Inner Sanctum Halloween Month, day 15 of 31: "The Creeping Wall"

There are a lot of rip-offs in old-time radio scripts, especially when you examine a series such as Inner Sanctum, it being a program which wasn't under a tremendous amount of scrutiny when it first appeared. If Suspense stole someone's idea, that might be news -- but if Inner Sanctum did it, possibly no one would notice. Which brings me to today's episode of Inner Sanctum: "The Creeping Wall", first broadcast January 8, 1946.

The story concerns a wife who is under mental strain. She seems to suffer from hallucinations and is particularly haunted by the wallpaper in her house. If this sounds a little like "The Yellow Wallpaper," well, that's not an accident. This story is an unapologetic rip-off of the famous 1892 short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. You can read the original story on Project Gutenberg. It doesn't take that long to read. That story received an official adaptation on the July 29, 1948 episode of Suspense, starring Agnes Moorehead; you can listen to that here.

"The Yellow Wallpaper" is still studied at many universities today because it serves as an example of feminist literature. The ways in which the husband in the original story belittles his wife's condition are not too dissimilar to the one in "The Creeping Wall." However, while "The Yellow Wallpaper" climaxes on a moment of intense horror, "The Creeping Wall" ends on a rather upbeat ending with the wife described as 'beautiful'. If you're studying "The Yellow Wallpaper", perhaps comparing it to "The Creeping Wall" would make a strong essay?

"The Creeping Wall" was hosted by Paul McGrath and starred Irene Wicker. You can listen to this episode at archive.org by clicking here.