Aural Atavism: The Witch's Tale and Gothic Horror

Aural Atavism: The Witch’s Tale and Gothic Horror Radio Matthew A. Killmeier This article offers a cultural historical interpretation of The Witch’s Tale (1931– 38), an early U.S. horror radio drama, and argues that the program’s use of the Gothic genre unified its content and form. Its plays emphasized temporality to highlight the Gothic intertwining of the past and present, and offered allegories that while often rooted in the fantastic nevertheless addressed contemporary concerns—gender, Others, and socio-economic anxieties. It used sound to complement its content, evoking the supernatural and monsters, and cuing and sustaining suspense. And it tapped radio’s connotation as a supernatural medium to complement and magnify its generic horror. This article provides a cultural historical interpretation of The Witch’s Tale (1931– 38), a U.S. horror radio show. It aired on WOR New York as a half-hour, weekly anthology program, and was syndicated by the Mutual Broadcasting System from 1934–38. Arguably the first regular, horror radio drama, program creator Alonzo Deen Cole wrote, directed, and starred in the plays, giving him a good deal of creative control over its realization. The program also innovated the framing host in horror radio, influencing other programs and popular culture (Hand, 2004, pp. 24– 5). Old Nancy, a centenarian Salem witch, opened and closed the show and offered humorous counterpoint to the macabre matter along with ‘‘her wise black cat Satan,’’ which was voiced by Cole (Siegel, 1998, pp. 4–5). More significantly The Witch’s Tale’s use of Gothic—horror’s larger generic field— strongly unifies its content and form. The program’s emphasis on emotion, mystery, the supernatural, the sublime, and the uncanny contrasted with modern sensibilities. Like a good deal of the Gothic its horrors were often allegorical or symptomatic; it relied upon the fantastic but crystallized real concerns of 1930s America. The Witch’s Tale’s use of sound complemented its content: it sonically sparked the imagination by crafting monster figures, offering emotional proxies who evoke horror through their narrative responses, conveying the supernatural through perceptually subjective sound, and aurally creating and sustaining suspense and fostering realism.

Matthew A. Killmeier (Ph.D., University of Iowa, 2003) is an associate professor of communication and media studies, University of Southern Maine. His research interests include radio history, radio drama, and sound studies. © 2012 Broadcast Education Association DOI: 10.1080/19376529.2012.667021

Journal of Radio & Audio Media 19(1), 2012, pp. 61–82 ISSN: 1937-6529 print/1937-6537 online

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I first situate the program within the genre of U.S. horror radio and the literature thereof before turning to some of its intertextual contexts. Afterward I provide an accounting of the Gothic, address how it figures in some plays and interpret allegorical elements of the program. I then scrutinize how the program’s formal use of sound complemented its Gothic narratives. In the conclusion I consider early radio’s supernatural connotation and suggest how this complemented the program’s Gothic elements and may have affected its reception.

Contexts and Intertexts From the dawn of radio’s golden age in the early 1930s to its twilight in the early 1950s listeners could frequently hear horror shows.1 Before radio became a national, mass, medium the Collier Hour featured horror stories, and the Detective Story Hour premiered the supernatural Shadow character in 1930.2 Horror programs expanded greatly and peaked in number during WWII, but several shows made the 1930’s ether quite eerie (McCracken, 2002, p. 183).3 Most horror programs also had writer/creators who fulfilled multiple roles, Mutual network distribution,4 an anthology format, limited production budgets (most lacked regular advertising and big network largess), 30-minute length, and a significant degree of intertextuality with other media. Horror radio remains largely unexamined in critical scholarship with a few exceptions. Hiablum (1986) provides a synopsis of horror radio including a brief summation of some of the major shows. Chandler (2004) likewise offers an historical survey of the form contextualized by popular culture. Nachman (1998) assays a few of the major programs and attends to their evocative sound effects. McCracken (2002) assesses Suspense, emphasizing how gender figures in numerous plays. Killmeier (2010) interprets a 1950s horror program as symptomatic of popular concerns about postwar modernity. Hand (2004) offers the most complete portrait of horror radio scrutinizing it broadly and offering interpretations of some of the major programs. He situates horror radio within the larger genre, offering nuanced socio-cultural context, and examines the use of the medium, sound effects, acting, and the formal and narrative elements shared by many programs.

Classic Fiction and Pulps Fiction and pulp magazines served as central intertexts of the The Witch’s Tale. A ‘‘prodigious reader’’ (Siegel, 1998, p. 4) Cole drew upon lesser known classics and historical contexts (Hand, 2004, pp. 72–75). The program featured adaptations of several significant 19th century authors including Théophile Gautier,5 Nathaniel Hawthorne,6 Washington Irving,7 and Robert Louis Stevenson8 among others. Myths and legends the program adapted or drew upon include the Flying Dutchman,9

Killmeier/AURAL ATAVISM

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Tanhauser,10 the Golem,11 Thor and Loki,12 and a Hawaiian shark god.13 While Cole reached into the past for material and inspiration the horror pulps likewise influenced him (Siegel, 1998, p. 4), as well as horror radio in general (Chandler, 2004, p. 729). Pulp magazines began in the late 19th century deriving from dime novels; their eponymous paper complemented their contents—ephemeral entertainment aimed at working-class readers (Smith, 2000). Initially pulps featured general fiction but by the early 1900s began to specialize in genres that influenced radio and film: science fiction, Western, superhero, adventure, detective, and horror (Server, 1993, p. 15). The first horror pulp The Thrill Book premiered in 1919; it ended after seven months. Weird Tales, the most influential and longstanding pulp, premiered in 1923 and ran until 1954, publishing contemporary horror and classic works. Some of Cole’s monsters linked with the pulps. He adapted Frederick Marryat’s The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains (1839) as ‘‘The Were-Wolf’’ (11 June 1931); Weird Tales had earlier published Marryat’s story (May 1926).14 The Witch’s Tale also adapted Bram Stoker’s The Judge’s House (1891) as ‘‘Hangman’s Roost’’ (4 July 1932); Weird Tales featured Stoker’s story (March 1935) just before the program’s reprise.15 Cole also re-worked some plays for pulps. He published ‘‘The Snake House’’ (4 April 1932)16 in Mystery Novels Magazine (July 1935), and ‘‘The Spirits of the Lake’’ (2 January 1933) in Weird Tales (November 1941). Weird Tales likewise printed Cole’s adaptation of ‘‘The Gypsy’s Hand’’ (14 November 1932) as ‘‘Gipsy’s Hand’’ (May 1942). Cole launched a pulp magazine tied to the program, The Witch’s Tales, which premiered in November 1936 and ceased publication after the second issue.17 Mike Ashley attributes the magazine’s failure to its publisher (Carwood) and editor; a larger firm may have successfully transferred the radio program’s success to a pulp (2000, p. 104).18 Nominally edited by Cole, Tom Chadburn actually handled the work (Ashley, 2000). The December issue included an adaptation of ‘‘Mrs. Hawker’s Will’’ (20 June 1935), however, it mostly reprinted Pearson’s Magazine material from the turn of the century (Ashley, 2000).19

Film Horror film provides another important intertext of The Witch’s Tale, which featured some monsters and story elements also depicted in film. Two of its plays echo Joseph Sheridan le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872). ‘‘Graveyard Mansion’’ (6 March 1933) and ‘‘From Dawn to Sunset’’ (6 March 1933) both feature female vampires.20 Perhaps the film adaptations Dracula (Tod Browning, 1931) and Vampyr (Carl Dreyer, 1932) influenced these plays or Cole’s (5 June 1933) version of John William Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819), which featured a male monster. He also dramatized Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), which unlike Universal’s picture (James Whale, 1931) more faithfully hews to the novel and preceded the film’s release (Hand, 2004, p. 76).21

