The Mysterious Traveler
The Mysterious Traveler begins with a train and a voice: Maurice Tarplin’s unseen companion invites the listener into another journey through the strange and terrifying. From there the series can become ghost story, murder tale, science fiction or psychological nightmare, held together by the host’s intimate, faintly mocking presence.
Where to Start
Researched entry points from recordings already in the Golden Radio Hour archive.
The House of Death
This is an early surviving broadcast in the GRH holdings and gives a useful point of comparison within the surviving material.
Episode details →Death Has a Thousand Faces
This is a middle-period broadcast in the GRH holdings and gives a useful point of comparison within the surviving material.
Episode details →The Green Plague
This is a later surviving broadcast in the GRH holdings and gives a useful point of comparison within the surviving material.
Episode details →Program History
A mystery, suspense, and speculative-fiction anthology introduced by an enigmatic traveler who guides listeners into tales of crime, fate, the supernatural, and strange possibilities.
Mutual anthology of strange, terrifying, criminal, supernatural and speculative stories created by Robert A. Arthur and David Kogan.
The run breaks into several distinct periods: Mutual anthology run (December 5, 1943 to September 16, 1952) on Mutual Broadcasting System.
Names that turn up again and again in the surviving run include Maurice Tarplin (performer), David Kogan (writer, director, and producer), Robert A. Arthur (writer, director, and producer), Carl Caruso (announcer), Paul Taubman (organist), Al Fanelli (organist), and Jock MacGregor (director).
Across its run, the surviving broadcasts are tied to Mutual Broadcasting System, Don Lee Network, and KXOA.
The stories often return to murder, homicide and criminal violence, ghosts, curses and supernatural return, speculative science, inventions and experiments, dreams, obsession, fear and psychological instability, war, Hitler and wartime catastrophe, and space, rockets and other worlds.
The show also sits in a wider radio history that includes Wartime fear and enemy imagery, Postwar science and technological anxiety, Low-cost sustaining network anthology, and Mysterious Traveler cross-media franchise.
If you are following the same actors and creative circles, related programs worth opening next include Words at War, Columbia Workshop, Theater Five, X Minus One, and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar.
All Episodes & Recordings
Search this program or browse in its validated catalog order.
The House of Death
Two paranoid elderly sisters believe relatives want their money and flee their home in a desperate escape that ends with grim irony.
The Good Die Young
A manipulative girl's schemes turn her devoted father against his new wife and reveal a frightening cruelty beneath her innocence.
Beware of Tomorrow
A doctor discovers his former professor's artificial-life experiments have created a self-aware intelligence with dangerous plans.
The Accusing Corpse
An elaborate fake-murder blackmail plot collapses when one overlooked physical detail exposes the deception.
The Queen of the Cats
A man's attempt to leave a mysterious, cat-like woman brings a terrifying campaign of obsession and revenge.
Death Laughs Last
A desperate man turns to crime to help his wife, only for the decision to end in a tragic reversal.
They Who Sleep
A woman seeks a hypnotist's help to move her consciousness into her beautiful sister's body, with horrifying consequences.
The Case of Charles Foster
A man engineers his wife's death for another woman and is eventually trapped by his own manipulation and past.
Death Comes for Adolf Hitler
A German submarine carrying Hitler on a secret escape voyage encounters an inexplicable and terrifying doom beneath the Atlantic.
Murder Goes Free
A father's carefully planned crime to prevent his son's marriage backfires with devastating and unexpected consequences.
Death Is the Visitor
A man trying to dispose of an unwanted trunk is driven toward madness when it repeatedly and impossibly returns.
No One on the Line
Mysterious telephone calls feed a possessive husband's paranoia until he commits murder and discovers a devastating truth.
The Symphony of Death
A composer's desire for solitude is followed by a suspicious series of accidents involving his three devoted sisters.
If You Believe
A scientist's attempt to create life is transformed into terror when sensational publicity appears to give his experimental matter monstrous form.
New Year’s Nightmare
After a New Year's accident, a man's life becomes a horrifying cycle of amnesia and murder.
No Grave Can Hold Me
A condemned showman promises revenge from beyond the grave, and those responsible for his death begin dying under full moons.
The Woman in Black
A reporter tracking a mysterious woman linked to several killings discovers a terrifying truth about who—or what—she is.
Dark, Dark Destiny
An honest man's effort to save his sick wife tempts him into burglary and ultimately murder.
Mind over Murder
A mind reader's oppressive control over his wife is challenged by her hidden love for another man.
Death Is the Judge
An antique bell associated with death appears able to restore the dead, but every resurrection demands a terrible price.
The Locomotive Ghost
A man responsible for a deadly train wreck is haunted and pursued by a spectral locomotive called the Judgment Special.
The Man the Insects Hated
A scientist obsessed with insect control faces a terrifying backlash in the Louisiana swamps.
Vacation from Life
A timid professor's precise plan to escape his cruel wife goes fatally wrong on a deserted Maine shore.
Death Is My Caller
A stockbroker is terrorized by a former partner newly released from prison who seems to be arranging his death step by step.
The Man in the Black Derby
A woman's overwhelming fear of dying takes the form of a mysterious stranger in a black derby, blurring terror and reality.
The Man Who Died Twice
A man paroled for murder discovers that the person he was convicted of killing is still alive.
They Struck It Rich
Two petty crooks tunneling toward a bank vault stumble onto a treasure far older and greater than the money they intended to steal.
Murder in Jazz Time
A New Orleans honeymoon becomes nightmarish when a husband's jealousy over his wife's fascination with a jazz musician pushes him toward violence and hallucination.
I Won’t Die Alone
A bank robber betrayed by his partner waits years to exact a chilling revenge inside a dark cavern.
Death Writes a Letter
A skeptic of spiritualism receives a letter in his own handwriting that appears to have been dictated by his dead brother.
Murder Is My Business
A radio writer pushed beyond endurance by his tyrannical boss designs a murder around the very gimmick the boss declared impossible.
Queen of the Cats
A man is haunted by the vengeful spirit of his dead, cat-obsessed wife as he tries to remarry.
Zero Hour
A desperate man claims to have discovered a secret Martian invasion but finds himself trapped by everyone else's disbelief.
The Man Who Vanished
An isolated albino scientist perfects invisibility and uses it in a descent toward murder and concealment.
The Visiting Corpse
A man's attempt to rid himself of his meddling mother-in-law ends in murder and a trunk that refuses to stay gone.
Death Has a Thousand Faces
A mild man tries to frame his unfaithful wife for his own staged murder, but the plan exposes his true character.
Death Rings Down the Curtain
Two relatives eager for an inheritance devise a murderous plan against their wealthy, reclusive aunt.
Till Death Do Us Part
A man's effort to escape his obsessively devoted wife turns supernatural when death does not end her hold on him.
The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
Treasure hunters pursuing pirate gold discover that a ghostly presence seems to claim the treasure for itself.
Death Has a Cold Breath
A publicist's staged suicide stunt turns into actual murder and is finally exposed by an unexpected scientific clue.
Cast, Crew & Contributors
Every relationship below is backed by the current Golden Radio Hour smart index. Open a profile, or use the broadcast count to see the exact recordings connecting that person to this program.
Maurice Tarplin
Bret Morrison
Karl Weber
Lon ClarkMore Ghosts & Supernatural Radio
Programs connected through the most specific listening path for this show.
