Darker Pastures
Darker Pastures is a monthly horror fiction anthology, set in the very heartland of the North American continent: the vast and rugged landscapes of the Great Plains. The austere beauty of this open country is home to all manner of dreadful monstrosities, of both the everyday and the otherworldly variety, lurking in each shadow and sometimes even waiting in the full daylight. If you dare to join me, let us wander these darker pastures together.All stories written, narrated, edited, and scored by Lars Mollevand, unless otherwise noted.For all inquiries and feedback, please contact me at darkerpasturespodcast@gmail.com.
Celebrants
A long-empty house in the countryside receives jubilant visitors on Halloween night of 1975. But there are some silences which are not meant to be broken.
***Content Warning: This episode contains gore, some sexual content, and reference to suicide. Listener discretion is advised.***
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Father Grimwald
In 1899, a young drifter develops a curious relationship with an older man, whose past on at least two continents is checkered with mystery and shadow.Â
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Conflagrations
With the heat and fury of summer growing ever more intense, and wildfires raging from coast to coast, a young girl in the country’s heart gets a glimpse of what lives within the flickering flames.
***Content Warning: This episode deals with wildfire devastation, including home destruction and familial loss. Listener discretion is advised.***
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Boys
Tagline: In the spring and summer of 1952, the sun shines brightly for a young farm boy – but the shadows yawn dark and deep.
***Content Warning: This episode deals with bullying, harm to children, implied spousal and child abuse, the historical reality of Japanese-American internment, and contains graphic depictions of violence and a scene that may be triggering for survivors of sexual assault. Listener discretion is strongly advised.***
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Inertia
An isolated and bereaved man discovers what so many of us do in time: that middle age steals over us far sooner than expected, and that so too can life’s subtler cruelties.
***Content Warning: This episode contains body horror, deals with themes of major depression and parental loss, and may be triggering for those with mycophobia. Listener discretion is advised.***
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Greenhorns
In the spring of 1904, a young man arrives on a ranch in Wyoming, pursuing a singular aberrant desire. What follows is one of the strangest annals in the closure of the Old West.
***Content Warning: This episode contains potentially disturbing themes, scenes, and imagery, deals frankly with animal cruelty, murder, and suicide, and makes reference to the historical 1903 incident at Lightning Creek, Wyoming. Listener discretion is advised.***
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Blue
In a lonely saloon on the 1888 western Kansas prairie, a man recounts an incredible tale from his childhood – one which has no clear beginning, and no definite end.
***Content Warning: This episode deals with themes of disease, disfiguration, decay, and familial loss, and contains explicit descriptions of physical violence and body horror. Listener discretion is advised.***
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Little Fears
A seemingly minor accident on a nighttime country road in March of 1921 marks the beginning of a series of events that will forever change the lives of the Grossman family.
***Content Warning: This episode deals with themes of racism toward Indigenous people, and contains some violence and gore. Lister discretion advised.***
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Remembrance
On Valentine’s Day of 1975, old wounds are reopened and chilled hearts beat again.Â
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Vicious Circles
In response to an unforgivable transgression, two brothers plan the inconceivable. But no plan survives contact with reality.
***Content Warning: This episode obliquely alludes to child sexual abuse, and references torture and murder. Listener discretion advised.***
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Crypsis
An aging cattleman struggles with the usual hardships of winter... and with one entirely new.
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Excavations
The son of a Texas ranching dynasty returns from the battlefields of 1918 France to develop newly discovered oil wells on his inheritance, and discovers that his home is irrevocably changed… as is he.
**Content Warning: This episode touches upon themes of combat-related PTSD, substance abuse, mental illness, and suicide. Listener discretion is advised.**
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Undersong
Few could ever hope to understand the events that transpired in the autumn of 1888 on the ÄŚernik homestead, nestled in the gently rolling Bohemian Alps of southern Nebraska. Those who could forever maintained a stubborn silence.
***Content Warning: This episode contains themes of familial abuse and child illness. Listener discretion advised.***
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Guardian
An elderly couple finds their new neighbor troublesome and strange, but they could never guess what dark secrets lie in wait so near to their home.
***Content Warning: This episode deals with themes of the abuse and genocide of Indigenous people, as well as animal cruelty. Listener discretion advised.***
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Homogene
In the heart of the country, a traveling couple find themselves encountering a persistent shadow of the past – one that just might follow them home.
***Content Warning: This episode touches upon the history of American eugenics, and contains frank depictions of racism and sexual horror. Listener discretion is strongly advised.***
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Leavings
Returning home to deal with her estranged father's estate, a young woman discovers a strange survival.
***Content Warning: This episode deals with themes of parental abuse, familial estrangement, substance abuse, and hoarding, and contains explicit descriptions of decomposition. Listener discretion advised.***
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Cold Ashes
A tragic 1984 fire continues to haunt one of the survivors in a manner most unnatural.
***Content Warning: Contains repeated and descriptive references to deadly house fires.***
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Carrion Wind
In the late 1870s, three souls will discover that the prairie winds sometimes carry dark and wicked things.
***Content Warning: Contains frank depictions of genocide against Indigenous people and death by hanging. Listener discretion is strongly advised.***
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Immortalis
One cold night in the spring of 1963, the disparate threads of a darkly arcane narrative become interwoven upon the lonely plains of North Dakota.
***Content warning: Episode contains violent scenes and references to historical atrocities. Listener discretion advised.***
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Lovelorn
A lonely middle-aged woman tries to find love where she has never dared to look before.