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Two plays seem inspired by either Maurice Renard’s novel Les Mains d’Orlac (1920) or its Austrian film adaptation Orlacs Hände (Robert Wiene, 1924).22 In the novel and film a doctor grafts the hands of an executed killer onto the body of a talented pianist after his hands are maimed and amputated. Afterward the pianist loses his dexterity for music but gains the desire to dexterously kill. In ‘‘The Gypsy’s Hand’’ (14 November 1932) the ‘‘greatest pianist ever known’’ requires the amputation of one hand. The loss drives him mad and to seek revenge: his disembodied hand attacks the surgeon and his wife.23 In ‘‘Devil Hands’’ (14 September 1934) a prosecutor visits a condemned killer that he convicted.24 The killer tells the prosecutor he will be cursed with the killer’s ‘‘devil hands’’ after his execution, afterward the prosecutor discovers he can draw like the killer, write in the killer’s handwriting, and his hands attempt to kill his wife. The Witch’s Tale’s intertextuality suggests several functions. It exemplifies genre expectations shared by producers and audiences and a predilection for repetition common to horror. Familiar stories likely reduced risk and perhaps production costs (how the program handled copyrights tied to its adaptations remains unknown, however WOR required writers to submit a form attesting to the writer’s responsibility for copyright and releasing the company from any liabilities, suggesting a loose concern for intellectual property rights that may have been widespread in early radio).25 Intertextuality also indicates the shared audiences and interconnectedness of radio, print, and film, for instance Weird Tales advertised the program Stay Tuned for Terror, and the introduction of ‘‘The Spirits of the Lake’’ in that magazine suggests readers’ familiarity with the program.26 The program’s links with the pulps provides evidence that Cole saw such magazines as a secondary outlet for his stories and as trans-media vehicle. Publishing his stories and creating his own pulp provided Cole with additional publicity for the program and revenues. The Witch’s Tales magazine also anticipates the contemporary media industry’s emphasis on content across multiple platforms and tie-ins. Finally, in rooting his material in classic, Gothic horror, a good deal dating to the 19th century, Cole offered an intertextual reference to the program’s affinities.

Gothic and The Witch’s Tale Horror pictures and pulps frequently featured Gothic stories, but Gothic unified The Witch’s Tale’s content and form. This section first unpacks Gothic’s history, characteristics, and developments before examining its significance in the program. Helen Wheatley defines Gothic, ‘‘as an aesthetic, mode or style, as a set of particular themes and narrative conventions, as a sub-genre of fantasy’’ (2006, p. 2). Gothic developed in 18th century Britain and contrasted with modern, Enlightenment ideals; e.g., freedom of thought and action over religious and traditional authority and rational and scientific comprehension of the world. Whereas the ‘‘Enlightenment valued reason, order, modernity, the Gothic acted as a negative image, imaging forth the irrational, chaos, the past’’ (Jones, 2002, p. 77). Against the idealized


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Englightenment figure of the scientist seeking knowledge The Witch’s Tale offered alchemists, mad scientists, diabolical occultists or pagan witches whose pursuit of forbidden knowledge often brought doom.27 Unlike the Enlightenment Gothic reveled in the unknown (Botting, 1996, p. 7) and offered ‘‘paradox, never high truth’’ (Hume, 1969, p. 289). The Enlightenment spawned the modern period, or modernity, identified as ‘‘the here and now,’’ which respectively followed and was defined against the ancient and medieval (Kumar, 2006, p. 404). A present-bound, continually updated descriptor modernity (or modern) refers to the 18th century as well as the present (Kumar, 2006). Modernity describes how changes wrought by the Enlightenment manifested in everyday life; e.g., scientific and Industrial Revolutions, emergence of nation-states and expansive market economies.28 Above all modernity presumes an historical break with the past connoting a period of ongoing progressive change. Gothic countered prevailing Neo-Classical aesthetic ‘‘ideals of order and reason,’’ elevating ‘‘romantic belief in emotion and imagination’’ (Hume, 1969, p. 282). Realism characterized Neo-Classical art while Gothic works often featured the fantastic and supernatural—staples of The Witch’s Tale where the dead often came back as avenging, aggrieved spirits.29 Realist works represented the social milieu whereas Gothic centered on psychology and the individual (Hume, 1969, p. 288). Neoclassicism elevated harmonious beauty while Gothic centered on the dissonant— particularly terror and the sublime (McGowan, 2007, p. 33). Edmund Burke’s aesthetic theory gave terror aesthetic bona fides by associating it with the sublime (1757/2004). Burke stressed the irrational, emotional aspects of art heralding the sublime as ‘‘the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling’’ and intertwining terror and pleasure (as cited in Punter, 1996, p. 39). For Burke, ‘‘whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the idea of pain, and danger : : : whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible subjects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime’’ (Burke, 1757/2004). Terror provides the emotional basis for the sublime filling ‘‘the mind with great ideas, and the soul delights in the experience’’ (Monk, 1935/1960, p. 87). The sublime de-centers subjectivity taking us outside ourselves, evoking a larger universe where we are neither in command nor necessarily significant and triggering awe, contemplation and reflexivity. Burke’s treatise provided numerous sublime stimuli, many tied to nature, but beings, human and otherwise, did too: 18th century villain-heroes that combined beauty and terror and monster figures that rose to prominence in the 19th century (Fiedler, 1992, p. 128). Monsters were the ‘‘antithesis of neo-classical values : : : deformed, irregular and disproportionate,’’ such as the lycanthropic ‘‘man-beast’’ in ‘‘The Image’’ (8 February 1932) and the snake woman in ‘‘The Boa Goddess’’ (31 July 1933) (Botting, 1998, p. 163). Nevertheless, ‘‘the emotion produced, not the object that produces it, is the important factor in Burke’s aesthetic,’’ which explains the plasticity of sublime stimuli and the protean character of Gothic (Monk, 1935/1960, p. 93). In the 19th century the emphasis on terror waned while horror waxed and sublime stimuli followed suit. Terror evokes sensations of ‘‘awe and wonderment’’ while

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horror elicits ‘‘feelings of revulsion, disgust and loathing’’ (Botting, 1998a, pp. 123– 124). Objects of terror are ‘‘often connected to an immediate threat, [but] the cause of horror is far less discernible : : : not so much threatening as taboo : : : horror appears when fears come a little too close to home’’ (Botting, 1998a, p. 124). With horror the sublime became associated with what Freud dubbed the uncanny—a feeling triggered by frightening things that are simultaneously strange and familiar (1955, p. 220). Such stimuli include ‘‘repetition, returns, déjà vu, premonitions, ghosts, doppelgangers, animated inanimate objects and severed body parts’’ and ‘‘homes and families which are haunted, tortured or troubled in some way’’; The Witch’s Tale featured examples of each (Wheatley, 2006, p. 3). I consider the uncanny an updating and refinement of the sublime (Bloom, 1981; Punter, 2007). Both combine pain and pleasure, the reason certain things evoke them remains strange and mysterious and they therefore promote reflexivity (Freedland, 2004, p. 98). The stimuli that evoke them and the particular qualities of the affective response distinguish the sublime and uncanny. Extraordinary fears triggered by objects of destructiveness, pain, or death (e.g., TV footage of the 2011 Japanese tsunami) elicit terror and the sublime. Fears prompted by partly familiar stimuli that evoke possible threats (e.g., a vampire) call forth horror and what I call the uncanny sublime. The shift from the sublime to the uncanny sublime reflects changes in sources of fear and anxiety—from nature to the everyday world. The Witch’s Tale especially exemplifies Gothic’s concern with ‘‘the nature of temporality,’’ which frequently takes the form of narratives that intertwine past and present and sometimes the future30 (McEvoy, 2007, p. 20). Traditional Gothic works celebrate the besting of the past by ‘‘modern progressive values’’ (Baldick & Mighall, 2000, p. 220). I distinguish between the program’s Gothic and inverted Gothic narratives. With Gothic narratives present elements triumph over those of the past; in inverted Gothic past elements triumph over those of the present. A little less than half of the plays exhibit Gothic narratives.

