Two years ago, after catching up with Welcome to Night Vale, I began listening to The Magnus Archives. The Magnus Archives is an audio drama about the Magnus Institute, a location in London dedicated to collecting statements on the strange and paranormal. It follows Jonathan Sims, the newly appointed Head Archivist (and his archival assistants Tim, Sasha, and Martin) and his job to file and digitise the statements.
Over the course of 200 episodes (not including extras such as trailers, non-canon episodes and the 2019 live show), isolated statements seem more and more connected, and the pasts of the archival staff are uncovered. You also get introduced to more characters: a ghost-hunting youtuber, a police officer with anger issues, and an ex-girlfriend immune to fear – to name a few. There’s also more than enough villains and cult members to antagonise Jon (including many kidnappings).
I think The Magnus Archives is a good podcast. I like it because it plays around with modern horror tropes – sometimes exaggerating them, sometimes subverting. The characters each have their own relationships and histories with each other that have genuine consequences, and each is an individual puzzle piece in a larger web of statements and supernatural manifestations. It questions what it means to be human or a monster with multiple major and minor characters describing their descent into something otherworldly.
As of January, there’s also been the weekly release of its sequel, The Magnus Protocol – a podcast set in another universe centred on the soul-sucking night shifts of Samama Khalid and Alice Dyer (plus their coworkers Colin, Gwen, and Lena).
I would recommend this podcast to fans of cosmic horror and tragedy or fiction podcasts like Welcome to Night Vale or Old Gods of Appalachia (you can find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Patreon, or the Rusty Quill website).
