The Screaming Woman

Originally Aired: November 25, 1948

Suspense #316, "The Screaming Woman," young Margaret Leary takes a shortcut through Mr. Kelly's vacant lot on Thanksgiving Day when she hears something terrifying: a woman's voice screaming from beneath tons of freshly dumped dirt and debris. The voice comes from the area where she and the neighborhood children used to play in a large concrete pipe they called "the fort," now completely buried. Panicked, Margaret races home to alert her parents, but neither her mother nor father takes her seriously. They dismiss her pleas as childish imagination and insist she wait through an agonizingly slow Thanksgiving dinner before her father will even consider investigating.

After dinner, Mr. Leary finally accompanies Margaret to the lot, but when they arrive, the screaming has stopped. He hears nothing but wind and the distant trolley. Margaret desperately insists the woman was there, trapped beneath the fort where Kelly's dump trucks have piled massive loads of dirt. Her father remains skeptical, suggesting the "screaming woman" doesn't perform for grown-ups. As the sun sets on Thanksgiving Day, the question remains: was someone truly buried alive in that lot, and if so, is there still time to save her?