Lights Out

Lights Out

Lights Out was an extremely popular American old-time radio program, an early example of a network series devoted mostly to horror and the supernatural, predating Suspense and Inner Sanctum. Versions of Lights Out aired on different networks, at various times, from January 1934 to the summer of 1947 and the series eventually made the transition to television. In 1946, NBC Television brought Lights Out to TV in a series of four specials, broadcast live and produced by Fred Coe, who also contributed three of the scripts. NBC asked Cooper to write the script for the premiere, "First Person Singular", which is told entirely from the point of view of an unseen murderer who kills his obnoxious wife and winds up being executed. Variety gave this first episode a rave review ("undoubtedly one of the best dramatic shows yet seen on a television screen"), but Lights Out did not become a regular NBC-TV series until 1949.

Sci-Fi & FantasyCrimeDramaReality

Seasons

1. Edna Warren

Air Date: 1949-07-19

2. Promise

Air Date: 1949-07-26

3. Long Distance

Air Date: 1949-08-02

4. Crater

Air Date: 1949-08-09

5. SOUVENIERS OF HIS DEAD WIFE

Air Date: 1949-08-16

6. The Housekeeper

Air Date: 1949-08-23

7. Dressing Gown

Air Date: 1949-08-30

8. The Whisper

Air Date: 1949-09-23

After defeating Morales, Lights hires trainer Ed Romeo (Eamonn Walker), who once trained Death Row Reynolds. Romeo is part boxing guru and part psychologist, and his approach is very different from Pops'. Meanwhile, Theresa worries about Ava's attitude about life.

9. Conqueror's Isle

Air Date: 1949-11-07

The training regimen Ed Romeo (Eamonn Walker) is imposing on Lights splits the Leary family: Theresa and the girls don't like its late-night hours, but they do like Ed. Johnny doesn't, and he's upset that Ed won't let Lights promote the Reynolds fight. For his part, Ed thinks that Lights' brother is "bleeding him dry."

