Murder Manor is an American murder mystery radio drama series created by Ethan Zehr that ran from September 1, 2023, to September 20, 2024. The story revolves around a group of ten people who are invited to an island all by different hosts, before they find themselves trapped and are picked off one by one as the survivors struggle to solve the mystery.

The series featured an ensemble cast including creator Ethan Zehr, Alice Lucia Coates, Sean Madson, Envee Lin Alice, Leah Ryan, Byron Rodrigues, Crescent VA, Megan Roseburn, Drake Ostrowski, and Sirach Deen.

In 2025, Murder Manor was nominated for Best Fiction Podcast at the Apulia Web Fest and won Best Voiceover and Best Sound Design at both the International Celebration of Cinema and the Global INDIE Filmmaker Awards.

Despite winning awards, the audio drama was put on indefinite hold in 2025, after 3 episodes and a Christmas special, in order to adapt the series into a visual novel video game, after multiple cast members left the series.

Main

  • Crescent VA as Ron Hunter, a young secretary who is looking for job to support his father.
  • Alice Lucia Coates as Shirosaki Hanimiio, an in-home nurse.
  • Ethan Zehr as James Darrel, a laid-back musician who quickly becomes friends with Ron.
  • Envee Lin Alice as Candy Lockhart, an energetic young woman who wants to work as a maid again after spending all her money.
  • Byron Rodrigues as Blake Rov, a tough young man who has trouble controling his anger.
    • Fox Matt played Blake for the first episode only. He was replaced by Rodrigues for all future episodes and had some of his lines dubbed over by Rodrigues for the clean version of the episode.
  • Leah Ryan as Tsuki Kotone, a sarcastic loner who starts feeling protective of Candy.
  • Drake Ostrowski as Aiden Tatsuhara, a famous gay adult movie actor.
  • Sean Madson as Luke Rogers, a cold-hearted police detective.
  • Megan Roseburn (credited as Megan Kelley) as Yarou Gaira, an established mystery author who goes by a secret pen name.
  • Sirach Deen as DAKOTA Winfrey, a programmer who hides behind a mask in the shape of a rabbit.
    • Ethan Zehr doubled as Dakota for the Christmas special, which was recorded after the first three episodes despite being released before the third. By this time, Deen had left and Zehr quickly stepped in as a replacement.
    • Kiyana Morgan dubbed over Deen's lines for the clean version of episode 3. Instead of dubbing over just the explicit parts, like Rodrigues, Morgan dubbed all of Dakota's lines.

Development

In 2020, Ethan Zehr came up with the concept of Murder Manor and planned to turn it into a video game. However, the project disolved due to his lack of experience in game development and in 2022 he rewrote it into a ten episode audio drama. Zehr cast himself as James and cast Sean Madson, who he had previously worked with, as Luke. The cast recorded for the first episode in 2022, but the episode wasn't edited and released until 2023. Before the release of episode 1, the cast was brought back to record episode 2, and Fox Matt, the voice of Blake, dropped out of the series. Zehr asked Byron Rodrigues to join, as he had previously worked with him.

Zehr credited himself under the name Aqua Voices for all his contributions except voice over in the episodes aired in 2023, before dropping the name and using his name for all future credits.

After recording for episode 3, the cast quickly recorded and released a non-canon Christmas special, where they reenacted A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens as their characters. The episode was released on December 24, 2023.

The original ten episode plan was rewritten and cut down to five before the release of episode 3, which wasn't until September 20, 2023, almost a full year after the release of the last episode. Due to complications, the series stopped releasing episodes on August 28, 2025, when the clean version of episode 3 was released. Zehr has since announced the production of a game adaptation for the series where the story will be redone and finished in the original way he imagined.