The 'EnCrypted' Podcast is coming soon...

I enjoy stories - lean or shaggy, long or short - and, even better, tall and short.

If you have an appetite for what people variously call macabre, spooky, spine-tingling, weird or, even better, eldritch... then my new series EnCrypted: The Classic Horror Podcast could be just the ticket.

As a grown-up child of ___- _____ I find a story read aloud to be the perfect thing to coerce one into slumber. And the choice of story, when filled with supernatural horror and creeping dread, can induce the most delicious nightmares, which is why all bad physicians recommend EnCrypted for a good night's sleep.

I started the podcast because, when I was prowling the internet in search of short story audio I discovered that I could often find the story I was after, but not the voice. Too many times a classic by Poe, Lovecraft or Bierce would be let down by a flat reading or a muffled recording. Not every narrator can tell a horror story with the gravitas of Christopher Lee or Vincent Price (and certainly not this narrator, before you accuse me of ideas above my lowly station!), but, as an experiment, I thought I would at least try to bring these timeless tales to life (or, perhaps, back from the dead) with a combination of speech, music and sound effects. These things, I find, are a matter of taste, and all I can ask is that the curious listener lends me their ears - figuratively speaking, of course.

Who am I?

For the purposes of this enterprise I go by the name of Jasper L'Estrange because it is more appropriate to a classic horror podcast than my real name which is appropriate only to a desk jockey. It will help your enjoyment of EnCrypted if you imagine Jasper, perhaps in his smoking jacket (with or without the fez), sharing these stories over a full glass of port, sherry or brandy (more likely Johnnie Walker Black if you're paying) accompanied by the crackle and glow of a roaring log fire and the steady ticking of a grandfather clock.

Again for the purposes of this enterprise, the stories on EnCrypted are all necessarily in the public domain which, at the time of writing, means anything published before 1 January 1926 or written by authors who died before 1951 (I think...).  Alas, this means that I will not be reading some ghastly favourites by L.P. Hartley, Rosemary Timperley, and Robert Aickman. But since it permits the likes of M.R.James, E.F.Benson, Walter de la Mare, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, H.G.Wells, Saki, Amelia B.Edwards et al...  it would seem rather churlish to complain.

It is fashionable these days to speak of a 'community'. And were such a thing to assemble around this humble venture I would be interested to hear from said community ideas for future podcast episodes. Loneliness, after all, can be more tolerable when shared with others.

By now EnCrypted should be available, as they say, wherever you get your podcasts. Never fear, if you fail to hunt it down. I will be posting the YouTube videos on this blog - something I'm quite sure Vincent Price never said.

Thank you for indulging me thus far.

Jasper