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The Skull Sessions: Malevolent




William

Good evening. This is your loyal host William A. Wellman. In addition to creating Hello From The Hallowoods every week, I write novels, read horror stories and tune in to the work of other podcasters in the horror fiction space today. Sometimes I invite them into my dimly lit parlor for an armchair conversation about horror. In this bonus episode, I sat down with Harlan Guthrie to talk about his many horrifying stories and wicked games. This is the Skull Sessions: Malevolent.


*theme music plays*


William

So, we are here with Harlan Guthrie today. Harlan, you had recently asked me if I considered myself a horror writer. Do you consider yourself a horror writer?


Harlan

Whoah. Good first question. Uh, yeah. Hey buddy. Well, I, okay—first off, I’ll admit, the reason I asked you is because of a horror writer panel I want to put together. But we’ll get back to that after this.


Yeah, do I consider myself a horror writer? I’m really bad at complimenting myself. And you’re going to learn this by the end of this chat, and people listening will learn this, and people who already know me know this, because I was raised by parents who really devalue artistic notions.


Now, I should clarify, they pushed us for piano and stuff like that. Like, they were definitely helpful in that regard. But they never saw that as a career. Like I remember wanting to go to film school, and my dad being like ‘no, go to business school.’ Like that’s straight up where it’s at.


So I have a big sort of staunching of a flame, where I’m trying to constantly set my expectations lower for myself. To be like ‘no, you’re not a writer, you’re not a voice actor, you’re not a nothing’. But, if I were to suspend disbelief and go on to the actual analytical answer, I have written many thousands and thousands of words in a horror genre that would allow me to put aside my massive ego, dad, and say that I probably am a horror writer. I don’t know if I’m a good one, but… *chuckles*


William

I’ve always been curious how you ended up working on, you know, five to six horror podcasts and actual plays and things at once?


Harlan

Yeah, me too.


So basically all this started around Covid. And it’s funny because I think a lot of us are similar in the fact that Covid was a really defining moment for a lot of podcasts. But for me, I was working for almost ten years at a water cooler company…


William

Huh!


Harlan

They exist. Not bottled! We were a bottleless water cooler company. It was called Aquarian. It was in Pickering, where I’d lived. And basically I’d went there ten years previous, as a… to help them funnily enough with social marketing and stuff like that, you know. ‘I’ll make you a Facebook account, I’ll make you a Twitter account!’ We created this thing called Thought Of The Day, and anyway…


I worked my way up in that company, because it was a pretty small company, under ten people. And the owner was an older man named Alan who wanted to eventually retire. And around year six he started dangling the prospect of basically buying the company out from him when he wanted to retire. Paying him off, and me becoming the manager, the owner, everything for Aquarian. Which honestly at the time sounded like a pretty ideal life. I could pay my bills, work a nine to five, come home every day.


William

For sure.


HARLAN

It would just be work for work. And it’s funny because my philosophy was very much my dad’s, which was work was work, this is where we’re at, everything is great, and do all the fun stuff you want in your spare time. Which is a fallacy by the way. Doesn’t work for everybody, it can work for some people, it was a fallacy for me. So Covid hit, that company got bought out, he sold it out from under me. Broke a promise, I got very angry. And I was jobless.


And around that time my now-wife and I were just starting to date, and my life was more or less in shambles. But I was trying to pick up the pieces and figure out what I wanted to do. Funnily enough, I went to my dad who owns a business and asked for a job and he said no.


William

Oof.


Harlan

Side note, my brother in law, my brother, and my ex-wife all work there.


William

*whistles*


Harlan

My ex-wife was hired after me. He said no to me and then hired her. That’s another story!


William

I’m sure that doesn’t sting!


Harlan

And I was kind of lost! And I was kind of lost for a little while. I didn’t know what to do, and then Jo, my amazing wife, was kind of like ‘you know, you’ve always loved the creative aspect, we always did RPG’s’—we ran RPG’s every Wednesday, and had done at that point for a number of years. Because my day job was so boring, and I needed an outlet. And she was like, ‘you know, let’s do something more creative’.


