Wellness. Relaxation. Horror. One of these things is not like the other, or is it?
My podcast Scare You To Sleep is my love story of nightmares meeting sweet dreams. Terrifying tales told in a soothing voice with as much atmosphere as I can pack into each episode. Short stories that vary from week to week, be it ghosts and ghouls or body horror and gore. There are also episodes I invented called Guided Nightmares where I take you through a guided meditation of sorts, but, well, this isn’t meadows of flowers or tranquil beaches. No, I take you running for your life through haunted manors, away from bog witches, and we get lost together in corn mazes full of decaying reanimated corpses!
Dormir o Morir is a beautiful Spanish language addition to this weird world of terror and requiescence that I’ve constructed.
When I set out to create my very first podcast, I had been a lifelong fan of all things macabre, I was an avid listener to guided meditations, and I couldn’t sleep without YouTube channels that exist solely to relax you. I didn’t know if anyone but me would listen, but I just had to do it. I say “had to” because at the time, I needed my own escape into a world of horror, somewhere far away from my real life where the monsters were scary, but not nearly as scary as the ones I actually had to confront in reality.
I wanted to give myself and others a place to go with a voice that was somehow both comforting and terrifying. I also wanted to set myself apart from other shows by being the singular voice, with no additional actors. It gave the show a sense of nostalgia, almost reminiscent of a parent reading you a bedtime story. It was an odd combination of things; trying to shove horror and relaxation together wasn’t exactly everyone’s peanut butter and chocolate. But I knew I could find other horror fanatics like myself who would get it.
So, after countless hours of YouTube tutorials, gathering some of what I considered my better short horror stories, and channeling some kind of vocal love child of a late night DJ and an ASMR creator, I created my first episode. That was almost five years ago, and since then my audience has grown to numbers I could never have fathomed. I’ve done a live show with creators whose work I once only admired from afar, met with fans who I have both laughed and cried with. But, not to sound greedy, I wanted more.
I grew up in a tiny town called Imperial, CA near the border of California and Mexico. My dad’s side of the family is Mexican-American and with these things combined I always wanted to find ways to honor my upbringing and half my heritage. I made nods to both in some of my work, notably my Araceli series, but I knew I could do better than that.
Thus comes Dormir o Morir. With the help of editor and translator (and all around amazing person) Guillermo Ruiz de Santiago Sánchez and the incredible support of the BloodyFM network, we set out to make Scare You To Sleep accessible to a wider audience. We brought on the incredible voice talents of three voice actors: Ginette Zavala, Daniela Neach and Fernanda Carraso to be the sirens who lure you into a sense of comfort. And before you realize you’re actually in a world of nightmares… it’s too late.
The post Bloody Disgusting Releases Spanish-Language Guided Nightmare Podcast “Dormir o Morir” [Podcasts] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.