The Shiver Show

This week on The Shiver Show, co-hosts Mary Labrie and Greg Flynn take you deep into the murky shadows and mean streets of 1940s Los Angeles, where danger leans in a darkened doorway. Our featured tale is a gripping slice of classic noir: Raymond Chandler’s “The Ebony Link," from The Adventures of Philip Marlowe series (1949).

Chandler’s writing is at its sharpest here, weaving a tale thick with deception, misdirection, and cha...

The Shiver Show plunges headlong into one of the Suspense radio series’ most delicious gothic tales: Fugue in C Minor (1944), starring the incomparable Vincent Price and the extraordinary Ida Lupino.

Price plays the eccentric Theodore Evans, a rich widower who invites Ida Lupino’s Amanda Peabody into his life.  Add into the mix Theodore's creepy children, and the untimely death of Theodore's first wife, and you’ve got the ...

This week on The Shiver Show, co-hosts Mary Labrie and Greg Flynn take you on a journey to the Red Planet—a mission wrapped in nostalgia and dread. Our featured old time radio drama is the 1951 Dimension X adaptation of “Mars Is Heaven!”, an award-winning tale from the golden age of radio drama.

Written by Ray Bradbury and published in Planet Stories (1948), the tale later became part of The Martian Chronicles under the title “The T...

Return to Manderley this week on The Shiver Show, as we present the 1950 Lux Radio Theatre production of Rebecca—the only time Hollywood’s golden couple Vivien Leigh and Sir Laurence Olivier performed on radio together. Recorded before a live audience this broadcast brings Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 gothic masterpiece to life.

Olivier is prickly and brooding as Maxim. Leigh’s unnamed narrator is meek, sweet, and utterly alone in this ...

All aboard for a journey where chance, obsession, and murder share the same carriage. This week on The Shiver Show, we feature the Lux Radio Theater adaptation of Strangers on a Train (December 1951) — a chilling broadcast based on Patricia Highsmith’s acclaimed novel of the same name.

Just months earlier, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 film had dazzled audiences with its sleek black-and-white cinematography and psychological menace. The r...

Clutch your rosary and uncork your vial of holy water! This week on The Shiver Show, we unleash one of the creepiest episodes of the CBS Radio Mystery Theater: “Possessed by the Devil” (1974). Hosted by the unflappable E.G. Marshall, written by Ian Martin, and scored by horror maestro Hyman Brown, this is a delicious horror classic.

There must have been something in the air, because this cautionary tale of possession and damnation c...

This week on The Shiver Show, we bring you The Lonely Hearts Matter from the legendary detective series Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar.

Bob Bailey stars as Johnny Dollar, the cool-headed insurance investigator with the “action-packed expense account.” Johnny never shies away from danger—or a dame in distress.  A young woman hires Johnny Dollar to investigate the suspicious death of her recently remarried (and very insured) father. But w...

Turn out the lights, lock the doors, and prick up your ears — this week on The Shiver Show, we’re hitting the open road with a woman who should have stayed home. Our featured presentation is “Terror by Night,” a spine-tingling installment from the legendary radio series Inner Sanctum Mysteries, first broadcast in 1945 and written by Amo Tepperman.

Anne Shepherd stars as Linda Dixon, a weary traveller heading into the mountains for a...

First Contact — Dimension X (1951)

Before Star Trek imagined the Prime Directive, Murray Leinster dreamed up a story about the most dangerous meeting in the universe — the first contact between two intelligent species. His 1945 novelette, later honored with a Retro Hugo in 1996, introduced the idea of a universal translator — decades before science fiction made it standard issue.

In this Dimension X adaptation by Howard Rodman, two s...

This week on The Shiver Show, we take you to the world of insurance fraud, shady dealings, and one very slippery string of pearls with The Kranesburg Matter, a classic tale from Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar. First broadcast in 1949, this episode features the inimitable Bob Bailey in his signature role as “the man with the action-packed expense account.”

Johnny Dollar, hardboiled but never humorless, is sent to investigate a stolen pea...

This week on The Shiver Show, we bring you the second part and the finale of The Kranesburg Matter, from the series Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar (1949).  

Johnny Dollar, is still on the case of the stolen pink pearl necklace with a hefty insurance claim. With dubious characters, double-crosses and maybe even triple- crosses, The Kranesburg Matter is a satisfying noir crime thriller. 

Join us and find out "who done it" and why...

This week The Shiver Show brings you The Killers, a 1949 episode from NBC Theatre / Screen Directors’ Playhouse.

Based on a short story by Ernest Hemingway, and directed for radio by Robert Siodmak, this production features Burt Lancaster reprising his film role, Shelley Winters as femme fatale, Kitty, and William Conrad as crime boss, Jim Colefax. 

Tense and raw with moral ambiguity, The Killers tells the story of two hit men sent t...

This week on The Shiver Show, we tune to Drive-In, a standout 1946 episode from the Suspense series.

In this taut drama, the legendary Judy Garland steps away from her familiar world of musicals and light romcoms to deliver a rare and powerful dramatic performance. She plays a young waitress closing up a Southern California drive-in restaurant for the night—just one more customer to serve before she can head home. But when that fina...

Lend us your ears and listen to this Old Time Radio horror classic, Death Robbery. Originally broadcast on July 16, 1947, this unforgettable tale comes to the Shiver Show from the Lights Out radio series.

Written and directed by Arch Oboler, and adapted for the airwaves with his signature flair for the macabre, Death Robbery explores the dangerous intersection of love, grief, and scientific ambition. When a scientist dares to tamper...

Long before Silicon Valley, TikTok, or the age of algorithms, a pulp sci-fi writer named Murray Leinster imagined a world where machines got a little too smart. In 1947 he wrote A Logic Named Joe—a story so ahead of its time it feels uncanny even now. Just a few years later, the tale came crackling to life on the radio anthology Dimension X in 1950.

In this episode of The Shiver Show, Mary and Greg dive into this eerie slice of old-...

This week, the Shiver Show goes deep into the strange and twisted mind of H.P. Lovecraft with The Dunwich Horror.  This episode first aired on the terrific old time radio series, Suspense, in 1945. 

H.P Lovecraft is know as one of the masters of creepy tales and The Dunwich Horror does not disappoint.  Some might say the story is intriguing; others say that it's perplexing. You be the judge!

Ronald Coleman and Brett Morrison giv...

This week, The Shiver Show crackles to life with telekinetic intensity in this 1950 sci-fi episode from the Suspense series, Report on the Barnhouse Effect.  This episode is a daring dive into the paranormal from the first published short story by Kurt Vonnegut  Jr.

Before Slaughterhouse-Five, before Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. exploded onto the world stage with this mind-bending tale of mental might and military madness. Imagin...

Step into Cold War Vienna with this 1951 radio drama, The Third Man. Brought to us by the Lux Radio Theatre, this episode features Joseph Cotton as Holly Martin and Evelyn Keyes as Anna Schmidt.  Based on an adaptation of Graeme Greene's novella of the same name, the Third Man is treat for old time radio fans, as well as fans of noir film.  

We have remastered the audio file and have taken out the rather lengthy Lux soap advert...

Put on your snap-brim fedora, cinch up a trench coat, and get ready to immerse yourself in a noir-drenched mystery with our Old Time Radio classic, The Lady in the Lake. Originally airing in 1949 on the Lux Radio Theatre, this thrilling adaptation brings Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled detective, Philip Marlowe, to life in a gripping drama that you won’t want to miss.

Based on Chandler’s celebrated 1943 novel, The Lady in the Lake, t...