Episode 58: Ghost Flies

What counts as a ghost is, perhaps, open to interpretation. 

Thanks to Steve Shell for voicing today’s field report. Steve is a co-creator, writer, and voice of the narrator on the Old Gods of Appalachia podcast. Old Gods is entering the homestretch of their fourth season and will be heading out on tour again this summer. 

Thanks to Emilie Lygren for today’s hidden lore poem, “Chrysalis.” Emilie Lygren is a poet and educator who has published poems in several literary journals and anthologies and developed dozens of publications focused on outdoor science education. Her first collection of poems, What We Were Born For, was selected by the Young People’s Poet Laureate as the Poetry Foundation’s monthly book pick for February 2022. Emilie lives in San Rafael, California, where she wonders about oaks and teaches poetry in local classrooms. Find her online at: emilielygren.com

Thanks to Leslie Anderson for reading today’s hidden lore. You know Leslie as the voice of Cassandra and the voice of the credits. You may not know that Leslie has a new horror novel coming this August from Quirk Books. The book is titled The Unmothers and it’s a folk horror-mystery about a journalist going to a small town to investigate a rumor about a horse giving birth to a healthy, human baby. 

“The Unmothers is exquisite and haunting in equal measure. . . . Nauseatingly tense and crushingly insightful. This book represents an absolutely vital entry into the horror canon.”—Sarah Gailey, nationally best-selling author of The Echo Wife and Just Like Home

For preorder information, visit LeslieJAnderson.com 

Preorders for Jarod K. Anderson’s new memoir about loving nature and struggling with depression are now open. Visit JarodKAnderson.com for more information. 

Episode 57: Breakfast

An early morning record focusing on starting the day The CryptoNaturalist way.

 Thanks to Joseph Giglio for today’s hidden lore, “The Sky.” Joseph is currently an MFA student at George Mason University and originally from Buffalo, NY. He has been previously published in Corvus Review and Dead Fern Press amongst others. He is often somewhere he shouldn't be looking for birds or ghosts, but never bird ghosts. You can find him @JoeWritesWeird on Twitter.

 Thanks to Ella Watts for voicing today’s hidden lore segment. Ella is a queer, disabled director, writer and producer of audio fiction in all of its many forms. She's currently Head of Production at Six to Start, the company behind audio drama and fitness app ZRX. She's also releasing an audio drama series she wrote and directed called Camlann. It's a post-apocalyptic urban fantasy inspired by folklore and Arthurian legends. Ella is an advocate for audio fiction in all of its forms, and longtime fan of The Cryptonaturalist.

Episode 56: A Walk in the Woods

There’s something playing music just down the path, but that isn’t the only worthy mystery beneath the trees.

Today’s hidden lore was “The Bone Mother’s Daughter” by Tim Goldstone. Tim Goldstone is based on a true event. He has roamed widely and currently writes in remote rural Wales. Tim is published internationally in numerous print and online journals and anthologies, including: The Speculative Book, Altered States, Veil: Journal of Darker Musings, Selcouth Station, I Become The Beast, DarkWinter, Medusa’s Kitchen, Pyre, Toil & Trouble, Coven Poetry, Dark Fire Fiction, Red Wolf Periodical, and forthcoming in Flash - The International Short-Short Story magazine, among other venues. His prose sequence was read on stage at The Hay Festival, and his poetry presented on Digging for Wales. Scriptwriting credits for TV, radio, theatre. Loiters in twitter @muddygold.

Thanks to Amanda Milstein for voicing this episode’s hidden lore. Amanda Milstein is a personal friend of the podcast, amateur voice actor and full-time nerd. You can also hear her as Vendetta Violent on the Violent Life Podcast. Find her at: amandamilstein.com

Episode 55: Feather Fountain

The Feather Fountain is as beautiful as it is deadly and it’s plenty of both.

 Thanks to Cecil Baldwin for voicing the Stairway Keeper. Cecil has long been one of my favorite voices in podcasting and you can hear him on the show that first inspired me to create audio-fiction, Welcome to Night Vale.

 Thanks to Kathryn Nuernberger for today’s hidden lore poem. Kathryn is the author of THE WITCH OF EYE, essays about witches and witch trials, and RUE, poems about plants historically used for birth control. ADVANCED POETRY, a textbook on reading and writing poetry co-authored with Maya Jewell Zeller was just released in January. She is currently writing a collection of essays about symbiotic mutualism, mutual aid, and ways of being together in an age of climate crises. Find her online at: kathrynnuernberger.com

Episode 54: Mirror Falls

The mirror falls, like all water, links us to many other versions of ourself.

Thanks to Cat Stone for lending her voice to this episode.

Hidden lore poetry by Matt Dennison. Matt is the author of Kind Surgery, from Urtica Press (Fr.) and Waiting for Better, from Main Street Rag Press. His poetry has appeared in Verse Daily, Rattle, Bayou Magazine, Redivider and Cider Press Review, among others. His fiction has appeared in ShortStory Substack, THEMA, GUD, The Blue Crow (Aus), Prole (UK), The Wondrous Real, and is forthcoming in Story Unlikely.