The Chicken Heart

No video today. We are going to do something a little different and return to those thrilling days of yesteryear. Follow me as we enter the theater of the mind with a vintage radio drama!

I first heard about this episode of the classic radio program Lights Out like a lot of people did – from Bill Cosby’s classic comedy routine describing listening to the show as a child. I thought it was something that Cosby cooked up because it sounded so silly. A chicken’s heart that will destroy the world? Ridiculous! But it was real! It was part of the Lights Out radio series.

Lights Out is a wonderful and surprisingly gruesome radio anthology series which was probably the forerunner of The Twilight Zone and certainly influenced the plot lines in EC Comics horror stories. Some of the stories are pure cornball, but others, like The Chicken Heart, are truly creepy.

Embedded below is The Chicken Heart. Click on it and listen, if you dare!


It’s a loopy, simplistic story that feels like a surreal nightmare you may have had after eating too much and reading HP Lovecraft before bed. I imagine it scared the crap out of a legion of kids of a certain generation including Bill Cosby when he first heard it broadcast. That’s because the cast is deadly serious, and the sound effects team do a terrific job. The world is ending by an ever growing chicken’s heart!

Happy Halloween!

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