The Morgue Files is an Audio Play horror anthology series created by David Near and Chazz Ravenelle, featuring transformed stories of creepypasta characters and other original takes on horror.
Episodes are presented as case files detailing paranormal occurrences and grisly murders that happened in the town of Forest Lawn, Michigan. Many of these case files involve people who were seen by Dr. Clarence T. Wilson at Pinehearst State Hospital. As the series progresses, all of the cases are slowly intertwined into a story that encompasses every odd thing that happened to each patient.
A side-series called The Pinehearst Sessions, featuring interviews with Jeffrey Mason, can be found here
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A playlist of the episodes (in chronological order) can be found here.
The Morgue Files contain examples of:
- Adaptation Name Change: Many of the characters based on pre-existing creepypasta characters had their names changed in this series.
- Abled in the Adaptation: Unlike his inspiration, Ticci Toby, there is no indication that Tobias Adams has Tourette's Syndrome.
- Anachronic Order: The series is told in reverse chronological order. Case #1 occurs in 2018, Case #2 in 2016, Case #3 in 2010 and Case #4 in 2000.
- Asshole Victim: With the exception of Case #4, there is at least one character in each case who deserves their fate just because of how deplorable they are.
- In Case #1, there are Frank and Evelyn Rogers, Tobias' abusive stepfather and mother, respectively. He kills them both before burning their house down.
- In Case #2, there is Paul, the gang member who slashed Jeffrey Mason's face. He ends up getting slashed in the face before being blown up inside his car.
- In Case #3, there are the Reeves twins, who were willing followers of the Faceless Demon. They're killed in a fight between them both and Officer Norris.
- Big Brother Instinct: Inverted. Tobias is the younger brother, but he put up with his stepfather Frank just so that his older sister Millie would have someone who would protect her.
- Doppelgänger: In Case #4, Sally has a nightmare involving an evil version of herself. After Sally dies, her doppelganger attempts to kill Aiden Klein, and succeeds in killing her grandmother, Helen Bauman.
- Expy: Almost every character is inspired by a pre-existing horror or Creepypasta character.
- In Vino Veritas: Played for Drama. During one of Evelyn's drunken outbursts, she outright tells Tobias that she thought of him as a mistake, telling him that she never loved him at all. She tries to explain this away with the alcohol, but this doesn't stop Tobias from killing her and Frank.
- Parental Favoritism: Evelyn never made it ambiguous which of her two children she loved the most, doting on her oldest child Millie to the point where she nearly neglects Tobias. It gets worse after she marries Frank.
- Wicked Stepfather: Frank can be described as every bad adjective in the book. He's horribly abusive to his oldest stepdaughter Millie, and he regularly physically abuses Tobias.
- Would Hurt a Child: Near the end of Case #3, after Tim Reeves kills Officer Norris' wife, he also kills her newborn baby by shooting him in the head.
