Hey, everybody. It's me, Mr. Balin, the backwards hat/flannel-wearing storyteller. I want to tell you about our newest Strange, dark, and mysterious hit podcast out of Balin Studios. It's called Runful, and the stories are definitely strange, dark, and mysterious, but more importantly, the stories are terrifying. The show comes straight from the mind of Rodney Barnes, an award-winning creator who has basically helped define the horror genre over the past couple of years. I'm telling you, this particular show is going to reinvent the horror genre in podcasting because it's so, so good. In this show, Runful, each episode explores stories of lore and legend in a totally fresh and unique way. Rodney pulls you in with his warm voice, his humor, and his first-person accounts, and then pulls you even deeper as his horrifying stories of vampires, witches, cryptids, and ghosts unfold. But rather than telling you how scary and amazing the show is, I'm just going to play a clip from Runful. It's from an episode called BooHags, and just for reference, a Boohags is like part vampire, part witch. After you listen, be sure you go follow Runful wherever you listen to your podcasts. But a warning, once you start listening, you will not be able to stop.

This is a very bingeable podcast. Okay, here's the clip.

The sun was setting when Mary got home. She went straight into the kitchen to pour a glass of wine. Her hands were shaking as she mulled over what the pharmacist said. It hit a little too close to what she experienced that night, the woman. The breath. Before she could stop herself, she pulled out her phone and did a quick Google. Boo, hags. She caught a few things. A witch from Gala O'Hoodu lore can be stopped if you leave out something like a broom. It gets distracted by counting the bristles. That cruel voice in her head interrupted her reading. It told Mary she was idiotic for believing in boo hacks, that she was just looking for an excuse as to why she couldn't handle being there. An explanation for her own weakness. Mary slammed the phone down, rubbed her temples. In the silence, the house creaked lightly as if settling down for the night. Then a more distinctive sound emerged. The floorboards groan loudly, somewhere upstairs. It had the very specific tone of footsteps. Mary set her wine down, waited. They came again, louder this time. She slowly stood and grabbed a knife from a drawer.

Her hand trembled as she held it aloft, making her way to the foyer, to the stairs, then up. One step at a time. She reached the landing, waited. Then a noise came from her mama's room, a foot scuffing against the wood floor, followed by a sigh. Mary inched towards the door and reached out. She twisted the knob, raised her knife, and flung it open. The bedside light was on. It cast a myriad of shadows around the room. In the inky recesses of the space, a figure stood, backlit. But Mary would know that silhouette anywhere. It was her mother. This time, she didn't disappear. She wore a nightgown. Her hair was a true mess. Kind of in a bun, but pulled every which way out of it, too. Frizzy stood up on in, nothing like the polished woman Mary remembered, and she didn't say anything. That was unlike her, too. Finally, Mary spoke. Just a whisper. Mama? Mary's mother turned. Half the light from the lamp caught her cheek. She looked terrible, ashen, sunken eyes and skin that seemed to hang off her face like a draped curtain. You know, all this time Mary's Mama had been what we call a big bad, a looming villain in Mary's head, the source of that nayser voice that always brought her down.

But seeing her mom confused and haggered, it took away a lot of the power she had over her daughter. At that moment, Mary didn't feel any righteous anger, just pity. So she set down the knife and found herself saying the only thing she'd ever really wanted to say, I forgive you. At least in this moment, she meant it. Her mom turned all the way around. Mary, thinking they were about to hug it out, opened her arms. She stepped closer, but as she did, she noticed the other side of her mom's face was wrong. The flesh on her cheeks hung even more there. It seemed to be uneven. The edges of her eye were peeling off, exposing raw muscles, tendons. When Mary's gaze traveled down her mom's body, she stifled a scream. The front of her nightgown hung open in tatters like it had been slashed. The skin beneath it was uneven, too, full of ripples, yanked tight in some areas, hanging loose and pursed in others like her mama had been torn open and sewn together again. As Mary took this in, her mom reached her hands into the seam at her belly and pulled.

Her chest came apart with a loud rip. The hand shoved the skin off her chest, took her shoulder out, then an arm, then pushed her mama's face back like it was a hoodie. The skin dropped to the floor and a figure stepped out of it. A woman. She was shiny, pure muscle. Stringy, matted hair hung over her face, but it parted just enough for a single bloodshot eye to peer out at Mary. Below that piercing gaze, a lipless grin. The person Mary had just achieved a milestone emotional moment with was not her mother. It was a horrific and possibly grotesque creature who had been wearing her mom like a garment. It was a bouhag.

So much for listening to this clip of Runful. If you liked what you heard and you want to hear the rest of this terrifying episode of Boohags, just look for Runful on any podcast platform and then follow the show and start your binge.