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January Smiles
Home for the holidays and for a break from her troubled life, a young woman rediscovers an old passion... and is discovered in turn.
***Content Warning: Episode deals with themes of severe depression.***
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đź”’ The Perfect Gift
Subscriber-only episode
A visit from a traveling salesman makes for an idyllic Christmas, 1957.
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Headspace
A person living on the margins of a tiny rural community is witness to increasingly disturbing developments in their neighbors, and their loved ones.
***Content warning: Episode touches upon themes of enbyphobia, queerphobia, bullying, familial estrangement, and contains some gore. Listener discretion is advised.***
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đź”’ Day of the Turkey
Subscriber-only episode
Every bird has its day...
***Content Warning: Episode contains irreverent humor, explicit language, and gore, and is not for the meleagrisphobic.***
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The Return
When the charismatic ministry of Asa Donague swept into the little prairie community of Homer, Kansas in late 1923, no one could have foretold what would follow.
 ***Content Warning: Contains frank depictions of antisemitism, racism, and anti-Catholicism, as well as disturbing and violent imagery. Listener discretion advised.***
 “Old-Time Religion”, performed by the Criterion Quartet, arranged by Charles Davis Tillman, recorded 1920. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, , and included under fair use.
Cover image provided courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USW3-033945-D (b&w film neg.)
You ca...
đź”’ Wanderers
Subscriber-only episode
A chance encounter in a small Western town on All Hallows' Eve, 1873 proves that nothing stays buried.
***Content warning: This episode deals with themes of alcoholism, murder, and exploitation of minors. Listener discretion is advised.***
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Serenity
A young man, returning to his hometown for the first time since starting college, finds that it is not quite the community that he remembers – and that perhaps even his memories cannot be wholly trusted.
***Content Warning: Episode contains explicit discussion of depression and suicide. Listener discretion advised.***
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Buried
Fleeing from his troubles, a man forced by chance to shelter in a site of historical atrocity finds that the evils of the past are both very real and undying.
***Content Warning: This episode deals with themes of exploitation of minors, misogyny, and the abuse and murder of Indigenous people. Listener discretion is strongly advised.***
Cover image adapted from:  St. Joseph's Indian Normal School © 2012 by  Chris Light , licensed under  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 InternationalÂ
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Gatherings
In 1901, a mysterious man arrives in rural North Dakota, summoned by a family in need with no one else left to whom they can turn. Yet awaiting him is something far more malignant than even he, gifted with esoteric expertise, could ever anticipate.
***Content warning: This episode touches upon themes of antisemitism, genocide against Indigenous peoples, and child abuse. Listener discretion advised.***
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Announcement
A brief announcement on a coming change when we return to darker pastures in August.
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Corvidae (Part V)
In the conclusion of the season two finale, the assembled survivors of the plague-devastated land come at last to the end of their long road.
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Corvidae (Part IV)
Many paths converge, and for a time, refuge is found, and darkness and fear are left behind. But the evils of the world always find a way in.
***Content warning: Episode deals with themes of traumatic loss, catastrophic fire, and automobile accidents. Listener discretion advised.***
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Corvidae (Part III)
A teenage girl, irrevocably separated from the family of her birth, finds a new one. But too late she learns the price of belonging.
***Content warning: This episode deals with themes of religious indoctrination and past sexual trauma, and contains some gore. Listener discretion advised.***
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Corvidae (Part II)
Two traumatized young men, a boy from Cheyenne and an ex-soldier, bear witness to the depths of human depravity. Meanwhile, the true inheritors of the earth look on from afar, patient and inscrutable.
***Content warning: This episode deals with themes of sexual slavery and violence, involuntary mater ity and pregnancy-related death, mass murder, pandemic and disease, and religious extremism. Listener discretion is strongly advised.***
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Corvidae (Part I)
In the wake of unbelievable calamity, a woman encounters both wonder and living nightmare on her long journey home.
***Content warning: This episode deals with themes of disease, pandemic, social upheaval, and the threat of sexual violence. Listener discretion is advised.***
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Whiteout
A prairie schoolteacher experiences purest terror and loss during the tragic Children's Blizzard of 1888.
***Content warning: This episode deals with themes of familial loss, missing children, and children in peril. Listener discretion is advised.***
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Strangers
Two strangers approach a small town we have visited once before, and something follows close behind them.
***Content warning: This episode touches upon themes of misogyny, bigotry, unwanted sexual contact and the threat of sexual violence. Listener discretion is strongly advised.***
Cover image adapted from original: NE50sNE8wRoadHills @ 2014 by formulanone, licensed and shared under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
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El Sepulcro
A small band of cowboys, chasing outlaws upon the southern Plains, happens upon a dubious sanctum. Despite their disparate life experiences, not a one of them is prepared for that which awaits them within.
***Content warning: This episode touches upon the realities of slavery, racism, and Indigenous genocide. Listener discretion is advised.***
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Sawbones
Unable to escape the horrific recollections of his Civil War service even in the remoteness of the Dakota Territory, a surgeon finds his nightmares bleeding into reality.
***Content warning: This episode deals with themes of warfare, substance abuse, and associated psychological trauma, and contains both gore and body horror. Listener discretion is strongly advised.***
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Beasts
Two wanderers, tossed adrift by the desperation of the Great Depression, encounter something strange and hellish on the benighted plains.
***Content warning: This episode deals with themes of familial abandonment, poverty, and genocide. Discretion advised.***
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