained story focusing on ordinary people inhabiting this extraordinary world. And for them it is not this future that is terrifying - it is our present. |
26 | 4 | Woe.Begone | An investigation into an online ARG "game", with something mysterious going on in the background. |
35 | 3 | A Scottish Podcast | A Scottish Podcast' is a serialised modern audio drama. It chronicles the story of Lee, a washed up former radio DJ who launches a paranormal investigation podcast. Lee wants to see his show The Terror Files mentioned up there alongside podcasts like The Black Tapes, Limetown, and The Message. And he’ll stop at nothing to achieve it. Aided by his jaded musician pal Dougie, the pair travel the length and breadth of the country in search of Medieval Demon Kings and Lovecraftian Gods of the Sea. So why not join them on this unique tour of the ancient and mystical lands of Scotland? You’ll walk through the long-forgotten catacombs under Edinburgh. Sail out to the lonely and abandoned island of St.Caillic. Visit dingy pubs, run-down industrial estates, and obscure non-league football grounds. The show contains strong language, “adult situations” (whatever that means), and isn’t for the easily offended. |
35 | 3 | Camp Here & There | Tune in to the loudspeakers of a small midwestern sleep-away camp plagued by supernatural terrors and natural disasters. Sydney Sargent, resident camp nurse, cheerfully reports on all the dangers just below (and above) our feet. |
35 | 3 | Derelict | DERELICT is a narrative podcast experience from award winning science fiction author J. Barton Mitchell, that follows a host of unlikely characters trying to unlock the frightening mysteries of an abandoned spaceship in the far reaches of space. |
35 | 3 | Hello from the Hallowoods | Come walk between the black pines! Your nightmarish host Nikignik presents a heartfelt horror show from the beautiful (and deadly) Northern Hallowoods. Tune in for weekly updates as a cast of LGBTQ+ survivors face twisted wildlife, the Instrumentalist, and other terrors in the forest at the end of the world. |
35 | 3 | Hello from the Magic Tavern | Arnie Niekamp fell through a dimensional portal behind a Burger King into the fantastical land of Foon. He's still getting a slight wifi signal, so he uploads a weekly podcast from the tavern the Vermilion Minotaur where he interviews wizards, monsters and adventurers. It's a major discovery! |
35 | 3 | Knifepoint Horror | Tales of supernatural suspense written and produced by Soren Narnia. The text of these stories is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA. Email: songofsadbirds@aol.com. Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sorennarnia Also by the author: the podcast 'Those Snowy Nights You Read to Me, They'll Never Be Forgotten.' |
35 | 3 | Leaving Corvat | They call me Sleeper. I worked the same brain dead job, at the same fast food place, all of my life. And I’ve always lived in the same town. No one that lives in Corvat, ever leaves. Until today. Today I leave. Join my on my adventure. |
35 | 3 | Limetown | Ten years ago, over three hundred men, women and children disappeared from a small town in Tennessee, never to be heard from again. In this podcast, American Public Radio reporter Lia Haddock asks the question once more, "What happened to the people of Limetown?" Limetown is produced by Two-Up, the producers of 36 Questions, The Wilderness and Shipworm. |
35 | 3 | Mission to Zyxx | An improvised science fiction sitcom following a team of ambassadors as they attempt to establish diplomatic relations with planets in the remote and chaotic Zyxx Quadrant… better known as the "ass end of space." |
35 | 3 | Mockery Manor | British Podcast Awards 2020 'Best Fiction' Nominee. Season One - Summer, 1989. Mockery Manor's new staff have moved into the on-site lake house, ready for the re-opening of Britain's most eccentric theme park. It's a teen dream of a job (as long as you've never seen Friday the 13th), and eighteen year old twins JJ and Bette are determined to leave a difficult year behind them and have a summer straight from the movies... if they don't kill each other first. But something's happening at the park. People keep going missing, and JJ has a horrible feeling the screams she heard in the scare maze were more than just a frightened guest. And why is feline park mascot Mr Crackles stained with blood? Season Two - Three years have passed since the grisly events of Season One, and Mockery Manor’s new assistant manager Parker receives an unexpected phone call from Tokyo. JJ has fallen in with a bad crowd and needs help. What better place for her to lay low than Mockery Manor’s sister park, Dunkelschloss - a magical land of fairy tales in the heart of the Black Forest. But as JJ knows, the past never stays buried, and it’s only a matter of time before she has to face her demons. Mockery Manor is a full-cast production best enjoyed using headphones. |
35 | 3 | Parkdale Haunt | Ever since Judith’s lifelong best friend, Claire Sterback, inherited a house from a biological family she never knew, things have begun to change. Claire has begun to change. It isn’t just that the house is full of cryptic notebooks, ominous scribblings on the wall, and a basement that is colder than it should be. It isn’t just that Claire abruptly up and left her live-in boyfriend and is now being stalked by a psychopathic realtor. Claire is… off. Claire is sleepwalking. Sometimes when Claire begins to speak, it isn’t her voice that comes out at all. Claire begins to obsess over a cult her biological family was a part of, The Family of Fire. As she gets closer to a secret at the heart of the old house in the Toronto neighborhood of Parkdale, she is also getting closer to losing herself. And after Claire goes missing, with the help of co-worker-turned-friend-Owen, Judith vies to track her down, even if it means diving into a history that may have been better left untouched. Even if it means dealing with spirits that really do not like her. Parkdale Haunt is about friendship and identity, trauma, cults, demons, and rituals, and, most frighteningly, the Toronto real estate market. |
35 | 3 | Samite | A Horror Story in Four Parts |
35 | 3 | The Magnus Protocol | “Make your statement, face your fear.” A weekly horror fiction podcast examining what lurks in the archives of the Magnus Institute, an organisation dedicated to researching the esoteric and the weird. Join Jonathan Sims as he explores the archive, but be be warned, as he looks into its depths something starts to look back… New episodes every Thursday produced by Rusty Quill, featuring guest actors, short stories, serial plots and more. |
35 | 3 | The Mistholme Museum of Mystery, Morbidity, and Mortality | Hello, and welcome to the Mistholme Museum of Mystery, Morbidity, and Mortality. This Audio Tour Guide is aware that this is your first visit to the museum! On behalf of the Museum: Welcome! It's a pleasure to have you with us here today. The Audio Tour Guide will be your window into the history of the museum and its exhibits today. If you would like an introduction to how the museum works, please continue breathing normally. Fantastic! |
35 | 3 | Wireland Ranch | Welcome to the color soaked psychedelic cosmic nightmare you've been waiting for (whether you knew it or not.) Where every tragedy is a ritual and every sacrifice a joke. Welcome to Wireland Ranch. |