
Noctuary and the Spectral Link
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed

Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $15.56
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Jon Padgett
-
By:
-
Thomas Ligotti
About this listen
Chiroptera Press presents Noctuary & The Spectral Link by the legendary Thomas Ligotti, a consolidated volume of two horror collections, back in print after over a decade.
Noctuary is divided into three sections, following Ligotti’s introduction, “In the Night, in the Dark: A Note on the Appreciation of Weird Fiction.” The first section, Studies in Shadow, begins with “The Medusa,” blurring lines between fiction, metaphor, and reality. “Conversations in a Dead Language” chronicles a mailman’s Halloween nights leading to doom, while “The Prodigy of Dreams” features Arthur Emerson’s answered prayers to an obscure god. “Mrs. Rinaldi’s Angel” involves a child’s nightmares and dubious supernatural assistance.
Discourse on Blackness, the second section, starts with “The Tsalal,” an apocalyptic novelette set in Moxton, introducing Andrew Maness and an ancient power. “Mad Night of Atonement” presents a scientist’s invention channeling the Creator’s power, and “The Strange Design of Master Rignolo” follows a visual artist’s descent into madness. “The Voice in the Bones” evokes a surreal prison.
The third section, Notebook of the Night, features twenty vignettes exploring insidious exploits, esoteric rituals, and hymns to the void.
The Spectral Link, Ligotti’s most recent collection, emerged after his near-death experience. “Metaphysica Morum” channels the rage and despair of The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. The volume ends with “The Small People,” a poignant masterpiece exploring the uncanny terror of existence.
Narrated by Jon Padgett, a renowned voice in the world of weird fiction. Padgett, an accomplished author, is celebrated for his haunting narrations, particularly his work on Ligotti’s Songs of a Dead Dreamer & Grimscribe (Penguin).
©2023 Jonathan Dennison (P)2024 Jon PadgettListeners also enjoyed...
-
Not a Speck of Light
- Stories
- By: Laird Barron
- Narrated by: Jennifer Pickens, Joe Hempel
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bram Stoker Award-winning author Laird Barron returns to the dark and dreadful with his fifth horror collection, which weaves sixteen weird tales into a mosaic of the bloody and the macabre.
-
-
Awesome as always
- By Tranquilla’s granddaughter on 04-17-25
By: Laird Barron
-
Song for the Unravelling of the World
- Stories
- By: Brian Evenson
- Narrated by: Mauro Hantman
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A newborn’s absent face appears on the back of someone else’s head, a filmmaker goes to gruesome lengths to achieve the silence he’s after for his final scene, and a therapist begins, impossibly, to appear in a troubled patient's room late at night. In these stories of doubt, delusion, and paranoia, no belief, no claim to objectivity, is immune to the distortions of human perception. Here, self-deception is a means of justifying our most inhuman impulses—whether we know it or not.
-
-
Interesting in a different way...
- By Fishwich on 12-29-24
By: Brian Evenson
-
Corpsemouth and Other Autobiographies
- By: John Langan
- Narrated by: Matt Godfrey
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
John Langan, author of the Bram Stoker Award-winning novel The Fisherman, returns with ten new tales of cosmic horror in Corpsemouth and Other Autobiographies. In these stories, he continues to chart the course of twenty-first century weird fiction, from the unfamiliar to the familial, the unfathomably distant to the intimate.
-
-
Finally more John Langan in audiobook form
- By Anonymous User on 09-10-23
By: John Langan
-
A Collapse of Horses
- A Collection of Stories
- By: Brian Evenson
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A provocative collection of literary horror stories by one of America’s most acclaimed and inventive writers whose unique prose “can be soul-shaking” (New Yorker).
-
-
Terrific uncanny horror
- By TJ on 12-18-24
By: Brian Evenson
-
Blood Standard
- By: Laird Barron
- Narrated by: William DeMeritt
- Length: 8 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Isaiah Coleridge is a mob enforcer in Alaska - he's tough, seen a lot, and dished out more. But when he forcibly ends the money-making scheme of a made man, he gets in the kind of trouble that can lead to a bullet behind the ear. Saved by the grace of his boss and exiled to upstate New York, Isaiah begins a new life, a quiet life without gunshots or explosions. Except a teenage girl disappears, and Isaiah isn't one to let that slip by. And delving into the underworld to track this missing girl will get him exactly the kind of notice he was warned to avoid.
