For the New Year we look back on singletons we met once but never really got a chance at love. So for this date we pull the Pascagoula Elephantmen out of the stables for a little space seduction and alien abduction. Strap in and strap on because these ETs are out of this world.
Featuring: we have rhythm (sort of) - New Years Resolutions - “Sliterature” - hot takes on orc romance novels - Spooky News: The International Cryptozoology Museum is moving, San Antonio Dogman Sightings, Bigfoot Bae - carrot-like protrusions - two bros chilling in a rowboat - when the downstairs is the upstairs - AND MORE!
CW: Spiders (4:05-5:30), discussion of fantasy stereotypes/racism (16:00-16:55), death from cancer (57:00-58:00), mentions of abduction/physical restriction related to extraterrestrials throughout
We are proud to be a part of the Sword & Key Network - beacons.ai/swordandkey. Our music is by the handsome and talented Nick Lambert. Find him on Instagram @lambertropolis. All other music and sounds are licensed through Epidemic Sounds.
Happy Holidays from all of us at Monster Crush! To celebrate this festive season we return to the Yule traditions of ol for a couple monsters that are naughty, nice, and everything in between. So jingle your bells and wrap your present for the Mari Lwyd and Grýla the Christmas Witch. Plus a few bonus monsters including The Yule Cat!
Featuring: who would Zooey Deschanel play in The Lion King? - you can’t lowkey Les Mis someone - F**k, Merry, Exorcise the ghosts from A Christmas Carol - The Feast of the Ass - watch out for Sausage Swiper and Window Peeper - capitalist incentives to avoid being eaten by a cat - Stubby the Yule Lad - AND MORE!
CW: Mentions of Christianity and Christian influences on history throughout, mention of the historical use of blackface (24:20-25:10), harm to children in folklore (43:10-1:10:15)
We are proud to be a part of the Sword & Key Network - beacons.ai/swordandkey. Our music is by the handsome and talented Nick Lambert. Find him on Instagram @lambertropolis. All other music and sounds are licensed through Epidemic Sounds.
For this holiday episode we have only one question for you… Naughty or Nice? Honestly, with monsters it really doesn’t matter which you pick because even the nice ones have a dark side. So wrap your present and stuff your stocking for the naughty Kallikantzaros and the nice Nisse!
Featuring: Did we do a Krampus episode? Yes, yes we did - it’s really dark in the PNW - when you can’t count to three - throw pancakes on your roof - they’re just garden gnomes - minor cat-induced chaos - don’t put the butter on the bottom - harmless horse pranks - follow the rules, even when the rules change - a life goal is to be a sauna-spirit - AND MORE!
CW: Mentions of Christianity (throughout the episode but starting at 11:30), some serious Christian religious trauma (24:30 - 25:30), harm to infants (25:30 - 26:10), mention of the history of bigotry against Romani (31:30 - 32:14), harm to domesticated animals (54:45 - 55:30), folkloric murder (56:45 - 57:30)
We are proud to be a part of the Sword & Key Network - beacons.ai/swordandkey. Our music is by the handsome and talented Nick Lambert. Find him on Instagram @lambertropolis. All other music and sounds are licensed through Epidemic Sounds.
For many Americans Thanksgiving is a holiday focused on the iconic main dish, the turkey. But what about the country of Türkiye? Apparently it’s chock full of monsters we can smooch! So for this holiday, we gobble down on two Turkish monsters with the iconic Lake Van Monster and the nightmarish Al Basty. Pass the gravy because this episode is going to get saucy!
Featuring: an ode to the noble turkey, why we’ll never talk about Sesame Street Monsters, the alternate timeline of Big Bird tragedy, a visit to LD’s Smut Corner, Spooky News: Age of Disclosure documentary and phantom boobs - a rich cultural heritage of monsters in Türkiye, a cyclo-boobian monster, a lake monster with murder on the mind, nightmares hide where it’s wet and they ride your horse without permission, the monster that is your cool wine aunt, AND MORE!
