Nightshade Diary

​You Know What I Did? by Charles Beckman appeared in Manhunt May 1954. This is a gritty story that plays out in only two hours. Your kid's missing, and at first it's nothing to worry about. Then time passes, and your kid doesn't come home.Charles Boeckman Jr. (1920 - 2015), who wrote under the pen name Charles Beckman Jr., was a prolific American pulp magazine author known for his work in suspense, mystery, and western genres. He broke into the pulps in 1945 with a story published in Detective Tales and continued writing for major publications like Star Western and Fifteen Western Tales until the format’s decline in the late 1950s. Beyond his pulp career, Boeckman was a professional jazz musician (clarinetist and saxophonist) who toured with bands for decades and authored the non-fiction book Cool, Hot and Blue. Several of his short stories were adapted for television, including an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and he remained active as an author well into his 90s, publishing new works and anthologies of his vintage stories.The Woman on the Bus is a short story written by R. Van Taylor, originally published in the May 1954 issue of the pulp crime fiction digest Manhunt.Mack didn't know why he was worried. The woman only wanted to stay until the next bus. Then she took out a gun...This story was famously adapted into a television episode for the anthology series The Pepsi-Cola Playhouse. The episode aired in 1954, directed by Charles S. Gould and starring Polly Bergen, Chick Chandler, and Ross Elliott.Host - M.P. Pellicerwww.MPPellicer.comSUPPORT VIA DONATIONBuy Me A Coffee - https://www.buymeacoffee.com/Marlene11LISTEN TO ALL MY PODCASTS www.EeriePodcast.comSIGN UP FOR MY NEWSLETTER ON SUBSTACK:https://marlenepardopellicer.substack.com/Hypnosis DIY - https://www.hypnosis-diy.comMusic - Pixabay.com, Purple-Planet.comNarration always by a human, no A.I.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/nightshade-diary--2765110/support.

The Mummy's Soul is an anonymous short story first published in The Knickerbocker, or New York Monthly Magazine in May 1862.  Scholarly analysis identifies it as one of the earliest American curse fiction tales, predating Louisa May Alcott’s Lost in a Pyramid (1869) and Jane G. Austin’s After Three Thousand Years (1868). The plot follows a narrator who desecrates an Egyptian tomb and removes a stone scarabaeus inscribed with the prophecy, "three thousand years hence a new life." Upon returning to America, the narrator's wife begins to physically and spiritually wither, eventually dying.  The narrator later discovers a supernatural fly in his home, which he burns, but he is haunted by the reanimated mummy from the tomb, which seeks magical revenge for the desecration. This narrative established a template for the "mummy curse" genre, linking tomb disturbance with supernatural retribution. ​Host - M.P. Pellicerwww.MPPellicer.comSUPPORT VIA DONATIONBuy Me A Coffee - https://www.buymeacoffee.com/Marlene11LISTEN TO ALL MY PODCASTS www.EeriePodcast.comSIGN UP FOR MY NEWSLETTER ON SUBSTACK:https://marlenepardopellicer.substack.com/Hypnosis DIY - https://www.hypnosis-diy.comMusic - Pixabay.com, Purple-Planet.comNarration always by a human, no A.I.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/nightshade-diary--2765110/support.

Date in the City Room is a punchy, short story published in Weird Tales, January, 1938 by Talbot Johns. It blends a classic supernatural twist with a gritty, fast-paced journalism setting. The story takes place late at night in a frantic metropolitan newspaper office— the "city room." Two reporters meet up in the press room, waiting to see a massive headline hit the morning papers. As they talk and watch the printing presses roll, it is revealed that the breaking news story they are waiting on details a horrific crime and its immediate aftermath: the execution of a killer.Talbot Johns (1909 -1969) was an American author and advertising executive. While he only published a handful of fiction pieces, his professional life was deeply rooted in the golden age of American advertising.Betelgeuse Bridge is a satirical science fiction short story by William Tenn, first published in the April 1951 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. It serves as a sharp, humorous commentary on interstellar diplomacy, economics, and cosmic "racketeering". The story is told from the perspective of a public relations executive hired by the government. A race of highly intelligent, slimy, snail-like aliens arrives on Earth from the Betelgeuse star system. Rather than invading Earth with weapons, the polite and unassuming aliens engage in trade. Only too late do humans realize what they really wanted.William Tenn was the celebrated pen name of Philip Klass (1920-2010), a British-born American author and academic widely recognized as one of science fiction’s greatest and sharpest satirists. He began publishing immediately after his military discharge, debuting with Alexander the Bait in 1946. Under the pseudonym William Tenn, he became a dominant voice in the 1950s golden age of science fiction, particularly in Galaxy Science Fiction.Host - M.P. Pellicerwww.MPPellicer.comSUPPORT VIA DONATIONBuy Me A Coffee - https://www.buymeacoffee.com/Marlene11LISTEN TO ALL MY PODCASTS www.EeriePodcast.comNarration by a human, never AIHypnosis DIY - www.hypnosis-diy.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/nightshade-diary--2765110/support.

A powerful and compelling tale of brooding horror that deepens and broadens to the final catastrophe—an unusual and engrossing novellete by the author of "The Curse of Yig".Medusa's Coil" by Zealia B. Bishop and H. P. Lovecraft is a short story first published in January 1939. A traveler seeking shelter at a decaying plantation hears a tale of forbidden love and supernatural horror. When Denis de Russy brings his mysterious Parisian bride, Marceline, home, dark secrets emerge through a painter's portrait, revealing monstrous truths about the woman's true nature and her serpentine hair that possesses its own sinister life. The story blends Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos with Greek mythology. Zealia Bishop (1897 - 1968) was an American writer primarily known for her collaborations with H. P. Lovecraft, who extensively revised her work to the point of ghostwriting three major horror stories: "The Curse of Yig" (1929), "Medusa's Coil" (1939), and "The Mound" (1940). Host - M.P. Pellicerwww.MPPellicer.comSUPPORT VIA DONATIONBuy Me A Coffee - https://www.buymeacoffee.com/Marlene11LISTEN TO ALL MY PODCASTS www.EeriePodcast.comNarration by a human, never AIHypnosis DIY - www.hypnosis-diy.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/nightshade-diary--2765110/support.

A mutinous Spaniard slithers into the shadow-soaked hold of an English ship with powder, vengeance, and heresy on his tongue. But in the stinking dark beneath the deck, blades whisper, loyalties bend, and something far worse than steel seems to be waiting.Originally published in Weird Tales in February 1932, The Horror in the Hold captures everything readers love about early pulp horror: salt-stung realism, eerie supernatural undertones, and the creeping dread that Frank Belknap Long perfected.The Black Chapel by Anonymous (published April 1936, Terror Tales)A story of revenge from beyond the grave. The stories that appear in TERROR TALES are sometimes based on the theory that physical death is not necessarily the end of a human entity, for, whatever one may happen to believe, it is hardly questionable that strange and eerie things do occur, occasionally, which cannot quite be accounted for by material explanations.Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror (Jan. 1933) by AnonymousHeadless Ghosts - retelling of famous English ghosts known for having lost their head while alive.Host - M.P. Pellicerwww.MPPellicer.comSUPPORT VIA DONATIONBuy Me A Coffee - https://www.buymeacoffee.com/Marlene11LISTEN TO ALL MY PODCASTS www.EeriePodcast.comNarration by a human, never AIHypnosis DIY - www.hypnosis-diy.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/nightshade-diary--2765110/support.