How do you catch a murderer who has already been killed? In the brand new crime drama podcast, Ghost Town Killer from Jeremy Lutter and Marcy Waughtal, Lilith Black (Dalila Bela) is looking to find that answer. The series is told through Lilith’s paranormal podcast In the series first episode, “My Sister’s Last Séance,” Lilith returns home to Fort McBeth and her sister Amanda (Emily Tennant) is killed while the two are conducting a séance in an old haunted hotel. But things aren’t what they appear and Lilith decides it’s time to do a bit of investigating on her own.
DISCLAIMER: The following post is a recap and by nature, will contain spoilers! If you haven’t gotten the chance to listen to this week’s episode of Ghost Town Killer – go check it out! You can listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher!
RELATED: GGA’s 6 Favorite Fandom Podcasts That Should Be on Your Radar
“My Sister’s Last Séance” begins as Lilith meets with Fort McBeth’s last police officer Donovan McKenzie (Dakota Daulby) and Vancouver homicide investigator Tadashi Hamamoto (Hiro Kanagawa). Lilith recounts the events leading up to her sister’s death, including the mysterious being that was standing over Amanda’s body. Tadashi points out that the two weren’t close and that it’s rather odd that Lilith returned to Fort McBeth on the day of her sister’s death. However, he warns Lilith not to leave town during the investigation and that if she does, he will find her.
Lilith returns to her motel later that day to freshen up. While she is in the shower, someone or something sneaks into her room and leaves her a message on the bathroom mirror. It says, “Forget what you saw.” Clearly spooked, Lilith decides to take a walk to clear her head when she is nearly run off the road by a truck that appears to be carrying a dead body in the bed. The driver is Rick (Matthew MacCaull), Amanda’s husband, who is clearly upset over her death. When Lilith finally calms him down, he shows her that it isn’t a human body in the bed but a deer.
Not wanting to return to her motel just yet, Lilith heads over to Rick’s house instead. During the ride, he makes a mysterious phone call to a colleague at the mine, Ivan Molotov (Andre Tricoteux). Ivan is worried that Rick went to the police to rat him out, but Rick lets him know he didn’t let anything slip but needs a favor from Ivan. He doesn’t actually say what it is, just that he needs him at the mines. However, Ivan doesn’t seem too keen on the idea of helping Rick. We also learn that Rick is the brother of Donovan, who might have gotten him out of trouble in the past.
At the house, Lilith and Rick discuss his police station visit. Rick doesn’t like Investigator Tadashi, who thought it was odd he and Amanda had different last names. Lilith asks Rick about the supposed affair Amanda was having. Rick opens up that Amanda was sleeping with Jiu Fu (Curtis Lum), the son of the mine’s previous owner. He decided to follow her one night to make sure and saw her sneak over to the Fu house. Lilith doesn’t think this sounds like Amanda at all, but Rick is certain that Jia must have promised Amanda the world in order to win her over from Rick.
“My Sister’s Last Séance” cuts to a radio broadcast where we hear Rick serving as the union leader for the miners who are unwilling to let go of their jobs. However, new mine owners Lucy Fu (Olivia Cheng) and her brother Jia need the miners to work with them, and with coal taking a hit on the market, it seems some are going to lose their jobs until it gets better.
Lilith decides that she needs to learn more about her sister’s relationship with Jia. She visits the Fu house where she finds Lucy first. She lets on that Jia is having meetings behind her back before sending Lilith in. The conversation with Jia is full of tension and Lilith uncovers a compass in his office that belonged to Amanda. She blatantly asks Jia if the two were having an affair. Jia accuses her of coming on behalf of Rick and kicks Lilith out.
Lilith knows that Jia is lying about knowing Amanda and returns to the motel to do a bit more research. She ends up finding a photo of Amanda, Lucy and Jia at an event. It’s pretty hard not to know everyone in this tiny town. While recording some voiceover work for her podcast, Lilith hears something hitting against her window. Upon investigation, she gets hit by a snowball from some children. When she returns to the motel room, she realizes that someone has snuck into her room and finds a bat shut into her bathroom.