So from there we launched Dice Shame, after a trip down to Gencon as kind of a big blowout. We wanted to do something really nerdy that we’d never gotten to do because of jobs. We went down there with my friend Justin, Rob Deobald who’s on Dice Shame, my now-wife Jo and myself. And on the way down there we were kind of like ‘you know, we should do a podcast’. And we decided on an actual play podcast called Dice Shame. And we started releasing that shortly thereafter, and it was a lot of fun.


And as I was searching for new work and figuring that out, I kind of put more attention into Patreon, and I thought you know, people who are supporting us on Patreon for this actual play podcast should get a little something extra. So I started to make a show called Malevolent, which was a weekly chapter release show. It was exclusive for patrons, and I sent it some of my best friends on our stream—Carly was one of our first listeners, and she was like ‘oh this is really good’.


And after a few chapters went out I kind of just asked the patrons, ‘hey do you guys care if I release this publically?’ and there were like five of them at that point. And they were like, ‘yeah go for it, we really like it’. So I started doing the public releases, and honestly the rest is history. I just kind of fell into it. You know? By that time, everything kind of started to chug along.


Malevolent got more popular, I started realizing that people actually wanna listen to this. And it just… I don’t want to say that it caught on like wildfire, but it definitely grew in a way that I never expected, and am still kind of surprised by.


William

I’d be willing to say it caught on like wildfire. I think even before you and I knew each other fairly well, Malevolent was one of the shows I was seeing that was just getting talked about a little bit more, people were really getting engaged with the story. And I think there’s a unique aspect to Malevolent that most shows don’t have as well? Do patrons get to vote on upcoming events in Malevolent? How does that work?


Harlan

Yeah so basically the public release, which most people consume, is comprised of five chapters. And I use the term parts for the public releases, which are the longer 40-minute episodes, and I use the word chapters for the weekly releases.


William

Mhm.


Harlan

So every chapter, they’re released weekly—I make them every monday. Basically chapters 1, 2, 3 and 4 of a particular part all end with a choice. It can be, does Arthur go right or left? Do you hide or run? Do you say yes or no? Sometimes they’re mundane, simple questions, sometimes they’re really important. And every week patrons get to vote on that, and after that I write a new episode based on what they decided. And then, again every five of those I edit them together, remove the choices…


Because on Patreon there’s a little bit of an intro and outro to every episode, where the Booth Entity kind of talks to them.


William

That is one thing I’ve seen mentioned as well, that there is a Booth Entity that exists in the Patreon version of the show but not in the Spotify release.


Harlan

Yeaahh they call it Booth John, which I’ve never referred to it as, it’s just the Entity. But basically yeah, it’s kind of like a framing device for the choices. Because I recognized early on that people were a little too lost with what was going on. I had to kind of be there to be like, ‘hey, so Arthur’s standing in this hall, right or left?’ Because especially in the mediums you and I work in, and especially the one where I don’t have a narrator per se, I sometimes need to give additional context that needs to be third-party. It needs to be above the protagonists, so that people can understand the extent of the choices?


It can’t just be like, right or left, it has to be like ‘right will lead you down a path of misery. Left will lead you...’ you know, like it kind of has to be a little more contextually viable.


William

And that is something that we, especially in podcasting, run into. And one of the things that kind of brings me some amusement from show to show is to see what that framing device looks like.


Harlan

Yeah.


William

Because you know, we’ve invented whole tropes just for narrative frames in podcasting.


HARLAN

Absolutely.


William

I think the Magnus Archives really popularized a certain ‘everything is tape recorded, everything is files that were lost somewhere and then found again…’


Harlan

Which is interesting though, because I don’t think we need that anymore. I think… and I firmly believe this, and again I’m working on a found footage show in the forthcoming year that we’ve been discussing.


And I don’t think people need that beep or that click. I think now we’re in that sort of cool world where people have heard enough of these that it’s kind of just understood. You know what I mean?


William

Yeah. You aren’t planning on a sort of three-minute ambient loop of cassette reeling in the background?


