Lights Out by Cooper

Lights Out was one of the most famous series of all time. Even those not interested in OTR have generally heard of Lights Out. Created by Willis Cooper in 1934, and passed on to Arch Oboler in 1936, the series went through several incarnations and reincarnations throughout its long life, lasting until 1947.

The exact number of episodes is a nebulous issue, since Oboler frequently renamed episodes several times over for rebroadcast, expanded the length of some of Cooper's shows, and freely moved shows back and forth between Lights Out and his other projects with re-edited intros, making it very difficult to identify episode origins with any degree of certainty. To make matters worse, many shows have been lost over the years. Episodes vary in length from 15 min to 60 min.

Murder Castle is considered to be one of the landmark phenomenon in the history of radio broadcasting. It was labeled as "the ultimate in horror" and was first on air on 3rd July 1943.

The tape, stuck together and pulled apart, replicated the sound of a man's or woman's skin as if its being ripped off. Chickens were used, whose legs were pulled off to create the the illusion of a person's broken arm. A raw egg dropped on a plate stood in for an eye being gouged; poured corn syrup for flowing blood; cleavered cabbages and cantalopes for beheadings; snapped pencils and spareribs for broken fingers and bones. The sound of a hand crushed? A lemon, laid on an anvil, smashed with a hammer.

In researching the effects we stumbled upon this image of an article highlighting the stars and the foley artists from the series. Listeners imagined loved ones that they had buried, and went to bed that night wondering if their dearly departed might have been ...