Untold Podcast

​The Bitter Souls team tracks down a Rougarou in the Louisiana bayous. But is it a man to rescue, or a monster to slay?

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The legends say the Rougarou has plagued the New Orleans bayous for centuries. With the body of a man and the head of a wolf, it has the appetite of a monster: human flesh. One version of the legend says a Rougarou is born when a cursed man consumes the flesh of another man. Another says the creature manifests around the time of Lent to hunt down any Catholics who violate the holy time. Still another says the Rougarou is a creature that has passed its curse from one man to another since the very founding of New Orleans. It is said the curse of the Rougarou is transferred when the creature bites a man without killing him . . .

​At the end of World War II, a group of German dissidents await their execution for speaking against the Nazi regime.

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Spring had come again to Germany that April in 1945, after a hard winter of the hell of war. 

​In the remote town of Alte Kirchenstadt, rumors were swirling like fluffs of pollen from the wild flowers gaily dotting the nearby hills. The Nazi regime was near collapse and the nation was in ruins. 

The rumors reached even through the medieval stone walls of Eiderisernes Tor Krankenhaus on the ridge overlooking the town center. The Tor, a long abandoned hospital for the insane, had been seized by the Nazi soldiers and converted to a prison for dissidents and other local nuisances. 

​When John accidentally knocks over a cross on a mausoleum, it unleashes . . . something.

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​John walked towards the church, passing through the cemetery among the gravestones, squeezing a rock in his hand. He looked at his white knuckles and saw his tears falling on them. His mouth twisted into an anguished snarl, and he threw the rock as hard as he could. It flew into the dark and hit something. He heard the sound of something falling then breaking. John sighed and stared at the moon for a while, then went to inspect the damage.
 
A strange mausoleum he didn't remember seeing before loomed in shadow. What appeared to have been a stone cross affixed above the door now lay shattered on the ground. John gathered up the pieces and put them into his jacket pocket. He promised himself to tell the pastor when he saw him next and pay for it somehow.

​There are more things in Heaven and Earth. . . One of them must kill tonight.

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I must kill tonight.

I know this from the moment I enter the vehicle. The knowledge weighs upon my shoulders as the driver takes us through the streets of Reykjavik. It remains as we stop. It is still there as Hekla climbs into the seat beside me

“Hello, Uncle!”

​Sweet, innocent little Hekla. For a moment, I share her smile and forget. 

​When young Pierre loses his sight in an explosion, he discovers a deeper way of seeing the village around him.

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It had been two weeks since the accident at school. Pierre’s frail schoolboy body had recovered; his arm and chest no longer ached. But he was now blind. The bandages had been removed from his eyes and now life was a puzzle he had to sort through.

Weeping, hovering over his hospital cot, his parents and the doctors had told him to expect blackness, nothingness, confusion. However, those had not come. For, instead of dark static nothingness, there was sound, vibrations, and waves -- the emanations of living things.

A demonic force oppresses a successful man.  ​

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A chilled shudder raced up my spine. Every muscle tensed, paralyzed by fear. Terror’s icy grip latched onto my throat, robbing my lungs of breath. I tried to clench my eyes shut, terrified by the looming darkness that lurked by my bedside, but they were pried open by a supernatural force.

A vile entity cloaked in shadow drew close to me, whispering hateful blasphemy. Chilled breath blew against my face. Goosebumps rippled across my skin. Dead, yellowed eyes peered through to me and into the deepest reaches of my soul.

​ ​Cassidie is part of the third generation of children to be born into Vibrant Village, a nursing home turned sanctuary, which protects her and its inhabitants from the dangers of the outside world.

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My great-grandmother died last week. She was the only window I had to a world outside of Vibrant Village. The walls seemed to thicken with each day of her passing. 
​
When Nonna Lola was young, she was hired as a nurse and hairstylist for Vibrant Village, a self-sustaining nursing home complex. My Nonna told me it had been built in a deserted shopping mall. The nursing home was designed to look and function like a small town to help residents, particularly those with dementia, feel more at ease. As a child, I would go into her room, lie down in the bed next to her, and listen to her stories. Stories about the beginning of the village, the moon, space travel, the Great Pandemic, and butterflies. 

Someone is waging war against Christmas. Mrs. Claus the Valkyrie is going to stop them.

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It had been a long time since I’d attended the Council, so I suppose I should have anticipated that not everyone would recognize me. Still, I wasn’t expecting to be challenged by a vampire bodyguard.

“Nobody gets close to the Skeleton King,” he growled, putting an arm across the elevator door.

I didn’t care if I were close to the Skeleton King—who, by the way, isn’t a king at all, because Halloween isn’t a kingdom and so doesn’t have a monarch. He is, of course, a skeleton, but that hardly makes him special. But I did care that if I didn’t take this elevator, I was going to be late.

Traveling through the portals of the realms, Lord Nazerous grows weary after twenty years of constant battle.

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The skull spider crashed one of its mechanical legs into the makeshift catapult.

“Fall back,” Lord Nazerous ordered.

Thirty or so tusk-faced freedom fighters ran past their would-be savior. They clutched their blasters looking for shelter in the foothills behind the village.

The mechanical spider swept another leg across a cluster of home-pods.

Thank God we evacuated, thought Nazerous.

He unsheathed the blade from his back and charged the guardian. A hum followed by green energy surrounded the blade.

The skull spider was a doomsday weapon.

On a fateful night in Endor, one woman pierced the veil between the worlds. What did she see?

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Her lover had come again tonight. 

Not that he ever left her. But his presence was as arbitrary as his whims. She no longer questioned them. 

He had no living eyes, but she felt his gaze as she sprinkled fresh-cut herbs into the draught. The brackish liquid cast a strangely clear reflection in the firelight. She stared into a face that had once been beautiful. Bright, copper eyes gleaming out over full, soft lips and supple skin crowned by raven locks. Clouded now, the lips dry and bloodless, her aged flesh hanging loosely upon the bones.

Daon took what form he wished. Often he appeared to her as a raven. At other times a serpent. Once a black, man-like shadow of liquid fire. 

She lifted the bowl, breathed in fumes laced with incense. It masked the potion’s vile odor, but would do little for the taste. She looked to the side. Daon—a raven now—regarded her hungrily across the fire. Watching, waiting, whispering.