Retro Radio: Old Time Radio in the Dark

An accountant on his first field assignment is the only man who can stop a catastrophe, and the project director has a debriefing schedule designed to bury him until it's too late.

Look for this podcast on YouTube Music, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and numerous other podcast apps. Get the full list of options here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR

CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Death On Project X” (September 16, 1977) ***WD
00:46:12.808 = BBC Radio 4 Spinechillers, “Metballs Are Murder” (November 08, 2006)
00:59:57.050 = Strange Wills, “Prince of Broadway” (July 06, 1946)
01:29:44.479 = Suspense, “Suspicion” (February 10, 1944)
01:59:15.319 = Tales of the Frightened, “Don’t Lose Your Head” (December 17, 1957)
02:03:46.026 = The Creaking Door, “Cat Woman” (December 14, 1964) ***WD
02:32:10.595 = The Saint, “Cowboy” (July 01, 1951)
03:00:57.876 = Theater Five, “World Enough And Time” (November 10, 1964)
03:23:02.258 = Theater 1030, “Two Little Punctures” (July 12, 1953) ***WD
03:50:03.008 = Two Thousand Plus, “Veteran Comes Home” (July 05, 1950) ***WD
04:18:09.269 = The Unexpected, “Two Of A Kind” (1947-1948) ***WD
04:29:57.657 = Unsolved Mysteries, “Rue Morgue Mystery” (June 17, 1942) ***WD
04:44:51.349 = Dark Venture, “Ten Dollar Bill” (August 14, 1945)
05:13:49.213 = Show Close

(ADU) = Air Date Unknown
(LQ) = Low Quality
***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.
CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0643

In a storm-bound country sanatorium, a brilliant scientist driven mad by one fatal mistake insists the immortal Count Cagliostro speaks to him from beyond the grave — guiding his hand toward an experiment that has already killed once before.

Look for this podcast on YouTube Music, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and numerous other podcast apps. Get the full list of options here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR

CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Passport To Freedom” (September 15, 1977)
00:45:51.080 = Peril, “Undivided” (early 1950s) ***WD
01:08:41.986 = Mystery Playhouse, “Female of the Species” (June 07, 1946) ***WD
01:33:50.352 = Philip Morris Playhouse, “Murder Need An Artist” (May 06, 1950) ***WD
02:00:25.283 = Adventures of Ellery Queen, “Dead Man’s Cavern” (April 15, 1944) ***WD
02:25:41.142 = Quiet Please, “Is This Murder” (January 16, 1949)
02:54:03.552 = Radio City Playhouse, “Unguarded Moment” (August 29, 1949)
03:22:02.393 = It’s Murder, “Picture Wire Murder” (August 10, 1944)
03:36:41.570 = The Sealed Book, “Ghost Makers” (September 09, 1945)
04:06:11.396 = The Shadow, “Nightmare at Gaelsbury” (February 02, 1941)
04:30:25.714 = Sleep No More, “The Storm” (December 19, 1956) ***WD
04:57:35.046 = Show Close

(ADU) = Air Date Unknown
(LQ) = Low Quality
***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.
CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0642

A scholar returns from the Indian jungle carrying a bronze idol, a borrowed god, and a body count that will follow him across an ocean. | #RetroRadio EP0641

Look for this podcast on YouTube Music, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and numerous other podcast apps. Get the full list of options here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR

CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Way To a Duty Death” (September 13, 1977) ***WD
00:45:52.224 = Mr. Keen, “Young Husband Who Thought His Wife Failed Him” (April 17,1941)
01:00:40.882 = Murder at Midnight, “Death’s Worshipper” (March 10, 1947)
01:27:00.036 = The Black Museum, “The Raincoat” (1952) ***WD
01:55:52.412 = Mysterious Traveler, “Hide Out” (December 11, 1951) ***WD
02:26:11.998 = Mystery House, “Murder In Paradise” (November 18, 1945) ***WD
02:52:38.153 = Night Beat, “Search For Fred” (June 08, 1951)
03:20:14.930 = CBC Nightfall, “Private Collection” (March 18, 1983)
03:49:10.159 = Obsession, “A Question of Personality” (December 11, 1950)
04:12:05.964 = Origin of Superstition, “Sing Before Breakfast” (1935) ***WD
04:26:26.474 = Pat Novak For Hire, “Johnny Brown Gambling Ring” (August 03, 1947) ***WD
04:55:45.899 = Show Close

