Knifepoint Horror Podcast
Imagine meeting someone at a bar, a party, or maybe even in a doctor’s waiting room. Imagine they leaned in, maybe finishing their drink or putting down their three-year-old magazine, and started telling you about the scariest thing that ever happened to them. No introduction, no musical accompaniment. Just the scariest shit you’ve ever heard.
That is the podcast Knifepoint Horror.
Starting in November 2010, the podcast is written and produced by Soren Narnia. I have to assume that’s a pen name, and it’s a great one. When I realized these eerie tales were all written by the same author, unlike other anthology podcasts I’ve reviewed, it made more sense that there’s only one episode a month. It also scared me just a bit. There’s a lot of twisted darkness in these stories. The episodes range everywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour and a half. And I have yet to listen to one episode that didn’t scare the hell out of me.
I started with the first episode, titled Town. It’s the story of a man returning to his hometown on a photography job. It was a town he thought he knew pretty well, having grown up there and visited often. However, his employer seemed to know the place better than he did. Or at the very least, he knew the darker corners. And our narrator saw his hometown in a way that he never thought he could. As a place of madness, death, and torture. A place that turns people into monsters, simply by whispering suggestions. The narrator sees that his childhood friend is going mad. He hears stories about his former neighbors that he never would have thought possible. And he barely makes it out alive. This story was especially scary for someone who still lives in her hometown. What shadows do I walk past, all unnoticed?
Another truly horrific tale, if you haven’t the time for an hour-long story, is called Corpse. It’s the tale of a killer who was electrified and buried. But his corpse never seemed to rot. Several times he was exhumed, and each time he had the same grin on his face.
This grin was used by our narrator’s father to torture him as a child. The father, a rather sadistic gentleman, took a picture of the Grin Man’s face and used it to scare the narrator into behaving. Eventually, the father even cuts off the hand of the Grin Man.
I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, that’s not the best way to raise a healthy child. And our narrator is far from a healthy person.
The most recent episode, titled Hole, was an emotional roller coaster. It’s the tale of a film writer working with an eccentric actor. They meet in a rented house in the middle of nowhere to work on the character, a serial killer. If you know anything about method actors, you know what sort of nightmare this writer has gotten himself into. But a crazy actor is only part of the story. There is a woman next door digging a hole. Not a very deep hole, but deep enough for her purposes.
This story twisted so many times that I didn’t know which way was up. I was sure I knew the ending at least three times and was entirely wrong each time. That being said, the ending was delightfully creepy.
Stories are living, breathing things all on their own. They come in many forms. Movies, books, video games, tv shows, podcasts, and songs. Often elements are blended to tell tales to the best effect. We add musical scores to manipulate emotions and heighten moments of terror and suspense. Sound effects are added to podcasts and movies. Filmmakers add false gore and eerie effects. But a story, especially a scary story, doesn’t need this. It makes the listener lean in, making sure to catch every word. Because it’s the story that matters. It’s the story that will come back to us in the night when we’re alone.
Everything else is a distraction.
If you want to give a listen to Knifepoint horror, and I certainly encourage you to do so, you can find the whole series on Spotify. Or on their website, Knifepoint Horror.
(5 / 5)
I just wanted to post a brief shoutout to Linda Gould of the Kaidenkai to say thank you for including my Around the Campfire story. Feel free to follow this link and give it a listen. I especially love how Ed’s voice is conveyed. You really feel as if you are on the camping trip with everyone.
Around the Campfire sets the tone for the month of August wherein authors are invited to participate in telling tales as part of a whole campfire series, kind of like it did here originally on Haunted MTL in 2022.
I am among the authors who read their own works as well, with The Fur Coat. You can listen to my own reading on the Kaidenkai here. You can also read along with the original as posted here to Haunted MTL in 2020.
We have reached the last episode of the podcast, Dolores Roach. No, this really is the end. There are no more episodes unless they’re hidden away on some Patreon page I don’t have access to.
The reason I’m being clear upfront about this is because, after you listen to this episode, the fact that there are no more episodes is going to be both confusing and infuriating.
The story
This episode begins with Dolores in a tunnel, being chased down by a train. She barely manages to escape, jumping onto a subway platform and then boarding the train that almost hit her.
Dolores is in a state of panic. She just escaped the tunnels. She just saw Mother Cleats killed. Now, she’s on a subway train, surrounded by people she doesn’t know. And she is a mess. She hasn’t showered since going down in the tunnel, after all. She probably doesn’t smell great.
Dolores rides the train to Coney Island and gets off. She walks to the ocean and gets in the water to wash herself. And when she comes out, she’s recognized by an old friend, Georgie.
And it is then that we realize that it’s been Georgie she’s been telling this whole story to.
Seeing the state Dolores is in, Georgie insists that she come home with her. She gets Dolores some clothes and something to eat and makes her tell her everything that happened down in the tunnels.
And then, Georgie’s son comes home. A seventeen-year-old son who looks exactly like Dominic.
That’s where the story ends.
What worked
I had a hard time finding much to like about this finale. If it hadn’t been the last episode it would have been great, but it was.
