Still Scared: Talking Children's Horror
A podcast in which one film lecturer and one scaredy-cat discuss creepy, spooky and disturbing children's books, films and tv.
Episodes
April 13, 2025 • 53 mins
We've got a sequel on our hands, spooky kids, and you'd better believe it's disquieting and unsatisfying! Ren Wednesday and Adam Whybray are back to discuss Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, Roald Dahl's hodge-podge of a sequel to his beloved classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Hotel employees are eaten alive by aliens! Willy Wonka reveals the chocolate factory contains a hell dimension! And there's some really tedious p...
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February 28, 2025 • 61 mins
It's been a while since we've talked about Japanese children's horror, but your co-hosts Adam Whybray and Ren Wednesday are back this month to chat about the anime of The Promised Neverland. Don't go past the fence or through the gate, because this story goes darker faster than you might expect.
A transcript of this episode is available at: https://stillscared.podigee.io/68-promised-neverland
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January 8, 2025 • 63 mins
Buzz buzz spooky kids, this episode Adam Whybray and Ren Wednesday are discussing some apiary horror from 2022, with Ryan La Sala's The Honeys. Your cohosts chat substances, state senators, and everything sweet and sticky, with a Texture of the Week that is truly skin-crawling.
Content warning: violence, body horror, brief mentions of sexual assualt and suicide.
A transcript of this episode is available here: https://stillscare...
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October 31, 2024 • 71 mins
Happy Halloween, spooky kids! In this seventh anniversary episode, Ren Wednesday, Adam Whybray and special guest Mattie Dogrose chat about a 1980s Disney horror curio that lost the studio a hell of a lot of money: The Black Cauldron! We discuss moderate peril, oracular pigs and the films liberal approach to Welsh language and culture, and Adam and Ren once again alight on a unamious texture. Enjoy!
The transcript is a bit delayed ...
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October 4, 2024 • 73 mins
Sometimes family is a few battered wind-up toys, a dubiously-reformed rat, and some birds you've persuaded not to eat you. In this episode Ren Wednesday, Adam Whybray and special guest Stuart Young discuss The Mouse and his Child by Russell Hoban, published in 1967, and the animated film released in 1977. Body Horror + Philosopy = Jokes? Join Ren, Adam and Stuart for a discussion of conciousness itself, the last visible slush puppy...
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August 31, 2024 • 128 mins
In this off the cuff, spur of the moment, spontaneous and unresearched bonus episode, a Ren Wednesday and Adam Whybray located in the same georgraphical location entertain you with a book: Madness at the Mall, the 36th installment in M.D. Spenser's Shivers series.
No transcript for this one, but normal service will be resumed shortly!
Content notes: A cat gets killed!
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August 5, 2024 • 70 mins
Ren Wednesday and Adam Whybray are back with their discussion of part two of the Goosebumps TV series from 2023, and they won't be satisfied until they get their puppet carnival!
This is a Slappy-centric set of episodes, covering the territiory of Night of the Living Dummy, Night of the Living Dummy Two, the lesser known mud-monster episode You Can't Scare Me, and purportedly Welcome to Horrorland, though Ren and Adam were unconv...
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June 17, 2024 • 74 mins
Hello millennnials, zoomers and sundry other generations to look out for, and welcome to the Goosebumps of 2023! In this nostalgia-defying episode, Ren Wednesday and Adam Whybray talk about the first half of the reinvented Goosebumps series for Disney Plus, covering Say Cheese and Die, The Haunted Mask, The Cuckoo Clock of Doom, Go Eat Worms and Reader Beware.
Digressions include vegan veal, Mr Blobby and immersive theatre, and A...
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May 6, 2024 • 31 mins
In this bonus episode, Adam Whybray interviews Lauren Stephenson and Robert Edgar, two of the editors of the recent anthology Horrifying Children: Hauntology and the Legacy of Children's Television, published by Bloomsbury. They chat about anologue horror, public information films and intent vs effect in horror, as well as subversive queer interpretations of the Garbage Pail Kids.
The transcript for the episode is available here:...
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March 31, 2024 • 83 mins
Hail, O eaters of Toadstools! Ren Wednesday and Adam Whybray are back with returning guest and standing-stone correspondent Ali to talk about Alan Garner's debut novel from 1960, the Weirdstone of Brisingamen. This episode may venture further into fantasy than usual, but there's still plenty of horror to get your teeth into, with swarms of svarts, skin mittens, and of course, caves. Plus, Ren feels so guilty about their lacklustre ...
