As Halloween approaches, many people like to watch their favorite scary movies or read a bunch of Dean Koontz or Stephen King novels. May I suggest an alternative? Or at the very least, an addition. Why not listen to some old-time creepy radio dramas?
Before TV became widely available, home entertainment was delivered over radio waves. There was news, music, games shows, and comedy. There was also drama, including westerns, police shows, romances, and (wait for it) suspense and horror. Today, many of those old shows can be found on the Internet. Though many are lame by modern standards, there are some that require a cinching of the belt to prevent your pants from being scared off of you.
You can find a variety of Halloween-worthy shows by searching the Internet for such things as “creepy radio dramas” or “old-time radio horror stories” Let me separate a bit of the wheat from the chaff by suggesting a few good ones.
A series called ‘The Mercury Theater on the Air’ was started by Orson Welles in 1938. If you never listened to their production of War of the Worlds, it’s a good place to start. It aired as a 60-minute Halloween special, but it frightened many people who thought it was real. It’s presented like a live news program, with a frantic reporter describing the horrifying Martian invasion.
The Mercury Theater on the Air also produced a pretty good version of Dracula.
One of the first radio shows dedicated to horror/suspense was called ‘Lights Out’. It ran from 1934 to 1947. Three frightening episodes (there are plenty more) are Death Robbery, Murder Castle, and Knock at the Door.
“Quiet Please” was a series of dramas that aired in the late 1940s. You can find them on a website called quietplease.org. A particularly good episode is called The Thing On the Fourble Board. It will give you goosebumps, even at midday. Another good episode is called Tanglefoot.
There was a series called ‘Suspense’ that ran from 1942 to 1962 with more than 900 episodes. Some of them are lame, but some are quite excellent. I recommend an episode called Ghost Hunt, which may have been the first in a genre that became known as “found footage.” (A number of modern horror films fall into this genre, such as The Blair Witch Project, Host, and Cloverfield.)
Another worthy episode of Suspense is entitled Sorry, Wrong Number. And there is one called House in Cypress Canyon.
If you prefer to listen at random or pick your own suspenseful episode, a YouTube channel called Old Time Radio Archive has 910 episodes of Suspense, all free for your listening pleasure.
That same YouTube channel has 150 episodes of Inner Sanctum Mystery, a show that aired from 1941 to 1952.
If you dare, pretend it’s the 1940s. You are sitting in a darkened room. From the radio comes the creaking sound of a door slowly opening, followed by unearthly music and 30 minutes of old-time horror.
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