Given my love of classic, early-to-mid 20th Century pulp magazines, it probably comes as no surprise that I ALSO love early-to-mid 20th Century Old Time Radio! And, while I’ll always have a deep fondness for Our Miss Brooks, Burns and Allen, Gunsmoke, The Adventures of Sam Spade, X minus 1, and all them, the HORROR radio from that period holds a special place in my heart. So, since it’s Halloween Time, I thought I’d post up the VERY BEST of the OTR Spook-em-ups I’ve collected over the years. I’ll do a few at a time, so stay tuned, but they’re fun so give ’em a listen!

1 – The House in Cypress Canyon (Suspense, Dec 5 1946) – Let’s start with the absolute weirdest one on the list. Suspense was a great show and their whole catalog is worth listening to (when archive.org isn’t under attack) – they specialized in thrillers that, fairly often, would grade into weirdness, and they’re consistently well-acted and well-produced. This one is probably one of their scariest, strangest episodes; the set-up and the execution are top-notch, and there’s some great, spooky soundwork in here too. Listen to it!

2 – The Thing on the Fourable Board (Quiet, Please, 1948) – This might be the scariest old time radio show ever produced, due to the A) super-cool monster and B) the SOUND of the super-cool monster. Seriously weird choice for the “voice” of the critter in this one. It’s also a great story with a fun and surprising twist at the end. Really worth turning down your lights and listening to this one in the dark.

3 – Specialty of the House (The Price of Fear, 1973) – In ’73 and ’74 the great Vincent Price did an absolutely amazing radio horror series where he played a fictionalized version of himself, and buddy, lemme tell you, there’s some good stuff in there. I mean, Price is fantastic of course; his voice, his affect, everything, and the writing on these is just phenomenal. This episode in particular is really great, everything is played very subtly and calmly, right up to the very end. A phenomenal one, truly!

4 – Three Skeleton Key (Escape, 1956) – Speaking of Vincent Price, here he is again in a great adaptation of the short story (by Georges-Gustave Toudouze) “Three Skeleton Key.” This one revolves around the crew of a remote lighthouse, a derelict ship, and what’s on board…really fun, really scary.

That’s enough for now – two hours of audio spook-em-ups for you, a pretty good block. But there’s more to come!