OTR Halloween Day 28: The Weird Circle

The Weird Circle was an odd duck. I haven't seen many write-ups on its history; John Dunning wrote nothing about it in his Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. It was syndicated from 1943-1945 and featured adaptations of famous ghost stories - public domain stories to save on costs. The casts and directors were never credited.

At least, they seem to be adaptations at first glance. Some of them share little more than the title of the original work; I examined all of their Edgar Allan Poe adaptations in this blog post. Still, although their fidelity to source material was often found wanting, the Weird Circle drew from classic ghost stories for inspiration and there's a reason those tales have endured.

For instance, let's talk about "The Curse of the Mantle" from April 2, 1944. It's adapted from Nathaniel Hawthorne's story "Lady Eleanore's Mantle." This was the first episode of the Weird Circle I heard - it aired one Halloween night over my local radio station. I found it creepy and perhaps you might too; if you aren't familiar with the story, it concerns a woman who wears a mantle that seems to bring with it a dark power that corrupts her and brings disease and death to the countryside.

You can hear "The Curse of the mantle" on the Internet Archive!