When word got out that on April 8 a large meteorite fell from the sky and landed somewhere in far eastern Maine, Fred Greenhalgh and his collaborators on Maine horror podcast “Undertow” immediately started imagining fantastic scenarios for it.
There’s a $25,000 reward from the Maine Mineral & Gem Museum in Bethel for anyone who finds a piece of the meteorite larger than one kilogram, which astronomers believe fell in the sparsely populated mile-wide area between the Washington County town of Waite and the Canadian border.
The fact that no one’s found it yet further intrigued Greenhalgh and the other writers on “Undertow,” including Morgan Sylvia, Bob LeBlanc and Shawn French, all based in Maine.
“It literally seems straight out of a Stephen King story,” said Greenhalgh, an Old Town native and Alfred resident who for the past 17 years has created audio dramas and podcasts. “It’s out in the middle of nowhere in Maine. There’s $25,000 on the line if you find it. It came from space. Of course we’re going to think there’s some supernatural element to it.”
In “The Pulse,” Greenhalgh and company tell a story about the people descending on a tiny Maine town, in search of a fallen meteorite, in order to claim a cash prize offered for it. It’s the fifth season of “Undertow” and premieres Aug. 25 on Realm.fm, the largest scripted podcast network in the country
In this version of the story, however, the treasure hunters searching for the meteorite begin feeling a strange, erratic pulse that causes them to start giving in to their baser instincts. Is the pulse coming from the meteorite? What if it’s not actually a meteorite that streaked across the sky and landed in Maine?
Each season of “Undertow” has told a different Maine horror story, including “Blood Forest,” about a stretch of Maine woods full of monsters, and “Dark Tome,” about a mysterious book with magical powers.
“We like to think of it as a kind of virtual campfire story,” Greenhalgh said. “I think horror stories are most effective when they are actually grounded in reality, and with ‘Undertow,’ it’s really ripped from the headlines.”
Greenhalgh is a pioneer in the world of audio drama and podcasting. Years before seemingly everyone had a podcast, he was creating all-original audio dramas from his home studio in the Portland area and launched his first podcast in 2007. At that time, it was an all-consuming hobby for him, but with the podcast boom of the past decade, Greenhalgh found himself well-positioned to turn it into a career.
Since 2014, Greenhalgh has served as a producer, writer and director for podcasts such as Audible’s companion podcast for “The X-Files;” for “Marigold Breach,” starring Jameela Jamil and Manny Jacinto; and “The Cleansed,” an original, award-winning sci-fi audio drama produced under his own company, FinalRune. He also developed the 13.5-hour-long “audio movie” version of Joe Hill’s “Locke and Key,” featuring the voices of Tatiana Maslany, Haley Joel Osment, and Maine’s own Stephen King.
Since 2021, Greenhalgh has worked full-time for Realm Media from his off-the-grid homestead in Alfred and also teaches classes in audio drama.
“I feel like I was in the right place at the right time, because when all these celebrities started podcasts during the pandemic, suddenly I was in-demand for these skills I’d kind of honed for all those years prior,” he said. “Now I get to do this as my actual job, which is still kind of incredible to me.”
“The Pulse,” the fifth season of “Undertow,” will premiere on August 25 and run for three weekly episodes. For more information, visit finalrune.com.