Dim the lights, grab a cozy blanket and a mug of cider (or a pumpkin spice latte, if you prefer), and settle in for three tales of terror from our Art World Horror Stories series.

First on the chopping block is Mellyssa Diggs, a brand identity designer whose passion for social justice quickly spiraled into a nightmare of cyberbullying and social media censorship. Next, we turn to Asheville-based artist Wendy Newman. Last fall, her life was upended by Hurricane Helene, which not only obliterated her gallery but also displaced countless artists in her community. Finally, we meet painter Jacobina Oele, another Asheville artist, whose masterpiece was mangled beyond recognition at the hands of an unscrupulous gallery owner. 

Presented by NOT REAL ART’s parent company, Crewest Studio, Art World Horror Stories is a podcast about bad things that happen to good artists. In today’s crossover episode, we delve into the spine-chilling stories usually reserved for the spookiest podcast in Crewest’s network.

How You Can Get Involved

• Listen: 5 Practical Tips From 30 Years of Art World Horror
• Listen: Muralist Amandalynn Took a Great Fall
• Visit the Art World Horror Stories website.
• Visit Mellyssa Diggs on Instagram, LinkedIn, or YouTube.
• Visit Wendy Newman on Instagram, Facebook, or Pinterest.
• Visit Jacobina Oele on Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube.
• Learn more about Crewest Studio and our host, Scott “Sourdough” Power.
• Submit a horror story for 2026.

About Art World Horror Stories and Crewest Studio 

Art World Horror Stories is a podcast about bad things that happen to good artists. The series is produced by Crewest Studio, an independent company specializing in entertainment media, publishing, and experiential content, serving a diverse network of professional creatives and enthusiasts. With a mission to entertain, inform, and inspire, the studio recognizes the significance of the $2 trillion creative economy and the 30 million professionals within it. At the helm are co-founders Scott "Sourdough" Power, a seasoned leader with decades of experience, and Man One, a passionate artist dedicated to the transformative power of art in society. 

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Episode artwork: David Schwartz. 

The Not Real Art podcast is intended for creative audiences only.

The Not Real Art podcast celebrates creativity and creative culture worldwide.

It contains material that is fresh, fun and inspiring and is not suitable for boring old art snobs.

Now let's get started and enjoy the show.

Greetings and salutations, my creative brothers and sisters.

Welcome to Not Real Art, the podcast where we talk to the world's most creative people.

I am your host.

Faithful, trusty, loyal, tireless, relentless host.

Sourdough, coming at you from Crew West Studio in Los Angeles.

How are you people?

Are you feeling.

Are you feeling a little on edge?

Are you feeling a little like a little goosebumps?

Are you feeling like there might be something lurking around the corner?

Are you afraid that there's somebody following you?

Look behind you.

Are you being followed?

Are you.

You feeling threatened or scared or frightened in any way?

Because if you are, it's likely because Halloween is upon us.

Yes, our favorite holiday of the year, Halloween.

When.

When ghosties and ghoulies and long leggedy beasties are out to get us and we do our best to survive the night.

And to commemorate this fantastic, wonderful, creative time of the year, we put out our special Halloween episode, Art World Horror Stories.

When bad things Happen to Good Artists.

And today we have three.

Three horror stories from three artists that are going to keep you on edge, are going to scare the living daylights out of you, and bad things happen to all of us, in particular this time of year during Halloween, when the demons and the angels battle and the monsters and the creatures come out, and Frankenstein and Dracula and Wolfman and all of the monsters come to haunt our dreams.

It's all we can do to survive and stay alive and thrive during these horrific nights of fright.

We just love Halloween.

Can't you tell?

We just love Halloween.

And this year for Halloween, we have three art world horror stories from three artists.

And I want to share them with you today.

But before I do, I want to thank you for being here with me today on this Halloween celebration because you're making me feel a bit safer.

You're making me feel more calm.

The goosebumps on the back of my neck are calming down, so I'm feeling a little more safe and secure.

And it's all because of you.

You're.

Your loyalty, you showing up, you being here means the world to me.

It means the world to us.

And I'm extremely grateful for your support of everything we do here at Not Roll Art.

And of course, it's Halloween.