(ADU) = Air Date Unknown
(LQ) = Low Quality
***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.
CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0641

When a geologist proved that human grief and human joy were being siphoned to the stars as fuel for somebody else's machine, the world spun into cults and suicides and small wars — but the professor had a wooden crate, a Cumberland cottage full of secrets, and a private answer he wasn't ready to share with the man writing the checks. | #RetroRadio EP0640

Look for this podcast on YouTube Music, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and numerous other podcast apps. Get the full list of options here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR

CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “First Childhood” (September 12, 1977)
00:46:21.651 = Philip Marlowe, “Torch Carriers” (January 07, 1950)
01:15:58.500 = Pursuit, “The Loch Ness Killer” (ADU) ***WD
01:40:29.807 = The Black Mass, “Bartleby the Scrivener” (September 14, 1965) ***WD
02:14:04.032 = Michael Shayne, “Meet Me AT Oakland Depot” (April 02, 1945)
02:43:45.557 = Beyond Midnight, “The Locked Room” (1969) ***WD
03:13:19.062 = MindWebs, “The Machine In Shaft Ten” (1975-1984) ***WD
03:41:42.191 = The Humphrey Bogart Theater, “Dead Man / Pilot Episode” (September 17, 1949)
04:12:46.534 = Mystery in the Air, “Mask of Medusa” (September 04, 1947) ***WD
04:41:44.987 = Molle Mystery Theater, “Red Wine” (March 08, 1946)
05:11:00.140 = Show Close

(ADU) = Air Date Unknown
(LQ) = Low Quality
***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.
CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0640

For seventy years the woman in the green silk dress hung quietly in an old man's house — long enough, as it turned out, to learn how to step down off the wall. | #RetroRadio EP0639

Look for this podcast on YouTube Music, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and numerous other podcast apps. Get the full list of options here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR

CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Woman In The Green Dress” (September 09, 1977)
00:46:22.185 = The Haunting Hour, “Bird of Death” (March 31, 1945)
01:11:12.112 = Hermit’s Cave, “The Spirits of Vengeance” (March 16, 1947)
01:35:56.698 = Mystery is My Hobby, “Death Has a Hot Foot” (December 24, 1947)
02:00:49.021 = Sherlock Holmes, “The Coptic Compass” (December 07, 1946)
02:30:00.596 = The House of Mystery, “Haunters And Haunted” (June 13, 1945) ***WD
02:44:21.540 = Incredible But True, “Death Has a Will” (1950-1951)
02:48:07.969 = Inner Sanctum, “Black Seagull” (March 07, 1943)
03:17:50.145 = The Key, “Alexis” (1956) ***WD
03:44:01.024 = Lights Out, “Poltergeist Gravestone” (October 20, 1942)
04:09:27.539 = Macabre, “Midnight Horseman” (December 11, 1961) ***WD (LQ)
04:36:36.346 = Show Close

(ADU) = Air Date Unknown
(LQ) = Low Quality
***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.
CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0639