Harlan

Heh. No, no not anymore. Scratch off my ambient tape loop podcast idea. Dammit William.


William

I think, you know, this is something that can really go two ways. Because it’s to the point where just having it does feel like a bit of a trope. Only because it has been—I mean, it’s thoroughly descended from found footage horror films, but also—I don’t want to say it’s ubiquitous, but it’s common. So if you do go with that, I want you to go all the way?


Harlan

Yes.


William

And I want you to be thinking about who’s closer to this cassette player. Who’s farther away. How does that distort the sound?


Harlan

Exactly. That’s where I’m at, right? I want to hear… Like, if this is a physical thing, I want to hear pocket rustling. I want to hear the pulling it out. But no one goes that far because it’s nuts. *chuckles* It would be too much to do that.


William

But I think if you’re going to commit to it, then you have to commit to the bit. That’s my two cents.


Harlan

I agree, I think committing is the key here. People need to start learning to commit to this. But then again, you know like, you look at found footage movies nowadays too. And there’s so much less worry about that. I think of like, District Nine, which obviously is now fifteen years old or whatever.


William

*chuckles*


Harlan

Because there’s a point where that just moves from a first-person camera, just moves to third person. It just moves to being a regular looking movie. There’s no explanation for it. They’re not like, hey, we’re done with this… Just do it, because no one gives a shit. They’re just like, let me watch the movie, right?


William

This is one of the other things. I think that especially now, podcast audiences are ready for more unique takes on the narrative. Things that are more subtle.


Harlan

*hisses the word yes*


William

One of the things I’ve enjoyed listening in to the Silt Verses for instance, is that the narrative without explanation moves from internal monologues of characters to what they’re saying out loud to third-party narration to found footage media from that world.


Harlan

*whispers yes*


William

And the only technical throughline of it is that it’s what you need next to understand the story.


Harlan

And I dig that shit. I dig people trying to push the boundaries. Because that, to me… and don’t get me wrong, I’m not counting myself in that, because Silt Verses is like brainpower that I don’t have. But I respect the hell out of it. And I would aspire to be that kind of creative. Like a Cormick McCarthy of the audio drama realm. Like, in Blood Meridian every chapter opens up with a single-word explanation of basically what happens in that chapter.


It’s like, A BOY, HE DIES, BLEEDING IN THE SAND, HE MOVES TO A NEW TOWN and then the chapter starts. And you’re like, what a weird way to introduce…


William

*chuckles*


Harlan

Or even my favorite book of all time, The Road, has no names. It’s just The Son and The Father and there’s no chapters, it’s all one huge run-on story kind of symbolic of the story. And I love that shit. That to me, is a level of critical thinking—or I guess creative thinking—that so many people don’t. They do… and I mean, I’m not in any way trying to punch down. But more just saying, I respect the hell out of the people who are trying to think beyond the easy answer.


William

And I think especially here in the audio medium they really have a freedom to do that. Every time I tune into a new show… well, not every time, but often… I get surprised by like, just… they’ve pushed the format in ways that I didn’t know were possible up until listening to that show. There’s really I think a venue for creativity that we’re still kind of seeing explored as new mind-bending shows roll out.


Harlan

Absolutely. Yeah. It’s so exciting. It’s really cool, right? It feels kind of like, obviously the golden age of cinema was a little bit before this, but it feels like that avant-garde time in Europe when cameras started to be put into people’s mouths, and that seventies kind of crazy filming stuff. It feels like people are getting more excited about that, which is really exciting for me because that’s the kind of shit that I want to be involved in, and that’s the kind of shit I want to make. You know?


William

Absolutely.


Harlan

Or aspire to, I should say, because again I’m not talented enough yet.


William

Aw, don’t put yourself down Harlan.


Harlan

*chuckles*


William

There was a point where you were working on Dice Shame. Decided to start a small project on Patreon for your patrons, and that project became Malevolent. Out of all the different sort of genres and styles of story you could write as bonus content, why did you go in the horror direction? What kind of drew you to that?


