Chronicles of Ashwrath

A Devil in the Fireplace (Part Two)

Stupid Decisions — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 18:18:25 +0100

It wants to be let in. It's in no hurry to name its price. And it knows exactly where Agnes Marsh is standing.

Episode 5 continues the journal of Ashwrath's priest as he reads deeper into the Chronicle no bishop would sanction, and comes face to face with the thing his own book has been warning him about since the first page.

New voices this episode: Alison Tate, wife of Edmund Tate. Content note: themes of grief, plague-era death, folk horror and mild supernatural threat.

If you're enjoying Chronicles of Ashwrath, the biggest help you can give the show is a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify — it's a small show finding its feet, and it genuinely moves the needle. Thank you for listening.

Chapters

00:00 – Intro & Show Info
00:45 – "There Is a Devil in the Fireplace"
02:15 – The Hearths of Ashwrath Turn Strange
04:00 – The Chronicle: On the Matter of the Hearth
06:45 – The Fire Sits Still
08:15 – It Speaks
10:00 – The Devil's Offer
12:00 – "Do Not Answer Him Hungry"
13:15 – Closing Benediction: God Keep

The Appetite

Stupid Decisions — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 19:33:37 +0100

Three people died in Ashwrath on the twenty-third of October. Four on the twenty-fourth. One on the twenty-fifth, which felt — God forgive him — like a respite.

On the twenty-sixth, John Pike opens the chronicle and finds something that is not an account of the sickness. The chronicle calls it the appetite. It has been in the wood the way cold is in winter ground. The sickness has been feeding it. And now it is full.

A folk horror audio drama set in a medieval English village during the Black Death of 1348. One voice. One candle. A chronicle that knows more than it should.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Ashrath's Chronicles
01:11 The Concept of the Appetite
02:25 The Sickness as a Seasonal Force
03:25 The Oldest Threat: The Appetite
04:32 Introducing the Key Characters
07:33 The Night of the Walking Entity
09:01 The Shape and Presence of the Entity
09:28 The Impact of the Walking Sickness

A Devil in the Fireplace

Stupid Decisions — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 00:01:02 +0100

England, 1348. The Black Death is in the village. Something else is too.

John Pike, priest of Ashwrath, reads from a chronicle that knows more than he does — a record of a village dying of one sickness while another moves quietly through its lanes, leaving cold where warmth should be, silence where there should be sound, a mark in the mud with corners too sharp for any sole he knows.

Two girls are still missing. A wisewoman waits in her leaning house for what she has known was coming. A careful constable keeps a list he has not yet finished.

And in the iron case on Pike's desk, the seventh volume waits.

(00:00) - The Chronicles of Ashwrath, episode three, A Devil in the Fireplace.
(00:34) - Whispers of a Name
(02:56) - Thomas Aldred's Bonfire
(05:15) - Edmund Tate Returns Cold
(07:59) - Vale's Bootprint Evidence
(11:12) - Edith Crow's Warning
(15:13) - Agnes and Ruth's Doorway
(18:38) - A List of Unnatural Signs
(21:48) - Devil in the Fireplace
(24:31) - Reading the Seventh Volume
(25:45) - Prayer for Ashrath
(27:58) - The Iron Case Waits

The Healer at the End of the Lane

Stupid Decisions — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 18:27:26 +0100

Three nights avoiding the chronicle. Three nights sitting in the corner of a dark vestry, waiting for something to resolve itself.

Tonight the priest opens the iron case. There is a passage he has never read before — sitting between two he knows by heart, as though it was always there and he simply wasn't ready to find it.

It concerns Edith Crow.

(00:00) - Ashwrath 2
(00:42) - Three Nights Avoiding It
(01:20) - New Passage Appears
(02:06) - Meet Edith Crow
(03:58) - Village Secret Healer
(05:03) - William Aldred Falls Ill
(06:53) - A Recovery Too Fast
(07:53) - Thomas Aldred Spreads Fear
(09:15) - Edith Waits for Judgment
(10:10) - Urgent Note Agnes Marsh
(10:46) - Agnes Visits Edith
(12:31) - The Wood Will Ask
(14:29) - Priest Shaken by Evidence
(16:42) - Outro and Edit Notes

Two Girls Missing in the Woods

Stupid Decisions — Thu, 14 May 2026 18:26:12 +0100

It is the 14th of October, 1348, and Ashwrath is holding its market because to stop would be to say the word nobody is saying. They come to the stalls in the cold morning and stand a little further apart than they used to and hold their vinegar rags like small, damp prayers, and they buy and sell and pretend that buying and selling still means what it meant before.

Two girls went to the tree line before the market bell. Agnes in her mother's green shawl, Ruth with the basket, walking with the quick serious purpose of children who have been given a task and mean to finish it. They did not come back. The ground remembers nothing of them.

Somewhere beneath the chapel, by one candle in a locked room, the priest reads. The chronicle is on his desk. It was not the same book yesterday that it is tonight. It will not be the same book tomorrow that it is now.

He reads because someone must witness it. He is that someone. It is the only thing he has left that he is sure of.