The relative obscurity of what happened to Webster is what makes her tale more powerful from a narrative perspective, since multiple retellings can soften a tale’s original meaning, according to Mahnke. “Your mind’s never had a chance to work over this story before,” he says. “Those are the ones that I like.” It’s an approach that seems to work well: Lore is the 11th most popular podcast on iTunes, pulling in an average of 385,000 downloads per episode. It routinely beats out such veteran podcasts as WTF With Marc Maron, Comedy Bang Bang, and NPR’s All Things Considered.

That same underlying relevance exists in the works of Bae, Miles, and Mahnke—both on allegorical and literal levels. Even Bae’s provocative Hour of Horror yarn commented on a dire issue: bullying-related suicide. Lore also wraps each of its entries with commentary on what the most macabre tales say about humanity, whether it be xenophobia—another staple of Asma’s book—or isolation.

For a more recent example of how horror in particular thrives on tight word-of-mouth communities, look no further than the silver screen. Despite relatively small marketing and production budgets, horror films rely on a fervent base of vocal and socially active fans. Movies under the genre banner recoup huge returns from their modest investments; almost half of the 20 most profitable movies of all time fall under the slasher and supernatural umbrella. The game-changing film Paranormal Activity has netted over $89 million from a budget of $450,000—nearly a 200 percent return on investment.

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The surge of popularity for horror podcasts in particular stems from a number of reasons. The most obvious? They’re short and free. A relatively brief 40 minutes of audio doesn’t require the commitment of reading 434 pages—the length of Stephen King’s most recent novel, Finders Keepers.

It’s also one of the most accessible and democratic mediums: A guy in his office with a $99 microphone and cardboard box can craft a top-20 podcast alongside a more elaborate production like The Message, which has the support of a $117 billion company and an advertising agency with 15,000 global employees. “The world of podcasting is a fairly even playing field compared to film or television,” says The Black Tapes’s Miles. “A company that makes $4 million episodes of television or $100 million movies is pretty much in the same situation as us when it comes to making a podcast. It’s just a mixing board, a journalist, and a microphone.”

Stripping away the editors, cinematographers, actors, and book distributors makes the story paramount. The Black Tapes, Lore, and their peers bring their listeners back to the intimate simplicity of the bonfire and offer a break from the glow of digital screens. And according to Asma, scary stories are also the best vehicle for empathy and putting listeners in someone else’s shoes. “We are understanding more about the empathic social brain and mirror neurons that simulate the pain or anxiety of another person," Asma explains. “This makes fear (and other emotions) contagious. An oral horror story is uniquely able to trigger those contagious feelings in the audience, because the voice and the face are the best communicators of emotion.”