While not a sequel to “Untold Virginia,” the fiction podcast “The Hexings,” takes the idea of an audio drama dressed up as dramatized non-fiction and run with it until their path’s split. It’s a spiritual successor with a separate creative team behind each podcast probably having no idea of the other’s existence. Even when the specific paths are unique after a certain point, they both wind up in the same place by the end. Their respective journeys, however, are what make these two podcasts about witches and witchcraft different enough from each other. There’s also a bit of “Hysterical,” a podcast which won two Ambies in 2025 in the “Best Reporting” and “Podcast of the Year” categories, in terms of investigative reporting.

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A Brief Follow-Up to “Untold Virginia”

Before starting the review proper for “The Hexings,” it’s time to address an issue with “Untold Virginia.” When I originally wrote the review I was in the phase where I didn’t care about completed stories. People were perhaps too eager to wait for a season to finish before submitting a request. I wrote my review of “Untold Virginia” when not all episodes had been released. And those last few episodes changed my thoughts on the show. Where before I gave the show high praise for doing something unique. Its story was easy to set up with I assumed a predictable yet satisfying end involving two friends making a podcast together and that friendship drifting apart. What I got by the end was a horror audio drama. An effective one, audibly, but it didn’t match the show’s promise at the beginning.

The Hexings: A Podcast on Research vs. Reporting

This transitions nicely into my general thoughts on “The Hexings.” Both stories more or less follow a similar style. The most obvious difference is that “The Hexings” is focused on one character instead of two. The main character, Emily, is a digital sociology professor who studies trends found on TikTok and other internet challenges. She looks at everything from the dangerous Tide Pods challenge to the mildly inconvenient planking. While she references real and relatively recent challenges, the writer — Laura — doesn’t really add much detail to make me believe she is a digital sociologist. Emily’s knowledge and skillset seem more attuned to reporting than academic research. This by no means detracts from the story’s verisimilitude. What it does affect is suspension of disbelief. The production feels almost too neat in how everything plays out, like it’s trying too hard to sound like a realistic investigative podcast. It walks along the line between sounding like an actual true crime podcast and something created in a controlled studio environment, but it does so in a zigzag pattern. There are times where the production value goes in one direction that it doesn’t fit what’s happening in your ears.

While Emily’s expertise as a college professor of sociology might be hard to swallow, her investigative reporting skills are not. At times, she acts more like a reporter than a sociologist. It’s something the writer hangs a lantern on in episode four when a discussion between her and an interview subject brings up the topic of what the difference between an investigation and research is on a fundamental level. As Emily says in the episode, Academic research includes “pre-written research questions.” She has to go through an “institutional review board” for approval. She’s not “exploring dark tunnels and discovering sigils.” Ultimately, Emily sways back and forth between a reporter and a researcher. The result is her process is more fluid than her starting question of what is the hexing challenge.

A Supernatural ‘Hysterical’ with Shifting Focus

The backstory of “The Hexings is straight forward and condensed to a single episode. Emily won a grant to “find new ways to reach audiences to share academic research.” She chose to make a podcast focusing on internet challenges. One challenge catches her attention. The Hexings challenge, in which a person acts possessed in the middle of class. Emily’s introduction is through her daughter and the school she attends. A girl named Abby reportedly had a seizure in the middle of class with no history of epilepsy in her family. From there, the story sprawls out going in every direction to try and find the truth on whether something demonic is happening in the small midwestern town.

“The Hexings” first season is nine-episodes long and can be split into thirds much like a three-act screenplay. Episodes 1-3 are the first, 4-6 are the second and 7-9 are the pièce de résistance that ties it all together. The investigation doesn’t really start until the second act when Emily decides to simplify her investigation and have her question be about what happened to Abby after the incident in class. However, this shift in the story doesn’t stay focused for long.

Multiple Hexings Lead to Another Podcast And…

Much of the middle episodes are there as connective tissue, serving only one function. The third episode has Emily investigate a former psychiatric hospital repurposed into a school. From there, she investigates some occult and religious symbols, learns about Mothman and ultimately discovers what happened to Abby. Don’t worry no spoilers here.

This sweeping change in attention by Emily makes it difficult for the audience to keep track of the clues and how they relate to each other. The writer of “The Hexings” podcast does their best to connect them, but there are some tangents that don’t lead anywhere important and serve only to bridge some gaps in story logic. This is compounded with the mixing of real and fictional anecdotes, which usually adds some mystery to a story like this. The kind where you aren’t sure what’s real. Instead, the blend of real-world events and urban legends trades mystery for a sense of wonder. The latter having a lighter tone than the darker former.

Overall, while the journey may have some bumps along the way, this podcast has a similar problem to “Untold Virginia.” Both have a good third act, but one for a different story set up at the beginning. In the case of The Hexings,” it fits better than “Untold Virginia.” However, better doesn’t automatically mean good. For what it’s worth, I did enjoy the mystery of the show for most of my time listening. At times, the primarily solo narration became white noise. The one thing keeping it from completely fading into the background was the censorship beeps of people’s names. That would bring anyone back, even if it becomes somewhat obnoxious at times. I understood it within the context of the story, and while you gain the ability to bring the story into the listener’s foreground, you lose the immersion. Two things that can coexist together. To end on a positive note, the theme song works well in terms of visualization. I could see words appear in my mind’s eye with names of the crew coming onto the screen like a creative lyric video for a song.

The Hexings Podcast Rating

Low Ground Breaking (8.5/10+ Stars)