Welcome back, dear listeners, to The Ghostly Grotto. Pull up a rock and listen while I tune in my old squeaky 1932 radio to KPFA-radio in California, and we'll listen to one of the best and most underrated radio shows of all time... The Black Mass was not technically an "Old Time Radio" show, since it aired in 1969. Nevertheless, it was a very well done show which initially featured only one actor doing all of the narration for the stories. In fact, I say stories since most episodes of this series were direct readings of classic ghost stories by such famous authors as H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, and the author of this week's story, M.R. James. (My apologies for the image used to the left here. As far as I searched, I could find no newspaper clipping, advertisement, or other related photo which came directly from this series) "The Ash Tree," written by M.R. James and initially published in 1904 as part of James' Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. It tells the story of a woman who is killed for witchcraft but vows an ominous revenge by swearing to her murderers that "there will be visitors at the hall" of the man who sentenced her to death. Some very eerie things happen, but I don't want to give them away. This episode is one of the best, if not the very best of the series, and I've even seen it on some lists of Top 50 Scariest Radio Show Episodes, so there you are.
Here's the link to the episode, courtesy of Archive.org: archive.org/details/blackmassashtree Enjoy! And pleasant dreams!...
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AuthorA Halloween fanatic, scary story vinyl collector, and ghost story teller extraordinaire. All self-proclaimed titles, however. Archives
December 2019
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