Harlan

Oh. So I always have been a horror fan, more so when probably when I was young. I feel like all horror fans kind of go through phases, you know. Like, you need to watch the gory stuff to know you don’t really like it. You can have a pre-existing opinion on it, and say ‘I probably won’t like that’. But I do believe that you should at least like, you know, check. Because sometimes—and I was very surprised, because I remember being a kid and seeing the poster for Leprechaun in the Jumbo Video. And being like, that’s the scariest movie I’m ever going to not see.


And I used to have nightmares of a leprechaun cutting off my brother’s feet that hung over the end of the bed, and his voice was horrible and malicious, and it was just this terrible movie… and then I watched it, years later. And it is a joke. It would have been a joke when I was a kid. Like, it’s so silly. It’s Warwick Davis with this high pitched voice who’s like ‘I’m gonna get yer’...and it’s just really funny. And kind of meant to be a little funny too. And what my brain did was so much worse than what it actually did.


And I feel like there was a time, again going back to my original point, where horror viewers and consumers try to figure out what they really like and what they really jive with. And I’ve watched a lot of horror, all the—you know, the classics, to a lot of the slashers, to a lot of the gory stuff, and found my own kind of niche. Which really started to come into vision for me through the Invictus Stream, our weekly RPG show, when I stumbled upon the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game. Because I really click with that kind of 1920’s and 1930’s era.


And why? I don’t know, honestly. I love all those movies, I grew up on a ton of like black and white Humphrey Bogart ‘To Have And Have Not’, the Thin Man series of films… and I do love that aesthetic. And I do think there is something nostalgic about having to go to a phone booth to make a call and just not being able to be ‘gotten’ at certain points?


And I think that era was always enticing to me. And when I found that roleplaying game and I got to start telling stories in that world, I found it so refreshing, probably as a departure from where we are now in the modern world.


But also, just because. The shadows that get cast in a world like that are so much crisper, because so much is unseen. There’s so much less that we just know. There’s no security cameras, there’s no Google… phone books were even difficult to find, you’d have to go to the corner thing to do it. It was just, it gave a lot of space for mystery, and I think at the heart horror and mystery for me are intertwined. Because a great horror, I fail to think of a great horror without a great mystery.


Because in essence, horror is about revelation. It’s about revealing whatever monstrosity is there. You don’t start the movie knowing the monster a hundred percent. It’s the mystery of what it is. And I think a lot of people forget that. You know? It can’t just be, even if you’re talking about a slasher, hostile type film, it’s still a mystery as to what’s going to happen or how they’re going to die. And I think not enough people realize that.


William

I think even when you look at most say, great slashers, or even things that are very sort of open with their genre, like the Walking Dead for instance, I think part of the appeal still does come from that sense of mystery. Due to the fact that they’ve introduced something in that particular iteration that is part of the mystery.


Harlan

Totally.


William

With a great slasher, often that mystery comes down to ‘where did they come from?’ Because however this character originated is often how they are also undone. And even with Walking Dead for instance—I hope that ten or fifteen years later, it’s not spoiler territory anymore—but I think one of the early things that caught at least my attention with it was that they had this twist a bit in where it’s like, each person is ALREADY infected, it’s just whenever you die you’ll become a zombie. And that was a twist on what the core format of a zombie is.


Harlan

Absolutely.


William

And so like, even with a premise that people are familiar with, I think you should look for ways to change it and make it your own and give them that sense of wondering that will keep pulling them back to the story until it’s done.


Harlan

Absolutely. And yeah, so that to me was a real easy way to jump right into Malevolent. Because I had constructed those universes in my Call of Cthulhu campaigns. And Malevolent is really just a new offshoot of universes I had built in roleplaying. And so all the characters, especially in the early episodes of Malevolent, are characters that appear in my games. That are available online as well too, and some diehard fans have gone back and like, listened to them to be like ‘oh, that character is mentioned here, that’s funny’. Which is kind of really cool too. I know you, like me, love that worldbuilding stuff, so.


William

*chuckles* Oh I absolutely do. Which, I have to say while we’re talking here, it was a pleasure to guest on the Haunting of Blackreef five-part Call of Cthulhu adventure with you, just because I got to see in real time that sense of worldbuilding and horror mystery you have shine through. It was fantastic.


