Original Airdate: May 18, 1941
Inner Sanctum: Dead Freight
It’s a dismal rainy night in Kansas City and a young man dressed in a cheap serge suit dreams of warmer sunnier climes - like the southern Pacific coast. He’s thin in the wallet though and so, heads out to the KC freight yards and hops a freight train after finding an empty boxcar with an open door. Free transportation all the way to the orange groves of California! He sits back and reflects. He’s all set he thinks until suddenly he realizes he is not alone in this new shelter….
Inner Sanctum Mystery, also known as Inner Sanctum, was a popular old-time radio program that aired from January 7, 1941, to October 5, 1952. It was created by producer Himan Brown and was based on the imprint given to the mystery novels of Simon & Schuster. On January 7, 1941, the Inner Sanctum radio program premiered. The early 1940s programs opened with Raymond Edward Johnson introducing himself as "Your host, Raymond" in a mockingly sardonic voice. A spooky melodramatic organ score (played by Lew White) punctuated Raymond's many morbid jokes and playful puns. Raymond's closing was an elongated "Pleasant dreeeaams, hmmmm?" His tongue-in-cheek style and ghoulish relish of his own tales became the standard for many such horror narrators to follow, from fellow radio hosts like Ernest Chappell (on Wyllis Cooper's later series, Quiet, Please) and Maurice Tarplin (on The Mysterious Traveler).
The program's familiar and famed audio trademark was the eerie creaking door which opened and closed the broadcasts. Himan Brown got the idea from a door in the basement that "squeaked like Hell." The door sound was actually made by a rusty desk chair. The program did originally intend to use a door, but on its first use, the door did not creak. Undaunted, Brown grabbed a nearby chair, sat in it and turned, causing a hair-raising squeak. The chair was used from then on as the sound prop. On at least one memorable occasion, a staffer innocently repaired and oiled the chair, thus forcing the sound man to mimic the squeak orally.