The steps grow. Nobody tells you that at the start. The fear learns the gaps you leave, and every gap you close becomes a new step.

Now there are the mirrors — every one turned to the wall before dark, because she looked once, in the hall, and the hall behind her reflection was not empty. And there is the phone, which must never be answered once the steps have begun.

This week it rang four times. On the fourth, she answered. A young woman's voice, crying, calling her Mum, saying her own name into the line.The name went somewhere and did not stay.

Part 2 of 4.

Unlock an ad-free podcast experience with Caloroga Shark Media! Get all our shows on any player you love, hassle free! For Apple users, hit the banner on your Apple podcasts app. For Spotify or other players, visit caloroga.com/plus. No plug-ins needed!

Subscribe now for exclusive shows like 'Palace Intrigue,' and get bonus content from Deep Crown (our exclusive Palace Insider!) Or get 'Daily Comedy News,' and '5 Good News Stories’ with no commercials! Plans start at $4.99 per month, or save 20% with a yearly plan at $49.99. Join today and help support the show!

We now have Merch!  FREE SHIPPING! Check out all the products like T-shirts, mugs, bags, jackets and more with logos and slogans from your favorite shows! Did we mention there’s free shipping? Get 10% off with code NewMerch10 Go to Caloroga.com

Get more info from Caloroga Shark Media and if you have any comments, suggestions, or just want to get in touch our email is [email protected]

AI helps us with some of our voice acting and portrayl of characters.

Halloween Pop-up Channel Apple.
Halloween Pop-up Channel Spotify.

Cackles. Howls. Shrieks.
Something's stirring at Caloroga Media.

The gates are open... and the Halloween Pop-Up Channel has arrived. Hundreds of episodes. One haunted feed. Every kind of fright you could want this season.

Start with Ghost: Scary Stories, tales that'll have you glancing over your shoulder. Best enjoyed with the lights on. Craving something sweet among the tricks?

5 Good News Stories: Halloween Edition is the full-size candy bar of the bunch. Hitmaker Chronicles uncovers the stories behind music's spookiest songs.

Monsters, Sharks and Dinosaurs brings you creatures real and imagined... some of them extinct. Probably.

For true crime fans, Murder Weekly and True Crime serve up real cases with a Halloween chill. Grab a flashlight. Check the locks.

And Romance Weekly? Love stories with a dark seasonal twist. Happily ever after... with a little bite.

New Halloween episodes drop every single day. It's free, no costume required, and like any good ghost... it won't be here forever. Once the candy runs out, it vanishes.

This is the Halloween Pop-Up Channel from Caloroga Media. Search for "Halloween Pop-Up Channel" wherever you listen.

If you dare.

Unlock an ad-free podcast experience with Caloroga Shark Media! Get all our shows on any player you love, hassle free! For Apple users, hit the banner on your Apple podcasts app. For Spotify or other players, visit caloroga.com/plus. No plug-ins needed!

Subscribe now for exclusive shows like 'Palace Intrigue,' and get bonus content from Deep Crown (our exclusive Palace Insider!) Or get 'Daily Comedy News,' and '5 Good News Stories’ with no commercials! Plans start at $4.99 per month, or save 20% with a yearly plan at $49.99. Join today and help support the show!

We now have Merch!  FREE SHIPPING! Check out all the products like T-shirts, mugs, bags, jackets and more with logos and slogans from your favorite shows! Did we mention there’s free shipping? Get 10% off with code NewMerch10 Go to Caloroga.com

Get more info from Caloroga Shark Media and if you have any comments, suggestions, or just want to get in touch our email is [email protected]

AI helps us with some of our voice acting and portrayl of characters.

There was a stretch of her life, not long ago, when the fear came and would not leave. She was not a foolish woman. She ran a full, loud household; she was the one other people leaned on. Then something ended, and into the space it left, the fear came — a certainty, every night, that something was testing the edges of the house, looking for the way in.She checked the locks a hundred times a night. It didn't help, because she did it frightened and at random.Then she found the steps. The same doors, in the same order, a hand flat on each one, the name said out loud. And for the first time in months, the fear stopped.It came back, of course. A little bigger each time. And each time she did the steps, the relief was a little sweeter.Part 1 of 4.

Unlock an ad-free podcast experience with Caloroga Shark Media! Get all our shows on any player you love, hassle free! For Apple users, hit the banner on your Apple podcasts app. For Spotify or other players, visit caloroga.com/plus. No plug-ins needed!

