Hi gang. As Haunted Road wraps up its sixth season, I figured I’d give you a review of this very spooky podcast. It’s one I look forward to every week … because it’s hosted by Amy Bruni of Kindred Spirits fame. Still, you have to ask yourself, does reality TV success transfer over to podcast success? Get the scoop after the jump.

Haunted Road with Amy Bruni Overview

Amy Bruni, of Kindred Spirits and Ghost Hunters fame, started the dark history and ghost hunter interview series back in 2021. It’s produced by Grim & Mild (you know … the Lore podcast company) and iHeartRadio, the mega Internet radio network.

Now, this isn’t your regular weekly or biweekly series: It uses seasons, which I think is fitting for a TV star. Each season (usually) runs 12 episodes of about 40 minutes each. You can find new episodes each week of the season. Now, episodes focus on famous haunted locations, not Bruni’s personal investigations. The first half of each show focuses on well-researched AND referenced history, while the back half is an interview with an expert for the haunt.

As for the audience, this show is niche, like really niche. It’s spooky shenanigans at spooky places and interviews with spooky experts. Hard to classify. On Apple podcasts, the category is True Crime, but I think it’s really a history podcast.

Content & Storytelling

Haunted Road is a history podcast at heart. It might have a lot of spooky, but it’s still a history podcast. One challenge with this topic is it can feel a bit boring to casual listeners, but I think Amy pulls it off just fine.

She sticks to the spooky details, moves the history along to the next macabre event, calls out the significant names, and sets us up for the interview, which stays laser focused on ghostly shenanigans at the episode’s haunt. I’m not mad about it at all.

Does she try anything new or innovative with the history? No, not really. She simply tells the story (kinda like a plot-driven screenplay) with the emphasis on the interesting bits, and excludes the rest. I think it makes the episodes flow. I don’t even realize the episode lasted 40 minutes or so. It moves … which is a good thing.

Best Episodes

Season 6 featured 12 episodes AND Amy hadn’t investigated most of them. Here’s the list:

Episode	Title	Haunted Location
1	The House Often Left Him Fighting the Impulse to Stab His Wife	The Sallie House, Atchison, Kansas
2	Visitors Often Feel Invisible Hands Trying to Push Them From the Top of the Stairs	Graestone Manor, Gasport, New York
3	They Call Him Zombie Boy	The Oliver House, Middleboro, Massachusetts
4	The Workers Kept Uncovering Grave After Grave	The Grand Hotel, Mackinac Island, Michigan
5	Dead Man’s Hand Clutched Fast to Whiskey Bottle	Rolling Hills Asylum, East Bethany, New York
6	The Ghosts Couldn’t be Satisfied, Only Avoided	Winchester Mystery House, San Jose, California
7	They Would Hang Men by the Ceiling From Their Thumbs	Brushy Mountain Penitentiary, Petros, Tennessee
8	Crews Frequently Broke Ground, Just to Uncover Pits of Skulls, Vertebrae, and Arm and Leg Bones	Cincinnati Music Hall, Cincinnati, Ohio
9	The Sound of a Ghost Baby’s Cries Often Float Through the House	McInteer Villa, Atchison, Kansas
10	The Hospital of Death	Tooele Hospital, Tooele, Utah
11	There is No Heaven	Hinsdale House, Hinsdale, New York
12	The Most Haunted Location in Virginia	St. Albans Sanatorium, Radford, Virginia

What I liked about this season is that it featured locations I had never heard of before, and those were my favorite episodes. If I had to pick two, I’d say episodes 9 (McInteer Villa) and 8 (Cincinnati Music Hall) were ones I’d listen to again. For the most part, episode 9 drew me in for the guest interview and episode 8 for the truly chilling body parts horror story. Honorable mentions go to episodes 10 and 2.

But there was one episode that just didn’t do it for me, and that was episode 7 (Brushy Mountain Penitentiary). I don’t know how to say it any other way: It sounded like Amy really had to work to get the story from the expert. Usually, there’s a fun element to the show, but this one sounded like a chore for Amy to finish.

Strengths

What I love about Amy is that she seems like a real person—a bestie—that you can sit down with, drink wine, and talk some shit without judgement. And that comes through with Haunted Road. I like spending the 40 minutes listening to her spin a yarn about haunted history. Plus, she really likes spooky things, which helps!

Also, I like how she’s not afraid to debunk urban legends or use the phrase, “There’s no historical records to support that claim” to call out the bullshit.

I also appreciate that she doesn’t sugarcoat the horrible things that happened at a haunt. Now, she doesn’t push gore or anything like that: She simply and concisely states what happened using as much detail as necessary. It’s refreshing.

As for pacing, no complaints. I do think some listeners would like a deep dive into the dark history at the episode’s haunt. Maybe Amy could provide that as part of her club, Paranormal Circle, or on Patreon? Just an idea.

However, I think the history is used to setup the interviews in the back half of each episode. In that regard, she gives us enough history to understand the ghostly shenanigans in the interview.

Room for Improvement

I don’t have many beefs with the show’s production, but a few things stood out to me:

1. I can tell Amy’s reading the history parts, and it really stands out when the show moves into the more relaxed interview segment.
2. I noticed the edits. It’s like there’s not enough of a pause going into and out of the edit, so Amy starts speaking sooner than she would.
3. The guests’ sound quality can vary a great deal: I really notice when someone uses a laptop mic.
4. The research sources aren’t listed on the podcast episode pages, which I’d like to see.

I might be spoiled by listening to Aaron Mahnke’s Lore podcast. He’s just reading a script, but it doesn’t sound like it. I know it’s not fair to compare Amy to him, but I can tell … and I don’t think it should be noticeable.

As for the edits and guest sound quality, sometimes that’s the best you’re going to get. I make a podcast, and I run into these problems, too. When it comes to the hard edits, that’s as simple as adding in a bit more room noise and extending the space between audio segments (yes, I am a nerd).

Finally, listing the sources should be easy to do. Again, I might be comparing it to the Lore podcast, but that production house does it for Lore, so they can add links to sources for Haunted Road. Plus, I really dig reading the original source.

Note: I checked the Apple podcast episode page, Podbean episode page and On My Studio (I think that’s what Spotify calls it) for sources and didn’t find them.

The Critical Judgement

👻👻👻👻 out of 5

Haunted Road is a fun, spooky adventure through dark history, and it features engaging guests with deep knowledge of a haunt. You also learn a thing or two, which is ideal for me.

Add this spooky show to your podcast downloads. You won’t regret it.

You can listen to Haunted Road with Amy Bruni on every major podcast platform out there.

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Do you listen to Haunted Road with Amy Bruni? What did you think of the last season? Let me know in the comments.

Thanks for reading Ghostly Activities. Much appreciated and take care!