Gothic: ‘‘Mrs. Hawker’s Will’’ (20 June 1935) Barbara, a young woman, inherits a house from the estate of Mrs. Hawker; per the will Barbara must occupy the house 1 year and sleep in Hawker’s bedroom each night alone. Barbara agrees and moves in along with her Aunt Maggie and brother Rod. The first night Maggie dies in Hawker’s bedroom while inspecting it. A policeman, Ryan, later finds two white hairs that are over 6 feet long in the bedroom; afterward he is posted at the house. The next night Ryan hears a scream, rushes into Barbara’s bedroom, sees a hairy monster by the bed and shoots, but it escapes through a secret passage. Ryan speculates the passageway connects with Hawker’s mausoleum and that Hawker was ‘‘dead alive.’’ He notes how Tibetans could suspend animation, fake their deaths, and transmigrate to other bodies (Hawker lived in Tibet for some time).31 Ryan deduces Hawker wants Barbara’s body and figures light will kill Hawker hence he has electric lamps set up


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around the tomb. The next night Hawker rises and they turn on the lamps, which fail and Hawker begins to strangle Ryan, but the lights are restarted and Hawker becomes dust. The play’s narrative and elements are Gothic. Hawker embodies the past—dead for over 5 years and possessing ancient knowledge of Tibetan magic and alchemy. Although dead (or undead) Hawker attempts to control the living through her will— the legal document and her desire—a common feature of Gothic narratives (Tropp, 1990, p. 120). Her quest for forbidden knowledge through diabolical magic and alchemy make her a familiar Gothic figure (Punter, 1996, p. 87). Barbara and Ryan signify the present; she uses her nursing skills (she is a working woman) to aid Ryan after he is attacked and Ryan’s ratiocination draws upon his knowledge of the occult and attentiveness to empirical evidence, and the electric lamps likewise signify modernity. The play also uses Gothic tropes: a secret passageway and a heroine pursued by a villainous monster.

Inverted Gothic: ‘‘The Violin’’ (3 May 1934) The play opens in England 200 years ago with Nell and her husband Gordon hosting Tasso, an Italian violinist, at their home.32 Nell attempts to seduce Tasso, he resists and she becomes bolder to no avail. Tasso calls her a bad woman; afterward Nell rips her dress and screams drawing her husband. She tells Gordon Tasso attacked her, Gordon stabs Tasso, and Tasso curses their descendents as he dies. The second half moves to the present with newlyweds Ann and Frederick taking up residence in their ancestral home—Nell and Gordon’s house. After learning of Tasso’s curse Ann hears a violin, but Frederick does not (an example of how the program used sound to craft the supernatural, discussed further below). He attributes it to Ann’s imagination, and she agrees: ‘‘Oh, I know, I’m a fool. This is the 20th century.’’ Ann’s supernatural encounters with Tasso continue, and Frederick suspects Ann is cheating and plans to kill her lover. Ann again encounters Tasso and confesses her love. Frederick sees Tasso and shoots him, but the bullet goes through Tasso killing Ann and Frederick is arrested for Ann’s murder. Elements of the past haunt and triumph over the present. Tasso’s wrongful death sets in motion a curse fulfilled in the present—Ann falls for Tasso and contravenes her marriage bond while Frederick prematurely suspects his wife. Both suffer punishment for their ancestors’ misdeeds and their own failings—a common resolution in the program’s inverted Gothics. Again the dead control the living, but the past triumphs through serving supernatural justice to modern miscreants. As Old Nancy puts it at the end of a similar play: ‘‘if the law don’t git ya, the spirits will.’’33 ‘‘The Violin’’ contains Gothic elements of atavism and doppelgangers—Ann and Frederick’s actions parallel those of their ancestors’ and they resemble Nell and Gordon in ways that make them doubles. A family portrait conveys this resemblance as does the dialogue (at one point Tasso refers to Ann as Nell). The doubles also evoke the uncanny sublime serving as harbingers of evil and impending doom,

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and provide the play with psychological depth that suggests the degeneration of individual identity.

Female and Foreign Monsters The Witch’s Tale distilled some elements of 1930s culture, which contemporaneous media—newspapers, magazines, newsreels, and radio news—constructed in various ways. Edward Miller argues that media representations of events, such as the Hindenburg disaster or concerns such as the onset of war in Europe, registered in 1930s radio drama (2003, pp. 48–105). I concentrate on how perceptions of women and foreigners, which were articulated in many media texts, figure in some of the program’s narratives. Approximately one-third of the plays featured monstrous women or female monsters, therefore the program was hardly univocal. Men served as monsters and women as heroines, nevertheless the generic rarity of female monsters suggests their cultural significance. For instance in ‘‘Graveyard Mansion’’ (6 March 1933) two brothers inherit a long-abandoned family home. They encounter a beautiful young French woman who atavistically resembles an ancestor. One of the brothers falls in love with her but dies before they are married. The surviving brother also falls for her, but she is revealed as a vampire and killed. The ending offers a surprising specter of incest revealing that the woman was indeed their ancestor. ‘‘Mrs. Hawker’s Will’’ (20 June 1935) deploys a female monster with similar sexual undertones. Hawker’s grotesque appearance and actions make her the monster. White hair covers her body—hence the alternate title ‘‘The Hairy Monster’’—and her nails are frighteningly long, evoking an animal corporeality. Hawker’s attempted transmigration suggests lesbianism. Barbara must sleep in Hawker’s bedroom alone because of Hawker’s will or desire for Barbara’s body, but Ryan’s has a clear romantic-sexual interest in Barbara. The play indicates they will eventually get together implying a sexual struggle over Barbara. When Hawker attacks Ryan she strangles him signifying Ryan’s phallic threat. Its plot also implicates family anticipating what later becomes a prominent theme in American horror. Hawker’s will originally left the estate to Barbara’s sister Helen—who died the day of Hawker’s funeral—but stipulates that Helen’s female relative become the heir. Hawker lacks children and Barbara’s family parents—neither family features a patriarch although Ryan is presented as likely to fill that role. Three plays also feature monstrous women akin to femme fatales anticipating film noir.34 In ‘‘The Firing Squad’’ (31 August 1931) set during WWI, a French woman hypnotizes her lover, an American soldier, in order to get him to reveal intelligence that she divulges to the Germans. This betrayal leads to the death of his unit. Similarly ‘‘The Spirits of the Lake’’ (2 January 1933) features a femme fatale who suggests to her lover that he murder his rich wife, which he does. ‘‘The Violin’’ (3 May 1934) offers a rich example of a monstrous woman as femme fatale. Nell