She rented the house for the view — for the ageless, indifferent sea outside every window, for the poems she planned to write, for the phone calls to the men she used to love. But the housekeeper wasn't a housekeeper. The groundsman wasn't a groundsman. The little pink pills weren't vitamins. And somewhere out past the fog, a great white ship was drifting closer to shore… carrying the one man she'd been waiting fifteen years to kill.
ABOUT THE SONG: "Those Little Pink Pills" is a slow 6/8 waltz in the style of late 1960s orchestral chamber pop — the territory of Scott Walker's Scott 3 and Scott 4, Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra's duet work, Serge Gainsbourg's most cinematic arrangements, and the psychological gravity of early Leonard Cohen. The song splits its narrative between two voices: a female lead carrying the verses in a breathy, close-miked, dreamlike register, and a male baritone delivering the choruses with cold clinical certainty. She sings from inside the delusion. He sings from outside it. The listener sits in the gap between them, knowing what she does not. The chorus catalogues the quiet lies surrounding her — the housekeeper who isn't a housekeeper, the groundsman who isn't a groundsman, the voices on the phone that were never really there — and lands each time on the small pharmaceutical instrument keeping her fifteen-year delusion intact. The arrangement is all strings, harpsichord, vibraphone, and muted low brass swelling like a distant foghorn. No rock drums. No electric guitar. No major-key resolution. The style was chosen because the source story is a Roman poet's thesis dressed in 1970s clothes — I hate and I love, and I am in torment — and that sentence needed a setting that could carry both the romance and the rot without flinching. Chamber pop circa 1968 was the only room big enough.
ABOUT THE SOURCE EPISODE: The song is drawn from "Silent Shock," a 1977 episode of CBS Radio Mystery Theater written by Elspeth Eric, directed by Himan Brown, and starring Mercedes McCambridge as Catherine Gunther. Catherine has rented a beautiful oceanside house — the kind of place, she says, where a woman can finally get her life together. She walks the beach, copies down poems about the sea from Shakespeare and Coleridge and Byron, and collects flat stones for skipping. Between the poems she telephones the men from her past: Larry, the lover she once ran off with, and John, the husband she left behind. A patient groundsman named Casper tends the shoreline. A kindly housekeeper named Harriet brings up dinner and little pink capsules from the kitchen. And one foggy evening, Catherine sees a great white ship drifting toward her through the mist — the ship, she is certain, that will finally bring her father home. Nothing at the oceanside house is what Catherine believes it to be. Harriet is not a housekeeper. Casper is not a groundsman. The pink capsules are not vitamins. The phone calls to Larry and John connect to no one. The man who quietly runs the place is a psychiatrist, and every kindness in Catherine's pleasant afternoons is a figure borrowed from her unraveled memory. When her doctor arrives to say her father has at last come — by airplane, not by ocean liner — he must prepare her gently, because the father she has waited on for fifteen years has come for only one reason: the bills have grown too steep. Fifteen years earlier, during a quarrel in a motel room, Catherine shot Larry dead. Her father, unable to stomach the scandal, boarded a white ship and sailed for London, leaving his daughter to the care of Edgeworth Sanitarium and a monthly check. Now she waits for him on the beach, beside the little heap of skipping stones she has been saving. When the old man walks into view, she does not weep, and she does not run to him. She picks up the stones, one by one, and hurls them at his head — traitor, deserter, betrayer — while the doctor pulls her back from the water and Catullus, dead two thousand years, supplies the only fitting epitaph: I hate and I love, and I am in torment.
ABOUT CBS RADIO MYSTERY THEATER: CBS Radio Mystery Theater ran from January 1974 to December 1982, broadcasting nearly 1,400 episodes over nine seasons. Hosted by E.G. Marshall (and later Tammy Grimes), the series was created and produced by Himan Brown, a radio drama veteran whose career stretched back to the 1920s. CBSRMT was a deliberate throwback — an attempt to revive the theater-of-the-mind tradition in an era when television had long since claimed the American living room. The show drew on horror, suspense, mystery, science fiction, and psychological drama, adapting classic literature alongside original scripts from writers like Elspeth Eric, Sam Dann, and Ian Martin. Its cast rotated through the finest voice actors of the era, including Mercedes McCambridge, Agnes Moorehead, Fred Gwynne, Tony Roberts, Sarada Farrow, and dozens more. Each episode opened and closed with the signature creaking door and Marshall's literary invocations, bookending stories that ranged from supernatural horror to urban noir to quiet psychological devastation. CBSRMT remains one of the most ambitious and enduring artifacts of American radio drama's late twilight.
ABOUT STATIC WAX: Static Wax is a music project from Weird Darkness that takes stories from vintage radio drama — the horror, mystery, suspense, and psychological fiction of old-time broadcasting — and reimagines them as songs in the musical styles of the eras the stories originally aired in. Each track is drawn from a specific broadcast, matched to a period-appropriate musical register, and built to stand on its own as a piece of music while also honoring the source material. Whether the original story came from Lights Out, Suspense, Quiet, Please, CBS Radio Mystery Theater, or any of the other great American and British radio programs of the 20th century, Static Wax treats the source as both tribute and transformation — grooves pulled from broadcasts that faded decades ago.Learn more and hear the full catalog at https://weirddarkness.com/staticwax

