Greetings Ghouls and Ghosts!
"The characters in tonight's Quiet, Please are neither living nor dead. They enjoy neither of
these interesting conditions because they're soley the invention of my own imagination."
- Wyllis Cooper
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| Wyllis Cooper |
In the heyday of radio, there were a lot of horror and fantasy radio programs out there, and one of the very best was Quiet, Please. Quiet, Please was created by Wyllis Cooper, who was also known for another program called Lights Out, which predated Inner Sanctum and Suspense. Rod Sterling himself credited Quiet, Please as an influence on his own show, The Twilight Zone, both being a good mix of horror and sci-fi episodes as well as relevant social messages.
The other thing that made this show so unique is that the listener wasn’t just a passive individual. When you turned the lights off and sat in the dark listening to Quiet, Please you took on a role! You were an eavesdropper one night, or implicated in the action of the story itself. This effectively blurred the lines between reality and fiction, as announcer Ernest Chappell also voiced many of the characters on Quiet, Please itself.
While Quiet, Please didn’t get much of an audience while it was on the air, it was later recognized for what it was – a stroke of genius in the Golden Age of Radio. With a lengthy track record of 106 shows broadcasted, I’ve never listened to an episode which I didn’t like. Out of all of the Quiet, Please episodes I’ve tuned in to The Thing on the Fourble Board is my very favorite.
Granted, you’d think that the expiration on spoilers would kick in after 65 years, but this episode is so good that I’m going to hold my tongue here. No spoilers. Not even a peep. In fact, I challenge you to listen to the episode in full below. Wear a pair of headphones, sit in a dark room, and listen to the whole thing. If you aren’t the least bit taken, you don’t have a pulse.
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