EVENT: Radio Horror on Halloween!

Longtime readers of the blog may remember in past years mention has been made of the excellent Halloween radio drama specials done by the local group at FinalRune Productions, featured at Radio Drama Revival's website. This year brings fresh fodder from their imaginations!!!

They've been running special spooky stuff all month, but on Halloween night the new masterpiece of modern sci-fi suspense known as The Cleansed is going to air for the first time. To see some great action photos of all the crazy location segments they recorded over the last little while in prep for the show, check out their website: http://www.finalrune.com/this-halloween-tune-into-the-cleansed/

It's going out at 7pm EST at WKIT in Bangor and then again 9pm on WMPG here in Portland. The story is one that has run through the minds of Americans a lot in the last few years...

Some time in the not so distant future, the world as we know it is starting to unravel. The United States is mired in unwinnable wars, gas is scarce and the transportation system grinds to a halt. Homegrown terrorists take out the electric grid. Food is strictly rationed and distributed by the military. As citizens grow increasingly angry with the government, martial law is called in to maintain peace.

And then things really start to get bad.

You can listen to the promo here: http://finalrune.com/mp3/cleansed-halloween-promo.mp3

And a 5 minute sample here: http://finalrune.com/mp3/cleansed-sample.mp3

This Halloween! Tune into THE CLEANSED

FinalRune's newest piece of work, the pilot episode of our new sci-fi serial The Cleansed, will be debuting on Sunday, October 31st - that's Halloween, my friends!

How to Hear:

* 7:00PM EST on WKIT 100.3 "The Rock" of Bangor - Stephen King's radio station! Hit "Listen Now" on http://zoneradio.com/wkit/index.shtml
* 7:00PM EST on Transcontinental Terror, the international audio festival featuring 6 hours of original horror programming for Halloween. Streams online: http://transcontinentalterror.com/
* 9:00PM EST on WMPG, Greater Portland Maine's Community Radio: http://wmpg.org/ Links to "Listen to WMPG" on the right
* Miss these dates? Stay tuned for a live stream to be embedded on the Radio Drama Revival site.

There will NOT be a free podcast version of this show due to licensing restrictions of music used in it. So be sure to tune in when you can!

EVENT: Live Halloween Radio Horror!

Well, in the midst of getting ready for the opening of my bookstore, The Green Hand, it has also been brought to my attention that this is that most wonderful time of the year -- the Halloween season! With this comes a veritable flood of delectable events to tempt you with. One of these comes with my highest recommendation -- the live on-air performance of spooky stories by FinalRune Productions!

Fred Greenhalgh writes, "As you can imagine, I've been furiously trying to prepare for the Halloween show, collecting a ghastly array of sound effects gear from squishy balls to honking horns and boiling mounds of spaghetti to simulate the sound of gnawing on brains. It's going to be a ghoulishly awesome night!"

By gum and by golly, you better believe it! The past Halloween productions by FinalRune have been well worth the listen, but this year brings a new crop of tales including one by our friend, Lewiston horror writer and crime reporter Mark LaFlamme, and a host of other dainties with which to shiver your pretty little spines.

This Halloween, FinalRune Productions teams up with WMPG and members from the Mad Horse Theater Company for a live spooktravanganza at the University of Southern Maine, benefiting the WMPG PowerUp! campaign.

This event is rare in that it will be performed live, in front of an audience, as it is being broadcast on October, 31, 2009 from 7:00 to 9:00PM. (Buy tickets to the event here: www.finalrune.com/live-halloween-show-2009)

The 2-hr live radio event will feature original work from writers Fred Greenhalgh, Mark LaFlamme, Kevin Anderson, and Roger Gregg.

Stories Include:

The Ghost Behind the Black Door by Roger Gregg
A couple from the city moves to a mansion in the countryside only to find that things are not all as they expect... a spoof on the classic horror meme.

Leaving You is Hell by Fred Greenhalgh
A dark retelling of the myth of Orpheus inspired by the classic jazz tune "St James Infirmary." A man in New Orleans is doomed to keep falling in love with the same woman and seducing her to her death.