Subscribe now for exclusive shows like 'Palace Intrigue,' and get bonus content from Deep Crown (our exclusive Palace Insider!) Or get 'Daily Comedy News,' and '5 Good News Stories’ with no commercials! Plans start at $4.99 per month, or save 20% with a yearly plan at $49.99. Join today and help support the show!

We now have Merch!  FREE SHIPPING! Check out all the products like T-shirts, mugs, bags, jackets and more with logos and slogans from your favorite shows! Did we mention there’s free shipping? Get 10% off with code NewMerch10 Go to Caloroga.com

Get more info from Caloroga Shark Media and if you have any comments, suggestions, or just want to get in touch our email is [email protected]

AI helps us with some of our voice acting and portrayl of characters.

She promised, at the very start, to tell you how to stay alive. She kept every other promise. She told you she survived. She told you she'd give you the rule. She told you what it costs and what she had to refuse and what happened to the man three houses down.She has one thing left to tell you, and she has been building toward it for four nights. Listen the way she asked you to. The finale of The Listener. Part 4 of 4.

Unlock an ad-free podcast experience with Caloroga Shark Media! Get all our shows on any player you love, hassle free! For Apple users, hit the banner on your Apple podcasts app. For Spotify or other players, visit caloroga.com/plus. No plug-ins needed!

Subscribe now for exclusive shows like 'Palace Intrigue,' and get bonus content from Deep Crown (our exclusive Palace Insider!) Or get 'Daily Comedy News,' and '5 Good News Stories’ with no commercials! Plans start at $4.99 per month, or save 20% with a yearly plan at $49.99. Join today and help support the show!

We now have Merch!  FREE SHIPPING! Check out all the products like T-shirts, mugs, bags, jackets and more with logos and slogans from your favorite shows! Did we mention there’s free shipping? Get 10% off with code NewMerch10 Go to Caloroga.com

Get more info from Caloroga Shark Media and if you have any comments, suggestions, or just want to get in touch our email is [email protected]

AI helps us with some of our voice acting and portrayl of characters.

There was one other house on that road with a light in it.The woman who opened the door was about seventy, and she knew everything before Marion said a word. She raised a hand to stop her. She pointed to her own throat, then to her own ear. She would listen. She would not speak.She wrote on a yellow legal pad, in careful capitals, and the first thing she wrote — before hello, before her name — was this:DON'T ANSWER IT. NOT ONCE. NOT EVER.The houses on that road were not empty once. They were full of people at the end of a road that goes nowhere, which is a certain kind of person. She had watched the lights go out, one at a time, for thirty years. And she had a list of names.Part 3 of 4.

Unlock an ad-free podcast experience with Caloroga Shark Media! Get all our shows on any player you love, hassle free! For Apple users, hit the banner on your Apple podcasts app. For Spotify or other players, visit caloroga.com/plus. No plug-ins needed!

Subscribe now for exclusive shows like 'Palace Intrigue,' and get bonus content from Deep Crown (our exclusive Palace Insider!) Or get 'Daily Comedy News,' and '5 Good News Stories’ with no commercials! Plans start at $4.99 per month, or save 20% with a yearly plan at $49.99. Join today and help support the show!

We now have Merch!  FREE SHIPPING! Check out all the products like T-shirts, mugs, bags, jackets and more with logos and slogans from your favorite shows! Did we mention there’s free shipping? Get 10% off with code NewMerch10 Go to Caloroga.com

Get more info from Caloroga Shark Media and if you have any comments, suggestions, or just want to get in touch our email is [email protected]

AI helps us with some of our voice acting and portrayl of characters.

She stopped answering. She thought going quiet was the same as being safe.Every night it got better. The first phrases came out wrong — rhythm off, stresses in the wrong places, a voice reading letters it didn't understand. Then the seams closed. And it wasn't only voices it was learning. It learned that if it said half a sentence and let the silence stretch, she would lean toward it, aching to hear the end.Then it found her mother. Not just the voice — six years of that voice, every grain of it right. And in her mother's voice it said the things her mother never said in forty years. I'm proud of you. I'm sorry. I heard you. I always heard you.All she had to do was answer. One word.Part 2 of 4.

