Season 8 Episode 21 -Storytelling Through Scents & a Giveaway!

A perfume can set a scene before a single word is spoken. It can suggest a damp cellar, a candlelit room, the warmth of someone standing nearby, or the chilling sense that someone isn’t alone. Having previously won two Fragrance Foundation Jasmine Awards for these Scented Stories, this year’s spooky tale was perhaps the most thrilling yet!

In this episode, Suzy and Nicola take listeners behind the scenes of their Halloween Scented Story for 2026, revealing why they chose the fragrances they did, and how those scents helped drive the narrative. Neither knew what the other would write next, so each instalment meant following a trail of scented clues, and occasionally leading the other somewhere decidedly sinister…

But stay listening, as we’ve news of an exciting new fragrance house who would’t exist if the founder hadn’t been a fellow listener of On The Scent Podcast, and thrillingly there are FREE samples of both scents for the first twenty listeners who say the secret password when visiting the forthcoming Pop Up Perfumery.

First: for Suzy and Nicola, as storytellers, scent is an incredible device for imagination. Adding sensory descriptions doesn’t simply decorate a story: it draws us further inside it.

Characters become more understandable, the spaces they inhabit become easier to picture, and details emerge about the time of day and even the temperature of the air. A room becomes much more vivid through the imagined smell of its damp stone walls, its fading flowers or the books slowly decaying on its shelves.

And this isn’t only a way of telling stories. It’s a brilliant way for fragrance lovers to explore their own collections and appreciate familiar perfumes anew.

Allowing the imagination to run wild while smelling, rather than searching only for individual notes, can conjure a landscape, a person or a moment that hasn’t happened yet.

Giving the imagination permission to follow wherever a fragrance leads can reveal so much more, creating a truly fascinating, emotionally resonant connection with a scent. So, settle down with a warming cup of something comforting and listen as Suzy and Nicola revisit the perfumes that brought their story to life - and a few characters who refused to stay silent…

Halloween Scented Story 2026:

Dare you join us for this year's Halloween Special?

Will you experience a scented story of horror so treacherous that it will chill your bones and linger in your memory for years to come?

If so, continue at your peril...

1: Nicola

Her childhood was full of abandon. She lived in nature. She played with the animals. Green ran through her veins.

Juicy, vibrant, head-soaring green.

She was free.

@olfactive_o New Earth

Until she wasn’t...

It all started when she heard the lizard whispering to her. Telling her that her father was there. Telling her that he wanted trouble

Her father

So famous

So revered

So violent

So evil

He had not died peacefully

@SERGELUTENS De Profundis

She was being taken back there

Back to him

Back to where it all started

She could feel it

And there was nothing she could do to stop it this time.

2: Suzy

The tick of the clock, dusty wood, a sputtering candle ominous shadows

@borntostandout.official Saint Petal

The scent of dark leaves, bruised petals falling

Creeping down the staircase that night was embedded in her memories forever...

To reach her father's secret lair, one must access the damp, vaulted cellars, so cold each exhaled breath lived on as a spectre.

Wet stone, damp moss, clusters of mushrooms clinging to the wall. whole worlds,entire ecosystems exist alongside us,

if only you dare notice