CW: brief discussion of the Challenger explosion (11:30-13:00), conservative politicians/current politics/conservative religious conspiracies (29:00-33:15), monster attack that leads to a reported death (53:00-53:45), nightmares/sleep paralysis (58:45-1:08:00) post-partum depression/miscarriage/birth complications (1:02:46-1:08:00)
We are proud to be a part of the Sword & Key Network - beacons.ai/swordandkey. Our music is by the handsome and talented Nick Lambert. Find him on Instagram @lambertropolis. All other music and sounds are licensed through Epidemic Sounds.
That’s a lot of ones all in one episode number… So let’s do three cryptids that were only seen once! These monsters were seen for a good time but not for a long time and only for one time. So enjoy The 50-Foot Congo Snake, The Bathysphaera intacta (or Giant Dragonfish), and The Giant Shrimp in the Laundry Room (aka Shrimpy). It’s BIG SNAKE, BIG FISH, BIG SHRIMP… Plus a bonus cryptid!
Featuring: small talk about the weather quickly devolving into deep dives about dialects and accents, greener pastures for podcast listening, Spooky News: Mass Mall Dreaming, we like big snakes and we cannot lie, going real deep with hefty fish, big things in deep dark ocean, potential basement-dwelling escaped government experiment with a fondness for laundry, AND MORE!
CW: dreams and potential mass psychosis (14:15-24:30), snakes (27:00-35:30)
We are proud to be a part of the Sword & Key Network. Our music is by the handsome and talented Nick Lambert. Find him on Instagram @lambertropolis. All other music and sounds are licensed through Epidemic Sounds.
WE’RE BACK! Just in time for halloween we return to our teratophilic ways to explore romance with one of the most iconic monsters - FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER!!! So get ready for jokes to leave you in stitches, love that strikes like lightning, and a monster ready for LONG-TERM commitments because… IT’S ALIVE!!!
Featuring: Our podcast relationship Unicorn (Shadow), Halloween traditions & memories, LD’s Smut Corner - Scared Sexy Collection, a collection of dudes - a bro-pourri or a dude turducken, 8 feet tall and full of emotions, epistolary novels are just early found footage, Mary Shelley is a freak and a true Gothic Queen, we love cliterature… if you can find it, enormous schwanstuckers, AND MORE!
CW: body horror, minor references to gun violence, fictional child death, fictional murder, and references to historical misogyny
We are proud to be a part of the Sword & Key Network. Our music is by the handsome and talented Nick Lambert. Find him on Instagram @lambertropolis. All other music and sounds are licensed through Epidemic Sounds.
In honor of the recent holiday, Hobbit Day, we’re talking Tolkien! Derek is joined once again by special guest Shadow (@shadowsilvia on socials) to delve too greedily and too deep into some Middle Earth monsters! So prepare to make an unexpected party with Smaug the Dragon, The Watcher in the Water, and Durin’s Bane the Balrog!
Additional side note: Monster Crush will be skipping a week on our release schedule but will be back for a new episode hopefully at the end of October!
Featuring: we prefer #raptortok to #rapturetok - Spooky News: Squonk at the right hand of god, honoring Jeff Meldrum (professional foot expert) - Happy Hobbit Day - rawdogging a Hobbit - a new game: NAME THAT DWARF - being trapped in rooms by tiny spiders - being penetrated in one specific spot - all billionaires are bad, even if they’re dragons - tentacles with “fingered” ends - AND MORE!
CW: Mentions of the rapture (2:05-7:45), death from cancer (7:45-11:00), spiders (27:15-28:15)
We are proud to be a part of the Sword & Key Network. Our music is by the handsome and talented Nick Lambert. Find him on Instagram @lambertropolis. All other music and sounds are licensed through Epidemic Sounds.
