The podcast Alice Isn’t Dead almost doesn’t feel like a podcast sometimes—it feels more like a road trip in audio form. It’s the tale of one woman’s search for her wife Alice, where she joins up with a trucking company with bone-chilling supernatural ties. Now USA is turning it into a TV show, and a book deal is on the way, per The Washington Post.
Alice Isn’t Dead was created by Joseph Fink, the creator of Welcome to Night Vale. In it, the narrator’s search for the missing woman Alice leads her to join a trucking company that takes her across the country—both through familiar, busy places as well as all the vast emptiness in between. All the while, she feels like she’s being followed by something vile that she’s convinced must have something to do with Alice’s disappearance.
It’s also one of the best descriptions of a long road trip I’ve ever heard. I might not encounter the podcast’s pungent-smelling yellow ghoul called the Thistle Man on any of my trips (I hope), but I’ve certainly been stuck in many of the in-between spaces where your only entertainment is a string of billboards, or changes in topography and vegetation.
If you haven’t listened to the podcast itself, it’s all but a perfect match for long-distance travel. It was what we piped into the LeMons Rally car’s makeshift audio system for long hauls across the eastern part of the country because it just fit.
But if audio isn’t your preferred format, congratulations, Alice Isn’t Dead is coming to other formats to creep you out there, too. Show creator Joseph Fink is writing a novel based on the show set for a fall 2018 release, which publisher HarperCollins describes as a “fast-paced thriller,” the Washington Post notes.
Additionally, Fink will serve as the executive producer for the television adapation of Alice Isn’t Dead, which is in the works for the USA Network, but doesn’t have a release date yet.
Regardless of how you tune into the story, watch out for that Thistle Man, and remember to pay attention to all the weird details when you’re out on the open road.