Terror makes us rethink our condition: José Ramón Cantalapiedra

Omar González Morales

La Jornada Newspaper, Tuesday, July 8, 2025, p. 5

The book Tales from the Dark Side, published by Planeta, is more than just horror stories: it's a journey through more than 30 years of stories told by the audience of the radio show of the same name.

Author and host José Ramón Cantalapiedra, engineer, has witnessed firsthand the return of the narrative radio genre, which has now found its new home on YouTube, where he has consolidated his project.

Of Basque origin, José Ramón Cantalapiedra was always drawn to stories. As a young man, while studying engineering at a university in Puebla, he did voiceover work for commercials and radio broadcasts on the institution's radio station. After completing his studies, he focused on his profession, unaware that he would soon return to the stage.

In an interview with La Jornada, the writer spoke about his transition from radio to YouTube, and now to written fiction, after hearing hundreds of stories from his listeners.

Getting into radio in 2003 was a real pleasure. I used to do it for college assignments, but I loved it, and at the same time, I was a civil engineer. A friend, who was already a producer for another show, invited me to the project. When I arrived, I realized that listening to people was exciting , she commented.

The narrator explained that it was very difficult to combine his work as an engineer with that of a voiceover artist.

I didn't want to leave because there was so much to talk about. Just as my life as an engineer was ending, I would step into the booth and it was a different world. I don't know how I would have been able to live my life without it. It was a sharp cut from the reality of construction problems to a place where I could talk about a variety of topics , he explained.

He asserted that in the field of communication, it is key to never lose the capacity for wonder: on the contrary, I remain more interested than before in what people tell me, because the world and the stories are bigger than we think .

The YouTube channel Tales from the Dark Side is a hit. Its audience transcends ages; children, young adults, and adults enjoy Cantalapiedra's storytelling of horror and legends. But it's not all fiction; it also covers historical accounts, such as plane crashes, natural disasters, and real and literary crimes, all thoroughly documented.

It's complicated because today's audiences are so immersed in the immediate. A young person can spend three hours on their phone looking at 10 things, but only three of them were interested in what they saw. That's the challenge we all face as journalists, writers, and content creators , Cantalapiedra said.

The narrator stated that the Internet gives the advantage of generating a sense of closeness with the public , because now a person who arrives home from work, and does not want to listen to the news, can easily open the Internet and listen to a story told by a man sitting in front of him, who describes or explains something, making him feel accompanied and breaking a cycle of loneliness .

YouTube is home to many projects on a variety of topics, but the horror community has found the platform to be the perfect place for the genre, which has led to more viewers immersing themselves in the literary genre.

“I liked the theme of horror because it's relatable to everyone. It returns us to a natural, vulnerable state, making us rethink our conditions. People can have an orderly life: home, work, family… but when you realize that all of that can be shattered, and that it can happen to you, you start to think about it. That adrenaline is what makes us aware that something might happen,” commented José Ramón Cantalapiedra.

The writer spoke about his project's strong radio precedent: "If we have to talk about horror programs, of course we must return to the case of La mano peluda; they told very engaging stories, because the audience created them, but they always focused on the same themes. We seek to vary and give the 'fine details' to the stories; that defines our work a lot."

With thousands of stories in the background, the book Tales from the Dark Side is a small sample of the program's consolidation: "I'm not a writer: I'm a numbers and math person, and from there to jumping into radio and then into narrative has been a wonderful experience.

"I never knew when we'd have enough for a book. I wanted to add more, but it wasn't the right time, although we could do another one because I've heard stories that would last a lifetime. We don't cover many other topics, and we don't know what the future holds, but this program's adventure continues ," he concluded.