The Hermit’s Cave
1930-1944
Known Episodes: 800+ Recorded (27 Circulating)
“Ghost stories… Weird stories… and murders too! The Hermit knows of them all. Turn out your lights. Turn them out!”
The Hermit and his endearing cackle (Hee hee hee!) introduced his listeners to a new story each week from the eerie serenity of his cave using the same formula as did The Witch’s Tale. It began with 15 minute episodes by The Mummers before moving to a longer format sponsored by Olga Coal. At one point, Mutual ran a series called The Devil’s Scrapbook that was related and used the same sound effects only with the Devil introducing the stories rather than the Hermit.
Sources:
Digital Deli
Radio Horror Hosts
Radio Horror Hosts: The Devil’s Scrapbook
Wikipedia
OTRR
Author of Murder
An author’s mistress dies on the night he writes of her death trying to forget her rejection. She returns for revenge each midnight to kill his wife! How long until he can finally “write her off”?
Black Band, The
During the French Revolution, a man meets a woman crying at the foot of the guillotine. She is an aristocrat, but he takes her home, and the next morning she is dead! Was she a ghost? What lay beneath the black diamond choker she wears? [Adapted from Washington Irving’s The Adventure of the German Student] (Also CBS Radio Mystery Theater: The Guillotine)
Blackness of Terror, The
A woman watches her father, near death, haunted by ghostly visitations! Then the skeletons of her mother plus one are discovered in a secret room!
Buried Alive
Lunatic is locked in a room hearing his wife’s voice, but she died months ago! His jealous, rejected brother buried her alive…
Castle by the Sea
An adulteress is caught and her husband has her boudoir closet bricked up as she watches. Years later the caretaker is her sad spirit’s only companion. [Adapted from Balzac’s La Grande Bretche]
Crimson Hand, The
A couple rents a posh, but oppressive, furnished house in Paris. A bloody, disembodied hand begins floating around and reading their books. The owner’s body is found locked in the wine cellar… his wife was afraid of being lonely! Poor sound quality, but great slide whistle fun!
Dark House, The
Two men look at a house for sale and discover a laboratory in the basement. From the pit below come dark tentacles… (15 mins)
Devil Dog [Lost Episode]
Fever
An old miser comes down with a fever and tells his kids they’ll never get his money. When the coot dies, he proves that you can take it with you!
Footprints in The Snow [Lost Episode]
From Another World
A wonderfully Lovecraftian story that recalls Creepshow’s “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill”. A meteor lands on a farm and when the family retrieves it, the table they set it on turns black as if burnt. Their hands after they touched it also turn black and their throats grow incredibly parched. They lay dying, as if burned from the inside!
Guilty One, The [Lost Episode]
Gypsy’s Curse, The
When an old-country butcher finds it difficult to buy enough pigs to stay in business, his strong wife seems to have a way of convincing farmers to sell. When Grantmeyer refuses to sell, he soon must kill a wild pig that has gotten into his sty. In the morning, that’s no boar in the barn. It’s the butcher’s wife… With half a pig’s head! I am sad that this has not survived with better sound quality.
Hanson’s Ghost
A mad scientist experiments with capturing souls to prolong his life. He captures the soul of a suicide who died in his house, but that’s a mistake.
Haunted Theater, The [Lost Episode]
House of Madness, The [Lost Episode]
House of Murder
A scientist experiments on extending the humanlife-span. He moves to a house in the country that is haunted by a vengeful spirit. First it destroys his lab and his work… will it go so far as to kill him?
House of Purple Shadows
A man’s house falls under a spell and a cold wind dissolves his body! Invisible, he is cursedto walk a ghostly world of purple light forever. Can he warn his neice away from the house before she becomes a victim, too?
House on Lost Man’s Bluff
Man brings his wife & brother-in-law to a house where he had taken shelter once before. He is possessed by a murderous spirit from the house. No twist, but creepy.
