We were lucky to catch up with Angel Krause recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Angel , thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
I’ve been a horror fan my entire life, but I don’t have a lot of people around me that just enjoy it to the degree I do. Often times I would have to “make” people watch things with me or listen to things I wanted to talk about. All the while knowing they weren’t actually interested. I had done YT before for something else and I thought it would be fun to have a podcast about horror. I quickly realized I really had enjoyed the video component of YT and decided I would do that. I just really wanted a platform to talk about my love for the genre and with any luck I’d make some friends along the way.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Voices From the Mausoleum is a horror YouTube channel that doesn’t just focus on one facet of the genre. We cover filmmaker interviews, top lists, reviews, special fx, horror gaming, and books. A lot of YT channels will pick one piece of the pie to focus on and we focus on all of it. It was really important to me starting this brand that it was all encompassing. Voices even offers anthology publications for Indie horror writers.
After almost three years of running the channel, I have two pieces of the show that I’m the most proud of. The first is a series we call Influential Horror. This a series where we have guests come on and talk about their top five most influential horror movies. We get answers from creating a franchise favorite, to memories with loved ones, to horror movies impacting people’s careers. It has been one of the most incredible experiences meeting so many different people in the genre and learning how it impacted them. The other project(s) I’m quite proud of is the indie publishing side of Voices. We have now put out three horror anthologies. The first is called Livestock: Horror Stories from the Un-Herd. This was a charity anthology containing stories from women in the horror space. We put this together after Roe V Wade was overturned and so the entire anthology has stories pertaining to reproductive rights and body autonomy. The last two we’ve done are called That Old House: The Bathroom Part 1 & 2. These books contain Indie horror authors (many are first time publications) writing about a horror story that takes place in only one room; the bathroom. These are particularly near and dear because it was giving authors a chance to get their work out there when they haven’t been accepted or published before. We love working with Indie horror writers and to be able to put these collections together has been insanely meaningful.
We have regular series that focus on a range of topics. We have a remakes and continuation series that focuses on horror movie remakes, reboots, and continuations. We host the first ever horror talk show called The Coffee Crypt. There is also a series on found footage movies, one for Video Game Adaptations, and monthly lives. We also did a limited series called Beasts & Booze where myself my co host for that show talked cryptids while having a drink. We pride ourselves on being a truly diverse horror YT channel.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
Our goal is to continue building up a unique horror community that is kind, respectful, and a safe space for everyone. There tends to be cliques and favoritism in any platform you go to, and we strive to never be a place where someone feels they don’t fit in. Too often people get ignored or skipped over because they don’t have enough followers or enough “clout”. No matter what size Voices grows to, this will never be our attitude or our culture. The most important thing here is to create new friendships over a love for this genre. All of our growth and content we owe to people who share us, engage with us, and collaborate with us. All we want to do is build others up and grow together.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
Both myself and my cohost Steve are parents of smaller children. I had to learn early on what burn out felt like. I had to figure out how to navigate doing content but focusing on my son and my health. There have been a couple of times where I’ve made it to the point where I had to take a break. This meant recording less. I’ve had to take breaks from series to make sure I wasn’t overdoing it. I had to stop watching and reading so much horror. It was hard for me to take these breaks because I felt I just had to keep going if I wanted to keep this up. While I still have to practice grace for myself, I force myself to switch gears when content has become too overwhelming. The biggest example of this was last December. 2022 was such a huge year for horror and it was impossible to keep up. I was cramming in so much just for the sake of content that at the end of the year I wasn’t even enjoying it. I tried so hard to pump out Christmas themed content and get out more things and all it did was stress me out and exhaust me. So after I realized what it was doing to me (this is not to say, of course, that I didn’t love all the content I made because I did), I decided this year I won’t be doing any content in December. This is to save my sanity and let me just enjoy that time with my family and friends. It can be easier to recognize that you need to pivot as opposed to actually making the change. I’m still learning how to better balance work, life, relationships, momhood, and content creating.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.voicesftm.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/voicesfromthemausoleum/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/voicesftm
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/FromMausoleum
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbDnPfk4bPzJwv6AMJ0XDDw