While trying to distress after that bat incident, Lilith is in her motel room playing her guitar when Donovan pays her a visit. He lets her know that they have some pretty solid evidence that points to one particular witness, but Lilith cuts this out of her podcast, so we don’t get to know. Whoever it was, though, gets Lilith thinking about how her sister kept quite a few secrets from her. Donovan tells Lilith that he is risking his job by telling her, but he knew she needed to hear this in order to put her imagination to rest.
The next more Lilith shares that she had every intention of not including Donovan’s secret in the podcast, but someone else let something slip and it ended up on the news. She includes some clips in her podcast of news stations talking about how the motive for the murder was an affair. But not with Jia, but Lucy! They refer to her as vindictive and money-hungry. It seems that some believe she might be responsible for Amanda’s murder.
Donovan reaches out to Lilith and accuses her of going to the news with the secret. She tries to explain that it wasn’t her and the only person she has spoken with was him, but he doesn’t believe it. Lilith decides that it’s time to get serious with her own investigation and shares with us that she overheard the coroner sharing information with Tadashi before leaving the police station. Something serious that doesn’t point to Lucy being the murderer.
In a flashback sequence of “My Sister’s Last Séance,” Lilith shares audio from the day she returned to Fort McBeth. She visits with Amanda and opens up about how her podcast is struggling to gain followers and she might be kicked off the air. Amanda does a bit of energy cleansing to help Lilith figure out what she needs to do. But Lilith already has a plan and it includes Amanda joining her for a special episode of her podcast at the haunted ghost hotel.
Lilith and Amanda visit the old ghost town and the murder hotel and Lilith gives us a bit of background on the previous owner. Inside they head down into the basement, where they hold a séance to talk to the dead. As Amanda performs the seance, we overhear a ghostly voice speaking out, warning them to stay away and never return. Lilith tries to talk back, but the ghost refuses to answer. She then threatens to kill them before attacking Lilith and disappearing.
In the present, Lilith is providing a voiceover for what happened next. She had left Amanda inside as she went out to grab new batteries for her equipment. She hears Amanda scream from inside, but when Lilith gets back inside, she only catches a glimpse of a figure standing over Amanda’s body that quickly disappears. Lilith knows that supernatural elements are mostly explained away by science or just an unsettling feeling, but she believes that there is more.
She ties up the podcast episode by sharing with us the evidence the coroner found. Well, more accurately, what he didn’t find. Amanda’s body was missing all of her organs. Where did they go? Lilith’s goal now is to prove to her listeners that a ghost murdered Amanda.
RELATED: Our Favorite Webtoon Podcasts That Recap, Theorize and Gush Over Our Favorite Stories
Now that is how you do crime drama podcast. I absolutely love this first episode of Ghost Town Killer! Who really killed Amanda? Nothing is cut and dry in this podcast and I am here for it. It could be jealous girlfriend Lucy or the angry husband, Rick. Or maybe, Lilith isn’t the most reliable narrator and we are going to learn that she was the one behind all of this. For all we know, we could get new information in the next episode that points to someone else.
My eyes are on one significant bit of evidence now, and it’s the fact that Amanda’s body didn’t have any organs in it. Now, if you weren’t paying close attention to Lilith’s conversation with Rick, you might have missed the fact that he kept all of the organs from the deer he killed. He told Lilith that Amanda was the one who taught him to make use of every part of his kill. So could this be pointing to Rick? Or did Amanda learn this from someone else?
The next episode of Ghost Town Killer releases Tuesday, June 1, 2021!
Who I Am: A nerd by the strictest definition. I enjoy diving straight into my favorite fandoms without a care in the world. I live on video/board games, fantasy movies and TV, and all things geeky.
- Saturday Morning Webtoons: DAGGER TO THE HEART and TO DIE OR TO FALL IN LOVE - December 7, 2024
- Tavern Talk Thursday: Cold Themed DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS Monsters - December 5, 2024
- Gift Guide: Must-Have Gifts for WEBTOON Lovers - December 1, 2024
