The paranormal comes to life as husband-wife duo Dan Cummins (acclaimed standup comedian and true horror fan) and Lynze Cummins (costume and wardrobe stylist for numerous film and television productions) share terrifying stories that will leave you sleeping with the lights on. Dan’s goal? To scare Lynze with creepy accounts of demonic possession, shadow people, and other eerie phenomena. And when he’s done, Lynze fights back with chilling fan-submitted tales of true horror. Together, they explore the darkest corners of the web, dusty old books, and even their own eerie surroundings—a studio filled with occult objects and located right next to a cemetery. Don’t forget to check out the mini-series Nightmare Fuel, airing on this feed the first and third Friday of every month, where Dan narrates a short piece of original horror fiction.
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Dan delves into two puzzling missing person cases: Maura Murray, a nursing student who vanished after a car crash on a haunted New Hampshire road, and Barbara Bollock, an experienced hiker who disappeared in seconds on a Montana trail. Both cases are riddled with strange details and supernatural theories. Lynze then shares three listener stories, including a terrifying encounter with a hat man, a comical yet spooky bathroom ghost, and a chilling visitation from a pale, humanoid entity.
In a gripping conclusion, Ellen and her friends devise a desperate strategy to liberate her brother Ned's soul from Dr. Blackwell's torturous experiments at the Liminal Lodge. They confront the insidious spirit, luring her into an ancient Dybbuk box, thereby dismantling her sinister soul-harvesting machine. The episode culminates in Ned's emotional reunion with his lost love and the lodge's rebirth as a place of peaceful communication and healing, though Blackwell's presence in the box remains a potent, contained threat.
Dan takes us to Peru for our last stories of 2025. We begin in the Amazon, where indigenous villagers say seven-foot-tall armored beings with glowing yellow eyes drift through the trees at night, freezing their victims in place and taking “samples” of skin, fat, and organs. Then we go beneath the city of Lima, to a maze of tunnels stacked with the bones of tens of thousands of colonial dead, arranged in spirals and pits like macabre artwork. Tourists and locals alike report getting lost in the d...
It's our seventh annual holiday episode where Dan shares a classic tale! This year, he picked a tale from the amazing Mary Shelley! We hope you enjoy this modern telling of an old story from the mother of horror! Then Lynze has three tales to give us. The first is about an unknown haunted doll, the second is a beautiful confirmation tale from the other side and ends with a topsy turvy tale of a ghost named Genevieve. December Charity: This year, with your help, we were able to support 91 kids in...
Following Ned's tragic death at Tacoma General after Dr. Blackwell's "Quiet Room" experiment, his sister Ellen decides to transform the Liminal Lodge into a grief retreat, aiming to provide a safe space for communication with the deceased and secretly hoping to reach her brother. However, her attempts to contact Ned via a Ouija board reveal he is trapped by Blackwell, who manipulates him to lure Ellen, a "natural conduit," into becoming her next victim, continuing her horrifying experiments to open a permanent portal between worlds.
Dan shares two terrifying Swedish ghost stories, starting with Borgvattnet Vicarage, home to the sorrowful Grey Lady and a territorial spirit in the "bishop's chair." He then recounts the intensely malevolent hauntings of Frammagorn, where priests and investigators have fled in terror from shadow figures and violent attacks. Lynze follows with personal tales, including a Halloween party gone wrong after a Ouija board opened a doorway to a "Lady in White" and a family's unsettling encounters with a cloaked forest entity and a ceiling-crawling doppelgänger.
A really fun show this week with stories that are somewhat traditional and somewhat not! We hope you enjoy the variety. Dan takes us to Ohio for a dybbuk box tale, which is wildly interesting. Then we head to North Carolina to explore the Duke mansion. Lynze has three short stories this week. She covers a new kind of fear based coping mechanism, then takes us to Myrtle's Plantation and lastly, we fist fight a ghost together! Do you want to get all of our episodes a WEEK early, ad free? Want to h...
Ned's perilous journey into previewing the afterlife at the Liminal Lodge intensifies, guided by Dr. Blackwell's spirit, alarming his sister Ellen and his contractor Cal. As Ned's physical and mental state deteriorates from self-starvation and strange experiments, Ellen, fearing for his life, begins the process of involuntary commitment. However, Ned, indoctrinated by Blackwell, believes he's on the verge of a breakthrough, even as he experiences a terrifying full immersion into the lodge's hidden "quiet room" where he receives further instructions, setting the stage for a dramatic conflict over his fate.
