Suspense - Radio’s Outstanding Theater of Thrills

Originally Aired: May 3, 1955
Suspense #596, "Remember Me," Harry Nora finds himself in a desperate situation when his plan to rob Mr. Leibowitz's small neighborhood store goes violently wrong. Just as Harry is leaving the scene of his crime, Ruth Shaw walks in, a former high school classmate who recognizes him immediately. Ruth has never forgotten Harry, the popular football player she once had a crush on, and she's delighted by this chance reunion. Harry realizes he's been fatally identified and must now silence the only witness who can connect him to the murder.
Carrying Ruth's groceries, Harry maneuvers his way into her apartment, pretending to reminisce about their school days while actually planning her death. As Ruth cheerfully shows him pictures from their old class yearbook and makes coffee, she remains oblivious to the danger. The elevated train rumbling past her window gives Harry a chilling idea about how to commit the murder without being heard, but the question remains whether he can go through with killing this innocent woman whose only crime was remembering his face.

Originally Aired: April 26, 1955
Suspense #595, "Sight Unseen," Colin Farragut, a journalist for the Times, experiences a disturbing encounter while relaxing in the park one evening in 1926. Two ordinary-looking men in bowler hats approach him, addressing him by name and insisting he come with them. Though they refuse to identify themselves or explain their purpose, they speak with eerie certainty that he will eventually comply. When Farragut demands answers and threatens to call for help, they calmly respond that he will come "sooner or later" before mysteriously disappearing into the shrubberies. Convinced it's a prank by his friend Richard, a Scotland Yard sergeant, Farragut tries to dismiss the incident.
Later that evening, after meeting with Richard and confirming the sergeant had nothing to do with the strange encounter, Farragut takes Ellen, a restaurant worker he's been seeing, to the Palace dance hall. The evening takes an uncomfortable turn when they run into her employer, Mr. Wimper, a shifty Cockney character Farragut thoroughly dislikes. As the story unfolds through a letter Farragut writes to Richard, the journalist finds himself caught in circumstances that grow increasingly ominous.

Originally Aired: April 19, 1955
Suspense #594, "Speed Trap," follows rookie highway patrolman Art as he learns his new mountain beat from veteran officer Craig Hollister on a treacherous, rain-slicked night. While Hollister shows Art the deadly curves and hairpin turns that have claimed numerous lives, he reveals personal details about his wife Debbie, whom he caught speeding on this very road years ago. The routine check-out takes a devastating turn when a speeding convertible nearly runs them down. As they give chase through the dangerous mountain curves, Hollister makes a shocking discovery: the reckless driver weaving all over the road is Debbie herself, apparently intoxicated and out of control.
The tension escalates as the two patrolmen race to stop Debbie before she reaches the most dangerous curves on the mountain. Hollister, tormented by his wife's condition and the isolation that drove her to drink, desperately urges Art to catch up to her before it's too late. The chase becomes a desperate battle against time, weather, and the deadly mountain road as Craig faces the nightmare of potentially witnessing his own wife's destruction on the same curves where so many others have perished.

Originally Aired: April 12, 1955
Suspense #593, "The Lunch Kit," Jonathan reluctantly helps his embittered father construct a devastating weapon disguised as an ordinary thermos bottle. Filled with nitroglycerin and fitted with a timer set to detonate at 6:30 in the morning, the deadly device goes into Jonathan's lunch kit as he heads to work the night shift at an industrial plant. His elderly coworker Mike carpools with him, completely unaware of the lethal cargo. Once inside the plant, Jonathan leaves the lunch kit in his locker and tries to work normally, but his nerves betray him. He obsessively checks the time, makes careless mistakes, and eventually collapses from the strain. When the plant doctor confines him to the dispensary and gives him sedated milk to help him rest, Jonathan's panic escalates. Unable to access his locker with the ticking bomb inside, and fighting against medication forcing him to sleep, he faces a desperate race against time as the deadly detonation hour approaches and his control over the situation slips away.

Originally Aired: April 5, 1955
Suspense #592, "Zero Hour," presents Ray Bradbury's chilling tale of an innocent children's game with sinister implications. Mrs. Morris watches with mild amusement as her energetic daughter Mink and the neighborhood children obsessively play a new game called Invasion, gathering odd items like pots, pans, and tools while following mysterious instructions. Mink excitedly explains that a being named Drill is teaching the children how to help Martians invade Earth, using kids under eleven because adults are too busy to notice what happens under rose bushes and on lawns. When Mrs. Morris receives a call from her friend Helen in New York, she learns that children across the country are all playing the same game, each one preparing for "Zero Hour" at five o'clock.
As the afternoon wears on and five o'clock approaches, Mrs. Morris grows increasingly uneasy. Mink casually mentions they'll have to "get rid of" the grownups after the invasion and recites strange sequences of numbers and instructions. What began as charming child's play takes on an increasingly ominous tone as Mrs. Morris realizes that perhaps Drill isn't imaginary after all, and the invasion the children are so eagerly preparing for might be terrifyingly real.

