It is 11 October. There are 20 days until Halloween.

Sometimes I think I was born too late. For instance, I love listening to old time radio shows. I can only imagine what it was like to have so many wonderful stories to choose from, to hear the voices of so many terrific actors in their prime acting in well-written dramas of every genre. Could you imagine looking forward to the new episodes of The Whistler or The Abbott & Costello Show? The radio dramatization of Star Wars in 1981 was the closest I ever got to “Must Hear Radio.”

By the time the 1970s rolled around, radio drama as a viable source of entertainment was D.O.A. There were a few programs that tried to carry on the tradition, the CBS Mystery Theater and Nightfall to name a few. Though they tried to reanimate the corpse of radio theater, all these “modern” shows managed to do was to kick the last few clumps of dirt onto the casket. They sounded flabby, as if they could have used a few more rewrites. They also displayed the paucity of imagination at work in the field at the time. The producers, writers, and actors who really understood the strengths of the medium, who knew the power of the listener’s imagination when given the right “poke” with an audio cue, were in radio’s past.

To hear radio drama at the height of its power, you need to go back to the 1940s, and to hear the best of the best, you need to listen to Quiet, Please.

Wyllis Cooper (who was also responsible for the radio show Lights Out), and announcer/actor Ernest Chappell created one of the most potent, imaginative, and just plain creepy radio programs in Quiet, Please. Every show is a veritable “how-to” course for creating dread, terror, and suspense by the perfect combination of writing, acting, and sound design.

The cream of this dark crop is 1948’s “The Thing on the Fourble Board.” I’ll say nothing more about this episode for fear of ruining the surprise for those of you who have never listened to it before, save that a “fourble board” is the working platform on an oil derrick. (It is not, as I believed before I listened to the show, a large piece of furniture like a sideboard. Don’t ask me why I thought that.)

Cooper’s story is perfection. The characterization is clear and concise. We know who these people are and what they look like by how they sound. The sound design – especially the work of actress Cecil Roy – sends chills up the spine. And the ending – the ending! – is unexpected and unforgettable.

You can listen to “The Thing on the Fourble Board” here. You can follow along with the script here.

Enjoy!