“Silent Shock”: She rented the house for the view — for the ageless, indifferent sea outside every window, for the poems she planned to write, for the phone calls to the men she used to love. But the housekeeper wasn't a housekeeper. The groundsman wasn't a groundsman. The little pink pills weren't vitamins. And somewhere out past the fog, a great white ship was drifting closer to shore… carrying the one man she'd been waiting fifteen years to kill. | #RetroRadio EP0638

CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Silent Shock” (September 07, 1977)
00:45:58.247 = Everyman’s Theater, “Cat Wife’ (October 18, 1940)
01:14:57.244 = Murder By Experts, “The Big Money” (July 25, 1949)
01:44:22.965 = Exploring Tomorrow, “Secret That Cannot Be Cracked” (April 23, 1958)
02:04:00.956 = Faces in The Window, “Black Cat” (November 22, 1952) ***WD
02:27:40.978 = Dark Fantasy, “Superstition Be Hanged” (March 13, 1942)
02:51:54.169 = BBC Fear on 4, “Snowman Killing” (January 03, 1988)
03:20:34.628 = Five Minute Mysteries, “Murder Under Tent” (mid 1940s)
03:25:28.740 = Future Tense, “A Pail of Air” (May 20, 1974) ***WD
03:52:41.177 = BBC Ghosts From The Past, “Black Stockings and Broken Mirrors” (April 08, 1992)
04:36:22.865 = BBC Haunted Tales of the Supernatural, “Legal Rites” (May 15, 1982)
05:04:21.055 = Show Close

(ADU) = Air Date Unknown
(LQ) = Low Quality
***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.
CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0638

All songs are eventually released to major streaming platforms and music apps such as Spotify, Apple Music and iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, Pandora, and most other services worldwide. Songs always appear here first before distribution elsewhere.

Eight flawless pearls, six native divers, and a captain willing to do the math — the sea keeps better books than he does.

ABOUT THE SONG: "Ghosts of the Nancy Hale" — Southern Gothic blues with Chicago and Bayou influence. Inspired by the Weird Darkness Retro Radio episode "Ghosts of The Nancy Hale: The Six Who Did Not Die" featuring the story from Creeps by Night — "The Six Who Did Not Die," originally broadcast July 11, 1944. Eight flawless pearls, six native divers, and a captain willing to do the math — the sea keeps better books than he does.Every track is inspired by the strange, the haunted, the historical, and the occasionally unspeakable stories covered on the Weird Darkness podcast — murder ballads, cursed places, restless spirits, and the kind of folklore that keeps front porch lights burning all night.

ABOUT THE SOURCE EPISODE: "The Six Who Did Not Die" aired on Creeps by Night on July 11, 1944, on the Blue Network, and was rebroadcast on the Armed Forces Radio Service program Mystery Playhouse hosted by Peter Lorre. The story is set aboard the sloop Nancy Hale, anchored off the atoll of Mandariva in the Gambier Islands, and follows the captain's decision to murder his six native pearl divers rather than split the take from an unusually rich bed. When he returns for more, the sea is waiting with its own verdict.