-
-
Decent First Foray into Crime Fiction for Barron
- By Ross on 06-19-18
By: Laird Barron
-
Fugue State
- Stories
- By: Brian Evenson
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Brian Evenson’s hallucinatory and darkly comic stories of paranoia, pursuit, sensory deprivation, amnesia, and retribution rattle the cages of the psyche and peer into the gaping moral chasm that opens when we become estranged from ourselves. From sadistic bosses with secret fears to a woman trapped in a mime’s imaginary box, and from a post-apocalyptic misidentified Messiah to unwitting portraitists of the dead, the mind-bending world of this modern-day Edgar Allan Poe exposes the horror contained within our daily lives.
-
-
Maybe I just didn't get it?
- By Zach Hafner on 05-03-24
By: Brian Evenson
-
Not a Speck of Light
- Stories
- By: Laird Barron
- Narrated by: Jennifer Pickens, Joe Hempel
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bram Stoker Award-winning author Laird Barron returns to the dark and dreadful with his fifth horror collection, which weaves sixteen weird tales into a mosaic of the bloody and the macabre.
-
-
Awesome as always
- By Tranquilla’s granddaughter on 04-17-25
By: Laird Barron
-
Song for the Unravelling of the World
- Stories
- By: Brian Evenson
- Narrated by: Mauro Hantman
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A newborn’s absent face appears on the back of someone else’s head, a filmmaker goes to gruesome lengths to achieve the silence he’s after for his final scene, and a therapist begins, impossibly, to appear in a troubled patient's room late at night. In these stories of doubt, delusion, and paranoia, no belief, no claim to objectivity, is immune to the distortions of human perception. Here, self-deception is a means of justifying our most inhuman impulses—whether we know it or not.
-
-
Interesting in a different way...
- By Fishwich on 12-29-24
By: Brian Evenson
-
Corpsemouth and Other Autobiographies
- By: John Langan
- Narrated by: Matt Godfrey
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
John Langan, author of the Bram Stoker Award-winning novel The Fisherman, returns with ten new tales of cosmic horror in Corpsemouth and Other Autobiographies. In these stories, he continues to chart the course of twenty-first century weird fiction, from the unfamiliar to the familial, the unfathomably distant to the intimate.
-
-
Finally more John Langan in audiobook form
- By Anonymous User on 09-10-23
By: John Langan
-
A Collapse of Horses
- A Collection of Stories
- By: Brian Evenson
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A provocative collection of literary horror stories by one of America’s most acclaimed and inventive writers whose unique prose “can be soul-shaking” (New Yorker).
-
-
Terrific uncanny horror
- By TJ on 12-18-24
By: Brian Evenson
-
Blood Standard
- By: Laird Barron
- Narrated by: William DeMeritt
- Length: 8 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Isaiah Coleridge is a mob enforcer in Alaska - he's tough, seen a lot, and dished out more. But when he forcibly ends the money-making scheme of a made man, he gets in the kind of trouble that can lead to a bullet behind the ear. Saved by the grace of his boss and exiled to upstate New York, Isaiah begins a new life, a quiet life without gunshots or explosions. Except a teenage girl disappears, and Isaiah isn't one to let that slip by. And delving into the underworld to track this missing girl will get him exactly the kind of notice he was warned to avoid.
-
-
Decent First Foray into Crime Fiction for Barron
- By Ross on 06-19-18
By: Laird Barron
-
Fugue State
- Stories
- By: Brian Evenson
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Brian Evenson’s hallucinatory and darkly comic stories of paranoia, pursuit, sensory deprivation, amnesia, and retribution rattle the cages of the psyche and peer into the gaping moral chasm that opens when we become estranged from ourselves. From sadistic bosses with secret fears to a woman trapped in a mime’s imaginary box, and from a post-apocalyptic misidentified Messiah to unwitting portraitists of the dead, the mind-bending world of this modern-day Edgar Allan Poe exposes the horror contained within our daily lives.
