Some Classic Audio Frights for Your Halloween

Audio drama is often described as “the theater of the mind” and some of the best horror stories leave things up to one’s imagination. So it really shouldn’t come as any surprise that there are some top notch horror radio programs from the days of yore.

When we think of rating things at PG: parental guidance suggested, these two favorites are some of the programs we’re thinking about:

Suspense – The House in Cypress Canyon

Escape – Three Skeleton Key (with Vincent Price)

Also, if you’ve thought to yourself, “Yeah, these are classics and all, but what if I want vintage radio with Australian voices?” Well, you’re in luck!

Finally, we’re happy to announce that another local theater company, The Arlington Players, is getting in on the War of the Worlds action, using the original 1938 Howard Koch script used so successfully by Orson Welles back in the day.

You can hear it streaming live Halloween night (tomorrow!) at 6pm ET on our home station: WERA 96.7!

Remember, stay safe and spook responsibly.

War of the Worlds, Classic Style!

We had great fun adapting H.G. Wells’ sci-fi classic The War of the Worlds for radio last year, transporting the action from England to the outskirts of Washington, DC and also to the present day with War of the Worlds, 2018.

In fact, many people have adapted it to times and places convenient for them. It’s kind of what they do.

However, having based on our audio version in no small part to the original novel, we really would love to see a version that includes some of the creeping dread (and creeping weeds) of the original novel… set in the original time period.

If you’re like us, take a look at this:

C’mon BBC, make sure not to cut the final valiant act of HMS Thunder Child. We’re so looking forward to it!

More War of the Worlds Headed Our Way

We were already excited to see the TV version of War of the Worlds due sometime this year, but we’ve since learned David Tennant aka The Doctor aka Scrooge McDuck will be reading an audio version of War of the Worlds as well. We’re looking forward to both! (And we bet some of you are too).

Of course, if you want a version of War of the Worlds closer to our time and our neck of the woods (the Washington, DC area), you can check out the version we did last year.

Listen Live! War of the Worlds, 2018

Join us on WERA-LP 96.7 FM just about now at a special time (2:00pm ET) for a rebroadcast of the live performance celebrating the 80th anniversary of the famous Mercury Theater of the Air production of War of the Worlds.

Happy Halloween!

H.G. Wells’ classic “War of the Worlds” gets a Jabberwocky update as we tune in to a special radio broadcast in October 2018 learning of mysterious power outages and “seismic activity” in the Washington, DC area. Could this be related to strange gas eruptions on the planet Mars?

Cast (in order of speaking):

Announcer: William R. Coughlan
Narrator: Brooks Tegler
Bob Fredericks, WERA-LP Anchor: Steve Ray
Dana Lavelle, Traffic Reporter: Anna Coughlan
Lisa Howes, Weather Reporter: Yasmin Tuazon
Eddie Shaw, WQVA Reporter: Keith Waters
Dave Phillips, WQVA Recording Engineer: Bjorn Munson
Dr. Isabella Perrotin: Carol McCaffrey
National Guard Sergeant: Bjorn Munson
Brigadier General Lawrence Marvin, VA National Guard: Brooks Tegler
Captain McBride, U.S. Army Signal Corps: Keith Waters
Artilleryman: William R. Coughlan
De Soto, Artillery Officer: Nick DePinto
Warthog Lead: Brooks Tegler
Warthog Four: Yasmin Tuazon
Warthog Three: Nick DePinto
Man: Steve Ray

Crew:

Recorded live at the Gaylord Convention Center in National Harbor as part of Escape Velocity 2018
Music was composed by John Maestri
Sound Patterns by Heff Munson
Live sound recording and mixing and post-production mix by Antonio Villaronga
Written and directed by Bjorn Munson, based on the novel by H.G. Wells

Listen to the Episode Live!

Length: 49:25
Rated AD-PG, parental guidance suggested. Contains scenes of mass destruction and sci-fi violence, including people being incinerated by heat rays, suffocated by poison gas, and, in one case, impaled. I mean, the Martians really aren’t trying to be good neighbors.

Rated AD-PG (Audio Drama 'PG')
Rating: AD-PG

Listen Live! War of the Worlds, 2018

Join us on WERA-LP 96.7 FM just about now at a special time (6:00pm ET) for a rebroadcast of the live performance celebrating the 80th anniversary of the famous Mercury Theater of the Air production of War of the Worlds.

H.G. Wells’ classic “War of the Worlds” gets a Jabberwocky update as we tune in to a special radio broadcast in October 2018 learning of mysterious power outages and “seismic activity” in the Washington, DC area. Could this be related to strange gas eruptions on the planet Mars?

