You're listening to whispers of the Wicked on ninth Story studios.
Give me a story, a voice.
When you work in audio long enough, every coffee shop meet up feels like a reunion of ghosts. Projects that burned bright for a season, collaborations that fizzled, ideas half born and left to wonder. A few months ago, I found myself in New York, sitting across from my friend Graham.
We hadn't seen each other in person for years. We talked about the usual things, the shows we'd built, the scripts we recorded, the late nights, editing until our ears rang, And eventually we circled back to a name that always seemed to follow us around even now, The Wicked Library. It had been gone for years, mostly gone anyway, a hand full of new episodes than silence. But the Library is one of those places you just don't forget. You carry it with you, like an unfinished story that refuses
to stay closed. That day, what started as nostalgia, just two friends swapping memories, shifted into something else, a question neither of us wanted to ask, but couldn't quite ignore. What really happened to the Wicked Library. We thought we'd treat it like a joke, side project, a way to dig into a little mystery together, maybe make a true crime podcast just for fun. We called it Whispers of the Wicked. But the deeper we looked, the clearer it came.
This wasn't just a story we were chasing. It was chasing us. And before long, the library stopped being a memory started feeling like a crime scene.
You know, it just popped into my head. The Wicked Library. Remember that show, Horror anthology, creepy narrator, weird sponsors used to be a big deal.
Oh my god, Yeah, that intro music will give me goosebumps. It just vanished, didn't it.
Yeah, like one day it was everywhere and the next hoof silence. Some people say the host just walked away burnout.
Maybe No, I heard something way weirder. Someone said they saw him after the show stopped, but he was wearing someone else's coat, like not metaphorically literally and he didn't recognize him.
Okay, that's creepy, but like perfectly creepy. We should look into it.
Sorry to interrupt, but are you two talking about The Wicked Library?
Yeah?
We are.
That was my favorite podcast. I still check the feed every other month or so, hoping it wakes up again.
We might be working on that.
Shadows, drink the ink of stories, doors, remember every name. If you listen past the silence, you will never leave the same. The books are always waiting, their pages sharp with fear. They hunger for the trembling hands that dare to open here. What oh, I was just asking if you wanted a refill.
I think we're good for now, no problem.
If you need a warm up or a pumpkin spice muffin, just let me know. 'tis the season?
Okay? What was that?
Weird?
Really weird?
Welcome to Whispers of the Wicked.
I'm Addison and I'm Graham.
The show started as a whim, a joke, really, a way to dig into the disappearance of a podcast that both of us had enjoyed working with, The Wicked Library.
Okay, so we're doing this a podcast about a podcast.
Not just any podcast. This one had a cult following and now it's gone, or maybe it's hiding.
Just a few days after we met up in New York, we received a delivery a box wrapped in weird black paper, paper that makes no sound, doesn't crinkle, and can't be torn. Or cut and no it's not plastic right.
No sender or receiver address, no postage.
No FedEx truck, no UPS driver. It was just there sitting lurking in the studio.
Really weird, that smell of old books wafting out of it as soon as it was opened, and.
The contents scraps of wet paper covered with odd writing. Thumb drive with recordings, some of which we'll share with you all, and a key to a storage unit.
So we started asking questions, casual ones at first, reaching out to people we'd known through the show writers, narrators, producers. We figured we'd get like polite brush offs or vague stories about burnout and moving on.
Yeah, except that's not exactly what happened, right.
Several people agreed to talk, but only off the record. Some of the voice actors we reached out to said they'd rather not be named at all, and what they told us was strange, unsettling.
One described getting postcards handwritten, no return address, just fragments of phrases, almost like spells. Another actress we know swore she recorded dialogue that was never released, a character for Enfield Detective Agency, the promised mini series that was written by Aaron Bleck as a sequel to The Private Collector.
Right, didn't she say when she pulled up the original file she could hear a weird whispering layered underneath her vocals.
Yeah, she was really freaked out by it.
And then there was the music, because the Wicked Library wasn't just about stories and narration. It had a sound of signature atmosphere created by composer and producer Nico Vitzi.
Yeah, Nico's music was the Library in a lot of ways, the tone, the dread, the pulse behind it.
So we reached out to Nico, and while he agreed to speak with us us, what he told us wasn't exactly reassuring. You'll hear from him a little later in this episode.
But for now, let's start at the beginning, where the Wicked Library first went silent and why some people still check the feed every other month hoping it will wake up again.
If you're listening to this, maybe you were one of them. Maybe you were refreshing the feed year after year, waiting for something to appear.
And most of the time nothing, but then out of nowhere, one or two new episodes, no announcements, no explanation just enough to remind everyone the library wasn't entirely dead.