Originally Aired: March 29, 1955
Suspense #591, "Give Me Liberty," follows Paul French, a man who embezzled a quarter of a million dollars and managed to hide it before his conviction. As French is being transported to prison by a detective, handcuffed for the journey, fate intervenes in the form of a spectacular train wreck. In the chaos and flames, French sees his opportunity for freedom, but there's one critical problem: he cannot find the key to his handcuffs. In a desperate bid for survival and escape, he makes a brutal choice, switching identities with the injured detective before fleeing into the darkness.
What follows is a harrowing odyssey as French struggles to survive in the countryside while shackled by the very symbol of his captivity. Exhausted, starving, and unable to remove the handcuffs, he encounters a suspicious farm woman and her watchful dog, faces armed pursuers, and finally resorts to scavenging through garbage behind a roadside diner. When a young boy discovers him in this degraded state, French must decide how far he'll go to secure his liberty and reclaim his hidden fortune. His carefully planned future hangs in the balance, dependent on breaking free from the steel that binds him.

Originally Aired: March 15, 1955
In Suspense #589, "The Game," two restless teenagers, Pen and Red, find themselves bored on a lazy summer afternoon with nothing to do. What begins as an innocent search for entertainment takes a dark turn when Red suggests they get drunk at Pen's empty house. As the whiskey flows and inhibitions fade, Red begins needling Pen, calling him soft and chicken, questioning his courage in front of their friends. The verbal sparring escalates until Red proposes a terrifying way for Pen to prove his manhood: Russian roulette.
With Red's taunts ringing in his ears and alcohol clouding his judgment, Pen agrees to play the deadly game. Red retrieves Pen's father's .38 revolver, and they sit across from each other at a table scarred by childhood memories. They remove five bullets, leaving one in the chamber. A coin flip determines who goes first, and the ceremony begins. As Pen lifts the heavy gun for the first time in his life, the two boys enter into a contest where backing down means humiliation, but continuing could mean death.

Originally Aired: March 8, 1955
Suspense #588, "Nobody Ever Quits," a man desperately trying to escape his criminal past finds himself trapped when his old life catches up with him at the worst possible moment. Walt runs a remote mountain gas station with his pregnant wife Sally, but when a customer named Battaglia stops for fuel during an approaching blizzard, Walt's carefully constructed new identity begins to crumble. Battaglia recognizes Walt as Joey Perino, a man from back in Jersey City, and despite Walt's denials, the threat becomes undeniable when Big Pete himself calls the station. Pete ominously tells Joey that "the boys miss him" and that he's coming to talk in person.
As the storm intensifies and the mountain pass becomes increasingly dangerous, Walt faces an impossible situation. His wife is pregnant and due in April, her father is stranded in Victorville unable to return through the blizzard, and somewhere in the snowy darkness, dangerous men from his past are closing in. Walt must now confront whether anyone can truly leave their old life behind, especially when that life won't let them go.

Originally Aired: March 1, 1955
Suspense #587, "The Screaming Woman," presents a chilling tale of childhood terror that no adult will believe. Young Margaret Leary is cutting through Mr. Kelly's vacant lot on Thanksgiving Day when she hears something horrifying: a woman's desperate screams coming from beneath tons of freshly dumped dirt and debris. The voice seems to be coming from the area where a large concrete pipe, the neighborhood children's makeshift fort, has been completely buried. Frantic and terrified, Margaret races home to get help, but her pleas fall on deaf ears. Her mother dismisses her story while cooking Thanksgiving dinner, and her father treats it as nothing more than childish imagination run wild.
Despite Margaret's increasingly desperate attempts to convince her parents, they refuse to take her seriously. Her father reluctantly accompanies her to the lot after dinner, but when the screaming woman falls silent in his presence, he becomes convinced his daughter has a fever and locks her in her room for the rest of the day. Now Margaret faces an impossible dilemma: a woman is buried alive and dying beneath the ground, and she is the only one who can hear the screams.

Originally Aired: February 22, 1955
Suspense #586, "Waiting," three women endure an agonizing vigil as the hours tick down to Norman Landon's execution for the murder of Sheila Warrener. His wife Eileen, consumed by love and doubt, struggles with the terrible uncertainty of whether her husband actually committed the crime. Norman's sister Harriet clings desperately to his innocence, treasuring a final letter from her brother while tensions simmer with Eileen. Their mother, Mrs. Martinson, maintains a cold facade of religious resignation, speaking of God's will while barely concealing her judgment of Norman's moral failings. As the clock moves toward eleven, attorney Mr. Mailer frantically pursues one last hope: a witness from Mexico who claims to have seen a woman fleeing the apartment building the night of the murder.
The confined setting amplifies the women's conflicting emotions as buried resentments surface. Eileen's tortured admission that she still loves Norman despite everything, Harriet's fierce loyalty, and Mrs. Martinson's bitter pronouncements create an atmosphere of suffocating tension while precious minutes slip away and the question of Norman's guilt remains devastatingly unresolved.