Welcome to Heirloom Radio - A different kind of "Oldies" show. I am your host, John Lovering.
There were basically two types of radio programming that I listened to at night, while I hunkered down under the covers of my bed and carefully tuned my Radio Shack pre-transistor, small tube portable radio with a 67.5 volt battery… that I remember cost about $10… and this was back around 1960, so that was expensive…
While I diverge from my topic… the two types of radio nigh time programming that I Iistened to as a pre-teen boy were baseball games and radio horror programs. Programs that featured gruesome sound effects and some sort of beasts turned loose coming at me from my radio speaker. The horror programming turned loose in my imagination allowed me to be haunted by some creature following me into my room and seeking me out while I hid under the covers with my radio and flashlight…. It was damn scary.
In 1963 Erik Bauersfeld, who was the Director of Berkley’s Drama and Literature Department of radio station KPFA-FM for 31 years, produced a horror program that scared the bejesus out of me. Baurefeld titled his his series The Black Mass. What was really scary was him as an actor… his voice using it as if he had gone mad, coming back from the dead, frothing at the mouth, talking like a woman, totally losing it… much like the famed actor of film and a considerable amount of radio, the one and only Peter Lorre.
Some of the shows were incredibly frightening. Others not so much. But you never knew.. until you heard it. Bauerfeld created masterful productionf of Poe’s Tell Tale Heart and Lovecraft’s “The Rats in the Walls. .. stories from Bram Stoker, Herman Melville, Ambrose Bierce, Lord Dunsany
The sound effects in the Black Mass series generally contained bassoon or sitar music… and then there were often waves and the wind… a fairly common ingredient in radio horror stories… and then there were the echoing voices… spoken as if the character was in a tunnel, a dark stairway or a even darker cellar... the more of any of these sound effects, the more frightening the story…
ON this track you are going to hear how the Black Mass works… in an episode from February 29, 1964…. Entitled "All Hallows" with one character played by Erik Baurersfeld. Oh and if he at all sounds familiar, which I doubt, Erik Bauersfeld was the voice behind Admiral Ackbar and Bib Fortuna in Star Wars. He passed away on April 3, 2016 at the age of 93. He left us a treasury of radio drama in The Black Mass… "All Hallows … on Heirloom Radio - A Different Kind of Oldies Program and thank you for listening! Listen here or on Itunes or Google Play Music - search podcasts for "Heirloom Radio" This program and others from this series in found in our playlist "Horror/Suspense"
