GHOST RADIO THEATRE: SPOOKY STORIES FOR SMALL SPIRITS & HAUNTINGS FOR ADULT GHOULS
**** (out of five)
Shaw Special Events. Shaw Artists’ Village.
For those of us who grew up listening to radio, it took Halloween and the Shaw’s communication, outreach and education department to remind us of what we have been missing. That missing something has been using our ears and imaginations to focus and visualize stories, settings, characters, nature, the life of others and to feel wonder and share laughter while listening to radio.
During the golden age of radio, the 1930s through to the 1950s, there were spooky stories such as “The Shadow,” where the main character was invisible and where not seeing a ghost in a haunted house was as terrifying as seeing one.
“The Inner Sanctum,” sponsored by “Carter’s Little Liver Pills” opened with a creaky door. Boris Karloff, a.k.a. “Frankenstein,” was a frequent performer. Raymond, the host, promised thrills and chills and signed off in a menacing voice saying, “Pleasant dreeeeeams, hmm?”
Once on air, the radio drama was not just a play with sound effects; it was a drama that included dialogue, conflict, action, plus music and sound effects. Did we ever wonder how those sound effects were created? Who knew there were singing bowls, tuning forks, frog and cricket rasps and a variety of whistles, from sambas to owls and ducks to choo choo trains? We were about to learn.
About 30 adults and a sprinkling of children participated in how to create a live on-air spooky story for small spirits. First, we learned we would read signs held aloft by Jess Gorman. Next, we made rainsticks to shake from cardboard tubes filled with coiled aluminum foil, rice and plastic bits then sealed with taped paper at each end. On cue, we created the sounds of rain.
While stomping our feet we intoned “Double, double, toil and trouble, thunder clap and cauldron bubble.” We made whoosh sounds for magic spells and squishy sounds for slimy worms. A metal sheet was shaken to create thunder. Blowing through a straw into water created bubbling. A small wooden door, which the kids loved crawling through, gave the requisite knocks and slams. The crunching of celery emulated the cracking of bones.
Jenette Meehan and Sydney Alexander presented the narration and Matt Ratelle provided support intros and outros. There was much laughter capped by Halloween cupcakes.
In contrast, the evening presentation of a haunting for adult ghouls, began with a simple set of a chair and table radio topped by the sponsor’s bottle of bourbon, two glasses and the suggestion of easy at-home listening. We sat and listened to the mystery coming from the radio. It became a test of our ability to listen, focus and visualize a story.
Unsure of what next, we trooped into an adjacent area where we witnessed the same story, written by Jess Gorman and presented “on-air live” at their mics by Pragna Desai, Warren Bain and Sydney Alexander. We became more engaged because we saw the emotion, uncertainty, fear and panic on the faces of the characters as they became entangled in a terrifying web of the unknown.
Mary and Charlie are lured to a solitary house once part of a thriving village community. This house is occupied by Stella, who relates the strange story of a young woman, named Clara, suspected by the villagers of being a spectre. She is thrown into a well. Her cries for help are ignored. No one saves her.
Blue mushrooms sprout and grow around her well of death and spread into the gardens and fields. Once eaten by the villagers, they and the entire village disappear. Will Charlie and Mary survive? The discomfort of our own desolate extinction threat looms.
The exact timing, co-ordination and collaboration required of the narrators with Jess Gorman, Sabrina Merks and Matt Ratelle was critical and admirable. More radio history would have been an enlightening plus. What became apparent was what we have lost through our current obsessions with online tech and social media.
For children, lunch at home once meant listening to the soaps of “Ma Perkins” and “Pepper Young’s Family.” There were variety shows such as Edgar Bergen with his puppet Charlie McCarthy as well as vaudeville’s Amos and Andy. How innocent they seem now.
There were cowboy shows with Roy Rogers singing “Tumblin’ Tumbleweed.” The big bands of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway and “The Kate Smith Hour” kept our parents dancing. What was New Year’s Eve without Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians playing “Auld Lang Syne”?
What about the mystery and detective stories of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe and the hair-raising chills of Charlie Chan solving crimes helped by #1 and #2 sons and, brought to you by Feen-a-Mint, The Famous Laxative Chewing Gum “used by millions”?
Why not forget doomscrolling and return to radio? Who knows, it might just bring about a new golden age.
Penny-Lynn Cookson is an arts and culture historian, writer and lecturer living in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
