In October 2012 we presented three original works in Tomes of Terror: New Arrivals featuring “Shivers on Highway 61” by Alicia Goranson, “The Crasher” by Tim Prasil, and “The Red Line” by Tom Russell.

There’s one due date you can never escape! In October 2008 we presented Tomes of Terror 3, featuring our recreations of a Hallowe’en episode of The Baby Snooks Show and “The Tell-Tale Heart” as adapted for Nightfall and “Reynardine”, an original adaptation of Athan Y. Chilton's short story “The Ballad of Reynardine”.

In October 2006 we presented our first Tomes of Terror anthology, featuring “Gildersleeve's Halloween Party” from Fibber McGee and Molly and “The Maid’s Bell” and “The Monkey’s Paw”, both originally performed on Nightfall.

A nationwide re-telling of the classic American tale

About the Project

In 2011 PMRP spearheaded a nationwide campaign to spread the joy of terrifying radio drama to all the corners of America!

That Halloween, several radio drama troupes presented live performances of Washington Irving's classic American horror tale, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow". Each troupe adapted their own version of the story: from its original late 18th century setting to the modern day.

Organizations that have signed on so far include:

Hallowe’en comes alive! Our Hallowe’en show for 2013 featured our original adaptation of the classic horror film “Night of the Living Dead”, which largely inspired the zombie genre, and our version of the Suspense! episode “Ghost Hunt”, about a skeptic’s stay in a haunted house.

In October 2005, we re-created Arch Oboler's lost Lights Out! episode “Chicken Heart” as part of Chicken Hearts and Other Parts, a Hallowe’en-themed fundraiser for local filmmaker Chelsea Spear. In addition to “Chicken Heart”, the performance featured “The Atlantis Affair”, “Erasure”, and Improv PoetryProse by nationally-recognized voice artist Lindsay Ellison, and “The Unhappy Medium”, a segment from Spear’s project The Ballad of Burd Janet, a tretelling of the Celtic folktale Tam Lin.

For our third Big Broadcast, we returned to WPM's studio atop the Putnam-Moore department store for an episode of The Frank Cyrano Byfar Hour, in which Frank and Amelia moved into the Adams family home on Beacon Hill after Amelia's father, Ephraim J. Adams, left it to her in his will. With this move they also inherited the Adams' long-suffering butler, Chelmsford, along with an unusual assortment of neighbors and nuisances. The show was capped by a visit from one of Hollywood's leading ladies—none other than Katharine Hepburn herself! Following the Byfar Hour, in broadcast planned by station manager Howard Comstock to compete with the ever-encroaching threat to radio audiences posed by television, WPM broadcast an original adaptation of Washington Irving's classic tale The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

These performances were part of a nationwide radio-drama event, Sleepy Hollow: The Ride Across America. We were joined by special musical guest Jaggery.

For our second Big Broadcast, performed in October of 2010 at the Somerville Theatre, PMRP returned to the Rooftop Gardens Auditorium at the famed Putnam-Moore department store for another episode of WPM’s Frank Cyrano Byfar Hour to join Frank Cyrano and the gang for great music and lots of Hallowe’en fun, including a special guest appearance by none other than Hollywood horror legend Boris Karloff!. Then we presented another two chilling Tomes of Terror from the WPM archives: “But Oh, What Happened to Hutchings!” which touches among other subjects upon the finer points of cadaver acquisition, and “The Sirens of War” in which a Navy barge carrying munitions to the Gulf of Mexico encounters mysterious and compelling forces along the Missouri.

For our first Big Broadcast, performed at the Somerville Theatre in October 2009, we went back to 1938 with The Frank Cyrano Byfar Hour, as it might have been broadcast from the Rooftop Gardens Auditorium of the Putnam-Moore Department Store in downtown Boston, where we joined Frank, Amelia Adams, Charley Kendall, Jenny Brennan, Lex Concord and the Minutemen and the Chowderhouse Gang for some great music, lots of Halloween fun, and a very special guest star! Then we performed an original adaptation of The War of the Worlds, telling the story of how Boston fared during the famous Martian invasion of 1938, using news bulletins and field reports and dramatic recreations to depict the amazing story of how a North End mobster, an MIT scientist, and the Massachusetts National Guard allied themselves to carry out one final strike against the Martians and drive them from the city! We were joined by Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band.