Monster Crush is back after our Summer Break with all new chills and thrills. For this episode, Derek is joined by special guest Shadow (@shadowsilvia on socials) to discuss the noble Unicorn! And these horny horses have a wild history hiding behind all those sparkles and rainbows. Author Chris Lavers is quoted as saying “The history of the unicorn myth is so tangled that to try and unravel it is to glimpse madness”. But we’d gladly glimpse madness for some unicorn love!
Featuring: Chupacabras on Ice, unicorns are not what you think but also they are, the first unicorns were more unicows, shock-resistant horns, a medieval figure with the best name - Ole Worm, unicorn horns can cure anything (and nothing), whale blubber tastes like hazelnut, a 300 year-long Scandinavian scam, 2026 is the year of the alicorn, we keep going back to square rhinoceros, unicorns are super gay, AND MORE!
CW: Mentions of Christianity/real world religion throughout, Brief reference to the anniversary of 9/11 and recent news events (7:45-7:55)
We are proud to be a part of the Sword & Key Network. Our music is by the handsome and talented Nick Lambert. Find him on Instagram @lambertropolis. All other music and sounds are licensed through Epidemic Sounds.
Summer is a time for fun, sun, and (if you’re anything like us) reading! So for this summer break episode we went back to our childhoods to explore some of the wonderful monsters gifted to us by the one and only R.L. Stine in the Goosebumps series! So get ready for monsters from Calling All Creeps, The Beast from the East, and Night of the Living Doll! Listeners beware, you’re in for a (sexy) scare!
Also, this episode marks the beginning of our brief Summer Break for Monster Crush, we'll be back in September for more episodes!
Featuring: Summer activities in the 90s, the nostalgia of the Pizza Hut Summer Reading program, Spooky News: US Government Lies About Aliens/UFOs Again(?), Annabelle the Haunted Doll Kills a Man - R.L Stine wrote a horror novel about a rollercoaster, horror can be accessible for kids, Goosebumps cover Easter Eggs, do a “classic clone” to get to level 3, “fluids” counts as a superpower, FMK with some Goosebumps monsters, AND MORE!
CW: Spoilers for 30+ year old Goosebumps books, Conspiracy theories surrounding the government/gaslighting/misinformation (11:00-21:20), Death/Loss (21:20-30:20), mentions of horror violence with references to horror violence to kids (35:20-1:20:35)
We are proud to be a part of the Sword & Key Network. Our music is by the handsome and talented Nick Lambert. Find him on Instagram @lambertropolis. All other music and sounds are licensed through Epidemic Sounds.
On this date we fly back into the weird world of Yokai for a couple of avian singletons to nest with. So strap on and strap in for the Kogarasu and the Niwatori no sō! These two feathered friends are sure to peck their way into your hearts… perhaps literally.
Featuring: Toilet ghosts and sentient umbrellas, a trip to LD’s Smut Corner, Spooky News: Bigfoot could get you high, eat the prideful and haughty, chicken’s grudge-curse, cloacal kisses, AND MORE!
CW: Mentions of explosions/fireworks and allusions to the current state of the US (1:30-2:15), yokai/urban legend violence (6:30-7:25), drug use (20:30-26:30), monsters eating dead humans (29:10-33:40), bird-based body horror (33:45-40:00)
We are proud to be a part of the Sword & Key Network. Our music is by the handsome and talented Nick Lambert. Find him on Instagram @lambertropolis. All other music and sounds are licensed through Epidemic Sounds.
For our second Pride Month episode of 2025 we consider giving a second chance to some monsters who did not get our full attention on previous dates. So this time we explore the wilderness for the Scandinavian Troll! These mysterious monsters of magic and nature have haunted fables and myth far back into ancient times… so it’s about time they haunt our bedrooms! Things are going to get rock hard so strap in and strap on!
Featuring: A totally perfect first take on our intro - Spooky News: werewolf motivated robbery, aliens are starting WWIII… to help us?, and (old news) a portal in English forest is letting in werewolves - trolls are old and confusing, troll are bossbitches, trolls were illegal, smelly Christian blood, trolls are just Bigfoot(?), a quick dive into LOTR lore, troll movie recs, AND MORE!
