Jack's a long haul trucker that's not just hauling freight.

He's cursed with a psychic radar for evil...a 'Thump' in his skull that screams for blood, freezes the cab with spectral dread, or heralds true, ancient darkness.

Blackmailed by a demonic 'Dispatcher' holding his sister's life as leverage, Jack is now on a cross-country run with an impossible cargo: a sealed, freezing trailer that's a beacon for every monster on the map.

From roadside serial killers to rival psychics, Jack's about to discover he's not just making a delivery...he's hauling the key to the apocalypse.

Buckle up, because the haul has begun, and on this highway, there's no turning back.

Part 1 of a multiple part series: "THE BLACKTOP SAINT" book series. 

GET THE COMPLETE EBOOK FREE, 

Written, produced and performed by the author, James Cawley

A collection of some of my favorite original short scary stories, volume 1. 

For this special episode, Dust and Echoes presents a triptych of terror. Three Original Tales of Terror from author James Cawley that explore the unsettling truth that we are never truly alone, and that something ancient is learning how to get closer.

These stories take you from a solo camping trip where the wilderness is watching back, to a locked door with a terrible choice on either side, to the bottom of an old, dry well where a voice is waiting for a hero.

These aren't just scary stories. They're glimpses into a world where our safe places are being mapped, our voices are being recorded, and our very compassion is being used as a lure.

Seeking total solitude in the vast, silent corners of the Utah desert, a traveler believes he's finally alone. But the darkness is listening...and waiting. 

When a relentless siege begins against the thin fabric of his small tent, he is forced to remember the ancient, whispered rules of the night:

Don't speak,

don't whistle,

and never, ever tell the darkness your name.

This is a terrifying psychological battle against a patient predator that specializes in mimicry, using the voices of the loved ones he's lost.

Our traveler will fight to survive the long, dark night, but sometimes, the greatest horror isn't what's trying to break down your sanctuary...it's the rules you forget, before you encounter it.

Under the searing Utah sun, where the San Juan River cuts through stone and silence, a quiet frontier life is set ablaze. When a brutal betrayal rips her world apart, Emma Hawthorne rises from the ashes...scarred, armored, and guided by something far older than the church bells that once tried to tame her.

Redemption is not your typical western. It’s a vengeance-soaked, faith-fractured, desert-burning odyssey. A cinematic audio drama where religious power turns violent, colonial myth collides with Indigenous truth, and one woman’s grief is forged into something unstoppable.

Redemption is an Original Dust and Echoes Story in Audiobook style Podcast form. 

Looking for the perfect SCARY SHORT STORY???  

After the funeral and the estate sale Thomas stays behind to spend one final night alone in his childhood home.  To say goodbye before it's sold. 

The rooms are now empty. But something still moves in the silence.

As he clings to fading memories, something within the house begins to respond.

A slow-burning tale of guilt, loss, and the dark things that wait in places we think are safe.

Written and performed by the Author, James Cawley. 

Some roads lead to what people would rather forget.

In the backroads of Indiana, the corn grows high enough to swallow the horizon. Mile after mile of silent rows, where sound dies and even daylight feels heavy. Farmers tell their children to stay clear of the fields after dark. Hunters avoid them altogether. And still, the missing persons reports grow.

This is the story of what Jenson and Susan McBride stumbled into one late summer evening when a wrong turn, a stranger, and a simple act of kindness led them into a darkness beyond imagination.

Part crime story, part rural legend, The Corn Witch is a descent into isolation, obsession, and the terror that grows wild when no one’s looking.

A Dust and Echoes original story, written and performed by James Cawley.

Three hundred years after civilization fell, humanity survives high above the ruins of Manhattan.

But something still lives beneath the city.

THE DOWN DARK is a full post-apocalyptic horror story set in a future where nature has swallowed New York, ancient skyscrapers have become “stone trees,” and the survivors of the Stone Tree Clan refuse to enter the tunnels below.

They tell stories of dark walkers—creatures wearing the faces of the dead world, breathing through lungs of smoke and rust. Those taken into the Down Dark are never seen again.

When her younger brother Kael disappears, Enta discovers that he has descended into the abandoned subway tunnels beneath Manhattan. Ignoring every warning, she follows him into the darkness.

What waits below is not the monster she expected.

It is something far more human.

THE DOWN DARK

Enter the Dust: https://EnterTheDust.com

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😬 Would you enter the Down Dark to save someone you loved? Tell us in the comments.

#PostApocalypticHorror #HorrorStory #AudioDrama

Some places will never let you go.

Jeff Bauer thought he escaped his hometown of Burley, Idaho. He traded wheat fields for Hollywood lights, childhood ghosts for film scores and awards. But a phone call from an old childhood friend drags him back into the nightmare that he thought he'd escaped. 

Developers are unearthing the farmland where two kids once hid things that they hoped would always stay buried. Now, Jeff must confront the dungeon once again....the town he fled, the boyhood pact he broke, and secrets the Idaho soil refuses to keep.

In Burley, silence is currency, memory is a trap, and loyalty can cost more than blood.

Listen to past episodes and see what's next at: 

Long before covered wagons creaked across endless sagebrush and steam locomotives chased the horizon...something ancient arrived from the cold stillness between distant galaxies, and it buried itself deep into the red clay of Shoshone land.  And there, it waited for the old man and the girl. 

Generations later, Dzoon awakens it. The visions it brings are unlike anything he’s ever known...not memories, but omens. Fire. Ruin. A ghostly old woman.

A warning...

A fragile thread of hope that his people might survive a new darkness rising in the East.  Dzoon and Shaya must take a stand to keep the ember of their people alive and protected, before everything is buried behind the coming silence.

This is a story about ghosts trapped within the walls of our history.

Told in a cinematic, audio-book style by the author and host of Dust and Echoes, James Cawley. 

The Sky We Carried blends myth, ancestry, and prophecy into a story that refuses to be forgotten.

Dust & Echoes is a fiction podcast blending horror, mystery, adventure and suspense in original short story form. Each episode is a cinematic, immersive experience drawing you into tales of the strange, the forgotten, and the haunted parts of being human.

Written and performed by author James Cawley, Dust & Echoes delivers a modern campfire experience, one story at a time.

Unheard. Unpublished. Until now. 

New episodes every Tuesday.  Each one a new original story. 

See what's coming next at:  https://www.dustandechoespodcast.com