Chilling Tales for Dark Nights Kickstarter

Chilling Tales for Dark Nights is a popular horror-themed audio storytelling series and YouTube channel produced by Chilling Entertainment, created in late 2012 by lifelong scary stories fanatic Craig Groshek, and produced by a multinational team of independent authors, sound designers, composers, illustrators and voice over artists. The series is known for its immersive high-quality enhanced audio book style productions, which feature full casts, professional voice acting, exceptional sound effects and original cinematic scores.

As of February 2017, the Chilling Tales for Dark Nights YouTube channel has released more than 800 audio productions, and is followed by 170,000+ subscribers, and has accumulated nearly 18 million views. Its programs have been prominently featured on the Dark Matter Radio Network and the world’s largest podcast network, PodcastOne, and its adaptations of horror classics have been utilized for educational purposes in classrooms around the world, and as part of the Washington, DC-based SeeNoSun Literacy Project.

Over the course of its storied history, Chilling Tales for Dark Nights and The Simply Scary Podcast have accumulated hundreds of unsolicited fan testimonials and iTunes 5-star reviews, and the team behind the series has had the pleasure of adapting fiction penned by Bram Stoker award winners, as well as New York Times bestselling authors. They’ve also featured guest performances by the likes of renowned fantasy author Patrick Rothfuss, as well as multi-million subscriber YouTube personalities such as Mark “Markiplier” Fischbach, Tay Zonday, Rob Dyke, and Cryaotic.

Having worked diligently to bring radio theater “back from the dead” for more than 4 years, the team behind the audio excellence of Chilling Tales for Dark Nights and the critically-acclaimed Simply Scary Podcast are determined to take their high-quality audio productions to the new level, by producing the world’s first-ever fully-animated horror anthology television series.

Once successfully funded, any episodes produced will be distributed to campaign backers, as well as used to demonstrate the potential of the series to networks such as Netflix, Amazon, SyFy Channel and others.

The series is produced and directed by the duo of CTFDN creator Craig Groshek and executive producer Jesse Cornett, and is illustrated and animated by an accomplished team of artists including David Romero, Giselle Rosser and Bo Mathorne (the filmmaker responsible for the award winning short film, the Backwater Gospel).

On account of its anthology-style formatting and penchant for psychological terror and suspense, Chilling Tales for Dark Nights is compared frequently to spiritual predecessors such as Tales From the Crypt, The Twilight Zone, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Penny Dreadful, and Black Mirror. In spite of these comparisons, however, CTFDN’s animated incarnation will be unique in its field in several ways:

  • We’re not new: we’ve been producing audio horror for 4+ years
  • We’ve produced more than 800 audio book style productions over the years, many with sound effects and original scores
  • Our YouTube channel has over 170,000 subscribers
  • Our videos have been viewed 18+ million times
  • We release the critically-acclaimed and 5-star iTunes rates Simply Scary Podcast (iTunes link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-simply-scary-podcast/id1164228167
  • We’ve featured guest narrations by Markiplier, Tay Zonday, Patrick Rothfuss, Cryaotic, and Rob Dyke
  • We’ve adapted work written by Bram Stoker Award winners and New York Times best selling authors
  • We almost exclusively feature the work of independent, unpublished authors
  • All of our productions feature exclusively independent voice over talent
  • With rare exceptions, our team members have never spoken to one another in person, or met face-to-face
  • We are a true product of the Internet age: the members of our team are from several countries throughout the world, and from many of the U.S. states
  • All of our productions feature custom scores and sound effects
  • This Kickstarter campaign marks our first foray into producing animation on our own
  • Our first animated production features multi-million subscriber YouTube personality Markiplier in a collaboration with us
  • Our 2nd animated production will be an all-new, 100% original pilot episode written by the author of one of the world’s most popular creepypasta, “Psychosis,” Mr. Matt Dymerski (https://www.creepypasta.com/psychosis/)
  • We are actively negotiating with Robert “Freddy Krueger” Englund to feature him in a role as the protagonist in our pilot episode
  • We endeavor to pitch to Netflix, Amazon, SyFy Channel and others once our pilot is complete
  • Our films are being animated by an award-winning team, including Bo Mathorne, producer of the viral horror short film, the Backwater Gospel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVkDrIacHJM)

Please checkout the kickstarter over at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/craiggroshek/chilling-tales-for-dark-nights-the-animated-horror

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