CW: Robbery & Assault (4:00-8:00), Current events - politics, war, etc. (8:05-12:00), mentions of Christianity and Christian misogyny/oppression of women (periodic starting at 30:00), monsters as caricatures/stereotypes of ethnicities and as forms of antisemitism (46:30-47:30, 50:45-53:00)
We are proud to be a part of the Sword & Key Network. Our music is by the handsome and talented Nick Lambert. Find him on Instagram @lambertropolis. All other music and sounds are licensed through Epidemic Sounds.
Happy Pride, you beautiful Monster Crushers! To celebrate the queerest time of the year we wanted to present you all with a true gay icon. And, since we covered Mothman back in episode 69, we delved into pop culture for a figure who has represented the LGBTQ+ community for decades now. So strap on and strap in for the true Master of the Universe and master of our hearts, Skeletor! This skeletal singleton is sure to rattle your bones in the best of ways!
Featuring: Pride Month for monster fucking, it’s all fucking weird fucking, Spooky News: Annabelle the Doll Contained(?) and Squatch Sighting in Colorado, a new game: Battlecat or Cringer (Masters of the Universe Smash or Pass), the history and queerness of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, very important discussions about facial hair, abs on abs on abs, AND MORE!
CW: General discussions of sex, kink, and monster fucking (throughout the episode… I mean, come on), mention of con artists and objectively bad people Ed & Lorraine Warren (10:15-11:30), house fire and prison escape (12:55-13:13:35)
We are proud to be a part of the Sword & Key Network. Our music is by the handsome and talented Nick Lambert. Find him on Instagram @lambertropolis. All other music and sounds are licensed through Epidemic Sounds.
For this Memorial Day we bring you two monsters you just can’t forget about. War is weird and strange stuff happens during times of conflict, so this episode we discuss two giant sea monsters seen by German U-boats during WWI. So get ready to be blown…out of the water by the U-28 Creature and the U-85 Atrocity!
Featuring: The lusty month of May, a visit to LD’s Smut Corner: The Spinster and the Gargoyle, the gargoyle vs. grotesque debate, Spooky News: crop circles in England and a prehistoric wasp from hell, sea monsters learn to fly by exploding, don’t shoot whales because they might shoot back, mosasaur dickpics, AND MORE!
CW: Insect/body horror/parasites/forced impregnation - insect/implication (29:30-33:40), discussions of naval warfare (35:00-50:00), animal/dinosaur/monster genitalia (50:15-56:00)
We are proud to be a part of the Sword & Key Network. Our music is by the handsome and talented Nick Lambert. Find him on Instagram @lambertropolis. All other music and sounds are licensed through Epidemic Sounds.
We at Monster Crush want to celebrate Mother’s Day in the only way we know how… by making it about smooching monsters. So if you have mommy energy (however you personally define that), we want to wish you a special day full of whatever monsters you love best. But for us, we had to feature a monstrous mother of other monsters coming straight from Greek myth with the monster matriarch, the Echidna! So strap in and strap on for a serpentine seductress that will make you say “yes, mommy”.
Featuring: Strong Mommy Energy, is LD ‘Mother’?, shoutout Derek’s mom, if you email us weird things - we will email you weird things back, monster moms in pop culture, Spooky News - NASA Chief Flight Surgeon sees an American UFO, research on a potential UFO sphere, Joe Nickell and a legacy of skepticism - echidna but the cute animal, a CatDog of a monster, so so many monster offspring, Typhon’s really nice couch, clean your all-purpose holes, AND MORE!
CW: Mythological dismemberment (16:40-17:00), brief mention of mythological incest - i.e. Theseus (49:50-50:00)
We are proud to be a part of the Sword & Key Network. Our music is by the handsome and talented Nick Lambert. Find him on Instagram @lambertropolis. All other music and sounds are licensed through Epidemic Sounds.
