A podcast to give you nightmares

Long before it fell victim to the talk-radio craze, San Francisco station KSFO-AM used to broadcast shows from the Golden Age of Radio every night. Most were comedies, but my favorites were horror tales from the likes of "Inner Sanctum Mysteries" and "Lights Out"--which, of course, were the source of endless nightmares for a 10-year-old kid.

So I had mixed emotions upon coming across Pseudopod, which bills itself as "the world's premier horror fiction podcast." (There are so many others?) While not quite an interactive networking site, Pseudopod does depend on material submitted by the public.

I still haven't decided whether to listen to Pseudopod, at least not without the advice of a mental health professional. But just as radio fires the imagination well beyond reality, the site's teaser lines are enough to pique anyone's curiosity: "We're not going to try to pin down the genre's boundaries and hack away at it until there's nothing left. What matters is that the stories should be dark and they should be entertaining."

Shudder.