Emmy Award and Lon Chaney Award-winning actor Bill Oberst Jr. is known for roles in over 100 horror films and TV series, including 3 from Hell, Dis, The Dooms Chapel Horror and "Scream Queens," to name a few, and he'll now be lulling listeners to rest with excerpts from Gothic fiction as the host of the new podcast Gothic Goodnight.
Each episode of 30 minutes or less features a reading, Oberst’s musings on the piece, and the actor’s famously unsettling voice whispering a quiet "Goodnight."
The literary selections, which in the first two episodes of the weekly podcast have included works by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Louis Stevenson, are chosen by Oberst himself, with an emphasis on what he calls "lush language," atmosphere and a sense of the tragic. The show was inspired, he says, by the sudden change in social habits brought about by the coronavirus.
Oberst, who portrays author Ray Bradbury in a touring stage show, says Gothic Goodnight is also his homage to the likes of Vincent Price and Boris Karloff, actors known for onscreen fright whose dark radio readings brought comfort to listeners of their time.
"This is my little midnight whisper into the vast abyss of loneliness," said Oberst. "Dark tales are a balm in times of trouble, they help us to accept the night."
Listen to the first three episodes over on the podcast's official website.
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