Tomorrow is Halloween. To celebrate the occasion we feature two Old Time Radio shows to get you in the mood. If you hate spiders as much as I do, you’ll find yourself involuntarily prone to at least one quick shiver while listening to “The Crawling Thing” and then heading to find the bug spray. It’s the May 18, 1953 episode of Hall of Fantasy (1946-47, 1949-52, 1952, 1953) and tells of a scientific experiment gone horribly awry.

Our second Halloween offering is titled “Buried Alive,” from an early episode of Hermit’s Cave (1940-43, 1944-47). Not much is known about the writers or cast of Hermit’s Cave, nor even the dates of many of the episodes, but given that “Buried Alive” is episode 17, it probably dates from 1940 or 41. This eerie drama has a newlywed’s wife (Lenore) dying of a strange contagious disease. He refuses to come to grips with her death and while locked in a securely boarded-up room for his own safety he begins to hear her wailing voice calling to him. Is he imagining his beloved’s voice hearkening to him from the grave–or is there something much more sinister involved?