Fearsome Fiction: Mysteries, Thrillers, True Crime & More

On a recent afternoon at Read Mill Books in Clinton, New Jersey, the story was told of a cursed walking stick and the lives it has destroyed, as it tries once again to ruin a man and all he holds dear. Mark McNease's supernatural chiller, Devil's Wood, held an audience's attention with chills, mystery, and the ancient battle between good and evil. Read it to find out which one wins.

Follow author Mark McNease deep into the Devil's Wood.

An ancient people. A tree that has stood seemingly forever. And a walking stick that must possess anyone who possesses it.

Two chapters at a time, only on the Fearsome Fiction podcast. You can purchase the entire audiobook on Spotify and select online retailers.

Enter the Devil's Wood. But be warned: you may never leave.

And now… fasten your headphones, and tell someone your last known location. The Devil's Wood dotcom.

Sarah Freeman - The Shapwick Poisoner

In the winter of 1844, a woman walked into a chemist's shop in Bridgwater, in the English county of Somerset, and bought three pennies' worth of arsenic. It was a common enough purchase. Arsenic killed rats. It also killed people, and in the village of Shapwick, people close to Sarah Freeman had a habit of dying.

Her husband, Henry. Her young son, James. Her mother, Mary. Each death was mourned, and each was buried. Then her brother Charles fell violently ill and died, and this time someone asked questions. The bodies came out of the ground. The tests came back. And the village began to wonder how long it had been living beside a poisoner.

On April 23, 1845, ten thousand people gathered in Taunton to watch Sarah Freeman hang. To the very end, she swore she was "as innocent as a lamb."

Was she a cold-blooded serial killer, or a convenient scapegoat? Today, we open the case of the Shapwick Poisoner.

Follow author Mark McNease deep into the Devil's Wood.

An ancient people. A tree that has stood seemingly forever. And a walking stick that must possess anyone who possesses it.

Two chapters at a time, only on the Fearsome Fiction podcast. You can purchase the entire audiobook on Spotify and select online retailers.

Enter the Devil's Wood. But be warned: you may never leave.

And now… fasten your headphones, and tell someone your last known location. The Devil's Wood dotcom.

Welcome back to True Crime Tuesdays. Today's case takes us to a Victorian sickroom, where the person meant to make you better was the one who decided whether you lived.

Her name was Catherine Wilson. She worked as a private nurse in small English towns through the 1850s and into the 1860s, sitting at bedsides, mixing medicines, and quietly becoming the beneficiary of more than one dying patient's will. Husbands, lovers, landladies, patients. The deaths piled up for a decade before anyone thought to ask why.

This is The Soothing Draught, the story of the woman who became the first known serial killer nurse in England, caught not because anyone suspected her, but because one patient refused to die quietly.

Follow author Mark McNease deep into the Devil's Wood.

An ancient people. A tree that has stood seemingly forever. And a walking stick that must possess anyone who possesses it.

Two chapters at a time, only on the Fearsome Fiction podcast. You can purchase the entire audiobook on Spotify and select online retailers.

Enter the Devil's Wood. But be warned: you may never leave.

And now... fasten your headphones, and tell someone your last known location. The Devil's Wood dotcom.

Enjoy this True Crime Tuesdays episode, brought to you courtesy of author Franklin Maw's upcoming Blood Evidence: 25 True Crime Chillers.

She married often, and buried often — husbands, stepchildren, her own children, one after another, in a mining town that had already seen more than its share of death. No one thought to ask why. Arsenic was cheap, convenient, and nearly impossible to prove... until someone finally did. This is the story of Mary Ann Cotton, one of Britain's first convicted female serial killers, and the quiet, domestic horror she left behind in West Auckland. This is "The Arsenic Widow," from Franklin Maw's Blood Evidence.

Welcome to The Devil's Wood Journal on Fearsome Fiction. Each week we'll bring you new entries from this extraordinary document found in an abandoned cabin in the New Jersey woods. The author remains anonymous, and his whereabouts unknown. All we know is that there is a place called Devil's Wood, located on no known map, from which those who enter may never emerge. Visit The Devil's Wood dotcom for more.

Follow author Mark McNease deep into the Devil's Wood.

An ancient people. A tree that has stood seemingly forever. And a walking stick that must possess anyone who possesses it.

Two chapters at a time, only on the Fearsome Fiction podcast. You can purchase the entire audiobook on Spotify and select online retailers.

Enter the Devil's Wood. But be warned: you may never leave.

And now... fasten your headphones, and tell someone your last known location. The Devil's Wood dotcom.

The story continues. Anonymous joins a retreat mate on the cabin porch, and an animal cries somewhere in the woods beyond.