Is this the creepiest radio show ever?

[This post was written by Patton Oswalt in 2013 and is reposted for the occasion]

I was tooling around Los Angeles listening to the Radio Classics channel on XM (XM 082) and they had an all-day horror marathon going on. They played episodes of Quiet, Please and Lights Out and The Whistler and, of course, Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds broadcast.

Anyway, this Quiet, Please episode called "The Thing on the Fourble Board" started and I only got to hear the first 10 minutes before I got to a meeting I was going to and headed inside. When I came back out the episode was over. But the first ten minutes were sufficiently creepy. I kept thinking about it.

The next day I visited Harlan Ellison at his house. As we were talking I mentioned listening to all of these old-time radio shows the day before. I know he’s a fan of them and I mentioned Quiet, Please. I mentioned how I heard episodes called “Five Miles Down” and “Good Ghost” and “Come In, Eddie.” And then I mentioned how I heard only the first ten minutes of “The Thing on the Fourble Board.”

“Did you hear the whole thing?” asked Harlan.

I hadn’t.

Harlan said, “Well, I first heard that episode when I was 14 and I never fricking need to hear it again. Go listen to the whole thing and think about being a fourteen year-old kid and that comes on the radio one night. No disclaimer, no warning, just boom!”

I listened to the whole thing. It’s only 25 minutes long. And it’s one of the creepiest things I’ve ever heard.

Harlan went on to tell me how every horror writer (or writer who’s dabbled in horror) he’s ever known — King, Matheson, Bradbury — all of them share the experience of being royally fricked up by “The Thing on the Fourble Board.” King didn’t even hear it until he was in his late twenties — so this was after he’d seen Night of the Living Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre — and it still fricked him up.

Listen and you’ll see what I mean.

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  1. 10 years ago
    Mike

    …Creepy

  2. 10 years ago
    HARLAN ELLISON

    Patton didn’t go far enough explicating our conversation. QUIET, PLEASE is–and has been, since
    I was a kid in the 1940s–one of the highest favorites of fantasy I have ever been exposed to. It was a radio show that I would crawl through hellfire never to miss. I have as complete a set of audios from SPERDVAC and Radio Yesteryear as one could amass in a long lifetime. The writer and director, the Creative Intelligence behind QUIET, PLEASE was

    WYLLIS COOPER

    a talent I hold on a level with Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Wm. Hope Hodgson, Poe, Bierce, and Shirley Jackson. It was my fervor, some years ago, to inveigle the US Post Office to issue a set of commemorative stamps honoring Great American Fantasists–including L. Frank Baum, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Smith and Lovecraft…and Wyllis Cooper.

    Getting to the High & Secret Conclave that selects what will be so honored is a full-time job; and I had to put the endeavor on the back burner. But Now that you’ve been exposed to Wyllis Cooper, do not embargo yourself from seeking out the dozens of other episodes of QUIET, PLEASE and let Ernest Chappell ensorcle you for hours.

    Yr. Pal, Harlan Ellison

  3. 10 years ago
    Solomon Microgrove

    This gave me a major boner.

  4. 10 years ago
    Gavin

    Just listened to it with the missus in the pitch black darkness and sorry but we had to laugh. I mean, I kept thinking, “Man this is good writing” but as far as scary goes? They lost us both at stone finger. The Others scared me so bad, I’m scared just typing “The Others” but this was about as scary as a dream Don Draper had.

  5. 10 years ago
    Max

    i started with my eyes rolling and ended up with my boots shaking. Fuuuuck.

  6. 10 years ago
    Assfishingiado

    This would have been better with Paul Harvey narrating.

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