Radio Free Burrito Episode 44: The Cecil Hotel

It’s a Halloween episode, sort of, with a spooky, creepy, weird story that gets really dark by the end.

• The logo was designed by WWdN:iX reader Marc, who asked that I not link to his “in progress” website. Thanks, Marc!
• Radio Free Burrito doesn’t work as hard to earn its [EXPLICIT] tag as Memories of the Futurecast did, but it still manages to upset mom and get Twitter breakup messages from sensitive people. You have been warned.
• The theme music is from the unofficial Night of the Living Dead Soundtrack.
• The Devil in the White City tells the true and compelling story of H.H. Holmes.
• The Lore podcast did an episode about Holmes.
• Sean Bonner’s newsletter is always worth reading.
• It takes three episodes for American Horror Story: Hotel to find itself, but it’s still on a show-by-show probation for me.
• Josh Dean’s story, American Horror Story: The Cecil Hotel is both the focus of and inspiration for this episode. There are a number of interesting and relevant footnotes in Josh’s story, as well as a lot of photos. There are also comments and links from readers that you can read and follow if you really want to fall down a deep rabbit hole.
• Josh wrote this story for Matter. I can’t think of a clever way to encourage you to check out the stories at Matter, so this sentence will have to do.
• I realized while I was reading this story that I drive by the Cecil Hotel on my way home from every Kings game, but I only saw the hotel for the first time about a week ago … that’s a strange and unsettling coincidence.
• I used a lot of music for this episode. It’s all under license from Magnatune.com, and includes: Edible Arrangements by Kalabi, Illumination by Robert Rich, Mandala for Chaos by Sampson-Carroll, Into the Void by Subsonic Information, and Touch by Falling You.
• I already had a lot of respect for the production quality of podcasts like Lore, Limetown, The Black Tapes, You Must Remember This, Welcome to Night Vale, and The Memory Palace, but until I tried to replicate their style, I didn’t realize just how challenging it is to find music that goes with the words in exactly the right way, emotionally hits the right way, and is mixed the right way. I don’t think I got there, exactly, but I came close.
• This episode is one of the longest I’ve ever made, at 1h33m It’s a VBR file, though, so it’s not too huge, and weighs in at 62.3MB.
• This is the end of the show notes.

Here’s your embed:

And here’s a direct link to 044-RFB.

Happy Halloween, everyone.

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