What are you dressing up as?

You're going out.

You're going trick or treat.

You're going to some big party.

You're going.

You're going trick or treating.

You take the kids out.

What are you doing?

You're going to dress up.

You're going to.

What are you going as?

You can dress up as a robot, as an astronaut.

You're going to.

You're going to go as a vampire?

Are you going to go as a ghost?

That's always classic.

A ghost, a witch, you dress it up as Evil Knievel.

You're going to.

You're going to go as our orange hair, orange skinned president.

Hmm.

Well, that would be the scariest one.

Would it?

Well, politics aside, we're not here to talk politics.

This is Halloween.

We're here to talk art World horror stories.

So you know what?

Before we get into this, let's cue the music.

Hit it.

Our darkness falls as chills abound Just when you felt all safe and sound.

Tis artists losing their bloody minds as their hard work turns on your evil eyes.

Tis worse than nightmares.

Tis worse than fears as artists cry horrific tears.

Welcome to Art World Horror Stories.

We have three our world horror stories for you today from three artists, Melissa Diggs, Wendy Newman, and Jacobina Oli.

And these stories, well, these are stories of when bad things happened to good artists.

And so we have a story about a social media nightmare, we have a story about a natural disaster nightmare, and we have a story about a nightmare of destruction.

So, Melissa Diggs, she writes, I was lying in bed when it happened, just scrolling and finishing up a post for TikTok.

I had just uploaded one of my prints, a 17 by 11 piece fine art paper, mixed media and photography.

The message was simple.

It read, racism is wrong.

I thought it might spark some good conversation, Melissa writes, maybe even resonate with people who needed to see it.

And it went viral, but for the wrong and worst reasons.

She writes.

I had 13,500 followers on TikTok, so I expected a mix of both.

But then I opened the comments and saw more hateful and trolling comments like go back to Africa.

This isn't even art.

I could print this at Staples for a few cents.

I'll just screenshot it and give it away for free.

Each comment felt like a punch and and soon it wasn't just on that post.

The heat spilled into a few other posts I had shared.

Melissa writes she reported the comments over and over, but TikTok said they saw nothing wrong.

That's when I knew I wasn't just having a bad night online.

I was in the middle of my own art world horror story.

Months later, the story reached its cruel ending.

She writes.

One day I logged in and gone.

My account banned.

No warning, no reason.

It was like TikTok had decided I was the problem and not the people hurling the hate.

The ban wasn't the end of it.

The ban wasn't the end of my art, just the end of my time on that platform.

My art still matters.

My voice still matters.

And no algorithm or hateful comment can take that away.

Melissa writes, I know this art is powerful.

It makes people uncomfortable and sometimes it scares the ones who don't want to face its truth.

And that's why I'll keep making art.

Melissa Diggs that is a art world horror story.

To be sure.

We've all had those scary moments when we think social media is going to flag us, shut us down or we post something well meaning and the trolls pile on in an ugly, toxic way.

Wendy Newman, a photographer from Asheville, North Carolina, Western North Carolina.

Her art world horror story is one of natural disaster because of course we just happen to be living on a rock hurling in space where animals on a planet, we're victims to its whims and natural occurrences for good, bad and indifferent.

And Wendy, Wendy writes my art along with hundreds of other artists all had our art at the Marquis Art Gallery in the River Arts district of Asheville, North Carolina when Hurricane Helene hit Asheville and devastated our town.

And this is what happened to the art gallery.

My Wendy Newman designs umbrellas were the one thing left intact in the gallery and the images of the umbrellas were on the Jackson Building and City hall, so symbolic that our town would rise above the and find the light at the end of the tunnel.

Here we are a year later and things are still hard.

Two days after Hurricane Helene hit.

We could get onto the roads, we could drive around and see the chaos and destruction.

I managed to get the umbrellas down and sold them as part of the Helene's history and gave one to artists who had lost more than I did.

I feel sad for those recovering and have no home.

Hurricanes and water can wreak havoc.

Yes, Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc on hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of artists in western North Carolina.

700 artists were displaced from the River Arts District alone, let alone the surrounding 25 counties in which Hurricane Helene devastated.