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transgresses in her attempts to seduce Tasso and causes his murder epitomizing Gothic’s present in the past: an 18th century femme fatale. Tasso also functions as a femme fatale—he woos Ann, eliciting the atavistic immoral woman within which leads to her death. Unlike its monstrous women, The Witch’s Tale fit firmly with generic and cultural conventions in crafting foreign monsters and American victims. Nearly two-thirds of the plays offer such scenarios with monsters represented as Other through their narrative functions and national origins. Nevertheless the program did depict several significant counterexamples where the attitudes or actions of racist or chauvinistic Americans provided their demise with a semblance of justice.35 ‘‘Kamohoalii’’ (18 January 1932)36 offers an intriguing example because it suggests desire for and fear of the Other, intertwining fear, desire and the taboo as it constructs an allegory about empire and race. It unfolds in 1930s Hawai’i—then a U.S. territory—on a boat approaching one of the islands. Roy, an American living in Hawai’i, is accompanying his compatriot Mason. Roy mentions his fiancée Irene, the daughter of a white man and a Hawaiian woman, and how a shark killed Irene’s father and rumors suggest Irene’s mother, Kaleema, put a curse on her father. Roy indicates he may later divorce Irene because of her ethnicity. A Hawaiian man spots a shark and says it is the King Shark God, which islanders worship. Roy claims he hears thunder and a voice, jumps overboard and is killed by the shark. Mason later learns from a doctor that Roy’s death paralleled those of two other white men who were interested in Irene. The doctor says Kaleema is a ‘‘priestess of the old gods,’’ but Mason is skeptical; he and Irene fall in love and become engaged. However Kaleema plans to sacrifice Mason to the shark god, which she sets in motion through procuring a lock of the victim’s hair for the shark. Irene insists on cutting Mason’s hair; afterward Kaleema tosses it into the sea. Kaleema and Irene then see Mason off on a boat, presumably to his death, but Irene tells Kaleema she substituted her hair for Mason’s (both are blond). Irene then jumps into the sea and is killed by the shark. The foreign, white men represent a threat to Hawai’i. ‘‘White man never good,’’ Kaleema says. However the white men frame matters in imperial terms. The doctor notes, only 160 odd years ago this land was unknown to white men, and what we call civilization. Although with help from the Chinese and the Japs we’ve done a lot to it in a short time, may heaven forgive us. But we haven’t yet destroyed all that was here before we came.

Americans fomented the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarch but did not commit to a formal bond (statehood) for a long time. Rather Hawai’i’ had liminal status— much like the bonds between Irene’s father and Kaleema and Roy and Irene. White men also threaten to the established racial/ethnic order when they become sexually interested in the Other. When Mason proposes to Irene she tries to dissuade him, highlighting the taboo:

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Journal of Radio & Audio Media/May 2012 can’t you realize that I’m a half caste. My hair is as yellow as yours, my skin as white—but I’m a bronze savage underneath. A bronze savage! I’ve learned you gaze at me like all others of my father’s race have done: as an inferior, a female animal, as if something they can take and break.

Mason says he doesn’t care, coloring him as modern. The ending suggests Kaleema’s ‘‘debt of hate’’ dies with Irene and modernity is victorious; more plausibly the past of racial purity triumphs (though racist ideas were hardly past in 1930s America). The shark god serves as one monster and Kaleema as the villain, but Irene, although a sympathetic character, also functions as a monster. With her blond hair and educated diction she visually and aurally passes for white, but is ‘‘a blond savage’’ and therefore ‘‘categorically interstitial,’’ provoking fear and tabooed desire through combining what should be separate (Carroll, 1990, p. 32). She may also elicit the uncanny sublime through her mixed ethnicity (the familiar and strange) and her death’s link to racial revenge, which may prompt listeners to reflect upon the real relations undergirding the drama. In deploying the dark fantastic as a popular means of seeding allegories about its times The Witch’s Tale exhibited continuity with a good deal of Gothic horror. Concerns about women’s power, particularly socio-economic power, figured in many Depression discourses, and fear of female sexuality—often articulated with economics—has deep cultural roots (McElvaine, 1993). The program’s foreign monsters tied in with American Gothic literature (Punter, 1996, p. 165), and resonated with isolationism in the postwar period as well as reactionary, nativist discourses (McElvaine, 1993). While the program did not offer unified representations of women or foreign others it tapped into concerns that made its narratives not only relevant to its times but an important cultural historical text, and it did so by innovatively using radio form.

Gothic Form Individual Causality Nearly all the plays feature individual narrative causality, which captures how a character’s actions or decisions contribute to the narrative’s cause and effect chain (Bordwell & Thompson, 2010, p. 102). The narrative could differ if he or she acted or decided otherwise. Non-individual causality describes how other forces, primarily the supernatural, function causally. Individual causality upholds a central tenet of American capitalist individualism: One’s lot results from one’s choices and actions. Individualism magnified the psychological stress and guilt of the unemployed (and those fearful of being so) during the Depression: ‘‘Americans who had claimed responsibility for personal gains found it difficult not to feel guilty when confronted with failure’’ (McElvaine, 1993, p. 172).


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Such anxiety abounds in ‘‘The Wonderful Bottle’’ (21 March 1932). Adapted from Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Bottle Imp (1891), it shares its basic plot. Jeff, the protagonist, and his companion Mack seek their ‘‘fortune’’ in Argentina. Mack describes the two Americas as ‘‘down on their luck’’—they lack food, work, and Jeff’s shoes are falling apart. They go to a beautiful house seeking ‘‘odd jobs.’’ The owner offers to sell Jeff a magic bottle that grants wishes. However, once purchased the bottle can only be disposed of by selling it for a lower price—it comes from hell and its owner must sell it before death or burn there. Jeff buys the bottle for $50, wishes for a nice home for himself and his family in San Francisco and gets it. Afterward he sells the bottle to Mack claiming that he has all he wants. The following day Jeff’s fiancée Eva telegrams him that his parents were killed. One year later Mack visits Jeff who has not married Eva because he has contracted leprosy. He asks Mack if he has the bottle; Mack sold it, but also wants it back as he has become blind. They leave in search of the bottle eventually finding it. Mack buys it, later sells it to Jeff and repeated sales and purchases transpire. After finally buying the bottle for 1 cent Jeff resigns himself to his lot, but a man buys it from him for a grain of sand. Although Jeff and Mack reference ‘‘luck’’ and ‘‘fortune’’ in the play individual causality is clear—they sought wealth in Argentina, failed, and choose to gain it through other means. The characters willingly buy the bottle aware of the potential consequences causing a chain of events that underscores the play’s theme: material wealth gained through inappropriate means is cursed. Wealth not gained through work is evil, literally and figuratively—the bottle subverts the link between individual initiative, labor, and the market and profanes the religious and economic order. The latter resonated during the Depression with public assistance programs demonized by the right as undermining morality, and relief recipients ‘‘stigmatized’’ (McElvaine, 1993, p. 181). That the bottle can only be disposed of through selling it for a lower price—and the dizzying accumulation of commercial exchanges—underscores its economic signification. Other working-class characters attempting to gain wealth outside the market likewise suffer.37 Such Gothic narratives illustrate its status as both a middle-class and anti-middle class mode motored by ‘‘the dialectic of comfort and disturbance : : : a continuous oscillation between reassurance and threat’’ (Punter, 1996a, p. 203). They crystallize the middle-class preoccupation with aspiration and fall, ‘‘the stuff out of which a middle class is forged’’ and ‘‘the very elements which continually seek to undermine its stability’’ (Punter, 1996a, p. 201).