“The Six Who Did Not Die”: Eight flawless pearls, six native divers, and a captain willing to do the math — the sea keeps better books than he does. | #RetroRadio EP0637

CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Waiting Room” (September 05, 1977)
00:45:54.440 = Creeps By Night, “Six Who Did Not Die” (July 11, 1944) ***WD
01:13:28.398 = The Crime Club, “Cowhide” (October 02, 1947)
01:42:49.458 = Danger Dr. Danfield, “Sam hardy Makes a Bet With Death” (December 15, 1946)
02:07:46.457 = CBC Deep Night, “Bonehouse” (August 12, 2005)
02:40:56.361 = The Devil And Mr. O, “Big Mr. Little” (November 12, 1971) ***WD
03:09:13.902 = Diary of Fate, “Peter Drake” (February 23, 1948) ***WD
03:38:40.669 = Dimension X, “The Man In The Moon” (July 14, 1950) ***WD
04:08:22.837 = The Strange Dr. Weird, “Man Who Talked With Death” (December 12, 1944) ***WD
04:20:55.067 = The Eleventh Hour, “Actor”
04:47:27.492 = Escape, “Confidential Agent” (April 02, 1949)
05:16:54.125 = Show Close

(ADU) = Air Date Unknown
(LQ) = Low Quality
***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.
CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0637

All songs are eventually released to major streaming platforms and music apps such as Spotify, Apple Music and iTunes, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, Pandora, and most other services worldwide. Songs always appear here first before distribution elsewhere.

Based on the story, “Interface To Terror” from the April 21, 2026 Weird Darkness #RetroRadio marathon, “Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook: The Crucifix Was Just a Warning!” https://weirddarkness.com/wdrr0636/

A quiet inventor, a bullying brother, and a homemade computer helmet that reaches a little deeper into the skull than advertised."The Lobometer" is a bluegrass murder ballad inspired by "Interface To Terror," an episode of Chet Chedder's Tales From The Morgue. A quiet inventor, a bullying brother, and a homemade computer helmet that reaches a little deeper into the skull than advertised. Static Wax takes the stories told on vintage radio broadcasts and reimagines them as era-appropriate songs — the way they might have sounded if they'd been written for the jukebox instead of the airwaves. Two brothers. One helmet. One second-story window.

ABOUT THE SONG: "The Lobometer" sits in the fratricide branch of the American murder ballad tradition, a lineage that runs from "Banks of the Ohio" through "Pretty Polly" and on into the dark-comic corners of bluegrass storytelling. Clawhammer banjo leads, upright bass walks, mandolin chops the off-beats, and a lone fiddle takes the break. The narrator reports the grisly particulars the way bluegrass narrators always have — plainly, with a slight grin, letting the listener decide how horrified to be. The final verse pulls back into minor key as the quiet brother closes the door on the loan shark's men.

ABOUT THE SOURCE EPISODE: "Interface To Terror" is a Chet Chedder's Tales From The Morgue installment in which an amateur inventor perfects the Lobometer — a helmet wired to a computer that transmits floppy-disk information directly into the human brain. His mob-adjacent brother sees the invention for what it is worth on the black market, and the two begin working their way through credit bureaus and card numbers. The partnership does not last.

ABOUT CHET CHEDDER'S TALES FROM THE MORGUE: Chet Chedder's Tales From The Morgue was a syndicated horror anthology produced by M&J Audio Theatre in the early 1990s, hosted by a morgue attendant whose stories were pulled from the case files of his more unusual residents. Each episode dropped a listener into a self-contained tale of the strange, the violent, and the darkly comic, delivered with the classic host-narrator framing device that reaches back through Vincent Price, The Mysterious Traveler, and Lights Out.

ABOUT STATIC WAX: Static Wax takes the stories told on vintage radio broadcasts and reimagines them as era-appropriate songs — the way they might have sounded if they'd been written for the jukebox instead of the airwaves. Each release is paired with its source episode on the Weird Darkness RetroRadio podcast and explored further on the Static Wax podcast and blog. All Static Wax releases eventually reach streaming platforms including Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, and most other major services under Weird Darkness Records.