Echoes in the Stone

De: Joshua Bish

Narrado por: Daniel LaRiviere

Some places do not need ghosts. The walls remember them. When freelance journalist Ellie Glass enters the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, she believes she’s chasing a forgotten chapter of West Virginia history, a trail of vanished patients, missing records, and whispered rumors buried beneath the stone. What she finds instead is something far older than the hospital’s crumbling halls… and far hungrier than the dead who never left. The deeper Ellie searches, the more the asylum changes around her. Corridors shift. Shadows breathe. The past bleeds into the present. And somewhere inside the dark, a presence watches with a patience that feels almost human.

As Ellie uncovers the horrifying truth behind the lost ledger of Dr. Walter Freeman, she realizes the asylum is not haunted by memory alone. Something opens its eyes for the first time in decades, a thing shaped by hunger, bound to bone and myth, waiting for someone foolish enough to listen. Ellie came to expose the truth. Instead, she awakens it. Echoes in the Stone is a relentless descent into Appalachian horror, blending psychological dread, historical reality, and the chilling knowledge that some stories never sleep. For fans of The Haunting of Hill House, The Shining, and dark folklore that crawls under the skin and stays there, this audiobook will haunt you long after the final chapter.

©2025 Joshua Bish (P)2025 Joshua Bish

Haunting folklore rooted in a real asylum

I had previously listened to The Lady in Flesh by the same author, so when I got the opportunity to listen to this one, I jumped in immediately. It’s set in a similar environment rooted in Appalachian folklore, which gives it a familiar look and feel, at least for me, but the story itself is very different from the Psalm of the Tear series. I love how this audiobook takes the past and brings it into the present, because as you listen and Ellie uncovers clues about what was happening in the asylum, everything slowly connects.

In my opinion, this one is actually better because it isn’t as dark as the other book, yet it still has a strong and immersive atmosphere. The characters are, of course, dark, perhaps darker than I expected, especially since this book doesn’t include flesh rituals. Instead, it shows an Ellie who, in her search for light, becomes entangled in shadows and uncovers a story about her family that might have been better left buried, deep and cold.

For example, the scene where Mr. Hanlon tells Ellie about the different practices performed in the asylum (such as lobotomies) completely froze my blood, and I had to stop listening for a while. The same happened during the scene when Daniel gives her a tour of the installations of that horrible place.

echoes in the stone

Echoes in the Stone is a dark grippling and unsettling but well narrated audiobook. It blends horror and history together with intense tension. A great audiobook for those who like horror and mystery.