Episode - 1
On this premiere episode of Echoes under Ashwood, five former best friends return separately to Ashwood, Ohio, drawn back by the will of their long-lost friend, Amy Caldwell. What should be a simple obligation, a reading, a signature, a quick departure, begins to feel unsettled the moment they arrive. The terms are clear. All five must be present. Together. No explanation is given. Gaathered after 30 years of little contact, things will be interesting.
Ashwood does not feel like a place they have returned to. It feels like something they have stepped back inside of. The town has been rotting from teh inside out for decades. The streets are quiet. The town looks...intact. But something in it resists being familiar. Distances feel slightly off. Buildings seem to linger in ways they should not. People look at them just a moment too long, as if trying to place something they cannot quite name. Every interaction carries the sense that their presence is not unexpected. It seems no one can run from Ashwood forever.
Each of them experiences this alone. They do not reunite, and there is no shared moment to validate what they are feeling. Left to themselves, they explain it away as nostalgia, stress, or the discomfort of returning to a place tied to a past they thought they had outgrown. Still, the feeling remains that Ashwood has not simply endured. It has been waiting.
Amy’s death is the reason they give themselves for coming back. The will is the structure that holds it together. Beneath that, something less certain begins to surface. A sense that their return was not chance, and not entirely their choice. That whatever connects them to Ashwood was never fully broken. As each of them settles into the town again, uneasy and alone, one realization begins to take hold.
They did not just come back to Ashwood.
They submitted to it.
From the Creator:
Echoes under Ashwood is more than a horror story...it is a deeply personal piece of autofiction. The slow-burn dread, the isolation of the rural Midwestern setting, and the unresolved history of the Gen X cast are directly informed by my own childhood trauma, processed and reframed through the lens of cosmic horror. This is an exploration of what it takes to look into the dark, face old ghosts, and survive the aftermath.
About Echoes under Ashwood: This is an audio-only cosmic horror podcast set in rural southeastern Ohio. Our story is a slow-burn analog mystery rooted in psychological dread, following a Gen X cast through an investigative narrative. While the story is completely improvised, the framework is heavily inspired by investigative tabletop RPG systems like Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green.
In This Episode:
Opening Song \"Home-grown\" written and performed by Sadie Baimel
Show is written, edited, and produced by James Altwies
Cast:
Bex Lexington / Carrie Harris
Dawn McBride / Angela Edwards
Harry Glassman / Grant Gleisner
Lance McClane / Gregg Baimel
Oz Hannigan / Art Pratt and Davis Edwards
Keeper / James Altwies
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