Radio Recap: The Black Chapel

There are only two surviving episodes The Black Chapel and precious little written about it among OTR fans - and that's a shame. It was a very cheaply-made 15-minute program that starred Ted Osborne as the narrator and sole performer. The only musical effects were provided by an organ which, one source claims, Osborne played himself!

The Black Chapel aired over CBS from August 19, 1937 until July 21, 1939. It was a horror program and aired from 11:45 to midnight (an appropriate hour). It was preceded by Lights Out and the Witch's Tale and doesn't appear to be as influential as either of those programs - yet, the two surviving episodes are intriguing examples of what the series was like:

• "The Mahogany Coffin" (January 6, 1939) A gravedigger who has prepared a very nice coffin for his own eventual death has to contend with a rival who wants to speed up his demise.
• "The Crawling Terror" (December 23, 1937) A horrifying blob-like creature lurks around a man's farmhouse, devouring everything that comes near it.

Ted Osborne was a prolific New York performer who appeared in just about every kind of program. According to the Suspense Collectors Companion, he's the only performer who appeared in both the first and final episodes of Suspense, aired 20 years apart!

There's nothing flashy about the Black Chapel; it depends entirely on how well you can follow Osborne's narration (I do find him difficult to follow when he drops his voice into a whisper). The stories themselves are true supernatural terrors like other 30s horror radio shows; if you count yourself a horror fan, you ought to give these short stories a spin!

The Old-Time Radio Researchers' Group has copies of the two surviving episodes of the Black Chapel in their Singles and Doubles collection on the Internet Archive. You can hear "The Mahogany Coffin" in this file and "The Crawling Terror" in this file.