Review #22: "The Organ" - Lights Out (Radio Show)

Source: Archive.org

Length: 30 minutes

Air date(s): May 12th, 1937 and June 8th, 1943

This is my first time listening to a radio show, and the experience was rather lukewarm, though it's not due to the story, but the medium. Before I state my thoughts, I'll tell the plot, with spoilers (because I don't expect many readers to actually seek out and listen to these radio shows themselves).

Chuck and Anne, a couple, rent out a country summer home for a very cheap price (due to the previous tenants being killed 20 years earlier). Already their son, Billy, has taken a liking to the house. Shortly after the real estate agent leaves, an agitated caretaker arrives, scaring the couple (they believe Billy to be in his new room), he angrily tells them to leave, that they don't belong there. He then leaves himself, leaving Anne in particular shaken.

Later that night, Anne and Chuck are in bed, and Anne begins to make mention of the creepiness of the house, and brings up ghosts, which her husband scoffs at. All of the sudden, they begin hearing an organ play. Befuddled, they make to search for the source, but they then hear Billy giggling. They go check on him, and he's referring to an old lady. Believing him to have awaken from a dream, he then says "the funny old lady wants to take me downstairs to listen to the music." Freaking out, Anne asks what he's talking about - Billy then points behind them at "an old woman who you can almost see through." His parents, however, cannot see a soul.

Billy is now sleeping with Chuck and Anne, who decide to leave as soon as the sun comes up. Chuck would prefer to "tear up the house" to find the location of the organ, but Anne wants to keep him near. Again, they hear the organ, and Anne begins to become hysterical; she screams wildly, and wakes Billy up despite her husband's warning for her to hush up. 

In the following seconds, in perhaps a shared vision-type thing, both of them see a "funny green light." It reveals a hidden room that has been walled over, and they see a young teenage girl sitting in a chair, conversing with a much younger (but still the same) caretaker. He's angry because her father, before he died, promised to leave him money in his will, but apparently didn't. He claims that her love would be a good equivalent, and puts advances on her, aggressively claiming he'll "make her love him." After a struggle, he kills her.

An older woman, the teen's mother, comes in, and still angry about being denied both love and money, he kills her too.

All of the sudden, the present-aged caretaker pops up, and after Chuck tells him he knows that he murdered the two women, the caretaker proclaims "No you know why I didn't want you here." He intends to kill the family. In the ensuring struggle between the caretaker and Chuck, the caretaker is accidentally shot.

After this, the walls in the room fall down, revealing the secret room the couple saw in the vision. Two skeletons are present, and it is said that after killing them, the caretaker, in a walled their bones in there with an organ. The couple believes that the skeletons played the organ to bring light to their murder.

As far as Lights Out episodes go, this is an earlier one, being within the first 50 episodes aired. I believe the version I heard is the original, being the 1937 one.

The story is not bad - maybe a little over-done, but not bad whatsoever. The voice acting was decent also. My problem is that I don't quite understand how a listener is supposed to listen to it. When the woman was screaming hysterically, I couldn't make out a single word she said. Many other pieces of dialogue were lost to me due to the scratchy audio. Obviously, this is not the fault of the radio show, but the fault of those directed to preserve it for future generations.

In short, I wish portions of the episode were more clear-cut (such as how exactly the caretaker popped up at the end), and I would hope future episodes would be of slightly higher quality. Still, this wasn't bad - just average. I do await future episodes though, in hope they'll be just a bit better.

My rating: 6/10