Supernatural Sound The Witch’s Tale relied upon listeners’ imaginations to realize its monstrous figures, but like the best Gothic horror it opted for suggestive sketches over detailed depictions. It emphasized emotional responses rather than concrete realism, relying upon characters as affective proxies to prime listeners’ emotional responses

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(Carroll, 1990). Neuroscience explains the efficacy of such economy for crafting indelible, individual impressions and eliciting emotion: ‘‘when information comes solely through our auditory system, our mental imaging systems have freewheeling authority to generate whatever visuals they want’’ (Douglas, 1999, p. 28). Hearing serves as humans’ early warning system making sound a primal stimuli partly tied to danger (Douglas, 1999, p. 30). In processing sound the part of the brain responsible for emotions—the amygdala—first receives signals directly from the auditory thalamus initially bypassing the cerebral cortex—the reasoning part of the brain (LeDoux, 1998, pp. 106–107). ‘‘The Boa Goddess’’ (31 July 1933) epitomizes the power of the program’s suggestive sketches of monsters, and its emotional emphasis. The protagonist Morgan and two accomplices pilfer giant emeralds from an Aztec statue of a snake god. One accomplice is mysteriously killed in the jungle—the other in the US—and Morgan marries Marianne and gives her the emeralds as his wedding gift. The play only intimates the monster throughout using drumbeats to suggest its latent presence, but in the last scene Morgan watches Marianne metamorphose into the boa goddess (this takes place on their wedding night offering a tabooed subtext of sex and death).38 Morgan initially narrates the process providing an incomplete picture of the changes. Descriptions of the action are interwoven with the crisp dialogue between Morgan and Marianne while fearful and painful ejaculations from Morgan offer fodder for listeners’ imaginations and emotions. Morgan: Marianne: Morgan: Marianne: Morgan: Marianne: SFX: Morgan: Marianne: Morgan: Marianne: Morgan: Marianne: Morgan: Marianne: Morgan: Marianne: Morgan: Marianne: Morgan: Marianne: Morgan:

ya seem to be growin’ taller, thinner somehow. What are ya doin’? Turn around, let me see ya. Let me look into your eyes! Look! [loud gasp] Dem emeralds are your eyes!! Yes. You’re the boa goddess! Three drum beats; continue under briefly That drum!! It means I claim my final sacrifice No! No, (straining voice) I can’t move, only stare in your eyes, and your body’s lengthenin’, changin’ into a monster snake! Soon I will coil around you No! fold over fold, and you will only gaze in my eyes and whimper, only when my coils tighten will you scream just once Nah!! then will I give you your promised kiss, the kiss of death for the Marianne who was only a squaw!39 (painfully) Ahh! I begin to coil Oh, cold, so cold. No I can’t die! For gain you defiled a people’s faith Ahh! I bind your feet Ohh!!

Killmeier/AURAL ATAVISM Marianne: Morgan: Marianne: Morgan: Marianne:

Morgan: SFX:

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For gain you betrayed a people’s hospitality. I bind your arms Ahh!! For gain you destroyed a woman’s love and life, I bind your heart Ahh!! For this you have been left the last of the three. Today as you yourself loved—as after a year of mortal fear, you aspire to happiness and peace— today I coil about your worthless soul and crush!! (withering) Ohhhoahh (loudly) AHHAHAA!! Three drum beats.

Morgan’s increasingly emotional outcries expressionistically color the impressionistic picture the dialogue offers and provide listeners an emotional proxy through which their responses are indexed (Carroll, 1990). The Witch’s Tale offers the sonic equivalent of silhouettes rather than descriptive detail providing foundation for its Gothic focus on psyches and emotions, which it reached through heightened—often hyperbolic and melodramatic—expression. While neuroscience suggests why we benefit by going back to the sublime, and Burke avers: ‘‘it is one thing to make an image clear, and another to make it affecting to the imagination’’ (as cited in Monk, 1935/1960, p. 94). Burke underscores ‘‘the greater emotive value of a verbal description as opposed to a drawing of the same scene, and the influence of music in arousing feeling without the aid of images’’— a stance at odds with Neo-Classicism and realism, and uncanny in its insights for The Witch’s Tale (Monk, 1935/1960).

Sonic Subjectivity The program also used sound to craft perceptual subjectivity, which is the direct depiction of what a character hears (Bordwell & Thompson, 2010, p. 95). Approximately a quarter of the plays use subjective sound to convey the supernatural by allowing the listener to hear something a character hears, but that other characters cannot.40 This technique conveys the supernatural—what should be audible to all is only perceptible to one—by encoding such voices and sounds as not emanating from material sources.41 It also increases the plays’ realism and fosters the uncanny sublime, which best succeeds in a realistic narrative (Freud, 1955, pp. 250–251). It likewise illustrates the Gothic tendency of pairing the fantastic and supernatural with ‘‘documentary techniques to provide (rather, to give the impression of providing) proof’’ (Jones, 2002, p. 125).42 ‘‘The Devil Mask’’ (13 June 1935) offers an evocative example. An American man shoots and kills a witch doctor in an African village; afterward the villagers tell him that the mask the witch doctor was wearing is a devil’s mask, which he now owns and will never leave him. His repeated attempts to get rid of the mask fail and eventually he is indirectly killed by it. After tossing the mask into his fireplace the fire ignites a bullet on the mask that served as a tooth, which in part rationally explains the supernatural. However the play remains ambiguous—a frequent Gothic characteristic—as the mask’s returns confound reason. Subjective sound is used to signify the return of the mask, reinforce its origins and

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create an uncanny effect. Twice after the mask eerily returns to the man he (and we)—but no one else—hears African drums ominously beating. These echo drums heard earlier in the village, but as the man is far away they evoke the uncanny sublime.

Suspenseful Sounds The program frequently used sound to foster narrative realism and create and sustain suspense. ‘‘The Suicide’’ (22 January 1937) exemplifies both; it centers on a callous protagonist who cheats on and berates his wife driving her to suicide.43 She promises to exact revenge—telling her husband to remember 4 a.m. (the time she dies)—and does so as a revenant doppelganger (another example of supernatural revenge). The play uses the sound of a clock chiming 4 a.m. throughout to herald the wife, her spirit or doppelganger (this use of a sound cue in association with the monster is a common feature).44 The chiming sound also adds to the realistic realization of the plot’s duration (it takes place over 4 years) and helps to cue and sustain suspense. In the climax, the number of sounds increases and the time between them decreases (another regular technique). It begins with the sounds of a ticking clock that continue under the dialogue.45 The protagonist repeatedly mimics the sounds— ‘‘tick, tock’’—breaking up his monologue which gins the suspense by revealing the deadline date (31 March) and his weapon (pistol with silver bullets). As time inches toward 4:00 the protagonist’s monologue becomes increasingly hysterical in subject and expression—offering sonic counterpoint to the steady, measured, uniform clock sounds. When the clock strikes 4:00 the protagonist gasps and before it has chimed the fourth time the doppelganger speaks. She reveals that she and his wife’s spirit are the same in a measured monotone that parallels the clock’s ticking and contrasts with the protagonist’s delivery. The protagonist laughs hysterically as the sound of six quick shots in succession is heard. Flabbergasted that the shots failed to kill her, the protagonist shrieks, ‘‘keep back! keep back!! don’t strike! don’t strike!!’’ screams loudly, and the sound of a falling body is heard. The play uses sound to achieve two intertwined Gothic characteristics: suspense and emotion. Gothic fiction relied heavily on the technique of suspense in order build an agitated affective state that was later released (Monk, 1935/1960, p. 14). Its use of the simple sounds of a clock economically achieves narrative and emotional ends. The plot builds to the deadline—cued in the first scene— that comes at the confrontation with the wife’s vengeful spirit. Until the ending sound effects are used sparingly but effectively—relying upon listeners’ attention to sound and imaginative co-creation. The ending achieves its emotional impact in part through the suspense and affective weight the sound effects accumulate with the clock sounds serving as pregnant, sonic ‘‘close-ups’’ (Cantril & Allport, 1941, p. 232).