Unlock an ad-free podcast experience with Caloroga Shark Media! Get all our shows on any player you love, hassle free! For Apple users, hit the banner on your Apple podcasts app. For Spotify or other players, visit caloroga.com/plus. No plug-ins needed!

Subscribe now for exclusive shows like 'Palace Intrigue,' and get bonus content from Deep Crown (our exclusive Palace Insider!) Or get 'Daily Comedy News,' and '5 Good News Stories’ with no commercials! Plans start at $4.99 per month, or save 20% with a yearly plan at $49.99. Join today and help support the show!

We now have Merch!  FREE SHIPPING! Check out all the products like T-shirts, mugs, bags, jackets and more with logos and slogans from your favorite shows! Did we mention there’s free shipping? Get 10% off with code NewMerch10 Go to Caloroga.com

Get more info from Caloroga Shark Media and if you have any comments, suggestions, or just want to get in touch our email is [email protected]

AI helps us with some of our voice acting and portrayl of characters.

It starts as warmth. That's the part she needs you to understand, because if you're waiting for it to sound like a monster you'll miss it, the way she nearly did.Marion nursed her mother for six years in a house at the end of a road that goes nowhere. Six years of being talked at by a woman who never once heard her. Then her mother died, and even that was gone, and the silence came down so completely that she started saying things out loud just to hear a voice in the house.The knocking began in the small hours. She explained every sound away, sensibly, correctly — right up until the sounds started answering her. And then, because she was so tired of being the only voice in that house, she started talking back. She told it about her day. She told it about her mother. She told it the things from the middle of her.It listened. It never once interrupted. It let her finish.Part 1 of 4.

Unlock an ad-free podcast experience with Caloroga Shark Media! Get all our shows on any player you love, hassle free! For Apple users, hit the banner on your Apple podcasts app. For Spotify or other players, visit caloroga.com/plus. No plug-ins needed!

Subscribe now for exclusive shows like 'Palace Intrigue,' and get bonus content from Deep Crown (our exclusive Palace Insider!) Or get 'Daily Comedy News,' and '5 Good News Stories’ with no commercials! Plans start at $4.99 per month, or save 20% with a yearly plan at $49.99. Join today and help support the show!

We now have Merch!  FREE SHIPPING! Check out all the products like T-shirts, mugs, bags, jackets and more with logos and slogans from your favorite shows! Did we mention there’s free shipping? Get 10% off with code NewMerch10 Go to Caloroga.com

Get more info from Caloroga Shark Media and if you have any comments, suggestions, or just want to get in touch our email is [email protected]

AI helps us with some of our voice acting and portrayl of characters.

The week she left was the coldest of the year, and nobody was holding her anywhere. The door was right there. It was always right there. That's the whole horror of what Walt built. You can leave any time. You just have to be willing to die in the snow to do it — and he made sure you weren't, and then he called your staying love. What broke it was the custody review. Because her stability was Walt, and the day her children came home was the day she'd have to stand on her own, and he had spent five months making certain she never could. The road through him didn't lead to her kids. It circled. So she stopped trying to win, and started trying to get out. Which meant becoming, on purpose, for the length of one conversation, exactly the woman he had always so gently implied she secretly was. The finale of The Provider. Part 4 of 4.

Unlock an ad-free podcast experience with Caloroga Shark Media! Get all our shows on any player you love, hassle free! For Apple users, hit the banner on your Apple podcasts app. For Spotify or other players, visit caloroga.com/plus. No plug-ins needed!

Subscribe now for exclusive shows like 'Palace Intrigue,' and get bonus content from Deep Crown (our exclusive Palace Insider!) Or get 'Daily Comedy News,' and '5 Good News Stories’ with no commercials! Plans start at $4.99 per month, or save 20% with a yearly plan at $49.99. Join today and help support the show!

We now have Merch!  FREE SHIPPING! Check out all the products like T-shirts, mugs, bags, jackets and more with logos and slogans from your favorite shows! Did we mention there’s free shipping? Get 10% off with code NewMerch10 Go to Caloroga.com

Get more info from Caloroga Shark Media and if you have any comments, suggestions, or just want to get in touch our email is [email protected]

AI helps us with some of our voice acting and portrayl of characters.

