The Dark Side of Hell

By: Patrick C. Harrison III

Narrated by: Shrader Thomas

Length: 5 hrs and 1 min

Publisher's summary

After a not-so-entertaining evening at a "haunted house," the Gibsons go about their unconventional routines on Halloween day. Little do they realize, the free passes to another haunted house experience they received upon exiting THE DARK SIDE OF HELL are tickets to the most horrifying times of their lives.

©2023 Patrick C Harrison III (P)2023 Fright Night Audio

Stay for the narration.

This definitely missed the mark and that’s unusual for PC3.

A tererible family goes to a haunted house and then get mandatorily invited back. Bad things happen.

Pros: neat uses of extreme/splatterpunk book titles, the first 25% of the book.

Cons: pretty much everything else.

BUT! The narration was perfection so kudos to the narrator for keeping me listening to the end.

Make sure you have a strong stomach

This is some extreme stuff: sexual assault, body horror, necrophagy. Don’t listen after you’ve eaten. You’ve been warned.

The story is gross but strangely compelling. The Gibson family is “invited” to attend a haunted house called The Dark Side of Hell on Halloween night where they are subjected to incredible horrors and depravity that makes their own deep family problems pale in comparison. As you listen you can’t help but wonder what horrible things are going to happen next, so you keep going.

The characters are interesting, though I would have appreciated a little more depth. No one deserves the horrors visited upon them in this story, but I don’t feel like the characters really came to any realization or learned anything about themselves in the process of enduring the dark side of hell, Horror allows for self-examination and reflection even amidst body counts and gore. This is horror for the sake of horror, which is fine if that’s what you’re looking for.

The narrator does a good job of evoking the emotions in each character and upping the tensions on each scene. I have to admit that some of the voices he does add a darkly amusing air to the story, which works well I think.

Overall, a decent story but you really have to have a strong stomach to listen.

Started strong

I absolutely loved the way this book started. It was creepy and eerie, and I thought, hmm, maybe PCH is taking a break from extreme! Let’s see where this goes.

I was wrong lol. It’s extreme.

There’s a significant amount of gore just to be disgusting, so if that’s your jam you’ll love it. I enjoyed the actual story line, but the SA and unnecessary gore were not enjoyable (for me).

I loved the use of Indie author books as characters in this story. I haven’t read all of the books mentioned, but I recognized all of the names. Very cool Easter Egg. The narration was on point and voiced expertly.

Extreme Horror

Dark and disgusting, just the way a book of this sub-genre should be. This book is definitely extreme horror, so please check your TW. The narrator was the perfect choice!

Highly recommended

Love thatPC3 is never afraid to push the boundaries and his version of a Halloween tale is no exception
Fright night always does a stellar job matching the right narrator with the story
If you enjoy splatter punk and are constantly looking for the most extreme like myself this is a no-brainer 5stars

Very Extreme

This one was very rough to get through. I used it as a test to see what I could stand. I had to skip 2 scenes. It cemented what I already suspected. Extreme is not for me