Harlan

Oh it was so fun. I really do love playing in those worlds, you know what I mean? For me personally, more than any other RPG, I do find that the Call of Cthulhu world… not really the systems, but just the 1920’s and eldritch horror really always clicks for me.


William

It definitely eliminates a lot of the easy solutions we have in the modern day? There’s an awkward scene just in a couple of different modern-day horror movies and books that I’ve seen now, but the scene is always the same. Where someone gets on Google and researches what the horror monster is, and conveniently finds a website that uses black background and white font…


Harlan

*chuckles*


William

…with some JPEG pictures, and can learn all about it from an underground source. And it’s the equivalent, of like, someone pulling out the Necronomicon back in Lovecraft’s period and being like ‘oh, so that’s what Yog-Shoggoth is’...


Harlan

Yeah, and well that’s it right? The problem is, writing in the modern setting there’s no reason not to do that. Which is why I think, and again you and I as writers tend to put our characters in places that we don’t really have to worry about those problems? Because the logic is, then the audience goes well, ‘you know if this character could Google it right now, why isn’t the character Googling is?’


And then as the writer you’re saying, because that would be boring, so I have to manufacture a reason that they can’t. Oh, an anvil fell on the computer. And the listener goes, ‘well that’s a stupid reason’. And you go, well yeah, but I didn’t want him to Google it because that’s boring’. And then then you’ve got to think of a clever way to do it, and then you spend five minutes trying to think of a logical reason that the computer can’t be used, rather than just do the fucking thing you want which is just tell a fun story. You know what I mean?


Thinking five steps ahead is always the plight of people like us when you’re trying to plot out a narrative, because you want to make it feel satisfying. I hate listening and watching stuff to be like, ‘well that’s a dumb reason, why wouldn’t you do that?’ You know? And it’s easy to do that, and it’s easy to counter that if you just change where you’re being set, or what time or what place or what crazy fantasy world you might be doing.


William

So one question I have for you is at this point, you tell a good number of different stories. You have the Seance series that was released recently, you at least collaborate on that. You have Malevolent rolling out constantly. And you’ve got I think, ‘Deviser’?


Harlan

Yesss.


William

Is a fun new one that’s only just been announced to the public.


Harlan

Yessssssss.


William

But these all consistently are something in the horror, kind of spooky genre. What do you want people to walk away from these stories with when they put their headphones down at the end of the day?


Harlan

Interesting. I mean, I would say different things, probably obviously. Like, I really… heh. Probably Obviously. I really enjoy the horror of the mystery, of the detective, of the noir for Malevolent, and I hope people kind of walk away with a bit of like a ‘oh wow that’s cool’, but I also want them to be like ‘oh that feels really cool in my ears, the soundscaping’.


But also from a thematic standpoint, the journey of Arthur and the entity within his head is really important for me. Because on kind of a bottom line for myself, I do not like toxic masculinity? As I hope most people don’t. And I find it really refreshing to see a friendship, a healthy platonic friendship… healthy in brackets.


William

*chuckles*


Harlan

Because it goes up and down. But being able to tell each other that they love each other, and that they care about each other, and to care about each other. And me, being able to write from my perspective, I was definitely raised in an environment where you know. My dad never cried, you know. He never told his friends he loved them.


And I, by that extension, thought it was week and silly to care about a friend. You know. No, you love your partner, and maybe your children, but you don’t love your friends, you don’t care about them so much, they’re just your friends. And I’ve always found that really offputting and kind of gross.


And so well before Malevolent just tried to make those changes in my own life, telling my other friends that I love them, and just letting them know that I really care about them. And it kind of came up as an accidental narrative, because it wasn’t an important point from the onset, obviously. Because this was meant to be a more ‘malevolent’ entity.


William

*chuckles*


Harlan

But it changes, and I think that’s what good writing does obviously. It changes with time. And as I got further into their relationship, I realized how important it was for me to show two characters that have their ups and downs but have a genuine love for each other in a way that isn’t romantic.


