Bestselling author, Grady Hendrix, joins Our First Fears for Episode 25 to talk about growing up as a cold-war kid, terrorized by constant reports in the 1980s of threats of a nuclear strike. He found strange solace in certain books an...

Episode 24 of Our First Fears has creepy middle-grade author, Lorien Lawrence chatting with Dan about Ed and Lorraine Warren, the real life “ghost hunters” who were played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga in James Wan’s 2013 film THE...

In this bonus episode, your host, Dan Poblocki, reads another creepy story, this time from his recent novel MORE Tales to Keep You Up at Night, and talks again about the story’s origins. “Imogen’s Skeleton,” is about a shy gir...

In Episode 23, author Jeramey Kraatz joins Our First Fears to chat about urban legends. If you’re intrigued by tales of killers lurking at lover’s lanes, weirdos hiding under beds who like licking your hand in the middle of the night, ...

In this bonus episode, Dan reads a chilling and chilly story from his novel Tales to Keep You Up at Night, and talks a bit about the story's origins. “The Psychopath’s Tarot,” is about a trio of teenage friends who trek to a wintery ca...

Episode 22 of Our First Fears brings you author Sam Rebelein, whose fear of Disney’s Haunted Mansion ride runs through his veins, deeper than he even knows. We talk about the creepiness of the Hudson Valley in New York State, where we ...

In Episode 21, celebrated author, Adrianna Cuevas, joins Our First Fears to chat about “The Raft” segment from the 1987 anthology film, Creepshow 2. If you’re intrigued by body horror, questions of morality in sc...

Episode 20 of Our First Fears brings to you horror-author and all-around super-star, Clay McLeod Chapman, as we chat about how he discovered Jason Vorhees as a kid. YES, we’re finally tackling the 1980 slasher classic, ...

Episode 19 – Author Eliot Schrefer joins us to talk about James Cameron’s 1986 action/ horror classic, Aliens, which is the sequel to Ridley Scott’s Alien from 1979. We get into themes of motherhood, survival, isolation, and k...

On episode 18 of Our First Fears, NY Times and USA Today bestselling author, Daniel Kraus joins me in a conversation about Fangoria Magazine – the tentpole horror movie publication that debuted in the late 1970s and quickly be...

On episode 17, WE ARE BACK . . . this time, chatting with writer and horror podcast-rock-star, Neil McRobert about a movie that made him cry when he was just a wee lad -  James Cameron’s 1984 science-fiction classic, The Terminator

On episode 16 of Our First Fears, NY Times bestseller, Tracey Baptiste reveals the map of her childhood village where her friends and family banded together to protect themselves from jumbies, the creepy creatures that haunt the Caribb...

On today’s episode, author Sara Farizan chats with me about the 1982 cult film  Halloween III: Season of the Witch. We also tie the film’s themes pretty tightly to her recent YA horror novel, Dead Flip, which is set in the lat...

On episode 14 of Our First Fears, author and illustrator, Derrick Chow joins me in appreciation of the genius and creativity of beloved actress Shelley Duvall’s possibly-accidentally-terrifying television show from the 1980s, Faeri...

We’ve reached lucky episode 13 of Our First Fears, and today, I get to talk with author Russell Ginns, or R. U. Ginns, about the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Together, we dig into how artists use elements of unease t...

Episode 12 of Our First Fears is a conversation with Bram Stoker Award finalist Ally Malinenko about Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and several other classic terrors. We talk about unreliable narrators, teaching ...

On episode 11 of Our First Fears, Pushcart Award nominee, Joe Vallese shows me the path beyond Stephen King's Pet Sematary and up into the haunted hills where the buried-dead have a tendency to rise and wreak havoc on the livi...

On episode 10 of Our First Fears, debut novelist and creator of monsters, Trevor Henderson and I head to the rear section of the video rental stores of our youths to paw through some of our favorite, and freakiest, VHS horror movie cov...

On episode 9 of Our First Fears, Bram Stoker Award Finalist, Lora Senf and I explore childhood memories of our early love for John Bellairs’s classic novel, The House With a Clock in its Walls, how this book inspired us to tel...

Today, rockstar author Lamar Giles joins me to explore one of the most notorious neighborhoods in all of horror cinema. Elm Street! With this episode, we've begun Our First Fears's first discussion of Wes Craven's classic film series, ...

Have you heard of Ophidiophobia? The fear of snakes? Tough-guy action hero, Indiana Jones had it, and so does my wonderfully funny friend, author Elizabeth Eulberg, who is more scared of snakes than anyone I’ve ever met. Throughout her life, sh...

In Episode 6 of Our First Fears, novelist and illustrator Ethan M. Aldridge shares their own personal tales of growing up in a supposedly haunted house in Utah. And I chime in with some stories about my own experiences as a haunted pre-teen in ...

In Episode 5 of Our First Fears, designer and bestselling author/ illustrator Jay Cooper takes us on a tour of his night-terrors, which leads us down some dark paths of 1970s and 80s children’s entertainment. He takes us through the magic of Sm...

In Episode 4 of Our First Fears, No. 1 New York Times Bestselling author Libba Bray takes my hand to ring the doorbell of the Bramford Apartments in New York City, where Rosemary Woodhouse lives with her husband Guy and, possibly, a cabal of ev...

In Episode 3 of Our First Fears, animator and author Rob Renzetti digs with me through the very old graves of Tod Browning’s Dracula and James Whale’s Frankenstein, both from Universal Pictures in 1931. We revisit ...