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Conclusion: The Witch’s Tale and Radio’s Gothic Qualities The Gothic unifies The Witch’s Tale’s content and form. Its plays illustrate Gothic fixation with temporality and allegorically address contemporary concerns through the fantastic and supernatural. The program’s form indicates an allegiance to Gothic with its heavy reliance upon individual causality that symptomatically expresses middle-class anxiety. Its use of sound to suggestively sketch monsters, heighten the affect of horror through emotional proxies, convey the supernatural through perceptual subjectivity, and to cue and sustain suspense demonstrate its Gothic roots and formal innovation. I conclude by considering how early radio seemed supernatural and how this complemented the program’s use of the Gothic and may have affected its reception. Like any new medium the public perceived early radio through historical, cultural lenses; however radio seemed especially magical. ‘‘Wireless’’ captured its distinctiveness and signaled a strange absence: materiality. The telegraph, telephone, and electric lights had wires, the phonograph used disks or cylinders and photography and cinema were based on negatives. Radio signals traversed the electromagnetic spectrum—invisible, immaterial frequencies that lent it a supernatural aura. The spectrum, popularly known as ‘‘the ether,’’ became a metaphor that aided comprehension of radio transmission and added to its mysteriousness: ‘‘the air had been cracked open, revealing a realm in which the human voice and the sounds of the cosmos commingled’’ (Douglas, 1999, p. 48). The postwar spike in spiritualism furthered radio’s supernatural semblance. Spiritualists believed in communication with the dead through a medium and saw parallels in radio; Sir Oliver Lodge gave public prominence to and advanced this affinity. Lodge illuminates, and perhaps recognized, radio’s Gothic possibilities. A British physicist whose research improved radio tuning and a spiritualist Lodge approximated an alchemist. Rather than eternal life he sought communication with those in the afterlife using his scientific background and stature to propose the synchronicity of radio and spiritualism in a series of well-attended U.S. public lectures (Douglas, 1999, pp. 42–48). Lodge likened ‘‘radio experimentation to the explorations of the supernatural’’: as the spectrum was invisible one had to invoke ‘‘the imaginary,’’ therefore the afterlife was analogous (Douglas, 1999, p. 44). Radio and spiritualism required a medium, but the mediation ‘‘remained mysterious, romantic, thrilling, forbidden’’ (Douglas, 1999, p. 45). Lodge coined the evocative phrase ‘‘the ethereal world’’ and intimated ‘‘that radio waves and the spirits of the undead inhabited the same dimension, the wavy, murky, howling ether’’ (Douglas, 1999, p. 45).46 While radio encapsulated modernity, Lodge, the ether, and the medium’s supernatural aura suggested radio’s public perception, and perhaps reception, also roused the past and the immaterial. The Witch’s Tale reflexively intimated radio’s supernatural and modern connotations. Upon finding an alchemist’s fantastic, crystal globe a character remarks, ‘‘it’s not possible’’ and her husband replies, ‘‘so one who had never heard a radio or seen an airplane might say of them. Nothing’s impossible.’’47

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Early radio revealed its Gothic potentiality by conjuring the past through broadcasting practices. In order to make the medium familiar, or at least less disruptive, broadcasters ‘‘consciously wedded radio to nostalgia early on, primarily by playing old favorites that reminded people of their youth’’ (Douglas, 1999, p. 25). Broadcasters also drew upon established forms for content giving radio a sense of continuity with the past, hence The Witch’s Tale drew adapted classic horror—a good deal dating to the 19th century—and presented its plays in the melodramatic style of popular theater. Radio also relied upon one of the most primal human senses and nowhere was hearing more acute than in the dark where visual deprivation increases the ear’s sensitivity; night-time listening pulls us to the past and enhances our imagination (Hendy, 2010, pp. 222–223). In its 7-year run The Witch’s Tale primarily aired after dark—at 9 p.m. or later—and Old Nancy always invoked darkness in her opening framing. ‘‘Douse them lights’’ she commanded, ‘‘so we’ll ‘ave it nice n’ dark,’’ and often described the dark as ‘‘cheerful.’’ Before each play she told listeners to ‘‘draw up to the fire, and gaze into the embers, gaze into ‘em deep, and soon you’ll see : : : ’’ evoking a pre-modern mode of storytelling and listening. The Witch’s Tale recognized darkness hid the supernatural and served as the setting for its effective dramatic realization (Hendy, p. 225).48 The program used a modern, electric medium to craft aural tales of terror, complementing its Gothic emphasis on entwining the primitive past and the modern present. Radio also tapped the dark past by revivifying the public’s aural sensibilities, which enhanced its reliance on emotion and imagination. It ‘‘carried people back into the realms of preliteracy, into orality, to a mode of communication reliant on storytelling, listening, and group memory’’ (Douglas, 1999, p. 29). Orality, which literacy began to banish in the modern period, returned to some extent with radio (Ong, 1982). The visual culture of print and images cultivated linear, rational thought and the Enlightenment disposition that deprecated the body and emotions. Radio returned a repressed aural sensitivity and resurrected its imaginative, emotional, and corporeal tendencies. ‘‘It was an atavism Americans clearly loved,’’ and paralleled Gothic’s emergence (Douglas, 1999, p. 29). The aural challenged the visual as Gothic countered the Enlightenment, Neo-Classicism, and modernity. As a horror program on an atavistic medium The Witch’s Tale amplified radio’s Gothic dimensions by contrasting with the prevailing aesthetic norms and content of respectable culture, contravening the visual with its aural expressionism and exercising the emotions and imagination, which complemented and may have magnified its genre plays.49 Radio could evoke the sublime through interpolating the sense of hearing and eliciting the imagination and emotions, awakening a psychic intensity. The ‘‘new, invisible dimension’’ of the ether facilitated ‘‘contact with others far away,’’ and ‘‘opened up a dark yet crackling part of the universe to the human imagination— put[ting] people, however temporarily, in further awe of the cosmos of which they were part’’ (Douglas, 1999, p. 53). Radio de-centered and intensified listeners’ subjectivity by taking them out of themselves while simultaneously plunging them into their ‘‘innermost thoughts,’’ probing the psychological turf of Gothic (Douglas,


