317: Small Town Horror, with Eleanor Hingley (long cut)

This is the unedited version for backers only.

This is a local episode for local people. We explore small town settings and why they work so well for horror. Isolated, insular communities are a mainstay of horror, usually populated by sinister locals who shun the outside world and treat strangers with suspicion, but there is much more to the subgenre than that. As well as digging into the major tropes of small town horror, we discuss ways to reinvent and subvert them, along with examples from media and our own gaming lives.

Our Guest Host

We are delighted to welcome Eleanor Hingley to the Good Friends! Eleanor is a lifelong horror fan, obsessed with Gothic and horror art since childhood. She has written for a bunch of tabletop roleplaying games, including Doctor Who: The Roleplaying Game, Hollows, Aegean, Broken Weave, The Laundry, Heart, and many other game lines. She also writes interactive fiction for Choice of Games, and has had IF published in sub-Q magazine. Eleanor has released her own independent TTRPG zines, which you can find on her itch.io page: Ex Libris, Talking Thunder and Seed of an Idea. You can follow Eleanor on Bluesky.

Blasphemous Tomes Latest Updates:

Blasphemous Tome Fanzines Update for $1 backers (April 2025)

Blasphemous Tome Fanzines Update for $3+ backers (April 2025)

Glass Cannon Live at Gen Con

If you're going to be at Gen Con this year, do check out the two live Call of Cthulhu games run by our good friends at the Glass Cannon Network. Both of this year's scenarios were written for them by our own Scott Dorward, and will feature Good Friends guest host Ross Bryant.

Blasphemous Tome update

Unfortunately, issue 14 of The Blasphemous Tome has been delayed by ill health. We're playing catch-up at the moment, however, and we hope to get it to backers before the end of August. Thank you for bearing with us!

Scott on Symphony Entertainment

Scott will be joining Bridget Jeffries and his regular gaming group, AKA The Blusterers, for a live game to celebrate the birthday of Symphony Entertainment. Our good friend Nate will be running us through a two-hour improvised game on the Symphony Twitch channel, starting at 6 PM UK time on the 19th of July. We hope to see you there!

Scott on Unconventional GMs

As if that weren't enough, you can also see Scott on an episode of Unconventional GMs, running Dead of Night for hosts Gaz Bowerbank and Guy Milner, Tasha from the IdeaRoll YouTube channel, and Andrew Kenrick, author of Dead of Night. This largely improvised game was inspired by the discussion of metafiction in the next episode of the Good Friends. This episode of Unconventional GMs is due to go out on the 19th of July.

Links

Things we mention in this episode include:

• An American Werewolf in London (1981)

• Hot Fuzz (2007)

• Folk horror

• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

• "The Forbidden" by Clive Barker

• Candyman (1992)

• Archive 81

• Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin

• The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin

• Milton Keynes

• The Laundry RPG

• "Kaddish" from The X-Files

• The Tribe by Bari Wood

• Paperbacks From Hell line from Valancourt Books

• State of Deseret

• Latter Day Saints

• Amish

• Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson

• Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle

• Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

• The Auctioneer by Joan Samson

• Needful Things by Stephen King

• Needful Things (1993)

• The Tommyknockers by Stephen King

• On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

• It by Stephen King

• The Shining by Stephen King

• Desperation by Stephen King

• Bag of Bones by Stephen King

• Alan Wake

• Midnight Mass

• "The Summer People" by Shirley Jackson

• We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

• Byzantium (2012)

• The Jonah by James Herbert

• "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" by HP Lovecraft

• Winter Tide by Ruthanna Emrys

• "The Smolting" on Ain't Slayed Nobody

• Rumspringa

• Midsommar (2019)

• Get Out (2017)

• Ready or Not (2019)

• The Wicker Man (1973)

• Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon

• The Other by Thomas Tryon

• From

• The Mist (2008)

• The Mist

• Ten Candles

• Chronicles of Darkness

• Bright Falls YouTube series

• In the Mouth of Madness (1994)

• Rhymer's Stone

• Gilmore Girls

• Silent Hill

• Centralia, PA

• Vaesen

• "Blackwater Creek" from the Call of Cthulhu Keeper Screen Pack

• Old tunnels under Edinburgh

• The Shoebox Enterprises in Norwich

• The Night Strangler (1973)

• Kolchak: The Night Stalker

• The Night Stalker (1972)

• Heaven and Earth

• Solemn Vale

• "Some Fell on Stony Ground" from Nameless Horrors

• The Realm of Shadows

• "Secret of Castronegro" from the Cthulhu Companion

• Grizzly Peaks Radio

• The Second Transmission: The Secret Frequency Files 2

• "A Warning to the Curious" by MR James

• Harrowhill Point

• Something is Wrong Here

• Twin Peaks

• Peyton Place

• "The Dunwich Horror" by HP Lovecraft