Does love have you stumped? Always branching out but your date always leaves? Well we get to the root of the problem this week with our lumbering singletons! No more barking up the wrong tree with two loveable cryptobotanical selections to really shiver your timbers! It’s two green-thumbs up for the Ya-Te-Veo and The Man-Eating Madagascar Tree! Plus a special appearance from The Cow-Eating Tree!
Featuring: A new game of Nessie Knockoffs, a return to LD’s Smut Corner, a 1 minute recap of M. Night Shamalayan’s The Happening, the cow-eating tree eats… cows, trees with eyes, some pretty messed up depictions of indigenous people thanks to white colonists, treacly fluid, just so many tree puns, AND MORE!
CW: mentions of suicide and self-harm (28:30-29:00), harm to animals (31:00-32:00), colonial depictions of indigenous people throughout the second half, sacrificial murder & sexual hedonism (42:30-44:30)
We are proud to be a part of the Sword & Key Network. Our music is by the handsome and talented Nick Lambert. Find him on Instagram @lambertropolis. All other music and sounds are licensed through Epidemic Sounds.
EPISODE 100 IS HERE! I can’t believe we actually made it to 100 episodes! And speaking of things that are hard to believe, is there a monster lurking in the depths of Loch Ness? Yes… at least we want the answer to be yes because we LOVE NESSIE! So strap in and strap on for Derek’s first monster love with The Loch Ness Monster! Also, a special thank you to all of you who have joined us on this wonderful monster ride and a very special thank you to Heaven-Leigh and Ellie for starting this amazing project for all of us to enjoy!
Featuring: Do invisible monsters *eject* invisible fluids?, Spooky News: Forbidden Designer Dogs - judging baby names, Checkov’s panties (if they go on in the first act, they come off by the third), top cryptids list, her humps - her lovely Nessie humps, pulling a Gandalf, Nessie needs to get out of the road, hoaxes.. so many hoaxes, Nessie aka Sandy or Archibald, King Kong, new photos of Nessie, pay for us to go to Scotland, Mr. Crowley, Catfished by Nessie, AND MORE!
CW: Mention of fictional SA (6:45 - 7:00), genetic manipulation (4:30 - 15:30), Catholicism (28:45 - 31:30), drowning/underwater monster attack (29:40 - 31:30), suicide/tragedy (1:01 - 1:02)
We are proud to be a part of the Sword & Key Network. Our music is by the handsome and talented Nick Lambert. Find him on Instagram @lambertropolis. All other music and sounds are licensed through Epidemic Sounds.
99 EPISODES! We wanted to celebrate getting this far with something big, so we chose dinosaurs! This episode we bring you two classic dino cryptids with LD choosing to learn about the Kasai Rex! This theropod dinosaur supposedly hunts the waterways of the Congo, and not only does it eat large animals like rhinos… but maybe people too. It’s welcome to eat us any time though as we go big or go home with this sharp-toothed scale-friend!
Featuring: LD’s favorite dinosaur that isn’t a dinosaur, this is a theme-song-heavy episode, a prehistoric game returns with Dino Yes or No (play along at home!), LD’s Smut Corner, possessive werepenguins, Spooky News - Antarctic crimes, The 300 Club, mysteries below the pyramids, pictures of lizards don’t count as pictures of dinosaurs, how do you find a severed hand in “good” condition, the hunter becomes the hunted, hippopotamus = lake cow bacon, a new segment: What That Downstairs Doing?, AND MORE!
CW: news of physical assault, accusations of SA, and mental health distress in isolated scenarios (35:30-40:00), stories of poachers/big game hunters as well as descriptions of animals and people killed by predators (45:00-1:10)
We are proud to be a part of the Sword & Key Network. Our music is by the handsome and talented Nick Lambert. Find him on Instagram @lambertropolis. All other music and sounds are licensed through Epidemic Sounds.