She went looking for Bev because of four words she'd been too busy defending Walt to hear: I said all that too. Not I felt that. I said that. Word for word. A stranger had predicted her exact defense of him before she made it. Bev had names. Thirty years of them. A woman who died in the house having signed everything over, and the town thought it was beautiful. Ones who left and were recast as ingrates before anyone could listen to them. And a man named Douglas, behind the counter of Walt's hardware store for twenty years, who lights up at Walt's name and cannot tell you the last decision he made for himself. Walt is not a con man. That's the part that takes longest to believe. Part 3 of 4.

Unlock an ad-free podcast experience with Caloroga Shark Media! Get all our shows on any player you love, hassle free! For Apple users, hit the banner on your Apple podcasts app. For Spotify or other players, visit caloroga.com/plus. No plug-ins needed!

Subscribe now for exclusive shows like 'Palace Intrigue,' and get bonus content from Deep Crown (our exclusive Palace Insider!) Or get 'Daily Comedy News,' and '5 Good News Stories’ with no commercials! Plans start at $4.99 per month, or save 20% with a yearly plan at $49.99. Join today and help support the show!

We now have Merch!  FREE SHIPPING! Check out all the products like T-shirts, mugs, bags, jackets and more with logos and slogans from your favorite shows! Did we mention there’s free shipping? Get 10% off with code NewMerch10 Go to Caloroga.com

Get more info from Caloroga Shark Media and if you have any comments, suggestions, or just want to get in touch our email is [email protected]

AI helps us with some of our voice acting and portrayl of characters.

By December she was warm all the way through, and that turned out not to be a good thing. The debts got consolidated, gently, so she wouldn't have to face the collectors. The account got managed, gently, so her money would be protected from her while she was still fragile. Walt's lawyer took the custody case for free, and it started to work — every step back toward her children running straight through him. Her sister called the house once and was told, kindly, that she needed space. Then a woman about sixty stopped her cart in the grocery store and said: count everything he does for you. One day he's going to hand you the bill. She defended him. Part 2 of 4.

Unlock an ad-free podcast experience with Caloroga Shark Media! Get all our shows on any player you love, hassle free! For Apple users, hit the banner on your Apple podcasts app. For Spotify or other players, visit caloroga.com/plus. No plug-ins needed!

Subscribe now for exclusive shows like 'Palace Intrigue,' and get bonus content from Deep Crown (our exclusive Palace Insider!) Or get 'Daily Comedy News,' and '5 Good News Stories’ with no commercials! Plans start at $4.99 per month, or save 20% with a yearly plan at $49.99. Join today and help support the show!

We now have Merch!  FREE SHIPPING! Check out all the products like T-shirts, mugs, bags, jackets and more with logos and slogans from your favorite shows! Did we mention there’s free shipping? Get 10% off with code NewMerch10 Go to Caloroga.com

Get more info from Caloroga Shark Media and if you have any comments, suggestions, or just want to get in touch our email is [email protected]

AI helps us with some of our voice acting and portrayl of characters.

The year she turned forty-one, everything came apart — the marriage, the job, custody of her two kids — and by October she was sleeping in her car. Then Walt found her. Everyone in town knew Walt: the man who paid for the food bank's roof, who cosigned second chances, who crouched by her window in the cold and offered her a warm room like she'd be doing him the favor. So she followed his truck home. The house was warm. There was a fire, and a plate of food, and a quiet woman named Ellen who'd been there eleven years and had to stop and count. And every single thing Walt did was a kindness. That was the problem. Part 1 of 4. Don't decide you'd have seen it coming. You'd have stayed too.

Unlock an ad-free podcast experience with Caloroga Shark Media! Get all our shows on any player you love, hassle free! For Apple users, hit the banner on your Apple podcasts app. For Spotify or other players, visit caloroga.com/plus. No plug-ins needed!

Subscribe now for exclusive shows like 'Palace Intrigue,' and get bonus content from Deep Crown (our exclusive Palace Insider!) Or get 'Daily Comedy News,' and '5 Good News Stories’ with no commercials! Plans start at $4.99 per month, or save 20% with a yearly plan at $49.99. Join today and help support the show!

We now have Merch!  FREE SHIPPING! Check out all the products like T-shirts, mugs, bags, jackets and more with logos and slogans from your favorite shows! Did we mention there’s free shipping? Get 10% off with code NewMerch10 Go to Caloroga.com

Get more info from Caloroga Shark Media and if you have any comments, suggestions, or just want to get in touch our email is [email protected]

AI helps us with some of our voice acting and portrayl of characters.