Prime spooky October radio and readings with your horror host C-Dawg Fangston

Tuesday 10/12/21

Wanted to get up some horror sound--in the form of readings and radio--that I've been listening to lately. Have some in one place.

This is a 1987 episode from the Cape Cod Radio Mystery Theater called "The Buoy." Pretty obscure. The young who comes to the seaside inn to spend the night because he missed the ferry isn't any great shakes. But everything else here is really well done. The writing is strong, the detail precise and impressive. A gem that one is simply not going to come across. Has elements of "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "The Hitch-Hiker" (at the very end, with the latter). I like the set-up, with the guy precisely telling you where he--and we--are going in his boat. That's a nice device. I'm really impressed with this installment of the program.

Here's Michael Hordern (who plays Jacob Marley in 1951's Scrooge) reading a piece that M.R. James wrote about the stories he had ideas for, which he didn't write. A form of meta-fiction that never was; or meta-fiction about fiction that never was, I should say.

With this example we have some of the ghostly portions of Dickens' The Pickwick Papers, with an appearance by Boris Karloff.

Now we have a 1962 Ralph Richardson reading of the "The Goblins Who Stole a Sexton" section of The Pickwick Papers, a proto-version of A Christmas Carol that I've written about for The Daily Beast and which is discussed in the forthcoming Scrooge book.

Two Vincent Price offerings now. An episode from Suspense of "The Pit and the Pendulum," and a reading of Poe's "Ligeia."

Next we come to Basil Rathbone reading Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado."

Here we have Christopher Lee reading the same story.

And also "The Fall of the House of Usher."

"The Black Cat."

"The Pit and the Pendulum."

I leave this one for last, because it's one of the best recorded readings I've ever heard. Top three. It's Lee reading an abridged version of Dracula. His finest reading. I can listen to this over and over again. Works at any time, but what more could one want for October and autumn than this?