!!Important!! (Patreon)

The pod is over for the time being. I will keep the show hosted on Podbean so you can still listen to it via your preferred podcast app, but there will be no new content for the foreseeable future. Very tough to make this call because I have been blown away at how much people seem to dig it. I hear tell one of the Bigger Boys from a much more famous show has even been boosting it from time to time on Twitter, so if you're listening then thanks and an affectionate 👁 for sending more listeners my way.

I've thought about this a lot and I was hoping the Christmas hiatus would help me recharge, but unfortunately my heart's just not in this at the moment. Whatever impulse initially sparked the urge to make Ghost Stories... is pretty much gone, at least for now. A few things have been gnawing at me while putting together the last couple of episodes and I can't really ignore them anymore.

One concern is that, in a shitty and bleak period of all our lives, I doubt I'm doing much good telling the roughly 1500 - 2000 people who listen to each episode that, actually, it's all even worse than you think. I feel like, even if in a small way, I am contributing to the paranoia and cynicism that I'm seeing a lot more these days on my side of the political spectrum. I'm not at all comfortable with that, to be quite honest. It is most definitely not cool.

My other concern is more grounded: There is simply too much reading, researching, writing and production work to fit around an already very stressful day job. I work from home, but this is not the gas it's made out to be, particularly with jobs like mine. My current routine is to finish a shift, grab a coffee, then head back to my laptop to continue work on the next episode. The show has started to feel like a second job. Honestly, doing this just isn't fun anymore.

This connects to my third reason for shelving Ghost Stories... indefinitely. Y'see, my partner is an ICU nurse, and as you can imagine she's seen some real shit over the last year. My own job is connected to healthcare and as a result we both work some crazy shifts. There's only a finite amount of time we get to spend with each other, y'know? And I feel like if the pandemic and lockdown has driven anything home to me, it's the importance of spending my time wisely. At the moment, burying myself in piles of research about Nazi drug rings and Joe Kennedy lobotomizing his children just feels so...abstract...compared to my day-to-day reality and where I need to be right now. These are big historical topics worthy of serious discussion, don't get me wrong, but another worry is that I will end up phoning in the show and putting out boring, half-arsed work that doesn't make you or I very happy.

I will bring GSFTEOTW back at some point, but it may be a ways off yet. I suspect my initial instinct back in the Italy phase of the show was the right one: "anthology" collections of episodes tied to a specific theme. We will finish off Amerikan Tabloid at some point, but I don't know when. Then, there will be a long period of radio silence until the next batch of Haunted Amerika episodes. Like the Hardcore History bloke does it.

I may still use this Patreon as a place to share bits of writing relevant to the themes of the show (movie reviews, news chat, whatever) from time to time, but I won't be putting out any episodes for a very, very long time.

I'm truly sorry if this comes as a disappointment or you feel conned in some way. Please delete your pledge as soon as you see this message. Thanks for your support these last couple of months, it really has meant a lot.

You guys are great.

DGC