The Mysterious Old Radio Listening Society

This episode was recorded live at the Bryant-Lake Bowl in Minneapolis with special guest, Shanan Custer! We’re listening to “The Wailing Wall” from Inner Sanctum Mystery, starring Boris Karloff! The story features a murderous husband who can’t seem to escape his crimes! What is the source of the keening sound that haunts him? Is he […]

A violent series of robberies have Joe Friday and the entire L.A. police force on high alert in this episode of Dragnet, “The Red Light Bandit”! According to his victims, the assailant approached them pretending to be a policeman. Even as a city-wide manhunt fails to stop him, his crimes grow more brutal by the […]

Philo Vance returns to the podcast! S.S. Van Dine’s classic detective pits his wits against a gang of robbers targeting upper class house parties in “The Cipher Murder Case.” When one of these robbers kills his own partner, a cipher is found on the dead man’s body that could unmask the mastermind behind the crimes! […]

This week, we’re presenting one of our B Sides of the Mysterious Old Radio, an example of the sort of bonus content we make available to our supporters on Patreon! Each B Side is a companion piece to an episode presented as part of our usual podcast. In this case we’re listening to “A Night […]

It’s not just any episode of Lights Out this week, it’s a recreation of one of Wyllis Cooper’s scripts from the earliest days of the classic series! “The Coffin in Studio B” features the story of actors and a director struggling to get a production of Lights Out ready in time for its broadcast, but […]

This week we meet The Man Called X! Herbert Marsall starred as the title character in this series of espionage thrillers. During this episode, “Storm Over the Alps,” X’s investigation into a counterfeiting ring brings him to the Swiss Alps, specifically an area of the mountains with peculiar weather conditions. But instead of answers, he […]

We’re revisiting the Australian series, The Key, about which not much is known. This episode, “Showgirl Murdered,” tells the story of a man seemingly framed for the murder of his former girlfriend. As the trial proceeds, a variety of circumstances align to prevent him from proving his innocence. Will the true killer be found? Will […]

This week we’re listening to Barbara Stanwyck’s lone appearance on Suspense, “The Wages of Sin”! Stanwyck stars as a hard-boiled woman being used to help cover up a murder. But once the police become involved she comes up with a scheme to secure a sizeable payday for herself! Will she successfully get her payout? Or […]

Our mysterious listener (and Patreon supporter and artist) Tim sent us down to the Listener Library for an episode of Nightfall entitled, “Gerald”! Thanks, Tim! This story features a young boy who is drawn down a dark path by a mysterious figure, someone who can’t always be seen or heard. As the child’s actions grow […]

We conclude our trio of inaugural episodes from classic radio series! This time we’re listening to “Milford Brooks III,” the audition episode of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar! In this initial story, Johnny has to keep the holder of a two-million-dollar life insurance policy holder from committing suicide. Along the way he’ll try to get some […]

For the second of our trio of inaugural episodes from classic radio series, we present “Dead of Night,” the audition episode for Escape! This story of a British ventriloquist plagued by paranoia and delusions was adapted from one section of a the classic horror anthology film of the same name. When this entertainer encounters his […]

In the hopes of launching 2024 with some auspicious beginnings, we’re presenting a trio of first episodes from classic radio series! Our mysterious listener Glenn starts us out by celebrating 50 years of CBS Radio Mystery Theater with the series’ debut episode, “The Old Ones are Hard to Kill!” Agnes Moorehead stars as a kindly […]

Before we dive fully into 2024, we’d like to take a moment to share a sample from our Patreon page! Last October, our patrons were treated to a Halloween Special, “Spirits and Spooks Summoned for Halloween by William Conrad,” a 1973 children’s spoken word album! At the end of the year, our Patreon members declared […]

Happy New Year’s Eve! We cannot let the year pass without another adaptation of Charles Dickens’ other famous ghost story, “The Signal-Man.” Unexpectedly, we learned of a version even more contemporary than last year’s, presented by Seeing Ear Theater from 1998! As before, this story depicts a curious stranger who encounters a rail worker beset […]

We’re spending this Christmas with Candy Matson! This episode, entitled “Jack Frost,” features Candy on the case of a missing assistant to a department store Santa, Jack Frost! When the man who played Jack turns up dead, she needs to call in some festive help from her friend Rembrandt Watson! Who would want to kill […]

This week’s visit to the Listener Library is a gift for Tim from our mysterious listener, Hank. Thanks, Hank! “The Crisis of Dirk Diamond” is an episode of Suspense featuring a cartoonist whose going to lose his job if he doesn’t come up with a new villain to challenge his protagonist, Dirk Diamond. But when […]

Join us in this celebratory toast to the peaks and valleys that we traveled through in 2022! Based on listener polls, the keen insights of esteemed special guests, and our own incoherent ramblings, one episode shall be declared the specialty of the house and another shall be declared a real punch to the groin. Who […]

This week’s episode is “The Man Who Stole a Planet,” from Quiet, Please! Even for this idiosyncratic, and groundbreaking series, this story is one of the stranger ones, featuring tomb raiding, the undead, and natural disasters in the Iron Range! Who is this man? What planet did he steal? Who wrote the script for the […]

It’s been a while since we’ve payed a visit to The Hall of Fantasy, so we’re stopping by for an episode entitled, “The Man in Black!” The story features two men who encounter a woman terrified by a person she calls “the man in black.” Once she’s found dead, the men become obsessed with finding […]

Happy Thanksgiving! As always, we are most grateful for our listeners and today we’re celebrating with a visit to our Listener Library! Our Mysterious Listener Dave recommended we check out “The Black Room” from CBS Radio Mysterious Theater. Thanks, Dave! The story features a man locked against his will in a light-less, window-less room. The […]