Those episodes were different, rougher, sparse. Some of the regular narrators were missing, and a few listeners swore the production sounded off like there were extra voices in the background.
Which is where our so called investigation started. We figured, fine, let's just call around see what people remember. At worst, we'll waste a weekend chasing rumors.
Except people didn't laugh, they didn't roll their eyes, They hesitated, they lowered their voices. Some told us they couldn't go on record because they'd signed agreements. Others said they talk, but not with their names attached, and a.
Couple of them told us things that were well, you'll hear. We're not the type to throw around words like possession or curses. But some of these stories they don't fit neatly anywhere else.
Which brings us back to the people closest to the library, the voices you remember, the ones who helped build it. A few of them agreed to speak to us carefully, cautiously, and their stories are where this gets darker than we expected. Okay, I've got the recorder on. Say that again. If you don't mind.
You don't distort our voice.
Absolutely, Okay.
So, like I said, I don't know what happened to the library, None of us do. But one day the recording started sounding wrong, like there was someone else in the booth with us, breathing, waiting. I told myself it was Mike bleed. But it kept happening, same whisper low every time. But I talked to I mean, one of the other voice actors we know, and she said she
was having the same problems with her recordings. The producer once said it felt like he was editing in a hallway, not a studio, like the tracks stretched on too far and the walls kept moving away from him. He laughed and called it liminal space. But the way he said it, it didn't sound like a joke anyway. Don't tell them I said this, I can't be.
Named a Whoay, Okay, that's definitely not creepy at all.
But that wasn't the only story. We heard variations of the same thing from three different people. The voice is the sense of someone else in the room. Let's take a quick break and when we come back. Graham's interview with Nikovitezi.
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Nico, you were the music producer for the Wicked Library for years. Your sound more or less was the Library.
Yeah, that was me, all those years, tucked away in my little room, trying to make it sound much bigger than it was. I always thought of it as painting with shadows. Creepy, sure, but it needed heart too. Otherwise it's just noise.
And when the show slowed down and then went quiet. Did you notice anything unusual?
At first, I thought it was just tired is I'd bounce to track down neat as anything. Then the next morning it sounded different, heavier, like there were layers I hadn't written, notes bent out of shape, Sometimes even voices. Voices, yeah, low whisper in the reverb tales. Once I swear one of them said my name, not loud, but enough to freeze me.
And you're sure it wasn't just a glitch.
That's what I told myself. But soon every session fell off, like I wasn't in my studio anymore more, like a hallway that stretched forever, doors on either side, none opening, just me sat there, finishing tracks that wouldn't end.
That's unsettling.
Yeah, I started to think maybe it wasn't just me right in the music anymore. Maybe something else had joined in. Ink bleeds backwards through the margins, whispered, lines erased, the day, shelves will shift when eyes are closing, guiding wanderers astray.
Sorry what was that.
I was saying? I hope you too have success figuring out what happened. Best of luck with it.
Nico's story lined up with what we'd already been hearing, whispers buried in the recordings, a sense of someone or something else in the room. He chalked it up to long hours, tired ears. Maybe it was just audio paradolia. But when you hear the same story over and over from different people, it stops feeling like a coincidence. It starts to feel like a pattern. And patterns are where every investigation begins.
So voices in the music, endless hallways and producers who started sounding like they've stepped out of a seance. Totally normal day at the office.
Right, Except Nico wasn't the only one.
Right.
We've heard stories from actors, editors, listeners, even.
And we're just getting started.
Next time, we'll talk about what showed up in the mail, that box filled with corrupted audio, scribblings, transcripts, letters that don't quite make sense.
And what we found in that storage unit.
That's what's coming up on Whispers of the Wicked.
And if you are still checking the Wicked Library feed, maybe you should keep doing that just in case. We leave you today with one of those recordings from the mysterious box.
What a piece of work is, man, What a piece of work is man a lattice of sinew stretched upon bone, pliable, breakable, host to one thousand tremors. How noble in reason he who screams logic into the void, and he has only his own breathless echo, How infinite and faculty his fingers made to pry upour secrets, never meant for hand, nor minds,
nor stars. Inform in motion, how express, how admirable? Yes, watch him dance brief, trembling thing upon the lip of the cosmic drain in action, How like an angel one cast down, molting wings and gutters, slick with memory, an apprehension, How like a god, a god of gnats and mirrors, blind to the pattern beneath the skin of the world, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals, Dust made recursive, flying upward, ever upward, to glimpse a truth that will not love him back? And yet to me,
what is this quintessence of dust? A vessel, a joke, a candle in the wind of void? Man delights not me, nor woman, nor anything born of clay, though by your smiling you seem to say otherwise. Tell me, when did your smile learn to lie