For Brian Siegele and Macleod Andrews, hosts of supernatural podcast Sightings, spooky is always trending. But their experimental format, which blends immersive narrative storytelling with “after show” discussions, is a clear signpost of where the genre is headed. While many in the industry lament the end of the “Serial” era, a period that launched a thousand Reddit forums, Sightings is bringing the conversation in-house.
And boy, there’s plenty to talk about. Ghost stories. The Loch Ness Monster. Flying objects of the unidentified variety. Listeners will be familiar with many of these tales. Their ubiquity is not just an indicator of our shared rush at a jump scare. It proves unsettling stories can be oddly comforting, too.
Sightings, like the hundreds of podcasts in its genre, is a testament to the enduring appeal of unexplained phenomena. But unlike its peers, Sightings approaches episodic podcasting with the production value of a limited series. Classic stories like Sleepy Hollow unfurl in new and thrilling ways. “There are a lot of supernatural podcasts out there. A lot of them are, generally speaking, a couple guys in the basement talking about cool stuff,” Siegele remarks when I bring up the show’s ambitious production, which includes custom compositions. “We wanted to elevate it and bring these stories to life in a way that’s new and fresh — entertaining but also thought provoking.”
Andrews, the show’s narrator, is an award-winning actor and audiobook narrator. His performance, alongside co-host Siegele’s direction, is a major part of why Sightings is fast becoming a genre favorite since its launch in 2024.
In the wrong hands, the decision to opt for a bifurcated structure would feel non-committal, even a little confused. Sightings balances both halves elegantly. And beyond the clear entertainment factor of combining storytelling with commentary, their choice is indicative of where narrative podcasting will go next. The show’s self-reflexivity allows broader appeal while their commitment to high-value production pulls in those seeking a more immersive experience than a YouTube video.
While Sightings is innovating, the show isn’t immune to the pressures facing other narrative podcasts. “Shows like [ours] are not cheap to make. And when you only run for eight episodes, that’s all you’ve got. You don’t have a chance to really build out the audience. Sightings takes what we really appreciate about fiction podcasting — being able to tell stories in ways that are much more intimate — and doing that on a weekly, bi-weekly or seasonal basis.
“A show that I look to that’s done very well and has been running forever is Welcome to Nightvale. I think world building is what’s really great in the fiction space. Our world is Planet Earth in 2025 where we have all of these fun stories to draw from.”
The Sleepy Hollow episode, published just in time for Halloween, also marks a shift in their subject matter. “This is the first story we’re doing where we’re using a fictional story as the groundwork,” Siegele explains. All of their previous episodes have covered actual encounters. “We reimagined [Sleepy Hollow] in the modern day for listeners to make it real and exciting. There’s so much more beneath the surface of the story that Washington Irving wrote in the 19th century.”
Picture this: a headless horseman riding through a modern city. The show’s retelling imagines an encounter with the ghostly figure not in the story’s original setting but during a bicycle commute through New York City. The narrator is a skeptic — until confronted by the horror before him.
Are Siegele and Andrews skeptics too? When faced with tales of alien encounters and ghost sightings, they aim not to be.
“We’re trying to approach these [stories] with an open mind, even though I think we’re skeptical by nature. What’s really fun to us is not whether something is true […] they’ve stood the test of time for hundreds of years, and they’re still things that people are talking about. That’s what’s really cool to us.”
Spooky stories have been omnipresent in media since The House of the Devil (1896). Indeed, Sightings feels like a direct descendent of Orson Welles’ radio production of The War of the Worlds (1938), a broadcast that was so convincing is caused mass panic as listeners believed Earth was experiencing a real invasion. While media literacy has evolved, the immersive effect of a well-told ghost story or urban legend endures.
In their episode about the discovery of Ancient Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun’s tomb, the show employs a Blair Witch-style technique through various “found footage” audio recordings. It’s a great example of the podcast’s scope, and points to the level of flexibility that the medium affords. But what’s next for Sightings?
More listener stories. Unsurprisingly, there are plenty of fans who have their own supernatural tales to tell. “It’s almost like you’re visiting an old friend sitting around a campfire then and hearing a spooky story,” Siegele explains. But despite its hybridity, Sightings remains committed to dramatized storytelling. “One of our favorite stories was one about a guy in the 1950s in Tokyo. This man shows up at the airport from a country that doesn’t exist. He had all this documentation. Then he vanished. Where did he come from? Where did he go?”
It’s unanswered questions like these that keep listeners coming back. Sightings, after all, isn’t just for Halloween. This podcast is for a lonely evening or midnight drive. Press play, if you dare.
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Alice Florence Orr is the Managing Editor of Podcast Review.