Cast (in order of speaking):

Announcer: William R. Coughlan
Narrator: Brooks Tegler
Bob Fredericks, WERA-LP Anchor: Steve Ray
Dana Lavelle, Traffic Reporter: Anna Coughlan
Lisa Howes, Weather Reporter: Yasmin Tuazon
Eddie Shaw, WQVA Reporter: Keith Waters
Dave Phillips, WQVA Recording Engineer: Bjorn Munson
Dr. Isabella Perrotin: Carol McCaffrey
National Guard Sergeant: Bjorn Munson
Brigadier General Lawrence Marvin, VA National Guard: Brooks Tegler
Captain McBride, U.S. Army Signal Corps: Keith Waters
Artilleryman: William R. Coughlan
De Soto, Artillery Officer: Nick DePinto
Warthog Lead: Brooks Tegler
Warthog Four: Yasmin Tuazon
Warthog Three: Nick DePinto
Man: Steve Ray

Crew:

Recorded live at the Gaylord Convention Center in National Harbor as part of Escape Velocity 2018
Music was composed by John Maestri
Sound Patterns by Heff Munson
Live sound recording and mixing and post-production mix by Antonio Villaronga
Written and directed by Bjorn Munson, based on the novel by H.G. Wells

Listen to the Episode Live!

Length: 49:25
Rated AD-PG, parental guidance suggested. Contains scenes of mass destruction and sci-fi violence, including people being incinerated by heat rays, suffocated by poison gas, and, in one case, impaled. I mean, the Martians really aren’t trying to be good neighbors.

Rated AD-PG (Audio Drama 'PG')
Rating: AD-PG

Listen Live! War of the Worlds, 2018

Join us on WERA-LP 96.7 FM just about now at a special time (2:00pm ET) for the recording of a live performance celebrating the 80th anniversary of the famous Mercury Theater of the Air production of War of the Worlds.

H.G. Wells’ classic “War of the Worlds” gets a Jabberwocky update as we tune in to a special radio broadcast in October 2018 learning of mysterious power outages and “seismic activity” in the Washington, DC area. Could this be related to strange gas eruptions on the planet Mars?

Cast (in order of speaking):

Announcer: William R. Coughlan
Narrator: Brooks Tegler
Bob Fredericks, WERA-LP Anchor: Steve Ray
Dana Lavelle, Traffic Reporter: Anna Coughlan
Lisa Howes, Weather Reporter: Yasmin Tuazon
Eddie Shaw, WQVA Reporter: Keith Waters
Dave Phillips, WQVA Recording Engineer: Bjorn Munson
Dr. Isabella Perrotin: Carol McCaffrey
National Guard Sergeant: Bjorn Munson
Brigadier General Lawrence Marvin, VA National Guard: Brooks Tegler
Captain McBride, U.S. Army Signal Corps: Keith Waters
Artilleryman: William R. Coughlan
De Soto, Artillery Officer: Nick DePinto
Warthog Lead: Brooks Tegler
Warthog Four: Yasmin Tuazon
Warthog Three: Nick DePinto
Man: Steve Ray

Crew:

Recorded live at the Gaylord Convention Center in National Harbor as part of Escape Velocity 2018
Music was composed by John Maestri
Sound Patterns by Heff Munson
Live sound recording and mixing and post-production mix by Antonio Villaronga
Written and directed by Bjorn Munson, based on the novel by H.G. Wells

Listen to the Episode Live!

Length: 49:25
Rated AD-PG, parental guidance suggested. Contains scenes of mass destruction and sci-fi violence, including people being incinerated by heat rays, suffocated by poison gas, and, in one case, impaled. I mean, the Martians really aren’t trying to be good neighbors.

Rated AD-PG (Audio Drama 'PG')
Rating: AD-PG

Say, Maybe the Artilleryman Was Onto Something…

If you listened to our adaptation of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, you’ll remember the artilleryman has a cunning plan to live in the network of tunnels under Washington, DC.

Now, this dialogue is actually taken almost verbatim from the novel and the artilleryman is referring to London, but we knew DC also has a good share of abandoned tunnels, so we kept it in.

Imagine our delight when we learned an amateur archivist is working on a map of DC’s tunnel network!

That artilleryman might not have been completely wrong.

 

Listen Online! War of the Worlds, 2018

This week on the podcast feed, we have a recording of a special live performance we did earlier this year to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the famous Mercury Theater of the Air broadcast of War of the Worlds.