House With a Past, A
A couple rents a furnished home in a nice neighborhood… then the milkman explains its haunted. They setup a stakeout with the owner and father of the deceased former residents. It really is haunted!
Inheritance [Lost Episode]
It Happened on a Sunday
A painter hears the spirit of his dead wife. She was crazy in life and wants revenge… because her husband murdered her!
Living or Dead [Lost Episode]
Lost Black Crow Mine, The
A group hunting for a gold mine in the desert accidentally kill their guide. Then they see a monster lapping his blood. They are trapped in the rocks with the thing and it’s growing dark out! Sound quality makes this unbearable despite the great story.
Man With White Hair, A
A corrupt banker meets a fortune-teller who foresees his death at the hands of a white-haired man. He begins to encounter them daily, but avoids them all until his own hair turns white with fear… Poor sound quality.
Marked Hours, The [Lost Episode]
Mister Randall’s Discovery
Dad’s basement experiments take on new life as a sample of stagnant water produces a blob with eyes… he pokes it. It eats his son.
Mysterious Return, The [Lost Episode]
Mystery of the Strange Thing
A victim of amnesia is visited by a strange glowing specter that beckons her… to the graveyard!
Nameless Day, The
Good murder by “witch’s brew” scene. A man buried as John Doe never lies quiet in the grave.
Notebook on Murder
When a woman is frightened after a break-in, the police secretly tell her to keep a diary. She is soon murdered! The notebook is a morbid tell-tale. Motif #1
Omen From the Sea [Lost Episode]
Plantation Mystery
A plantation owner reneges on a deal to share profits and takes on the traits of his ancestor, who had done the same. The ghost of the cheated man’s ancestor comes for revenge on the modern day filcher!
Professor’s Elixir, The
“If I die… investigate whether I was poisoned,” a man insists as blue tendrils rise from the Elixir of Death. Will his wife pay the blood money the professor asks, or will he have to teach her what it means to filch on an alchemist?
Reflected Image
A prospector tells his tale of woe when two travelers are directed to his cabin by a woman in the desert. Turns out she was dead and the cabin long gone… but what of the gold beneath it?
Sea Wolf, The [Lost Episode]
Search for Life, The
Hale Broughton, Re-animator, keeps a failed experiment caged in his lab. When his lab assistant, Cort Mander, decides to kill then resurrect his lover Nada Arling so she’ll forget her silly career, the growling zombie with proto-human strength threatens the operation. But Nada returns with the power to cloud men’s minds…
Sound That Never Ends, The [Lost Episode]
Spirit Vengeance
A storm drives two specimens– I mean, a young couple, to an old, dark house in search of their daughter and son-in-law who have disappeared. In the dead of night, a voice saves them from a stabbing! In a final confrontation in the lab, dead for two days, daughter Lisa and her husband return… for vengeance! (Do not confuse with episode Spirits of Vengeance)
Spirits of Vengeance
A man-shaped spot appears in the hallway of a man haunted by his parents’ ghosts. When his sister and nephew visit, they discover the bones of her other brother!
Story Without End, The
It sure feels that way! A man and woman recognize each other as soulmates as children, then the war comes. She promises to wait for him at the old log. When he returns, she is there! But some shocking news is also waiting at home…
Unseen Force, The [Lost Episode]
Vampire’s Desire, The
A man and his man-friday wander into a mansion during a storm and are trapped in an air-tight room by a vampire. Can they stake it to free his enslaved sister and escape?
Will in The Book, The [Lost Episode]
You Only Die Twice (or, You Only Die Once) See: Story Without End
The Devil’s Scrapbook
1938
Known Episodes: 1 Show Circulating
Only one episode remains of this show. It is included here with Hermit’s Cave because of its similarity. It uses the same sound effects and the same opening narrator, Charles Penman, only instead of a hermit, here he is the Devil.
Sources:
Radio Horror Hosts
Conquest of David Rugg, The
A man has a vision of a gruesome murder from years before, and coincidentally encounters the very house it happened at. He convinces the owner to dig under the tennis court. The murder is intense.
