At one time or another, The Mysterious Traveler was heard on virtually every night of the week. There were frequent gaps between its runs, but it always seemed good for a revival. It was eternally sustained but cheap to produce: there were no major film stars to pay, and no shortage of radio actors willing to work for union scale.

Maurice Tarplin, who played the title role, conveyed good-natured menace, the kind of mischievous malevolence imparted by The Whistler or Raymond of Inner Sanctum Mysteries. Like those characters, the Traveler stood outside the stories. With a few exceptions (when he played a "Dr. Smith"), he narrated and commented from some omniscient perch inside the soul of his protagonist. He came to his listeners in the night, riding a phantom train. The opening signature was that loneliest of sounds, the distant wail of a locomotive, fading in gradually until steel wheels could be heard, clattering on steel rails.

This is The Mysterious Traveler, inviting you to join me on another journey into the strange and terrifying. I hope you will enjoy the trip, that it will thrill you a little and chill you a little. So settle back, get a good grip on your nerves, and be comfortable—if you can!

The stories ran from wild "end of the world" science fiction to straight crime. A bug-hating scientist concocted a formula to destroy all insect life, but the insects got wise and came after him. A young couple was haunted by the ghost of a woman once murdered in their newly bought house in Vermont. Perhaps the classic Mysterious Traveler episode was Behind the Locked Door, much requested and rerun over the years. This story could not have been done in any other medium, as most of it takes place inside a cave, trapped by a landslide find inside the cave the remnants of an old wagon train, perhaps a hundred years old. When they are attacked by strange beings, they must conclude that the descendants of those pioneers still live in this sightless world, feeding on the fish that swim through the underground stream. The ending, of course, was a shocker—most Mysterious Traveler endings twisted fate and tried hard for the big sur-prise. The final scream blended into the train's whistle, and there was the Traveler again, clacking along on his ever-rolling journey. Oh, you have to get off here!... I'm sorry!... I'm sure we'll meet again... I take this same train every week at this same time... _{John Dunning}