-
-
Maybe I just didn't get it?
- By Zach Hafner on 05-03-24
By: Brian Evenson
-
The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell
- Stories
- By: Brian Evenson
- Narrated by: Mauro Hantman
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A sentient, murderous prosthetic leg; shadowy creatures lurking behind a shimmering wall; brutal barrow men: Of all the terrors that populate The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell, perhaps the most alarming are the beings who decimated the habitable Earth: humans. In this new short-story collection, Brian Evenson envisions a chilling future beyond the Anthropocene that forces excruciating decisions about survival and self-sacrifice in the face of toxic air and a natural world torn between revenge and regeneration.
-
-
22 Stories by a Master of the Form
- By Darwin8u on 11-16-22
By: Brian Evenson
-
Altmann's Tongue
- Stories and a Novella
- By: Brian Evenson
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Evenson's first collection of 25 short stories and one novella, Altmann's Tongue (1994), garnered comparisons to Paul Bowles, Poe, and Kafka and is considered by many an existential masterpiece.
-
-
Hard to describe
- By Scott Rees Ferrin on 07-19-22
By: Brian Evenson
-
The Open Curtain
- By: Brian Evenson
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Rudd, a troubled teenager, embarks on a school research project, he runs across the secret Mormon ritual of blood sacrifice and its role in a 1902 murder committed by the grandson of Brigham Young. Along with his newly discovered half brother, Rudd becomes swept up in the psychological and atavistic effects of this violent, antique ritual. As the past and the present become an increasingly tangled knot, Rudd is found—with minor injuries and few memories—at the scene of a multiple murder on a remote campsite.
-
-
Theological Horror
- By Scott Rees Ferrin on 12-13-22
By: Brian Evenson
-
The Warren
- By: Brian Evenson
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 2 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
X doesn’t have a name. He thought he had one—or many—but that might be the result of the failing memories of the personalities imprinted within him. Or maybe he really is called X. He’s also not as human as he believes himself to be. But when he discovers the existence of another—above ground, outside the protection of the Warren—X must learn what it means to be human, or face the destruction of their two species.
-
-
Very good
- By Amazon Customer on 12-01-22
By: Brian Evenson
-
Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe
- By: Thomas Ligotti, Jeff VanderMeer - foreword
- Narrated by: Jon Padgett, Linda Jones
- Length: 21 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Thomas Ligotti’s debut collection, Songs of a Dead Dreamer, and his second, Grimscribe, permanently inscribed a new name in the pantheon of horror fiction. Influenced by the strange terrors of Lovecraft and Poe and by the brutal absurdity of Kafka, Ligotti eschews cheap, gory thrills for his own brand of horror, which shocks at the deepest, existential, levels.
-
-
Incredible!
- By Erik McHatton on 02-27-23
By: Thomas Ligotti, and others
-
The Secret of Ventriloquism
- By: Jon Padgett
- Narrated by: Jon Padgett
- Length: 5 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jon Padgett's The Secret of Ventriloquism, named the Best Fiction Book of 2016 by Rue Morgue Magazine, heralds the arrival of a significant new literary talent. With themes reminiscent of Shirley Jackson, Thomas Ligotti, and Bruno Schulz, but with a strikingly unique vision, Padgett's work explores the mystery of human suffering, the agony of personal existence, and the ghastly means by which someone might achieve salvation from both.
-
-
Stunning Modern Weird!
- By BadgerJoeTats on 03-15-17
By: Jon Padgett
-
The Shivers
- Feel the Fear
- By: Joe Hill, Stephen Graham Jones, Grady Hendrix, and others
- Narrated by: Robert Fass, Kyla Garcia, Moniqua Plante, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this chilling collection, five acclaimed authors invite you into a world where the supernatural hides in plain sight. Look closely, and you’ll find it: lurking within an ancient tree, stalking an idyllic beach, and whispering through a friend’s letter. Your curiosity is exactly what it’s been waiting for.
