Exploring the darkness that lurks in Maine's woods
Maine is a place where fog clings to the trees, stories linger in the soil, and the night carries more than shadows. Acadia After Dark uncovers the folklore, haunted history, and unexplained encounters that shape this rugged coastline and deep forest. Made by locals who know these woods intimately, our work blends research, storytelling, and horror to reveal the strange world that thrives after sunset.
Visitors to Acadia After Dark
Ryan Von Ghoulsworth is a Maine‑born archivist, DJ, writer, and curator of the strange, specializing in the forgotten and folkloric corners of the state’s underground music history. Raised in Auburn and now based in Portland, Ryan has spent decades immersed in Maine’s DIY scenes, collecting obscure recordings, documenting lost bands, and championing the artists who shaped the region’s sonic identity.
Ryan’s creative path has always blended the macabre with the hyper‑local. From 2015 to 2018, he served as a producer for Damnationland: The Way Life Should Bleed, a film project celebrating Maine’s horror culture. There, Ryan helped launch the Damnationland: Music for the Wicked soundtracks, inviting Maine musicians to contribute exclusive tracks—an early spark that would evolve into their life’s work of musical preservation.
In 2019, what began as a personal mixtape exchange—sending compilations of Maine bands to strangers around the world—grew into Mutants of the East, a project dedicated to unearthing “macabre oddities” from deep within the state’s rural music archives. Ryan brought the project to radio in 2022 as a weekly show on WMPG, showcasing rare and overlooked recordings from the 60s through the early 2000s.
By 2025, Mutants of the East expanded into a full record label, committed to preserving Maine’s diverse and often undocumented musical legacy—from eerie experimental tapes to long‑lost punk singles and outsider folk. The label continues Ryan’s mission to amplify voices that never found a platform in the streaming era.
Beyond music, Ryan is a VHS collector, former filmmaker, and lifelong enthusiast of Maine’s haunted history. Their love of the eerie extends from ghost tours to attempts at reviving forgotten local horror films such as Lobsteroids and Dark Currents. They are also known for a charmingly odd footnote in Maine pop culture: during their college years working at Dairy Queen, Ryan regularly served Stephen King his go‑to order—a small vanilla cone.
Today, Ryan lives in Portland with his wife and a pack of cats, continuing to document Maine’s hidden creative past while fostering new collaborations through projects like the Maine Covers Maine compilation. Whether on the radio, in the archives, or behind the scenes of community‑driven releases, Ryan Von Ghoulsworth remains one of Maine’s most dedicated stewards of the weird, the local, and the long‑forgotten
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