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1999, p. 22). Reading and sight foster a sense of individual subjectivity centered by spectatorship, but hearing and the ear promote a collective subjectivity de-centered by sound’s enveloping qualities (Ong, 1982). Hearing a radio play requires the listener to engage in its collective co-creation, but it also necessitates individualizing elements of the drama which unfold in one’s imagination. For example, ‘‘Devil Hands’’ plunges the listener into a prosecutor’s psychological crisis after he becomes controlled by an executed murderer’s will. The protagonist’s hands, which manifest the murderer’s will, attempt to strangle people, and the protagonist cannot control them. The play succeeds in evoking the uncanny sublime as it takes us outside ourselves by propelling us into the psyche of the protagonist yet bringing us to a fundamental, familiar psychological fear—the loss of bodily and mental control and related anxieties about self-autonomy (Freud, 1955). It does so through spare description and heavy reliance upon the protagonist’s monologues, which limn his psyche as he confronts an existential crisis. However, in imaginatively creating the interior, mental action the listener takes a parallel psychological journey, one co-created but individualized. Radio likewise provided psychic mobility by fostering narrative travel through time and space, particularly through fantastic fare such as The Witch’s Tales. Its unparalleled capacity for fluid changes in time and space allowed radio listeners to jump from the present to past, here to anywhere, with minimal sonic cues—audiences conjured settings and action in the psychic space of their imagination (Cantril & Allport, 1941, p. 232). Here again the medium and the program took the listener outside themselves (their space and time) and plunged them into their imaginations providing the possibility of experiencing the uncanny sublime. In taking the listener outside themselves by de-centering their subjectivity and reorienting their temporal and spatial bearings to craft imaginative, emotional, and horrifying fictional experiences, the program tapped radio’s Gothic possibilities in the 1930s. Radio juxtaposed the modern and the past, scientific and supernatural, and revived an aural sensibility that complemented the Gothic content and form of The Witch’s Tale.

Notes 1 Other

programs featuring horror or the supernatural include: Lights Out (1934–1947), The Hermit’s Cave (1935–1944), I Love a Mystery (1939–1952), Dark Fantasy (1941–42), Suspense (1942–1962), The Whistler (1942–1955), The Weird Circle (1943–47), Creeps by Night (1944), The Haunting Hour (1944–46), Stay Tuned for Terror (1945), Murder at Midnight (1946–47), Escape (1947–1954), The Hall of Fantasy (1947–54), Mystery in the Air (1945, 1947), The Croupier (1949) and Nightmare (1953–54). 2 The Detective Story Hour was created by pulp publisher Street & Smith (Chandler, 2004, p. 729). 3 Even the prestigious Mercury Theater on the Air featured horror in 1938 with its adaptations of ‘‘The War of the Worlds’’ (30 November 1938) and ‘‘Dracula’’ (11 July 1938), its first play. 4 Mutual carried Dark Destiny (1942–43), The Mysterious Traveler (1943–53), The Sealed Book (1945), Strange Dr. Weird (1944–45), The Hall of Fantasy (1947–54) and, initially, Quiet,

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Please (1947–49), which later moved to NBC. Mutual’s relationship to horror radio is addressed in Killmeier (2010). 5 ‘‘The Evil Eye’’ (27 August 1931), ‘‘The Transplanted Souls’’ (28 December 1931), ‘‘Clairimonde’’ (16 August 1932) and ‘‘The Doctor of Souls’’ (15 May 1936). My interpretation of the program is based on an analysis of 37 plays (24 are recordings and 13 are scripts), which constitute the bulk of available material. Cole (1998) lists 333 total plays in total however many were reprised—quite a few of them multiple times. 6 ‘‘Rappaccini’s Daughter’’ (2 February 1932). 7 ‘‘The Devil and Tom Walker’’ (26 October 1931) and ‘‘The Headless Horseman’’ (31 October 1931). 8 ‘‘Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’’ (23 November 1931) and ‘‘The Wonderful Bottle’’ (21 March 1932). 9 (1 February 1932). 10 (19 December 1932). 11 (25 September 1933). 12 ‘‘The Statue of Thor’’ (22 May 1933). 13 ‘‘Kamohoalii’’ (18 January 1932). 14 Universal’s Werewolf of London (Stuart Walker, 1935) was contemporaneous with the reprise of ‘‘The Were-Wolf’’ (15 October 1935). Lycanthropy also featured in ‘‘The Image’’ (8 February 1932). 15 From script (Cole, 1998, pp. 63–76). Although derived from Stoker’s story Cole’s play changes many elements in a ‘‘free adaptation’’ (Hand, 2004, p. 80). And, as Hand notes, broadcasting it on America’s Independence Day was particularly ironic—the protagonists are nouveau riche Texans who purchase a haunted house in England illustrating an American association between status and the former colonial power that suggests dependence. 16 From script (Cole, 1998, pp. 47–62). 17 Weird Tales also spawned a radio show, Stay Tuned for Terror (1945), based on adaptations of Robert Bloch’s stories. 18 Publisher Street & Smith certainly did so with The Shadow magazine (1931–49). 19 From script (Cole, 1998, pp. 163–179); AKA ‘‘The Hairy Monster’’ (26 September 1932). 20 ‘‘From Dawn to Sunset’’ from script (Cole, 1998, pp. 31–45); AKA ‘‘Vampire Village’’ (21 January 1936). 21 Weird Tales also serialized ‘‘Frankenstein’’ beginning in 1932. But the editor ‘‘was so roundly condemned by readers that he decided against following it up with ‘Dracula’ ’’ (Haining, 1976, p. 13). 22 An American film adaptation was also made: Mad Love (1935, Karl Freund). The Raven (Louis Friedlander, 1935), nominally linked to Poe, exhibits a similar scenario. 23 The literary source for the severed hand is Guy de Maupassant’s The Flayed Hand (1875); such a hand figures prominently in ‘‘Four Fingers and a Thumb’’ (19 October 1937) and in the comic Tales from the Crypt 18 (June–July 1950). I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pointing out these connections. 24 From script (Cole, 1998, pp. 131–146). 25 The form noted, ‘‘I realize that many ideas, programs, formats, scripts, slogans, plans, suggestions, and other materials submitted to WOR are either not original or, if used by WOR are not used as the result of such submission. I herewith submit to WOR certain material; it being understood that I have full power to control and dispose of all rights thereto’’ (Undated contract, Bamberger Broadcasting Service, Incorporated (WOR), Radio Writers Guild Records, 1930–1958, Box 70, Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library). Other evidence suggests that copyrighted pulp stories were used on radio for no compensation or a meager fee. For instance, NBC confirmed that it had been granted permission and paid no royalties for three Story Digest stories used on Stories by Olmsted (Marion E. Noyes to Albert Gibney, 3 December 1946, Box 4, Popular Publications, Inc. records, New York Public Library). Other correspondence indicated that a fee of $25 for first radio rights was a common figure offered to Popular Publications in the late 1940s. The pulp publishers claimed to own all rights to stories they published and seemed to see radio as less a source of revenue than a means of