We jump right back into the deep end with Part 2 of IN THE MARCH OF MADNESS! This episode we bring you the GOO Conference (Great Old Ones) with an all new list of eldritch horrors and hard-to-pronounce names. So get your brackets ready and strap in and strap on for Tsathoggua, Idh-Yaa, Y’Golonac, Glaaki, Boat Z’uqqa-Mogg, Ithaqua, Gobogeg, Sfatlicllp, and the ultimate champion of this year’s Salty 16 Single Smooch Elimination Bracket!
Featuring: A mini Spooky News - watch politicians talk about aliens in a new doc… I guess - The Great Old One (GOO) Conference, eldritch tiddies are back, Derek predictably struggles with eldritch pronunciations, A big girthy frog with a queer tongue, what if Lovecraft wrote the musical Cats, an underground brain-dick, Kevin: the greatest eldritch horror, eepy and hungy is weirdly attractive, and the WINNER of our In the March of Madness bracket!
CW: Modern US politicians mentioned (5:00-8:15), allusion to SA (26:00-26:30, 38:50-39:30), Body Horror (27:50-28:15), Mention of the Algonquin monster We****o as an alternative name for an eldritch being (36:30-43:00)
We are proud to be a part of the Sword & Key Network. Our music is by the handsome and talented Nick Lambert. Find him on Instagram @lambertropolis. All other music and sounds are licensed through Epidemic Sounds.
It’s that time again! Continuing from last year we once again bring you IN THE MARCH OF MADNESS, our very own monster-smooching bracket of Lovecraftian and eldritch beings. So strap in and strap on for SIXTEEN SALTY beings of unknowable horror and tentacles as we complete a single-elimination bracket broken into two conferences. This episode we tackle the BOG (Beings and Outer Gods) Conference with Yibb-Tstll, Gnoph-Keh, Magnum Innomunandum, Mh’Ithrha, the Mi-Go, the Nightgaunts, Cthulhu, and Ubbo-Sathla!
Featuring: LD’s Monster Smut Corner - Caged Romances - Spooky News: Legalize Bigfoot, DOGE hates researching aliens, Pokémon Day - IN THE MARCH OF MADNESS SALTY SIXTEEN SINGLE SMOOCH ELIMINATION: BOG (Beings and Outer Gods) CONFERENCE: eldritch tiddies, nameless mists, Lovecraft’s childhood nightmares, AND MORE!
CW: Modern US politics (21:30-29:45)
We are proud to be a part of the Sword & Key Network. Our music is by the handsome and talented Nick Lambert. Find him on Instagram @lambertropolis. All other music and sounds are licensed through Epidemic Sounds.
Happy Valentine’s Day from all of us at Monster Crush! We celebrate Monster Love every single day but it feels especially important on this corporatized, pre-assigned day of affection. So this time we bring you a couple of monsters to make your heart skip a beat… as they rip it from your chest. Yes, far from content with heart-shaped boxes of candy, these monsters prefer hearts with more gooshy filling. So please enjoy the Danish fell-knight, the Valraven and the Korean 9-tailed fox of cunning evil, the Kumiho!
Featuring: Do we talk about actual Monster F***ing enough? - We restate our mission and boundaries - Spooky News: Ghost Earthquakes - Saxsquatch: musician and hero - Why does the heart symbol not look like an actual heart? - Roman’s sexed a plant to extinction - king hearts are like raven Taco Bell - bury your dead or else - Valraven has Pokemon evolutions - we support women’s wrongs - the best way to ruin a wedding: look like the bride and get naked - And More!
CW: Consumption of humans - specifically hearts (throughout), train-accident related death (12:40-12:50), child death (41:35-43:00)
We are proud to be a part of the Sword & Key Network. Our music is by the handsome and talented Nick Lambert. Find him on Instagram @lambertropolis. All other music and sounds are licensed through Epidemic Sounds.