Horror on the radio

Radio horror in the late 1930s and early 1940s in the USA could frighten me, whereas the costume horror films could not. Until I was ten, my mother would not let me listen to Inner Sanctum. The creaking door that introduced the show was enough to create goosebumps. I remember listening to it in the darkness of my bedroom and putting covers over my head during moments of fear.

If you don't know about this site, it has lots of old time radio. Lots of horror shows:

http://www.archive.org/details/oldtimeradio

Typing in "horror" in the search bar brought this up:

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=horror AND mediatype:audio

Looks like lots of audiobook type readings there.

Crime Classics is a well-done program. Really gruesome murder stories with a darkly humorous edge. Inner Sanctum, Creaking Door, and so on are there too. Just find your program, place your cursor above its link, right-click and "Save As" to your hard drive (it's all public domain). Listen at your leisure.

donroc said:

Radio horror in the late 1930s and early 1940s in the USA could frighten me, whereas the costume horror films could not. Until I was ten, my mother would not let me listen to Inner Sanctum. The creaking door that introduced the show was enough to create goosebumps. I remember listening to it in the darkness of my bedroom and putting covers over my head during moments of fear.

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When I was in seventh grade there was a horror program on radio in New York, dramatizations of horror tales, mostly just one person reading. It was on Saturdays at midnight and I always stayed up to listen to it. It scared the crap out of me in a serious way that nothing else ever has.

I highly recommend Suspense, Inner Sanctum, Lights Out, and Quiet Please. Lots of Hollywood stars of the era appeared in those shows, especially Suspense.