H.P. Lovecraft Podcasts
The podcast is one of the truly great Internet-inspired inventions, giving us access to news, notes, interviews, reviews, and all sorts of other broadcast material 24/7. Unless you’re plugged in to your favorite sources all day, listening to podcasts is the only way to catch up with what’s going on in the world that you care about.
There are a few HP Lovecraft-centered podcasts, each of which brings their own unique perspective and attitude. Here’s a look at our favorite HP Lovecraft podcasts and other recordings available online.
The HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast is put together by Lovecraft fans Chris Lackey and Chad Fifer. Chris and Chad are indie filmmakers that live a world away but share the common bond of a love for all things Lovecraftian, especially the literature and writings of Lovecraft and other Mythos writers.
The presence of a large amount of show-themed merchandise and tons of comments on the podcast site tell you one thing: they have a lot of followers. Lovecraft fans are exactly the right audience for a podcast. We tend to live in basements in the dark only peeking out for occasional holidays with the humans. With this podcast, I can stay up to date on the latest Cthulhu gossip without venturing into the bright world outside.
Features of this podcast include full-length readings of HP Lovecraft stories (classics like “The Call of Cthulhu”) and theatrical performances of some Lovecraft classics. The guys behind the HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast are talented readers and producers, and features like the “3D audio” versions of “From Beyond” and “The Picture in the House” are totally unique and amazing pieces of art. With their 3D audio system, the HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast records two different tracks, each meant to play simultaneously, adding to the atmosphere of the story.
The Cthulhu Podcast takes a slightly lighter approach to Lovecraft’s work. Unlike the HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast, the Cthulhu Podcast investigates the Cthuhlu Mythos and pop culture Cthulhu as much as it does the writings of Lovecraft himself. This podcast features readings of Lovecraftian horror, and even slightly unrelated but creepy ghost stories by other writers. The show even highlights music of the Lovecraft period (music from the 1920s and 1930s) and discussions on events in history at the time as they relate to the Cthulhu Mythos are particularly fascinating. There aren’t a lot of rules for the material covered in the Cthulhu Podcast: anything Lovecraftian, vaguely spooky, or historically relevant to the Cthulhu Mythos will pop up from time to time. Readers are regularly invited to contribute their own stories, audio, and other features to be broadcast on Cthulhu Podcast.
Librivox.org’s Lovecraft Stories
Okay, so I cheated and this one’s not technically a podcast. Still, this library of Lovecraft audio recordings, available at Librivox.org, covers a lot of ground. The link above brings you to a search result for “Lovecraft” in the author category, and you can make your way around the dozens of Lovecraft offerings recorded and presented here.
The cool thing about Librivox.org is that it depends on community participation. You can record your own reading of Lovecraft and share it with the world, provided the text you’re reading is public domain, as some writings of Lovecraft are today. This community attitude has had a big influence on the quality of recordings and other material available here, since a bad recording is likely to spawn 5 corrections. The HP Lovecraft poem “To the Old Pagan Religion” has 17 different readings available, totally for free.
Atlanta Radio Theater Company’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Atlanta Radio Theater Company has often taken on Lovecraft material in radio theater format. This recording of their production of “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” is the better of those available online. The other recordings represent many other phases of Lovecraft’s work, and this radio theater company can often be found at horror and fantasy conventions drumming up interest and even recruiting voice talent. Harlan Ellison himself was a part of one recording made at a convention a few years ago.
Atlanta Radio Theater Company is the right combination of funny and serious when it comes to producing great works of radio theater, and this recording of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" would make a great Halloween listen or an introduction the Mythos for someone new to Lovecraft’s writing.
Unfortunately, the Cthulhu Cult Podcast appears to be down for the count, but these 7 episodes of thought about the life and work of HP Lovecraft showed a lot of promise. The cool thing about podcasts is that as long as they’re hosted, you can go back and find them and listen to them again, so this archive of Lovecraft podcasts isn’t lost just because the creator has temporarily lost interest.
The interview with Ken Hite, creator of the Trail of Cthulhu RPG, is worth a dig through the entire podcast. Hite has a lot to say about the Mythos and about its influence on pop culture, and about Cthulhu RPG gaming in general. The hour-long interview with S.T. Joshi is totally exclusive to this podcast, and as Joshi is considered the foremost living Lovecraft scholar, this interview is priceless for Lovecraft and Cthulhu fans.
As long as there is widespread fervent interest in HP Lovecraft, the Cthulhu Mythos, and horror fiction in general, pockets of people all over the world will clamor for more Cthulhu material. The Mythos has been alive and well for the better part of the last one hundred years, and with podcasts and broadcasts on such a wide range of Lovecraftian obsession, it is likely to last long into the next.