In the fall of , NBC writer Wyllis Cooper conceived the idea of "a midnight mystery serial to catch the attention of the listeners at the witching hour. At some point, the serial concept was dropped in favor of an anthology format emphasizing crime thrillers and the supernatural. By April, the series proved successful enough to expand to a half-hour. In January , the show was discontinued in order to ease Cooper's workload he was then writing scripts for the network's prestigious Immortal Dramas program , but was brought back by huge popular demand a few weeks later.

After a successful tryout in New York City, the series was picked up by NBC in April and broadcast nationally, usually late at night and always on Wednesdays. Cooper stayed on the program until June , when another Chicago writer, Arch Oboler , took over. Cooper's run was characterized by grisly stories spiked with dark, tongue-in-cheek humor, a sort of radio Grand Guignol.

A character might be buried, eaten, or skinned alive, vaporized in a ladle of white-hot steel, absorbed by a giant slurping amoeba , have his arm torn off by a robot, or forced to endure torture, beating or decapitation—always with the appropriate blood-curdling acting and sound effects.

Though there had been efforts at horror on radio previously notably The Witch's Tale , there does not seem to have been anything quite as explicit or outrageous as this on a regular basis. When Lights Out switched to the national network, a decision was made to tone down the gore and emphasize tamer fantasy and ghost stories.

Only one recording survives from Cooper's run, but his less gruesome scripts were occasionally rebroadcast. An interesting example is his "Three Men," which became the series' annual Christmas show a version circulates among collectors under titles like "Uninhabited" or "Christmas Story" ; it has a plot typical of Cooper's gentler fantasies. On the first Christmas after World War I, three Allied officers meet by chance in a train compartment and find one another vaguely familiar.

They fall asleep and share a dream in which they are the Three Wise Men searching for Jesus. But is it really a dream? In the best tradition of supernatural twist endings, Cooper has the officers wake to find a strange odor in their compartment—which turns out to be myrrh and frankincense. In the mids, Cooper's decade-old scripts were used for three brief summertime revivals of Lights Out. The surviving recordings reveal that Cooper was experimenting with both stream of consciousness and first-person narration a few years before these techniques were popularized in American radio drama by, among others, Arch Oboler and Orson Welles.

When that doesn't work, they put him in a jail cell haunted by the ghost of a previous occupant, a smooth gangster named Skeeter Dempsey who describes his own execution and discusses the afterlife knowledgeably. In the final twist, the narrator reveals that he has taken Skeeter's advice to commit suicide and is now himself a ghost.

Another story, originally broadcast in March as "After Five O'Clock" and revived in as "Man in the Middle," allows us to follow the thoughts of a businessman as he spends a day at the office cheating on his wife with his secretary.

The amusing contrast between what the protagonist thinks to himself and what he says out loud to the other characters enlivens one of Cooper's favorite plot devices, the love triangle. One radio critic, in reviewing a March episode that used multiple first-person narrators, said:. Technique in writing and producing this script is one of pure radio license and can't even be compared to the flashback from the movies, since characters dead at the close of the tale do considerable talking of their experiences.

This feat, combined with the terse, stark sock of the drama, is probably one of the most realistic pieces radio has ever presented. Other Cooper scripts are more routine, perhaps in part because the author's attention was divided by other projects.

From the summer of until August , Cooper was NBC Chicago's continuity chief, supervising a staff of writers and editing their scripts. He resigned in order to devote more time to Lights Out as well as a daily aviation adventure serial , Flying Time. Hear from RBG herself in a new interview, and some of the people who know her best, including her granddaughter Clara Spera, law school classmate Professor Arthur Miller, and equal pay activist and Supreme Court plaintiff Lilly Ledbetter.

All The Smoke. Barnes and Jackson, who have played alongside two generations of All-Stars, will dish on the latest news and drama from on and off the court without boundaries. Expect the unexpected Dreamed about it all night!!

My love of audio drama started when my 8 th grade teacher played a casette. I recently found the same story 40 years later on this website. Sent it to texas for purchase next month.

I played Leiningen vs. I had them illustrate what they were envisioning. Most were pretty into it. I wish I had something like that when I was in school, especially since I took journalism. Lights out? Chicken Heart? Three Skeleton Key? Some of my favorites!!! The show's most familiar trademark, guaranteed to put you under the covers on a dark night was, "Lights out, everybody! On campus there is a clock that strikes the hours and I will catch myself saying "It-is-later-than-you-think.

Lights-out-every-body" quite often. We would often turn out the lights and listen to it with just a candle burning. From the Album Turn the Lights On. Listen Now. Your Amazon Music account is currently associated with a different marketplace. Sample this song. Title by Artist. Sold by Amazon. Spoiler : Today we celebrate the premiere of Lights Out!

Devoted to tales of terror and the supernatural, Lights Out was one of the first horror programs to come to radio even before classic programs like Suspense and Inner Sanctum made their debut.

Writer Arch Oboler became famous for his work on the series. Comment I have a related image to this show. I have a related image to this show. Would you like to create an account? You will be able to create playlist of your favorite episodes and series Yes No, Thanks.

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