"This is The Mysterious Traveler, inviting you to join me on another journey into the realm of the strange and the terrifying; I hope you will enjoy the trip, that it will thrill you a little and chill you a little. So, settle back, get a good grip on your nerves, and be comfortable... if you can..."
The Mysterious Traveler was a half-hour horror/mystery anthology program that was heard over Mutual from December 5, 1943 to September 16, 1952. Maurice Tarplin was the titular Mysterious Traveler, a man who would greet the listener from his seat aboard a train, then narrate a story. There are early episodes where he took a part in the dramas, probably because Mutual didn't have a huge budget; but mostly, he kept to his role as a horror host.
The Mysterious Traveler was different from the other horror hosts in that he didn't enter cackling like Old Nancy in The Witch's Tale or the Hermit in The Hermit's Cave, nor with the puns of Raymond on Inner Sanctum Mysteries. Tarplin made the Traveler sound somewhat menacing, but he was extremely restrained next to the rest of his siblings.
When I first got on the internet, I found many OTR fans complaining about Inner Sanctum Mysteries and it's "cop-out" endings. They were referring to the lack of the supernatural on that program; Inner Sanctum Mysteries seldom committed to the supernatural. If that's what you want from a horror program, then The Mysterious Traveler would seem to be the program you really want, because there are plenty of episodes that embrace the supernatural head-on.
...I wrote "would seem to be," though, because that's not true of every episode of The Mysterious Traveler. For example, sometimes there are ghosts; in other episodes, the ghosts are fakes. But still further, not every episode of The Mysterious Traveler was a horror story - there are science fiction stories, mystery stories and crime stories. You can't always be certain what you'll get when you tune in.
The most talked-up episode of The Mysterious Traveler is "Behind the Locked Door" (November 6, 1951), in which a young man tells his fiancee about his expedition underground and the weird creatures he met there; it is indeed a very good episode. I'm also fond of (links to the Internet Archive files):
- "The Queen of the Cats" (July 2, 1944): A woman with a supernatural connection to cats haunts her lover.
- "Death Comes for Adolf Hitler" (March 24, 1945): Hitler takes an ill-advised submarine ride.
- "Death Is the Visitor" (August 18, 1946): A man tries to get rid of his mother-in-law for good.
- "If You Believe" (December 29, 1946): A scientist's experiments in protoplasm are hyped up as a menace by the media.
- "New Year's Nightmare" (January 5, 1947): After a drunken New Year's, a man discovers he lived an entire year under another alias.
- "The Woman in Black" (March 9, 1947): A reporter trails a woman in black who appears at the time of murders.
- "The Locomotive Ghost" (July 6, 1947): A killer is haunted by a ghostly train.
- "The Man the Insects Hated" (July 27, 1947): Exactly what it claims to be.
- "Murder Is My Business" (June 8, 1948): A radio writer wants to kill his producer.
- "Death Has a Cold Breath" (March 29, 1949): A talent agent plots his client's murder.
- "S.O.S." (May 2, 1950): A heist with a surprising finish.
- "Strange New World" (February 19, 1952): Giant radioactive crabs; 'nuff said?
The series was primarily written by Robert A. Arthur and David Kogan. They'd previously created the horror anthology Dark Destiny for Mutual in 1942, but only 1 episode of that show has survived. They also created the Mutual syndicated show The Sealed Book in 1945, which recycled scripts from The Mysterious Traveler but had to trim a few minutes to fit the shorter timeslot; we can compare some programs that exist in both The Mysterious Traveler and The Sealed Book formats and it does show The Sealed Book to be inferior, as the material they trimmed really enhanced the The Mysterious Traveler's scripts.
Robert A. Arthur had a lengthy career in radio and later television and he was never one to let a perfectly good script lie idle. He and Kogan also created the 15-minute show The Strange Dr. Weird in 1945 with Maurice Tarplin also as the host. I've long assumed stories heard on The Strange Dr. Weird were condensed from The Mysterious Traveler scripts but I've yet to prove it; anyway, Arthur went on gamely recycling The Mysterious Traveler into the latter-day of Suspense's radio run. The duo also wrote for Murder by Experts and ABC Mystery Time.
The Mysterious Traveler had a comic book that lasted just one issue in 1948; I blogged about it here. It ran its own pulp magazine for six issues in 1951-1952. Later, Charlton published a comic that lasted from 1956-1959 and featured a lot of early work by Steve Ditko; Ditko published his own reprint of those stories in 2016, which I blogged about here. There were also two Mysterious Traveler comics by Moonstone in 2003 and 2004 that were by Trevor Von Eeden; I blogged about those too.
Despite the show's 9-year run, there are presently only 69 episodes in circulation. It's also unlikely more will turn up, given most Mutual shows vanished into the ether. For that reason, do treasure the fact we have The Sealed Book to supplement The Mysterious Traveler!
You'll find the Old Time Radio Research Group's YouTube playlist of The Mysterious Traveler below:
Next Thursday: Lights Out!
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