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December 11, 2023 • 47 mins
Happy festives, spooky kids! Ren's brain is fully on holiday already for this episode about the 1995 mixed live-action and CGI film Casper, directed by Brad Silberling, and perhaps more pertinently, set decorated by Rosemary Brandenburg.
In this not particularly thorough episode, Ren Wednesday and Adam Whybray discuss the mochi-like texture of Casper, the career trajectory of Eric Idle, and of course, the fish bannister. And as a...
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October 31, 2023 • 77 mins
Hello and happy halloween spooky kids! For this sixth anniversarry (!) episode, Ren Wednesday and Adam Whybray are joined by special guest Ailish Brassil to talk about three different filmic adaptations of Disney's Haunted Mansion ride.
Excpect the classic elements of comedy tombstones, extending corridors and sinister butlers - as well as the screaming goats, ghost winks and arachnaphobia unique to each adaptation. It's chaotic!...
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October 9, 2023 • 52 mins
In this episode Ren Wednesday and Adam Whybray go back to Ren's childhood to talk about a dark comedy: Angela and Diabola by Lynne Reid Banks. A different twist on the Omen trope, this book gives the evil child a twin of corresponding pure goodness, and a couple of long-suffering parents who do their best for their increasingly supernatural offspring. Indulge in the allure of evil with us, spooky kids, but please don't lock any sma...
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August 30, 2023 • 64 mins
Don't go chipping any dolls out of the plaster in your cellar, creepy kids, or open any ouija board apps! And definitely don't go and hunt your woebegotten cousin's ghost on a rainy Scottish island! It's not worth it! In this episode Ren Wednesday and Adam Whybray discuss the 2015 Young Adult novel Frozen Charlotte by Alex Bell, a grisly book about creepy dolls and the people they torment. Digressions include ghost hunting, bat det...
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August 7, 2023 • 70 mins
Enter into the turnip-filled darkness this episode, as Ren Wednesday and Adam Whybray discuss Robert Westall's Carnegie medal winning 1981 novel, The Scarecrows. Or, more accurately: The Very Angry Young Man and The Scarecrows That Represented His Anger. It's chewy, it's problematic, it's really frickin' weird and the scarecrows don't turn up until the end - have a listen and see what we made of it!
Content notes: interpersonal v...
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June 29, 2023 • 72 mins
Buzz buzz, creepy kids, today Ren Wednesday and Adam Whybray are tackling a stack of short stories by Roald Dahl, focussing on his collection The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar And Six More. In this episode they discuss the horror of boarding schools, make predictions about which stories Wes Anderson is likely to adapt, and Ren becomes overwhelmed with mirth at Joyce Carol Oates' tweets about skeletons.
Transcript (and Ren's Text...
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May 24, 2023 • 68 mins
Hello creepy kids! Ren Wednesday and Adam Whybray are back again to discuss the Joe Dante film The Hole (2009), not to be confused with The Hole (2001), which makes much less use of its titular hole. In this lemon-and-ginger tea powered episode, your cohosts discuss skewed suburban aesthetics, creepy theme parks and scrunkly jester voices, and as a special treat go on an extended digression about Las Vegas rock band, The Killers.
...
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April 18, 2023 • 75 mins
In this warty-textured episode, Adam and Ren are joined by returning guest Willow to talk about two books by Susan Gates: Revenge of the Toffee Monster and to a slightly lesser extent, Killer Mushrooms Ate My Gran.
In this wide-ranging episode, this gang of 90s kids chat about the Millennium Dome, cordyceps and the origins of toffee, and are joined by an extra special coconut-headed guest for Texture of the Week.
The transcript...
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February 12, 2023 • 59 mins
Happy new year, spooky kids, and welcome to our episode on Wendell & Wild (2022), in which Ren Wednesday and Adam Whybray gawp at beautiful stop-motion and wrangle unruly plot into submission. Featuring textural interruptions, a squirm of worms and the ultimate MacGuffin, this episode is one for the goths and the freaks and the sincere appreciators of viruoso animation.
The transcript is available here: https://stillscared.podi...
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December 29, 2022 • 60 mins
Welcome back, spooky kids! In this end-of-the-year episode, Ren Wednesday and Adam Whybray are talking about a suitably wintery ghost story - Moondial by Helen Cresswell. Impressionistic, atmospheric and philosophical, Moondial is a book rich in language and ideas, and in this episode your co-hosts have a tussle with conceptions of time and ghosthood, as well as sharing a rare unanimous Texture of the Week.
The transcript is avai...
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