H.G. Wells’ classic “War of the Worlds” gets a Jabberwocky update as we tune in to a special radio broadcast in October 2018 learning of mysterious power outages and “seismic activity” in the Washington, DC area. Could this be related to strange gas eruptions on the planet Mars?

Cast (in order of speaking):

Announcer: William R. Coughlan
Narrator: Brooks Tegler
Bob Fredericks, WERA-LP Anchor: Steve Ray
Dana Lavelle, Traffic Reporter: Anna Coughlan
Lisa Howes, Weather Reporter: Yasmin Tuazon
Eddie Shaw, WQVA Reporter: Keith Waters
Dave Phillips, WQVA Recording Engineer: Bjorn Munson
Dr. Isabella Perrotin: Carol McCaffrey
National Guard Sergeant: Bjorn Munson
Brigadier General Lawrence Marvin, VA National Guard: Brooks Tegler
Captain McBride, U.S. Army Signal Corps: Keith Waters
Artilleryman: William R. Coughlan
De Soto, Artillery Officer: Nick DePinto
Warthog Lead: Brooks Tegler
Warthog Four: Yasmin Tuazon
Warthog Three: Nick DePinto
Man: Steve Ray

Crew:

Recorded live at the Gaylord Convention Center in National Harbor as part of Escape Velocity 2018
Music was composed by John Maestri
Sound Patterns by Heff Munson
Live sound recording and mixing and post-production mix by Antonio Villaronga
Written and directed by Bjorn Munson, based on the novel by H.G. Wells

Listen to the Episode

Length: 49:25
Rated AD-PG, parental guidance suggested. Contains scenes of mass destruction and sci-fi violence, including people being incinerated by heat rays, suffocated by poison gas, and, in one case, impaled. I mean, the Martians really aren’t trying to be good neighbors.

Rated AD-PG (Audio Drama 'PG')
Rating: AD-PG

Listen Live! War of the Worlds, 2018

Join us on WERA-LP 96.7 FM just about now at a special time (2:00pm ET) for the recording of a live performance from this past Memorial Day weekend.

H.G. Wells’ classic “War of the Worlds” gets a Jabberwocky update as we tune in to a special radio broadcast in October 2018 learning of mysterious power outages and “seismic activity” in the Washington, DC area. Could this be related to strange gas eruptions on the planet Mars?

Cast (in order of speaking):

Announcer: William R. Coughlan
Narrator: Brooks Tegler
Bob Fredericks, WERA-LP Anchor: Steve Ray
Dana Lavelle, Traffic Reporter: Anna Coughlan
Lisa Howes, Weather Reporter: Yasmin Tuazon
Eddie Shaw, WQVA Reporter: Keith Waters
Dave Phillips, WQVA Recording Engineer: Bjorn Munson
Dr. Isabella Perrotin: Carol McCaffrey
National Guard Sergeant: Bjorn Munson
Brigadier General Lawrence Marvin, VA National Guard: Brooks Tegler
Captain McBride, U.S. Army Signal Corps: Keith Waters
Artilleryman: William R. Coughlan
De Soto, Artillery Officer: Nick DePinto
Warthog Lead: Brooks Tegler
Warthog Four: Yasmin Tuazon
Warthog Three: Nick DePinto
Man: Steve Ray

Crew:

Recorded live at the Gaylord Convention Center in National Harbor as part of Escape Velocity 2018
Music was composed by John Maestri
Sound Patterns by Heff Munson
Live sound recording and mixing and post-production mix by Antonio Villaronga
Written and directed by Bjorn Munson, based on the novel by H.G. Wells

Listen to the Episode Live!

Length: 49:25
Rated AD-PG, parental guidance suggested. Contains scenes of mass destruction and sci-fi violence, including people being incinerated by heat rays, suffocated by poison gas, and, in one case, impaled. I mean, the Martians really aren’t trying to be good neighbors.

Rated AD-PG (Audio Drama 'PG')
Rating: AD-PG

As Invasions Go, Not Bad

As anyone who’s been visiting this website in the past month or so knows, last Friday, we performed a live version of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds.

It was great fun, and we did snag a picture before all the mayhem ensued:

War of the Worlds, 2018 - cast and crew
From left to right: Steve Ray, Brooks Tegler, Keith Waters, Carol McCaffrey, Nick DePinto, William R. Coughlan, Yasmin Tuazon, Anna Coughlan, Antonio Villaronga, and Heff Munson

For those of us who weren’t able to join us at National Harbor, we are planning to broadcast it this Fall.

Oh, and while we were there at Escape Velocity, Bjorn did check in with someone who helped us get back on track with the whole timey-wimey broadcasting thing.