A family haunted by the Man in the Hat inside a coastal lighthouse estate.
Light House follows a single retrospective narrator through rooms, years, and buried family memory. Its horror grows slowly, moving from basement noises and locked-away objects to violence, ghosts, and a house that seems to wait for suffering.
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Light House is a fully scripted narrative horror podcast, not an interview or panel show — there is no host in the traditional sense, only a fictional first-person narrator, Tara Hollis, recounting her family's history at Lighthouse Point. Chapters are dated and move nonlinearly across the twentieth century, following Tara, her sister Leni, and their father as an unseen presence in the house feeds on the family's fear and dysfunction. Recurring elements include a decomposing apparition known as the Man in the Hat (later named Alexander Blythe), a forbidden basement darkroom, a music-box melody, and physical manifestations that escalate from whispers to direct attacks. The series is credited to writer-director Jeff Heimbach, with Holly Fry as executive producer and Corey Celeste composing the original score; a small voice cast (including Allie Trasher, Alyssa Rose, and Matthew Tyler Vorce) performs family members and supernatural figures across chapters. Episodes run around 30–35 minutes and are structured as chapters rather than standalone stories, so listening in order matters for following the Hollis family's generational thread. Themes covered include childhood trauma, a father's alcoholism and violence toward his daughters, inherited family curses, and the decision to destroy an ancestral home rather than keep living with what haunts it. The show suits listeners of serialized supernatural fiction rather than true-crime or documentary horror. Production is credited to iHeartRadio and Bamford Productions, and the feed also carries at least one trailer for an unrelated fiction podcast, The Passage, indicating cross-promotion within iHeart's fiction slate. There are no expert guests, panel discussion, or real-world reporting — the entire show is a voiced, scored drama with a fixed episode count.
Made for: Listeners who want serialized, first-person supernatural horror fiction with a continuing family storyline, rather than true-crime or interview podcasts.
What sets it apart: It's a fully scripted, single-family audio drama with a dedicated voice cast and original score built around one haunted estate across a fixed 12-episode arc, rather than an anthology, roundtable, or true-crime retelling format.
Tara Hollis was supposed to get a fresh new start at her ancestral home, Light House. But when Tara and her family moved into Light House on that warm, winter's day in 1963, they did not suspect the horror that awaited them; a horror that lurked in the shadows, biding its time to quench its hunger. There is a darkness that dwells in the heart of Light House…one that will tear Tara’s family apart. Do you believe in ghosts? Tara didn’t…until she moved into Light House.
Based on 4 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Light House turns one family's changing relationship with a haunted home into patient, place-driven horror stretched across decades.
Light House builds horror by turning a family home into a map of accumulating danger. Its narrated serial moves through chapters dated 1963, 1964, 1970, and 2019, letting the house's history emerge through basement passages, hidden rooms, old belongings, and figures glimpsed…
One basement door later, you'll reconsider every old house you've ever romanticized.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A haunted-house chapter where isolation, rumor, and performed fear become the narrator's only leverage.
Chapter 10 - 2019 settles into the hard, strange quiet of a woman living inside Lighthouse for six months with no power, no water, and no contact with the outside world.
A candlelit memory scene that lets quiet turn into creeping dread.
This episode holds to a spare, steady mood as it moves through a sleepless night, a candlelit walk for water, and a close pass at something shadowed that almost lands.
A tense chapter where family fear sends Leni into hiding, then draws the narrator back toward the basement.
Chapter 3 - 1970 turns Light House back into the house itself, where fear has settled into the daily routine. The narrator watches Leni change under their father's temper: she no longer runs to greet him after work, and instead disappears into hiding places for hours.
A basement, stray music, and a flashlight turn old family clutter into a tight little engine of dread.
Chapter 2 - 1964 finds its charge in a basement, a flashlight, and music that will not stay located. The scene is plain in the best way: a huge, dusty room under the house, crowded with old furniture, portraits, boxes, metal shelving, and family memories that feel less…
A 1963-framed fiction opener with a strong premise, though the story is mostly obscured by promo traffic.
Light House opens, at least in its framing, as a fiction serial with a clean period hook: Chapter 1 - 1963. That date gives the piece a useful charge before the story has much room to declare itself, and the title carries a built-in promise of isolation, signal, and trouble…
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Six months back, Lighthouse has become a way to stay alive.
The chapter returns to a sleepless night when the narrator goes into the dark with a candle and remembers the moment a shadowy thing came for her and missed.
Leni hides her injuries.
The basement waits.
Only the frame is audible.