It’s Valentine’s Day and we celebrate by welcoming Eric’s wife, Shanan Custer, as our special guest! She’s brought us a Lucille Fletcher-penned episode of Suspense entitled “Dark Journey!” A young woman claims that she can manipulate people and events by the sheer power of her will. Does she truly possess such supernatural powers? Who is truly to blame for the consequences that ensue? Sasquatch, why haven’t you called? Listen for yourself and find out! (During this episode we mention a couple links that we encourage you to check out: ghoulishdelights.threadless.com and thewallbreakers.com. Have a look!) Then vote and let us know what you think!
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Regarding the old radio programs of female detectives that Eric’s been listening to (38:55), I recently heard the last half of an episode of an anthology series that was new for me: Murder Clinic. The episode I heard, “A Scrap of Lace,” featured a female sleuth I hadn’t heard of and it piqued my interest. Madame Storey had more of a refined approach than hard-boiled. She’s not a character developed for radio: she originated in short stories from the 1920s.
https://www.oldtimeradiodownloads.com/crime/murder-clinic/murder-clinic-42-09-22-10-the-scrap-of-lace
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8758872-madame-storey-private-investigator
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulbert_Footner#Career_as_Author_of_Detective-Adventure_Stories
I understood the ending completely differently than the four of you did! I’m going to have to listen again! I thought Anne COULD mind-control people. When she was outside of Clyde’s home, the mother was there. She did her magic mind control and the mother died and Clyde loved her again. MAGIC! The twists were three: 1) She’d been mind-controlling him all along. She mind-controlled him to give her his fraternity pin, and all that. When he went to New York he was away from her mental control, and came to his senses, and didn’t love her any more. 2)… Read more »
Your interpretation makes sense and there’s nothing in the story to contradict it. I think my experience with Suspense affected my reading of the story. It’s very rare for the show to delve into the supernatural and when it does it’s usually fairly explicit about it, even if the supernatural element is only vaguely explained (“House In Cypress Canyon”, “Ghost Hunt”, “The Hitchhiker”, to name a few). The fact that the mind-control was described by an unreliable character and denied by a reliable one also made me believe that it was a red herring. It worked as a red herring… Read more »
Mind control or not, how terrible must those Riverdale police be? Clyde would have been the first and most obvious suspect in his mother’s murder, and murder by hammer? That has got to be messy. Even without modern-day forensic techniques, you’d think the local detectives would put some of that puzzle together.
Classic episode! Another great Lucille Fletcher episode I’d recommend is “Fugue In C Minor,” with Vincent Price. Very different, stylistically, but just as fun to hear.
A regrettable and forgettable examination of narcissistic attachment. This ridiculous story and tritely stereotypical representation of both men and women was an unflattering example of the creative female psyche. The weak plot and misanthropic characterization was topped only by how unlistenable thirty minutes of screeching hysteria can be. I liked the hitch-hiker but I’ll never get my time back for listening to this. To me Lucille Fletcher is now a stageplay writer to specifically avoid.
I can’t understand how and why he murdered the woman whom bore him 3 children. Why did he wait so long.