In a way that gives other listeners, especially playing in this world of Lovecraft which let’s face it, has a lot of listeners more on the right spectrum who are more closed-mouthed about their feelings, and this is just experiencing this world, that kind of have the ability to be a little bit softer and not feel weird or weak about it. Because I think that’s such a toxic idea, you know?


William

Do you feel like writing your characters and the process of doing this over a couple of years now, has changed you or your own sort of development as you’ve done it?


Harlan

There was probably a time early on that I wouldn’t have cared if they were more than emotionally involved. But when so many people kind of took it in a different direction, they took these characters in a romantic way. Which makes total sense! I have absolutely no issue whatsoever with people feeling that way or fantasizing that. I love that, I think that’s wonderful. But I realized that my message was being misinterpreted.


William

Mhm.


Harlan

And so I kind of really had to course correct. Not because it’s wrong by any means, but because it’s not the message I was trying to get across. You know what I mean? And so I know it sometimes bothers people when I shoot down ‘oh no they’re not romantically involved’, because they think I’m shooting down their dreams, but I’m trying to emphasize the actual message which is like, I love that you guys think these characters can be romantic. But please take away from this that these characters can be friends and love each other, because that’s what I’m actually just trying to tell people.


And it’s funny, because when people push the romantic and forget about that, they’re kind of missing the message which is ironic because that’s the whole reason I’m saying it? You know? It’s like, kind of becomes one of those snake-eating-its-own-tail where it’s like, I’m not shooting this down because I love romantic stories, but please tell your friends that you love them and let that be the thing you walk away with. As well as your own headcanons, you know.


William

I love that. And kind of my last question for now, would be…


Harlan

*startled gasp*


William

Mm. You and I are in a somewhat unique position, in that as far as I’m aware we’re both professional by the nature of it, podcasters.


Harlan

*says yes like a sleeping wizard*


William

For a lot of folks this is like you said, a hobby you do at night once you get home from the water cooler plant.


Harlan

Yeah.


William

And for a lot of people they are sitting out there with a pen in hand, wondering if it’s worth it to try and start a career this way or start to tell stories this way. Do you think that podcasting is a viable career choice? Would you recommend it for anyone else in this day and age?


Harlan

Oh man. Good question, and one that I’m really excited to answer, because I do have thoughts on this. First off, and William will be the exact same as me I promise you, the first thing that it takes to get into podcasting—and especially if you want to be popular—is luck. Because all of this comes down to chance at the end of the day. Because you can be extremely talented and be completely ignored. And it’s not all that common, don’t get me wrong, the bigger your talent the more likely you are to make inroads.


But it’s also networking and speaking to the right people and having a charming personality and there’s so many things that I put under the umbrella of luck, which is like, how comfortable are you at talking to other people? Because like, you know. That’s something that you need to do a lot when you’re trying to sell your show. So luck to me is going to be number one for me, unfortunately.


Beyond that? When it comes to making a show or wanting to be a podcaster. I think the biggest lesson that I learned, and this came years ago from film school. You can want to make movies, and you can want to make podcasts, you can want to make audio dramas. But it is much different to want to make a podcast and wanting to tell a story. And it is so much more important in my opinion, to want to tell a story or to share an important view, than to just want to make the thing.


Because I was surrounded by people in film school that loved movies, so they wanted to make movies. But none of us, including myself, had anything really worth saying. And that’s just the truth. It’s not deprecating in this instance, I just didn’t. The movies I came up with didn’t have any meat. They didn’t have any soul to them. They were just things, because I wanted to make a movie.


And if you wanna make a podcast because you just wanna make a podcast, you don’t care what it’s about, you just wanna make a podcast. I would reexamine, and first come up with the motivation. Like, first come up with the story. First come up with the conversation you need others to hear. And then let the medium follow after.


And so… and you’re someone who’s writing a book alongside this. It’s so clear from your creations that you have the narrative, or you have the story, and audio drama is the medium in which you choose to tell that story. And it’s similar to Malevolent. I knew I loved telling stories in this Call of Cthulhu world of the 1920’s, and audio dramas were the medium in which I got to tell that story.