-
-
Great storytelling and excellent narration!
- By Walter S. on 04-22-25
By: Joe Hill, and others
-
The Stay-Awake Men & Other Unstable Entities
- By: Matthew Bartlett
- Narrated by: Jon Padgett
- Length: 3 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A supermarket meat manager carves a doorway to a parallel world of bloody horror. A fading magician encounters his former mentor performing a terrifying new act. A party-goer ducks out early and is pursued by a creature bent on cruel malevolence. Winged creatures of unknown origin terrorize a small town. A disgruntled employee works his dark magic on a new breed of middle managers. A radio stunt shatters the sanity of a DJ.
By: Matthew Bartlett
-
Father of Lies
- By: Brian Evenson
- Narrated by: Mauro Hantman
- Length: 4 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lay provost Eldon Fochs is a happily married father of four. Based on his disturbing dreams, he may also be a sex criminal. His therapist isn’t sure, and his church is determined to protect its reputation. Written from the perspectives of Fochs, his analyst Dr. Alexander Feshtig, and the letters exchanged between Feshtig and his superiors in the church, Father of Lies is Brian Evenson’s fable of power, paranoia, and the dangers of blind obedience. It offers a terrifying vision of how far institutions will go to protect themselves from the innocents who may be their victims.
-
-
Needs to come with a warning label, a retch bucket and a lap to cry on.
- By Darwin8u on 09-04-23
By: Brian Evenson
-
Nocturnal by Nature & Other Stories
- By: Nick Roberts
- Narrated by: Derek Austin, Felix Blackwell
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Travel along a backcountry road as two bickering siblings encounter a sadistic masked menace. Watch from a couple’s window as a mysterious figure lurks through the darkness of the vacant house next door. Witness a malevolent presence threaten to unravel a man’s sanity decades after testing an urban legend.
-
-
Fantastic collection of horror stories
- By Renee Blair on 03-30-25
By: Nick Roberts
-
The Conspiracy Against the Human Race
- A Contrivance of Horror
- By: Thomas Ligotti
- Narrated by: Jon Padgett
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
His fiction is known to be some of the most terrifying in the genre of supernatural horror, but Thomas Ligotti's first nonfiction book may be even scarier. Drawing on philosophy, literature, neuroscience, and other fields of study, Ligotti takes the penetrating lens of his imagination and turns it on his audience, causing them to grapple with the brutal reality that they are living a meaningless nightmare, and anyone who feels otherwise is simply acting out an optimistic fallacy.
-
-
Reader Beware
- By Anonymous User on 04-11-25
By: Thomas Ligotti
-
Spectral Evidence
- By: Gemma Files
- Narrated by: Joel Froomkin, Hillary Huber, Zura Johnson, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For almost thirty years, Shirley Jackson Award–winning horror author Gemma Files has consistently served up tale after tale celebrating monstrosity in all its forms: the imperfect, the broken, the beautifully alien, and the sadly familiar. Her characters make their own choices and take their own chances, slipping from darkness into deeper darkness yet never losing their humanity—not even when they’re anything but.
-
-
New writer for me and an Anthology of Horror !
- By Androoski on 11-05-24
By: Gemma Files
Excellent audio book of a classic!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The Deeply Weird Midnight Master
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Must-read for horror fans
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Meh
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
pseudo-poetic, pretentious, monotonous prose
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The worst part is that the ones I don’t find boring could be good stories if the author didn’t use a thesaurus for each individual word of the story. Sometimes a simple sentence like “his reflection stared back at him” is enough, there’s no need to find the longest possible synonyms for every word in a story. I get that the author is inspired by lovecraft and other old Weird Fiction writers, but trying to artificially mimic their style by just using words that sound fancy doesn’t always (or even usually) work.
I found a ton of reviews online of people saying that they loved this collection, so take my complaints with a grain of salt. I’m not even trying to tear down or insult the author, I just don’t want anyone else with similar tastes to me to end up wasting their money on this.
TLDR: the stories tend to be boring, the author uses big words that barely fit, please listen to the sample before buying.
Please buy something else
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.