If you have ever listened to the Welcome to Night Vale podcast, you are my people. The incredible imagination in evidence here really takes me away.
I’ve heard this series of stories described as “Lake Wobegon as seen through the eyes of Stephen King.” It’s also a little Twin Peaks-ish, if I may date myself.
Welcome to Night Vale is Surreal, to Say the Least
In Night Vale, the community radio station is the most dangerous place to work, and the town is not only absurd but deliciously nightmarish. Every conspiracy theory is, indeed, real.
Unimaginable terror is presented as drab mundanity. You’ll get it when I just tell you the categories Wikipedia puts this podcast under: comedy, fake news radio, surrealism, paranormal horror, deadpan (that’s a category?), and magical realism.
A Great Fiction Podcast
I found this podcast in my search for fiction in the same imaginative vein as my upcoming book, Bits of String Too Small to Save. I would inaccurately flatter myself to compare my book’s magical realities to that of Night Vale, so I won’t do that, but I think I will go so far as to say if you like the free podcast Welcome to Night Vale (voiced by Cecil Baldwin), or the book Welcome to Night Vale, which is an amalgamation of the podcasts (by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor) you might also like Bits of String. You, clearly, are a person who enjoys taking your imagination out for a walk and then, what the hell, letting it off-leash.