Dan begins with a little known case of the Warren's about a grieving family heirloom and a century-old pact. Then, we’ll examine what many consider to be America’s first documented ghost story. Was Sullivan, Maine really home to America’s first documented ghost? Then, Lynze gives us two unsettling tales this week. Her first takes us to a prison infirmary for a both a paranormal and very real life set of fears. She wraps up this week with a teacher and a student both experiencing something rather...
We head to Northern England for Dan's first tale and meet the creepy bog hag, Jenny Greenteeth. She’s the monster kids went to sleep fearing for centuries there, worried the next time they strayed to close to a pond’s edge, they might get sucked in and never return alive. Then we go to Japan for more water horror. We’ll meet the kappa a river monster who might come for your butthole if you don’t give him a cucumber. Finally, we’ll head to Australia and meet a billabong-haunting cryptid called th...
In this forty-fifth installment of fictional horror written and narrated by Dan Cummins, tech millionaire Ned Watkins becomes dangerously obsessed with resurrecting a century-old sanitarium’s occult legacy after uncovering the hidden journals of its founder, Dr. Mildred Blackwell. When his sister Ellen visits, she fears the lodge isn’t just haunting her brother… it’s consuming him. ** originally envisioned as a two-parter at the time of this recording, it is now a four-parter ** For Merch and ev...
Dan offers us a poltergeist double header this week! We start with some wild, cool and interesting science that explores these strange occurrences. From Zimbabwe to Kentucky, poltergeists know no bounds. Then, in response to Lynze's request for widow tales, she brings us just that. Lastly, a very detailed encounter from one man on his daily run and the strange, out of date character he runs into. Do you want to get all of our episodes a WEEK early, ad free? Want to help us support amazing charit...
We head to South Africa to start this week. Two South African men vanished from separate hospitals in recent years - only to be discovered days later, their bodies found in the strangest of places. Official explanations have never added up. Were they murdered? And if so… was their murderer human? Or something else entirely? Then we’ll head to England, where, perched high above the sea on the island’s northeast coast, the ruins of Whitby Abbey have stood for nearly fourteen centuries - silent, wa...
Sixteen-year-old Tommy Calloway is found as the sole survivor of a mysterious shipwreck near Cape Fear Lighthouse in 1921. He recounts a terrifying story of Captain Bannister's ghost, a spectral pirate who massacred his crew for retrieving cursed gold. The head keeper, Malcolm Rourke, initially skeptical, soon finds his home haunted as the vengeful spirit follows Tommy, leading to a horrifying confrontation.
Dan shares a modern encounter where a man and his friend repeatedly see a mysterious shadow figure, years later discovering others also witnessed it. He then delves into the "Falkirk Triangle," a Scottish hotspot for numerous UFO sightings and alleged abductions in the 1990s. Lynze recounts a fan's haunted college dorm experience with a spectral visitor and another fan's strange encounters with their podcast playing spontaneously, suggesting a ghostly fan.
In this forty-third installment of fictional horror written and narrated by Dan Cummins, we head back to 1985, when ten year-old Ryan Mellard and three friends went trick-or-treating for the first time without parental supervision. When they passed by The Dead House, a site supposedly haunted by the ghost of a woman who used to live there, they dared Ryan to enter. And what he found inside changed him forever. Happy Halloween! For Merch and everything else Bad Magic related, head to: https://www...
Hello Creeps and Peepers! Welcome to one last Halloween revisiting of a few of my favorite Nightmare Fuels as we lead up to tomorrow's special new Halloween Nightmare Fuel release. Today, we look back (or take a first look if you're new!) at a story set in San Francisco, where a monster from Hmong horror lore, the Night Hag known as Dab Tsog, shows the young members of one Hmong family how it is anything but harmless superstition. This episode is scored by Logan Keith. We recommend listening wit...
Hello Creeps and Peepers! Welcome to yet another Halloween revisiting of a few of my favorite Nightmare Fuels as we lead up a special new Halloween Nightmare Fuel release. Today, we look back (or take a first look if you're new!) at when Claudia Nelson's life is changed forever by a shooting star that lands on her property outside of the fictional town of Dillon. What cosmic horror does the cursed meteorite bring? And what Hell will it unleash on Claudia and the other residents of her small, rem...
Dan has two awesome legends for us this week. We start in Chicago to learn the legend of Resurrection Mary followed by many encounters with her. Then, we go across the pond to learn about The Dark Huntsman. Lynze shares some great fan tales specifically around Halloween. The first involves some adults using a ouija board for the wrong purposes. The second takes us trick or treating with an unfriendly ghost. Scared To Death LIVE! 5th Annual Halloween Show! https://www.moment.co/scaredtodeath/scar...
