benito-cereno:

“The Thing on the Fourble Board” from Quiet, Please (1948)

A few months ago, following a certain post I made (to say which one would be a bit of a spoiler), someone brought this delightful piece of history to my attention, and I am very excited to share it with you now.

“The Thing on the Fourble Board” is widely considered the best and scariest piece of radio to have come out of radio’s golden age of horror and mystery programming. If you listen, you will learn why.

A fourble board is a horizontal platform on an oil derrick that is as high off the ground as four lengths of pipe are long (“fourble”=”quadruple”). This is the tale of a worker at the oil derrick and the staff geologist, and what they discover about the things their drilling has (literally) unearthed.

I’m trying my best to find the right balance between not over-hyping this and making it clear that this is the coolest fucking thing you will hear this Halloween.

I know asking you to listen to 25 minutes of old timey radio is asking a lot in this crazy iPad world we live in, but this is exactly the length of an episode of Welcome to Night Vale, so I know you can find time for it. Just imagine the narrator is Cecil and the geologist is Carlos. We can do this, together. Don’t worry: the writing is tight and the pace is fairly brisk. You won’t get bored.

You can download an mp3 of the show here if you want it on your listening devices instead of playing it on YouTube. (please let me know if this link doesn’t work)

Just take a few minutes, maybe while you’re cooking dinner or washing dishes or whatever, and give a listen to one of the most revered pieces of horror radio in history, and if you like it, please share it with someone you think would enjoy it.