If you’re burning the midnight oil working on a Halloween costume and want some background noise in the spirit of the season, here is nearly 12 hours of old time radio shows that will give you the creeps. These are from the Lights Out program which ran on radio in one form or another from 1934 to 1947. There was also a short lived television program that aired during the dawn of television, but it was very tame compared to the radio program. It also had a tough time competing with the theater of the mind that audio dramas provided. Listeners’ imaginations were always greater than the shoestring visuals of early television.
To me, these are the obvious inspiration for some of the over-the-top horror tales illustrated in EC Comics’ notorious classics such as Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror. I don’t doubt that writers up against a deadline lifted an idea here and there from a Lights Out or Suspense program.
