Inner Sanctum aired “Between Two Worlds” on December 20, 1948, five days before Christmas, the time of the season when Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is an annual favorite featuring a number of ghosts come to haunt miserly old Scrooge. “Between Two Worlds” also has much to do with a ghost, a ghost who grants a crook a second chance at life–if he will but perform a single task. What that task entails leads to a convoluted tale of deception, betrayal, and murder. But does the ghost’s scheme prove true, and to what ends, and why? What does the ghost get out of all this? And what about the crook who tries to do good with his second chance at life?

Future television star Mason Adams (newspaper editor on the 1970s Lou Grant show) has the lead role in this one, one of many he performed during his days of radio before transitioning into television and film.

While listening to Inner Sanctum  (1941-52) and other science fiction, horror, and mystery shows on radio in 1948, genre fans were also feeding their heads with the likes of Judith Merril’s “That Only a Mother” (Astounding, June), Ray Bradbury’s “Mars is Heaven” (Planet Stories, Fall), Wilmar H. Shiras’ “In Hiding” (Astounding, November), Frederic Brown’s “Knock” (Thrilling Wonder Stories, December), and novels by John W. Campbell, Jr. (Who Goes There?), Fletcher Pratt (The Well of the Unicorn), Stanley G. Weinbaum (The Black Flame), and Jack Williamson (Darker Than You Think), among others.

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