Friends, Lovers, & Other Gaslighters

25 Tales of Terror and the Bizarre

De: B.A. Ries

Narrado por: Rayne Botello

Since 2019, writer B.A. Ries has delivered dozens of tales of dark thrills and edge-of-your-seat suspense, garnering praise and attention in Reddit's NoSleep horror writing community. Many of these stories have been adapted for audio by podcasts such as The NoSleep Podcast and Creepy, and several have been published in written anthologies. Now, for the first time, B.A. Ries presents a compilation of these stories in "Friends, Lovers, and Other Gaslighters."

These 25 tales of the macabre and the bizarre feature an assortment of menacing minions, from hitchhiking ghosts to sentient scarecrows to vindictive vending machines. A washed-up star from a children's television show is hired to appear at a mysterious gathering. A woman returning home for the holidays finds herself drawn into a strange Christmas village. Two girls bond at summer camp, only to learn that they each harbor a dark secret. An ideal job comes with a shocking drawback. Don't expect formula from these stories. They go to weird, dark places. Some are just spooky; others also explore social issues: soul-sucking jobs, opioid addiction, the lingering impact of pandemic-era isolation, compulsory heterosexuality, and sexual repression. More than anything, these stories are about the worst demons of all — those who abuse the trust you put in them to make you question yourself, your identity, and whether your loved ones love you back.

"Friends, Lovers, and Other Gaslighters" provides a glimpse into a world of those who trick you into letting them into your life. And, by the time you realize that your friend — or even your lover — is your enemy, it's already too late.

©2025 B. A. Ries (P)2025 B.A. Ries

Unique Engaging Short Stories

Not your usual stories, unique and imaginative. Short stories but long enough to engage the listener.

A fine, if somewhat staid, collection of horror

Tension and release. Expectation and subversion. Blood and guts. These are the key elements of horror. The best horror writers know how to execute these elements seamlessly while telling a compelling, poignant story. Everyone else finds ways to work in these elements as best they can throughout their stories. I found that a couple of the stories in gaslight's twenty five tracks were able to engage with all these elements at once. Most of the stories were well crafted and perfectly functional if not run of the mill tales of terror. Only a couple I found downright terrible, but I do wonder how much better the stories would have resonated with a more capable reader. The real downfall of this collection is a rather poor performance by the voice over artist, who doesn't understand horror storytelling. Better yet, this would be wonderfully served by a cast of horror versed voice actors endeavoring to bring these audio tales to life.

Highlights-
B.A. Ries writes well. Characters are interesting, plots pay off in satisfying ways. I never outright disliked anything I heard, which isn't often the case. That being said, it doesn't rise to the heights of Poe or King, but what does?

Originality is sadly difficult to find in horror. So when Transformations began with a former child star pedaling nostalgia to pay the bills, I was genuinely intrigued, how would this pay off? Fortunately the visit to a strange home and ensuing situation thrust upon this erstwhile star was very rewarding. It is a truly great horror story that takes familiar elements and finds ways to make them surprising and satisfying.

First Heat is also great, sadly the version on the no sleep podcast is far superior than the version found here, for reasons discussed below.

Weaknesses
Too often the author fell upon the same old tropes. The thing our protagonist sees isn't really there. The circumstances weren't what they seem. Plots that feel copied from twilight zone episodes. Often the stories lack subversion or surprise, at least for the listener with a decent level of awareness of horror telling tools. That might not be a weakness for everyone, I personally enjoy when the story ends up in a different place than I expect. In nearly every story, I knew the end by the middle or earlier. That may just be my experience.

If I'm being kind, the voice actor is passable at best. Which just doesn't cut it for an audio book, especially in the world of horror lit. As this author has been adapted multiple times in well known horror podcasts, I would have hoped for a more professional presentation, but it just wasn't there. Often times I wondered if they kept a first pass at the material. Worse it's marred with mispronunciations, which takes me out of the story. I want to feel like this was a crafted experience, not a voice for hire gig. For instance, listen to the no sleep rendition of first heat, and then listen to this version, the differences between the productions are stark and obvious.

Worse still are stories that seemingly exist to nail home a message rather than tell a story. Galapagos is some kind of polemic either for or against Darwinism, but told very poorly with characters that felt two dimensional and farcical. All I heard was the authors ace, grinding along. It didn't sound good.

Lastly, and this is a nitpick, but it really annoyed me. The author or publisher decided to sequence part 1 of a story and part two and three twenty tracks apart. It's just annoying for the listener to attempt to recall the original story told at such a distance from the rest.

Over all this is a fine if somewhat formulaic collection of stories with a couple real highlights there were unfortunately tarnished by a poor voice over artist. I'm certain that the no sleep podcast version of this authors stories are performed and produced in a much more satisfying way. I would be surprised if that's true for all of the tracks in this group of stories.