William

It is very true. Actually audio was not my first choice of medium for Hello From The Hallowoods.


Harlan

Exactly. Yep.


William

Originally I was looking at a series of lengthy blog articles, I was looking at a graphic novel, I was looking at a webcomic… and all those things could sell it fairly well, but when it came down to what I wanted to do with this story, and the frankly ridiculous size of this story. Where it’s like, I want this to be a project I can work on for years and years. I want it to have all these perspectives. I want it to be this web you get entrenched in over time. And audio just allowed for so much more flexibility with that.


Harlan

Absolutely.


William

Because you can work in audio a little bit faster than you can a graphic novel.


Harlan

And you can do it yourself, too, you don’t have to be a super-talented… same with movies. Like for me, I totally would have made Malevolent into a movie, but I was like, shit. Then I need to hire all this stuff, I could just play all the voices myself, it’s easiest. And honestly? Let the story define the medium, not the medium define the story. I think that’s the best advice that I learned myself the hard way.


And don’t get me wrong, once you’re in it, like William and I, right now we are living in this audio world, so it makes more sense to be doing it. I have now gotten to the point where I get to see things from an audio drama perspective. You know, when I’m working on a story, I can be like ‘cool. How will that sound in this’. But that’s, you need to have that reasoning. And I promise you, if you look at any of these shows, Old Gods of Appalachia is the same way. Steve Shell was a poet, is a poet, you know, and loves that poetry that comes out in the audio drama.


And all of these successful people, you know, it was about wanting to tell a story and choosing this medium to get into it. And start with that. And it’s not to say that that’s even impossible. If you want to make a podcast, cool, but put that aside and focus on the story first. And then as you develop and you’re thinking about it, then go back to it, you know. Because it’s easier.


William

Two hundred years down the line, an adventurer is stalking through the dusty catacombs.


Harlan

Whoo.


William

Takes a crowbar. Pries apart a brick wall. Beneath it, clutching a cask of Amontillado, is the skeleton of Harlan Guthrie.


Harlan

Nicccee.


William

What whispered croak of advice comes out of your skull’s mouth?


Harlan

Whoa.


I think the best advice that was ever given to me was by a judge who was the preceding judge on one of my tangential friends in high school, who ended up… he. He got really big into drugs, and he got executed at a drug bust by other sellers who were trying to steal his stash. And he ended up putting those people away for a long time. He’s always been an interesting figure in my life, this judge.


But the best advice I ever heard I think, was very simple. And it was: don’t sweat the small stuff, and it’s all small stuff. And I think that… as simple as that was, and as much as I would see that on a wall in someone’s house probably, it’s come back more times than I could count. It really puts things in perspective to be like, it’s all just kind of… you know.


And don’t get me wrong, because Malevolent is filled with tiny little tidbits of my own philosophies. You know, eating things one bite at a time, and all these little nuggets of wisdom I’ve had over the years, or I feel over the years, I’ve slipped in. But I feel like it all boils down in my real life to that. Don’t sweat the small stuff, and it’s all small stuff.


William

I think that’s a wonderful note to take us out on. Thank you so much for talking with me today Harlan.


Harlan

Thank you William, this was an absolute blast. And I hope everyone listening enjoys, and I’m excited to hang out with you again.


*credit music plays*


Credits

Harlan Guthrie is the sole writer, actor, and producer of the hit horror podcast Malevolent, which you can find at malevolent.ca. Malevolent follows private eye Arthur Lester as he loses his eyes but gains an eldritch guide who lives in his mind. Harlan also hosts an actual play variety show Invictus Stream every Wednesday night, and plays on the Dungeons and Dragons actual play podcast Dice Shame. His new show, Deviser, offers a new world of horror to explore, and is set for release later this year.


[Author's note: As of May 1st, Deviser is available everywhere you listen to podcasts! Go seek it out!]


Hello From The Hallowoods is produced by William A. Wellman. For first access to new Skull Sessions with other voices in the horror podcasting space, look to the Hallowoods patreon at patreon.com/hallowoods.



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