However, I did like the shift in perspective that takes place when it’s revealed that Dolores has been telling this whole story to Georgie this season. Because of course, up until now, it’s felt like she was talking to us and only us.
What didn’t work
This episode had a lot of problems. For one thing, I didn’t trust Georgie from the start. And that distrust just got worse the more we saw of her. She’s a true crime writer who just happens to find Dolores when she comes out of the tunnels after two months. No, Dolores isn’t buying it and neither am I. And inviting a woman you have reason to believe is dangerous into your home is stupid. No one in their right mind would have done that. No parent would have allowed Dolores within the same block as their child. The whole thing was unbelievable.
But that complaint pales to the largest issue I have for this season finale. For this episode that is, as far as I can tell, a series finale.
I say that because I cannot find another episode listed anywhere. If I were to have just listened to this episode without knowing that, I would have assumed this was just a mid-season twist.
Because that’s what this feels like, a mid-season twist. It answers nothing. It wraps up nothing. It gives us no satisfaction at all. And that is more than frustrating. It is infuriating. It ruins any joy we might have gotten from the rest of the season.
The ending of Dolores Roach was, in short, not an ending. It stopped in the middle of the story, there’s just no way around it. And this episode came out in October of 2019, almost five years ago! I know that podcasts are rather notorious for having long periods between seasons. Mine is no exception, season three of AA will likely not see the light of day until 2025 at the earliest. But after five years I think we can all safely assume that we’re not getting any more episodes. And so Dolores is always going to be in limbo. We are never going to know whether or not Georgie was telling her the truth. We’ll never know what happened to Ginger or Ephraim. We’ll never know what Dolores does, standing in her old friend’s house with what appears to be Dominic’s seventeen-year-old son standing in front of her.
We will never know, because the show is taking an entirely different turn. And so, I’m afraid I have to add Dolores Roach to the same infamous list as Lime Town or The Black Tapes. This podcast was great until they decided to just not end it.
If you’ve waited this long to see if you should listen to Dolores Roach, here’s my advice. Listen to season one, it had a reliable and satisfying ending. But season two should be left in obscurity where all half-finished stories belong.
(1 / 5)
If you’re a fan of my work, please check out my latest story, Nova, on Paper Beats World. New chapters every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
We’ve reached not only the second to last episode of this Dolores Roach season but the series as a whole. If you’ll recall, last episode we were riding the high of a great new villain. We had an unexpected and shocking story arc.
Now, after listening to this second-to-last episode, that high is gone. And we are left with disappointment, lamenting what might have been.
The story
We begin our story with Dolores being shown to her new home. The home she’s to share with Ephraim is considerably smaller than the home they were sharing before.
Ephraim is thrilled. He’s read Mother Cleats’ treatment and is all in.
This doesn’t make sense to Dolores. To her, this place seems like a downgrade. But for Ephraim, it’s a chance to belong. A chance to feel safe, to not fear hunger or violence.
Dolores has no illusions of being safe from that, though. And she’s not thrilled with being drafted as the Chain’s new killer and cook.
She tries to get Ephraim to run with her. Even prison would be better than what she’s facing. But he doesn’t intend to go anywhere.
Next, Dolores tries to get Ginger to go with her. She points out that having a baby in a tunnel instead of a hospital is probably not her ideal birth plan. But Ginger has some sort of strange fit and screams at her.
Dolores is lost, unsure how she’ll ever fight her way through all of these people to get out of the tunnels. But at the last moment, she gets unexpected help from a very unexpected source.
What worked
Let me begin by saying that it’s honestly hard to say that anything worked in this episode. Which isn’t to say that it was bad. The acting was as wonderful as it’s been the whole series. The sound editing was wonderful.
But everything that did work suffered from the pacing. We’ll discuss that more later.
This episode was full of sudden yet inevitable betrayals that I love. I don’t want to ruin the fun for you. But it’s safe to say that no one is on good terms with anyone at the end of this. At least, the people still alive.
I also appreciated the setup for a pivotal death. Early in the season, Ephraim told us that the middle rail was certain death to touch. I think we all knew that this was going to come up eventually. That we would, sooner or later, see someone’s eyes melt out of their sockets. And yes, I’m pleased to say that did happen.
What didn’t work
If the podcast Dolores Roach has a flaw it is in its pacing. And that flaw came very much to light in this episode. Because this should have been at least two episodes.
It was not as fun to see the ending of this episode as it would have been if there had been more build-up. An important character betrayal didn’t mean as much as if there had been more of a build-up.
Overall, this story would have felt so much richer if there had been more room to breathe and experience them. It was as if we were to be served a wonderful meal. And instead of savoring it, we shoveled it down without truly tasting it. And that’s a shame. This seemed like a delicious story. I wish we could have tasted more of it.
Even though there should be more, there is only one episode left of Dolores Roach. And I don’t know how to feel about that. They’ve done everything they set up to do already. So, what’s left for Dolores now? That’s the only question we have left to answer.
(3 / 5)
If you’re a fan of my work, please check out my latest story, Nova, on Paper Beats World. New chapters every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
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