And here we have Wendy Newman, an artist who's part of a gallery along with other artists and that whole gallery was devastated in this hurricane.

Artists, hundreds of artists losing all of their work Just horrifying.

And yet somehow Wendy her umbrellas became a symbol of resilience and recovery, Jacobina Oli writes, I was once invited to the Netherlands for a week long painting residency.

Artists from Russia, Argentina, the United States and Germany gathered in the rural district of Zealand.

Our airfare, lodging and materials were covered, but in return we had to let the public observe our process.

Painting a nude model, creating portraits of people in costume, and developing studio works.

A percentage of sales would go back to the organizers.

I didn't care about the money, jacobina writes.

What mattered to me was the fellowship of peers, watching them work, exchanging knowledge and sharing inspiration.

It was an intensely joyful experience, and I was invited back the following year.

During the residency, Jacobina writes, I used the new model studies as seeds for deeper work.

Born in Zealand, I felt a strong connection to the history of its old cities, its seafaring heroes and its devastating floods.

The regional motto, which translates as I struggle and emerge, echoed in me, Jacobina writes.

From this I created a 36 by 36 inch oil painting, a vulnerable naked woman rising from the waters as history collapsed around her.

I didn't fully grasp its meaning then, but the work sold on opening day.

The buyer was also the event's main sponsor.

By the time I returned the next year, Jacobina writes, the symbolism of the piece had become clear, and I wanted to share that with the owner.

I arrived early and stopped at the local art supply store, which also doubled as a framing shop.

Then I saw it.

My painting desecrated.

Only the head had been framed.

The rest had been cut up and discarded like trash shaking.

I phoned the owner immediately, Jacobina writes.

The story that unfolded was darker than I could have imagined.

His wife, jealous of his affection for me, had decided to take a knife to my work, my intellectual property destroyed out of spite.

The fallout was surreal.

I was eventually handed a $10,000 check for damages, but only on the condition that I never contact the man again, Jacobina writes.

Once I got back home, I painted the same image once more.

This time, however, it carried a deeper resonance.

It was no longer just a symbol of struggle and emergence, but also a story of violation, betrayal, and rebirth through creation itself.

In a strange way, I felt empowered, Jacobina writes.

I saw a man trapped in an abusive relationship, capable of love, yet captivated and confined.

That vision made me recognize the reflection of my own marriage, bound in similar patterns.

With that realization, I chose to walk away.

The result was ultimate freedom, the power to create the life and circumstances I desired rather than living within someone else's.

Idea of me.

The woman in the painting was vulnerable but strong.

And the painting is still in my possession.

Wow, Jacobina, that is quite a story.

And Wendy and Melissa and Jacobina each are sharing the horrors that artists can experience, whether it's by the hand of another or the hand of Mother Nature, or even our own hand.

If we post something on social media and inadvertently kick up a hornet's nest, it's like the old saying, no good deed goes unpunished and the road to hell is paved with good intentions, right?

Well, bad things happen to good artists all the time, and they're going to happen to you and they're going to happen to me.

And it's not that it happens, it's what we do about it.

In the end, do we run or do we fight?

Do we cower or do we stand up?

Do we find courage or cowardice?

At the end of the day, we find out what we're made of.

When the times get tough, when bad things happen to good people and the horrors of life become real, all we can truly control at the end of the day is our attitude and our spirit.

Are we going to rise up like a phoenix from the ashes and fight?

Or are we going to cower and be scared and let life get the best of us?

Are we going to find that inner strength to triumph and transcend the horrors of life?

That, my friend, is up to You.

Choose courage.

Choose strength.

Choose perseverance.

When bad things happen Happy Halloween.

Oh darkness falls as chills abound Just when you felt all safe and sound this heart is losing their bloody minds as their hard work turns on evil eyes T worse than nightmares t worse than fears as artists cry horrific tears welcome to Art World Horror Stories.

Thanks for listening to the Not Real Art podcast.

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Not Real Art is produced by Crew West Studios in Los Angeles.

Our theme music was created by Ricky Pageau and Desi Delauro from the band Parlor Social.

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Thanks again for listening to Not Real Art.

We'll be back soon with another inspiring episode celebrating creative culture and the artists who make it.