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publication promotion. This began to change from the late 1930s onward as writers organized and demanded fair compensation (Alden H. Horton to Martin Jurow, 17 March 1950, Box 4, Popular Publications Inc. records, New York Public Library). 26 The introduction noted: ‘‘From THE WITCH’S TALE—that highly popular radio broadcast which thrilled you so often over the air—comes a story specifically adapted for the magazine by that famous program’s author and director’’ (Cole, 1941, p. 29). 27 Its alchemists include: Kendall in ‘‘The Alchemist’’ (5 October 1934); Hawker in ‘‘Mrs. Hawker’s Will’’ (20 June 1935); DeCaseraut (also a diabolical occultist) in ‘‘The Devil Doctor’’ (19 February 1937); and Old Dr. Drummond in ‘‘The House of the Bridegroom’’ (26 June 1933). Its mad scientists include: Dr. Sternhoff in ‘‘The Entomologist’’ (7 January 1935); and Victor Frankenstein in ‘‘Frankenstein’’ (3 August 1931). Its diabolical occultists include Mr. Black in ‘‘The Tenant’’ (6 May 1937); Judge Merrick in ‘‘Hangman’s Roost’’ (4 July 1932); and Turgoff in ‘‘Devil Hands’’ (14 September 1934). Its pagan witch/sorcerer figures include: the witch doctor in ‘‘The Devil Mask’’ (13 June 1935); the American Indians in ‘‘The Spirits of the Lake’’ (2 January 1933); Kaleema in ‘‘The King Shark God’’ (14 August 1935); Goody Fairfax in ‘‘The Haunted Crossroads’’ (17 October 1932); the spirit of an Aztec priest in ‘‘Knife of Sacrifice’’ (27 August 1935); Nora in ‘‘The Troth of Death’’ (11 March 1937); the pianist in ‘‘Gypsy’s Hand’’ (14 November 1932); Cheng Liu in ‘‘Four Fingers and a Thumb’’ (19 October 1937); Old Eric in ‘‘The Devil’s Number’’ (12 December 1935); the folklorist Farnum in ‘‘The Image’’ (8 February 1932); and Marianne in ‘‘Boa Goddess’’ (31 July 1933). 28 Living in the modern world is ‘‘to experience personal and social life as a maelstrom, to find one’s world and oneself in perpetual disintegration and renewal, trouble and anguish, ambiguity and contradiction’’ (Berman, 1982, p. 345). Modernism and modernist, although intertwined with modernity, are particular engagements with modernity. When capitalized both describe art and literary styles or movements and works thereof. When lowercase the terms refer to ideas and practices tied to modernity or particular responses to modernity; e.g., ‘‘to be a modernist is to make oneself somehow at home in the maelstrom, to make its rhythms one’s own, to move within its currents in search of the forms of reality, of beauty, of freedom, of justice, that its fervid and perilous flow allows’’ (Berman, 1982, pp. 345–346). 29 For example, hear respectively ‘‘The Devil’s Number’’ (12 December 1935) and ‘‘The Puzzle’’ (7 September 1934). 30 ‘‘The Mirror’’ (22 October 1935) concerns the temporal dimension—‘‘the land of time’’— accessed through a mirror apparatus. Closer to science-fiction or mystery than horror, the play nonetheless offers an allegory of its times. The protagonist-villain not only cheats on his wife, but bilks money in stock speculation making already poor workers destitute. The play repeatedly stresses that he gets away with his monetary malfeasance as his actions, although unethical, are clearly legal. 31 A similar method is depicted in Arthur J. Burks’ ‘‘The Room of Shadows’’ (Weird Tales, May 1936): ‘‘an ancient Tibetan wizard who [is] kept alive for ages by transferring his personality from body to body’’ (Weinberg, 1977, p. 40). Transmigration also features prominently in Supernatural (Victor Halperin, 1933). 32 Perhaps Tasso is an allusion to the Italian poet Torquato Tasso best known for Jerusalem Delivered (1580), an epic poem on the First Crusade notable for its supernatural and imaginative elements. 33 ‘‘The Spirits of the Lake.’’ 34 Their 1930s intermedia are likely noir fiction—a good deal of which originated in the detective pulps. Horror film of the period also shared elements with film noir (Meehan, 2011). 35 For example, ‘‘Kamohoalii’’ (18 January 1932), ‘‘The Spirits of the Lake’’ (2 January 1933). ‘‘The Devil Mask’’ (13 June 1935), ‘‘The Boa Goddess’’ (31 July 1933), ‘‘The Statue of Thor’’ (22 May 1933) and ‘‘Four Fingers and a Thumb’’ (19 October 1937). 36 Ka-moho-ali‘i is a shark god in Hawaiian mythology, however it was a benevolent entity. The interpretation of the play is based on a script from the Generic Radio Workshop Script Library. Retrieved from http://www.genericradio.com/show.php?idD3XK5LQ9H6. AKA ‘‘The King Shark God’’ (14 August 1935).

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37 In ‘‘The Spirits of the Lake’’ (2 January 1933) Hilda desires money so she can ‘‘swell it over’’ her neighbors that looked down upon her, which partly motivates murder and her death. Dr. Zander, the villain in ‘‘The Snake House’’ (4 April 1932), murders his boss and becomes engaged to the boss’s rich sister. Zander’s material aspiration partly motivates his actions and his moral and economic transgressions result in his death. 38 Such a linkage would certainly qualify as a radical stimulus for the uncanny which Freud (1955) ultimately associates with women—specifically the vagina and womb. They are familiar in that we biologically originate from them and strange owing to our phallic identification. That the boa goddess is a woman and a phallic monster licenses multiple Freudian and Christian connotations. 39 Morgan learned about the Aztec statue from his native girlfriend who he describes as ‘‘only a squaw.’’ 40 For example, ‘‘The Violin’’ (3 May 1934), ‘‘The Troth of Death’’ (11 March 1937) and ‘‘The Statue of Thor’’ (22 May 1933). 41 Michel Chion argues that disembodied voices in film, which he calls ‘‘acousmêtres,’’ are perceived as ubiquitous, panoptic, omniscient and omnipotent, qualities ascribed to supernatural or divine entities (1999, p. 24). In radio all voices are disembodied, but The Witch’s Tale’s use of subjective sound to convey supernatural and fantastic phenomena is akin to acousmêtres as it provides listeners with formal cues that encode such voices as actually disembodied in the narrative. 42 One of the most effective radio examples of this technique is the Mercury Theater on the Air’s ‘‘The War of the Worlds.’’ 43 AKA ‘‘The Clock Strikes Four’’ (25 June 1931) 44 For example, Tasso is associated with the sounds of a violin playing in ‘‘The Violin’’ (3 May 1934), the wife and her revenant are linked with the sound of coughing in ‘‘The Spirits of the Lake’’ (2 January 1933), the animated statue in ‘‘The Bronze Venus’’ (2 July 1931) is articulated with gong sounds, and the disembodied hand in ‘‘Gypsy’s Hand’’ (14 November 1932) is tied to a dog’s barking. 45 The sound of the clock’s ticking also serves as a sound bridge between Old Nancy’s introduction and the opening of the play. 46 Lodge was not alone. ‘‘Picking up on the connection between radio and spiritualism, several mediums claimed that radio was a special agent of telepathy. NBC, in 1929, offered a show called the Ghost Hour, which featured an advocate of ‘electrotelepathy’ ’’ (Douglas, 1999, p. 53). 47 ‘‘The House of the Bridegroom’’ (26 June 1933) 48 The importance of darkness to the program is suggested by the comments of a Bronx junior high school student cited in a 1936 study: ‘‘If it were in the afternoon it wouldn’t seem too ghostly, but it is on at a pretty later hour of the night when everything is still and sometimes I think that a witch could walk right into the room, grab me, then take me to an underground den, and torture me there. After The Witch’s Tale, which ends about ten-thirty P.M., I try to fall asleep. Then comes the sad part of it. If I do fall asleep I dream of ghosts, goblins, and witches and many other fairy tale folks, which frighten little folks. From now on, when The Witch’s Tale comes on the air, I won’t listen in, unless it comes on the ether earlier’’ (Eisenberg, 1936, p. 109). 49 Thirties horror films were likewise affected by the addition of sound to cinema, which sparked supernatural and uncanny connotations that transcended their content (Spadoni, 2007).

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