Old Time Radio Thrills Still Scare In ‘Dark Sanctum’

The format of the short horror anthology series is almost as old as storytelling itself as travelers would entertain themselves around a campfire with stories of things that go bump in the night and don’t always end well for those involved.

The seven stories contained in Dark Sanctum, the new short fiction horror audio series from writer/director Mark Ramsey and Wondery, are a perfect companion for those who want a short jolt to the system and a reminder that there is still a bit of wonder in our modern world and that everything doesn’t tie up as neatly with a bow as we would like.

Only the first episode, “Requiem for a Traveler”, is available to listen to for free, as the other six are referred to as a “premium show” and are currently only available on Wondery +. However, give a listen to the stirring sounds and haunting screams of one man’s terrible dream that keeps happening and you may not be able to stop yourself from subscribing.

The show makes use of what series creator Mark Ramsey referred to as “something similar to repertory theater” in that the same voice actors play various parts throughout. Stars Clive Standen (Doctor Who), Bethany Joy Lenz (Dexter) and Michael O’Neill (Dallas Buyers Club) will chill you with intense dramatic scenes that cut right to the heart of the story without a single false note and expertly directed by Mark Ramsey.

We spoke with Mark over Zoom about this celebration in suspense.

The series really plays with our fears of very real things that could happen.

Mark Ramsey: It is very much about the knocks that come our way, and I tried to integrate them into this series and make it very full of life and reality.

“Requiem for a Traveler” brings to mind those 80s horror series like Tales from the Crypt.

Mark: The short horror story is one of the oldest traditions in horror dating back to EC comics and more recently Tales from the Crypt. What makes this different is they were a little tongue in cheek and were made for kids, but not really with a wink-wink sort of thing. The Twilight Zone was deadly serious, and that’s what this series is.

The first episode has that great foreshadowing when they say “the brain can survive if the heart stops beating”.

Mark: Everyone wants to know if it’s true by the way and I’m not going to answer, but that’s a good example of how we’re playing with audio by not just using it for traditional storytelling, but for tricking the ear and imagining something that isn’t there. You can’t see the horror that we talk about, but you can see it in your mind. We wanted to have relevant themes like the value of time or at least time well spent.

The decision you didn’t make or wish you had made.

Mark: Yeah, or what you really value are the decisions you make that prove what you value. I really enjoyed writing for this series because podcasts really aren’t known for using storytelling designed to tell a larger theme.

There was one horror fiction show called Darkest Night a few years ago, but the sound was too visceral and I didn’t stick with it very long.

Mark: We don’t do that here. Doing something that vivid is the most obvious thing to do in audio. However, one of the most famous obvious examples of audio like this is a body being turned inside out and it’s actually done by turning a rubber glove inside out from an episode of the old radio show Arch Obler’s Lights Out Everybody. We thought a lot of old stuff could still be scary and a lot of it does hold up, we’re just trying to bring it up to date.

Unlike all those other shows you mentioned, you don’t have a single voiced narrator to explain things or wrap everything up with a cutting point.

Mark: We don’t do a Rod Serling like framing voice to punctuate the point at the end because I thought if the piece doesn’t punctuate it then it needs to be revised. I wanted to take a page from a guy like Frank Darabont who knows how to infuse horror with craft. If you’re going to do something you might as well do it well.

How hard is it to get these stories down to a 14 or 15 page script?

Mark: There’s only so much character development you can do in a short piece, so the time spent is mostly in conceptualizing and less in revising. We tried to use trained actors like Michael O’Neil for the most part, and not primarily voice actors, and they bring it every time.

The episodes run the gamut from the shocking to the brutal like “Detour”, which is a modern adaptation of Sorry, Wrong Number.

I hate to allude to older things so much, but I think if you don’t have a sense of history you can’t do great work today. Orson Welles always said that Sorry, Wrong Number was the single best radio play of all time. It’s about a woman who was bedridden in the days of party lines and she would pick up the phone and hear people talking who were plotting a murder, and it was her murder

“Detour” is about a guy rushing to get home and he goes to jail and can’t give the money to the guy he stole it from and the action is entirely over the phone which makes it really effective because it uses the ear exclusively.