Radio Recap: Unsolved Mysteries

Unsolved Mysteries was a 15-minute syndicated program from 1936. It featured a variety of "unsolved" mysteries - some of them with supernatural overtones. Many of these will be familiar to fans of true crimes and the supernatural, such as the Lizzie Borden affair, the "mystery" of the Marie Celeste. There's also stories of zombies in Haiti and a pretty good story of seemingly-magical foreknowledge dubbed, "The Toll-Bridge Mystery."

As the episode would near its conclusion, the narrator would announce:

"Out of deference to people who are still alive, character names in these Unsolved Mysteries have been changed. In as much as any solution must of necessity be supposition, liberties of time, place and character exist in the solution that will be presented after you have heard from your sponsor."

The solutions offered by Unsolved Mysteries tend to reject the supernatural where it's present, instead offering reasonable explanations for how events might have transpired. It's a pretty good, rather unsung series, one of the better 1930s syndicated shows I've heard.

There are 27 episodes of Unsolved Mysteries in the Old-Time Radio Researchers' Library.