Original Airdate: November 29, 1944
Inner Sanctum: Voice on the Wire
Starring: Lesley Woods
Director: Himan Brown
Writer: Robert Sloan
Your Host: Raymond
On a desolate island offshore in one of North America’s Great Lakes, lies a cottage. Inside resides a woman, heartbroken from the death last summer of her husband in a fire in the adjacent cottage. Although everything appears to be peaceful, she is now being haunted by her composer husband’s piano playing and a strange howling dog at night. But there are no dogs on the island and her husband is long dead and there are no piano playing residents around. She is interrupted this night by a blunt voice on the telephone telling her she has but four hours to live. Hers and her doctor friend’s car are the only vehicles on the island and the mainland connecting bridge has been washed out, yet another car is now approaching the cottage….
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).