"This is the Mysterious Traveler, inviting you to join me on another journey into the strange and terrifying. I hope you will enjoy the trip, that is will thrill you a little and chill you a little. So settle back, get a good grip on your nerves and be comfortable -- if you can!"
So spoke the Mysterious Traveler (voiced by Maurice Taupin), as the lonely sound of a train whistle could be heard in the distance.
The Mysterious Traveler was a half-hour radio anthology series of weid stories that began on December 5, 1943 on the Mutual Radio Network and ran until September 16, 1952. The show was the creation of writers Robert Arthur and David Kogan, who wrote and directed the episodes -- some 370 shows were aired; about 75 still exist. (Arthur and Kogan were both active members of the Radio Writers Guild, which was deemed a Communist organization in 1953 by fear-mongering politicians; as a result Mutual was pressued to drop the program. A damned shame.) The show garnered an Edgar Award in 1953 for "Best Radio Drama," having been nominated twice before. Its popularity spawned a number of similar radios shows, and in 1951 a shoirt-lived (five issue) digest magazine, published by Kogan and edited by Arthur, appeared. The show also made its way into the world of comic books with a one-shot Mysterious Traveler Comics from Trans-World Publications in 1948, and thirteen issues of Tales of the Mysterious Traveler from Charlton Comics from 1956 to 1959; Charlton would add two final issues in 1985.
"The Man Insects Hated" is scientist John Hanson who has perfected a formula that can eradicate all insects. This draws the ire of the insects, who demand vengeance. Featured in this episode are Eric Dressler, Helen Shields, and Robert Dryden.
The script was resurrected for a July 27, 1947 airing.
Enjoy this creepy tale, which takes place in a decaying mansion deep in the Louisiana swamps.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3XqKA_V4YQ
Liked the magazine even more than the radio series, but the series was definitely more durable. I hadn't known that the series was Red-baited out of existence. Robert Arthur remains a personal hero, for several reasons, and I still wonder what killed him, rather young...I had his daughter's email around somewhere but haven't yet chosen to be ghoul enough to ask a stranger such a question.
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