Hello Creeps and Peepers! Welcome to another Halloween revisiting of a few of my favorite Nightmare Fuels as we lead up a special new Halloween Nightmare Fuel release. Let's look back (or take a first look if you're new!) at the first episode that seemed to really excite a lot of you about this series. The third horror story I wrote. The tale of a mysterious beast that's been brutally killing men for decades in the former gold rush town of Bodie, California. And out introduction to Ezra Calhoun....
Hello Creeps and Peepers! Welcome to a Halloween revisiting of a few of my favorite Nightmare Fuels as we lead up a special new Halloween Nightmare Fuel release. Let's take another look (or a first look if you're new!) at Sam. Sam's a strange doll found by a young boy, Jack, when he and his sister and mother moved into a new home following the death of Jack's father. Sam looks like she comes from another world, and she does. And her world is full of nothing but evil... This episode is scored by ...
Both of Dan's stories come from Thailand. Thailand has a LOT of supernatural stories! We begin in Bangkok where we explore an abandoned and supposedly haunted skyscraper. Then, we’ll head to one of Thailand’s biggest college campuses, Chiang Mai University, to examine a few of the resident spirits there. And learn a bit about the relationship between Thai culture and the spirit world along the way. Then, Lynze has three very different stories this week. We begin in a hospital with a patient who ...
In this forty-second installment of fictional horror written and narrated by Dan Cummins, we meet Tess Hughes in another standalone story. She's just bought her first house in Missoula, Montana. It's a fixer-upper that needs a lot of work. And, is it also haunted? Does is hold secrets that might get her killed? For Merch and everything else Bad Magic related, head to: https://www.badmagicproductions.com Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of Scared to Death ad-free and a wh...
We are off to Lima, Peru to explore the very dark legend of what many claim to be Lima’s most haunted location, La Casa Matusita with Dan. Has a 16th century curse led to a whole lot of blood and madness? Then, we’ll head to the suburbs of Chicago for a modern encounter that starts with a shoe print. Then in Lynze's half of the show, we have two fantastic tales! Her first is a second hand account of a man who needed to get away after a bad break up. What he found while camping alone may have bee...
Dan's first tale this week is wild. What if you brought some type of demonic presence home from a vacation and it ended up possessing your neighbor, and then your demonically possessed neighbor than attacked you? We head to Ireland for that one. And then, we’ll take a quick trip to Australia to hear about a supposedly haunted, and deadly, body of water known as the Devil’s Pool. Lynze has all over the map this week both geographically and spoopily! We begin in Nigeria where a family uncovers a p...
In this forty-first installment of fictional horror written and narrated by Dan Cummins, we meet Lachlan Harrison. Maybe not the best guy. But does he deserve what happens to him in the forest when he goes for what's supposed to be a light, refreshing hike? And will he atone? For Merch and everything else Bad Magic related, head to: https://www.badmagicproductions.com Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of Scared to Death ad-free and a whole week early. Start a free trial n...
Dan takes us to China, back to the 17th century for a truly weird and deliciously creepy tale. Then, England, where we explore another story involving a supposedly haunted doll, a doll with no name. Lynze brings us to the UK for a haunted house tale that has the most peculiar rhythm- is the story that's creepy or just the way its told. Lastly, a woman continues to see something in her dreams that eventually enters her real life as well. What is it? Scared To Death LIVE! 5th Annual Halloween Show...
Dan starts off the week in Chicago, in the suburbs. We will explore the very well documented legend of the Big Muddy Monster. Did a variety of people see some sort of big, terrifying, bipedal cryptid in a swamp back in 1973? And have people been intermittently been seeing it since? Then we head to our favorite city in America, New Orleans. We explore a less documented legend - the legend of the Carter Brothers? Did a pair of vampires get arrested for murder back in 1932? And following their exec...
The big showdown is here in this fortieth installment of fictional horror written and narrated by Dan Cummins. Lizzie travels to Portland to work with Detective Ray Salazar to put a stop to Samael Orcas's murders. How will she do that? Can she do that? She still doesn't know. But she's not going back home until she tries. Enjoy! For Merch and everything else Bad Magic related, head to: https://www.badmagicproductions.com Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of Scared to Deat...
Dan's first of two stories takes us to a supposedly haunted bus in the fascinating nation of Singapore. Then we are headed down south for legend of the Plat-Eye. Then Lynze takes us to the Philippines for a creepy tale about a legendary creature. Lastly, we make our way to Ketchikan, Alaska and spend a few nights at the Gilmore Hotel- a notable haunted location. Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp 2026: We are so excited to be hosting the 4th Annual Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp again in 2026! That’s ...
