The Documentary Horror Series On Amazon That Took Podcasts To Another Dimension

Lore started as a documentary podcast by Aaron Mahnke (Cabinet of Curiosities), created in 2015. His podcast covered everything from horrific historical events to folklore and legends. The premise of Lore was mostly to discuss popular horror legends like vampires and werewolves and the potential truths behind these myths.

In 2017, the podcast was turned into a TV show. Aaron Mahnke has a heavily influential hand on the episodes and worked alongside Gale Anne Hurd (The Terminator), Ben Silverman (Charmed), and Howard Owens (Tabitha Takes Over) to create the Lore TV show.

Each episode features voice-over clips from the Lore podcast for the story. Documentary footage and a few cinematic scenes help to further bring the story to life and increase the dread and horror for the viewers.

There are a total of 12 episodes across the two seasons of Lore. They covered topics like ice pick lobotomies, vampires, fairies, haunted dolls, and werewolves in the first season. The second season is more focused on murders, like the Burke and Hare murders, Elizabeth Bathory, and the Hinterkaifeck murders, though there are still a few episodes on other events.

Unfortunately, the show had some rather mixed reviews, and Season 2 of Lore didn’t do well at all. While the first season included Mahnke’s narrations, the second removed them entirely. Even though the show did much better with its production, it lost a lot of life in the second season by removing the narration entirely.

Season 1 of Lore had some pretty mixed reviews. Critics gave the series an average score of 69 percent, and audience members were right behind with an average score of 68 percent. While some people loved it, others felt the show couldn’t stand up on their own.

This was proved in Season 2 when the narration went away, and the story was dull and lifeless. The narration from the original podcast gave Lore life, and it became nothing more than a weak horror anthology, according to fans.

This series had a much lower rating of 22 percent by audience members and no rating from critics. It did so poorly that Amazon decided to cancel any chance of future seasons.

This isn’t the only podcast Mahnke works on. In addition to Lore, he has a shorter podcast called Cabinet of Curiosities and Unobscured. Both also cover similar themes, with Cabinet of Curiosities focused on weird events and Unobscured spending more time breaking down major historical events and people like Rasputin and the Salem witch trials.

If you love the podcasts or just want to watch something creepy about history, the two seasons of Lore are available to watch on Amazon Prime Video. If you like the show and want to enjoy more of the stories, the podcast is available at most places you’ll find podcasts, like Spotify and iTunes.