Bone Lake by Mark LaFlamme
The ice fishing is going well on Bone Lake, until a man comes from the winter's night looking for a very strange catch.

Third Shift by Kevin Anderson
A company will sell you very efficient workers at a bargain price. Just don't send the living to check out their work.

You can also tune in from anywhere around the world. The show will be broadcast locally on 90.9/104.1 FM in Greater Portland, Maine, and streamed online -- just click here to listen along: www.wmpg.org.

There's also a Facebook Event page for this show.

And if you REALLY can't make it out, you'll be able to hear it podcast on Radio Drama Revival.

Can't wait until then?? Whet your appetite with some precursors... of doom! ... by visiting the Radio Drama Revival website for podcasts of more October treats.

October 22 – “Sorry, Wrong Number” by FinalRune Productions
FinalRune Productions and The Mad Horse Theater Company team up for their second collaboration tale, a production of the radio classic by Lucille Fletcher. A woman overhears two men plotting a murder over the telephone, and very quickly her whole world starts to unravel.

October 29 – “Listening in the Dark” by the Icebox Radio Theater
Three tales from Northern Minnesota to chill you to the bone. A writer’s notes from a haunted house turn against. A man gets haunted in his fishing shack. Santa Claus may not be who you thought he was. Jeff Adams shows off his incredible skill in the darker arts in this haunting hour-long special.

What is PowerUp? WMPG's PowerUP! Campaign seeks to raise $250,000 to upgrade the signal strength of the station's main transmitter and move it to a better location.

Merry Christmas everyone!

While most of us have been heavily exposed to Dickens' famous Christmas story, "A Christmas Carol," few in America know that it is part of a larger British tradition of holiday ghost stories. While here we tell spooky tales during the Halloween season, over in Great Britain they feast on the supernatural around cozy Yuletide fires as part of the annual holiday doings. Sounds good to me!

As a treat to listeners, Fred Greenhalgh of Maine's own Radio Drama Revival has announced that, although "Christmas is reasonably un-strange... on Christmas Day I'll be airing a contemporary dramatization of "A Christmas Carol" (never heard that one, right!)." Check out their website on December 25th for a special production of this timeless, hair-raising and heart-warming classic, as performed by Quicksilver Radio Theater wherein they return to the heart of the 1843 story - mining the dark veins of what its author called "a GHOST story - for Christmas."

If you're feeling the humbug vibe, drop into their website at http://www.radiodramarevival.com/ anyhow, because they have a great archive of fantastic fiction audio productions that should keep you entertained for hours on end through all manner of winter gales and slush storms!!!

mystery and drama on Portland radio

Strange Maine readers who enjoy the company of the good old wireless- be it a high-tech receiver or an old vacuum-tube antique, can tune in to Portland-based WLOB on Sunday evenings and listen to radio dramas and the Twilight Zone. The frequencies are AM 1310, or 96.3 FM, and the entertainment begins at 6pm with the Twilight Zone, and continues with a variety of classic programs (including The Green Hornet, for example) and concludes at 11pm with another one-hour Twilight Zone episode. Great listening for the living room or the front yard- and the price is right!

Eerie voice of the future

Quietly, persistently, the Old Time Radio culture of bygone years has worked its magic on a select audience of new listeners. With the dawning of the digital era, and easy online access to uncopyrighted material thought long-lost, interest in the old audio dramas has not only revived, but also increased. Now, worthy successors to such serial masterpieces as Arch Oboler’s Lights Out and other creepy utterances such as Inner Sanctum Mysteries and the Weird Circle are finally emerging from within our midst.

Witness the folks at Mind’s Eye Productions, home of the newly christened Horrorscopes, whose roots lie in the Rocky Coast Radio Theatre and the Nightmares on Congress Street series of full cast horror stories, available on Amazon.com, Audible.com, and elsewhere (try starting at http://www.mindseyeproductions.com/).

