Embers leap from the flames of creativity as faces illuminated by that flickering glow whisper tales of terror in your ear. Clover Hill’s very own Spooky Story Podcast, where students can submit their writing and have a chance to see it featured and narrated, hopes to capture that stories-around-the-campfire feeling.

While librarians Cassidy Capuano and Heidi Williams had a hand in this endeavor, the mastermind of the idea was library aide Kat Bogdanowicz. The library hosted a horror storytelling workshop on Oct. 19 where students could come to draft their diabolical tales, giving students the chance to not just write but also give them the rare privilege to perform as well.

“I have a deep, deep love for storytelling,” Bogdanowicz said. “I think telling stories out loud. . .It’s just a different kind of beast! There’s definitely a skill in that. I just wanted to give [students] an opportunity to maybe improve and hone their skills.”

She enjoyed doing the podcast so much that she wants to do it again in future years.

“I think that it would be amazing if we could do it every year! Maybe we could make it into a whole month-long workshop,” Bogdanowicz said. “Recording your own voice, adding sound effects, those kinds of things can really add to it, or even listening to other horror podcasts to get some ideas going.”

Several students have submitted to the podcast. Senior Andrew Orndorff wrote and narrated his story Endless Blue, in which a man finds the exact same cloud throughout several places over a large span of time. Orndorff considers it to be a fascinating psychological thriller reminiscent of cryptid legends. One of his inspirations was a non-fiction book called Gödel, Escher, Bach in which the author theorizes about how consciousness began.

Another author on the Spooky Story Podcast was junior Carrie Thomas, who wrote about a prophetic dream in which the main character always relives the same empty, ethereal day over and over that always seems to end as prophesied in their dreams. 

Anyone interested in listening to the various podcasts as well as the resulting pieces from these library workshops can be found at linktr.ee/chhslibrary.