I sat down with Maine's own William Dufris, founder of the company, for an interview early this month, which I’ll be posting parts of on the blog as I transcribe it. He has teamed up with Maine horror author Rick Hautala to unleash their 2008 series. I suspect we will not be disappointed, if their past productions are any indication.

Dufris has some favorites in the company’s repertoire, including the War-of-the-Worlds-style original “The Horror of Walker Point” by Anthony Marino, which takes place as a live broadcast in downtown Portland with horrific results. Other delicious tidbits include classics like H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Statement of Randolph Carter” and previously unheard originals such as “The Cabin in the Woods” by Clay Graybeal, which will make you think twice about inheriting that seemingly idyllic cabin in the Maine woods from your well-meaning relative.

Pick whichever tale you like, the care put into these productions is evident, creating a convincing and compelling audible world that will swallow you into its sweetly screaming oblivion. For a sample, visit http://www.radiodramarevival.com/ and pull up Episode 38, which is one of Dufris’ most recent recordings, an adaptation of horror legend William Hope Hodgson’s “The Derelict,” about a crew of sailors that finds a strange boat adrift in the endless ocean, and discovers all too gruesomely the reason for its abandonment! From the creak of the oars to other, less friendly sounds that the sailors encounter, listeners will find themselves walking with them every horribly fascinating step of the way.

Dufris confided his surprise that none of his neighbors came to investigate the noises being made in his garage during the recording of “The Cabin in the Woods.” I suspect they were scared away.

NOTE: More samples of chilling tales are available as part of Radio Drama Revival's 2007 Halloween Extravaganza. Enjoy!

TONIGHT! Horror Stalks the Airwaves!

Radio drama rises from the dead this Halloween as WMPG unleashes a triple set of tales of terror. From 8:30-10PM on October 31st all manners of ghouls, gods, and ghosts will infiltrate the eardrums of listeners with tales by Mind's Eye Productions/William Dufris, The Grist Mill, and an original by Portland's own FinalRune Productions.

A demon may be loose in the world, but no one believes him. A god forgotten since ancient days confronts an awestruck human. Two friends head to a haunted house and awaken an ancient evil. The terror is non-stop Halloween night as we hear H.P. Lovecraft's "The Statement of Randolph Carter," Joe Lansdale's "God of the Razor" (winner of the 2007 Ogle Award), and Frederick Greenhalgh's "Dark Passenger."

This live audio event is a collaboration of WMPG DJs Eric Poulin and Frederick Greenhalgh, the latter of whom runs a weekly show dedicated to audio theater called Radio Drama Revival! Listeners can tune in to WMPG at 90.9/104.1 FM, stream online at www.wmpg.org, or hear the podcast of the presentation after the fact at www.radiodramarevival.com.

Photo features Chris Reiling butchering a pumpkin while Philip Hobby screams in terror (see on YouTube )...

Curious? You can also hear the promo for the whole thing online.

Who is this William Dufris, and why is he trying to scare the pants off of you? He is a Maine native, hailing from Houlton. After a 13 year residency in the UK, where he had the distinct pleasure of regularly performing in a number of BBC Radio Plays, as well as producing for The Story Circle, he returned Stateside in 2001, only to discover a lamentable lack of audio theatre in the area. He immediately sought out a number of theater friends and acquaintances from his pre-UK days, with the intention of producing a localized War Of The Worlds, a la Orson Welles. However, the events of 9/11 put that idea to rest, and thus was born the series Nightmares On Congress Street (with its obvious allusion to Nightmare on Elm Street). His original plan to produce a 'live' horror disaster set in Maine finally came to fruition with "The Horror Of Walker Point." But don't rest easy... he still intends to realize his original plans for A War Of The Worlds, but for now...).

Thanks to Mr. Dufris for pointing out that tonight WKIT 100.3 FM in Bangor (Stephen King's radio station) will be doing a Halloween broadcast of some old Nightmare favorites, as well as a new piece from The Tales From The Crypt series.