10. Pengallen's Bell

Air Date: 1949-11-14

11. The Fall of the House of Usher

Air Date: 1949-11-21

12. I Dreamt I Died

Air Date: 1949-11-28

13. SOMETHING IN THE WIND

Air Date: 1949-12-05

14. Justice Lies Waiting

Air Date: 1949-12-12

15. The Elevator

Air Date: 1949-12-19

16. The Man Who Couldn't Lose

Air Date: 1949-12-26

17. The Riverman

Air Date: 1950-01-02

18. JUDGEMENT REVERSED

Air Date: 1950-01-09

19. The Green Dress

Air Date: 1950-01-16

20. The Devil to Pay

Air Date: 1950-01-23

21. Reservations for Four

Air Date: 1950-01-30

22. Dead Pigeon

Air Date: 1950-02-06

23. The Invisible Staircase

Air Date: 1950-02-13

24. Graven Image

Air Date: 1950-02-20

25. Portrait of a Dead Man

Air Date: 1950-02-27

26. The Strange Case of John Kingman

Air Date: 1950-03-06

27. The Emerald Lavalier

Air Date: 1950-03-13

28. The Scarab

Air Date: 1950-03-20

29. Mary, Mary Quite Contrary

Air Date: 1950-03-29

30. The Queen is Dead

Air Date: 1950-04-03

31. The Faithful Heart

Air Date: 1950-04-10

32. A Toast to Sergeant Farnsworth

Air Date: 1950-04-17

33. The Man Who Couldn't Remember

Air Date: 1950-04-24

34. GLOVES OF GINO

Air Date: 1950-05-01

35. The Silent Voice

Air Date: 1950-05-08

36. The House That Time Forgot

Air Date: 1950-05-15

37. Rendezvous

Air Date: 1950-09-22

38. HOW LOVE CAME TO PROFESSOR GULDIA

Air Date: 1950-05-29

39. The Heart of Jonathan O'Rourke

Air Date: 1950-06-05

40. DETERMINED LADY

Air Date: 1950-06-12

41. A Child is Crying

Air Date: 1950-06-19

42. An Encore

Air Date: 1950-06-26

43. THE WHISPER (RESTAGING)

Air Date: 1950-07-03

44. I DREAMT I DIED (RESTAGING)

Air Date: 1950-07-10

45. THE DEVIL TO PAY (RESTAGING)

Air Date: 1950-07-17

46. THE STRANGE CASE OF JOHN KINGMAN (RESTAGING)

Air Date: 1950-07-31

47. THE QUEEN IS DEAD (RESTAGING)

Air Date: 1950-08-14

48. THE HEART OF JONATHAN O'ROURKE (RESTAGING)

Air Date: 1950-08-21

1. IDES OF APRIL

Air Date: 1950-08-28

2. Benuili Chant

Air Date: 1950-09-04

3. The Dark Corner

Air Date: 1950-09-11

4. The Leopard Lady

Air Date: 1950-09-18

5. SISTER OF SHADOW

Air Date: 1950-09-25

6. The Posthumous Dead

Air Date: 1950-10-02

7. Just What Happened

Air Date: 1950-10-09

A man stands trial for murdering another man by throwing him out a window.

8. The Thing Upstairs

Air Date: 1950-10-16

9. The Skeptics

Air Date: 1950-10-16

10. The Martian Eyes

Air Date: 1950-10-30

An odd professor claims he can spot Martians, who masquerade as humans, using a pair of infrared glasses he wears. Only then can you see the third eyeball in the middle of their forehead. He relates his wild theory to a photographer sitting by him in a bar--and the man believes him. While playing around with infrared film, the photographer says he's snapped a shot of a man with three eyes. The two team up to convince authorities of their find.

11. The Half Pint Flask

Air Date: 1950-11-06

12. The Waxwork

Air Date: 1950-11-13

13. THE EXPERIMENT

Air Date: 1950-11-20

14. THE MULE MEN

Air Date: 1950-11-27

15. Beware This Woman

Air Date: 1950-12-04

A woman experiencing poltergeist activity in her home secures the services of a reluctant, non-believer in the supernatural, scientist to resolve her problem.

16. THE MASQUE

Air Date: 1950-12-11

17. The Men on the Mountain

Air Date: 1950-12-18

18. Jasper

Air Date: 1950-12-25

Songwriter Charlie has suffered with writer's block" since he and his wife moved to the country. Betty wants them to sell the house to pay the bills, but Charlie doesn't want to part with the family estate. His late ancestor, Jasper, isn't thrilled with the idea either.

19. The Haunted Skyscraper

Air Date: 1951-01-01

20. Bird of Time

Air Date: 1951-01-08

21. The Bottle Imp

Air Date: 1951-01-15

22. For Release Today

Air Date: 1951-01-22

Maggie, the press agent for actor Henry Crawford, is horrified by his lifeless performances during dress rehearsals for his new play. She comments that he seems dead, to which his wife, Elaine, declares that he is. A year earlier, Elaine's ex-fiancé Balsamo had cursed Henry when he stole her away, promising Henry that he'd be through in one year.

23. The Masque of the Red Death

Air Date: 1951-01-29

24. THE HOUSE OF DUST (AKA) 1962

Air Date: 1951-02-05

25. Curtain Call

Air Date: 1951-02-12

Off-his-rocker Kruger, a famous actor coming out of retirement for a new play with his daughter (Randel), suddenly is tormented by the ghost of his late, thought-to-be-a-suicide wife. His daughter is a triumph in her first big stage role, but ... can Kruger take the adulation she receives ...

26. Strange Legacy

Air Date: 1951-02-19

After suffering a concussion in a car accident on the Oregon coast, Stephen Elliott is carried to the home of an old man and his beautiful daughter-in-law to recover. The young woman tells Stephen that her husband, a World War II pilot, had died the year before and left an uncompleted musical composition, a model airplane and a piece of sculpture, as well as a strange will.

27. The Dispossessed

Air Date: 1951-02-26

28. THE MAN WITH ASTRAKHAN HAT

Air Date: 1951-03-05

29. Leda's Portrait

Air Date: 1951-03-12

30. Western Night

Air Date: 1951-03-19

31. THE POWER OF BRUTE

Air Date: 1951-03-26

32. The Mad Dullaghan

Air Date: 1951-04-02

A man finds his missing fiancé in a mental hospital. She believes she's possessed a Dullaghan, a spirit of Irish folklore that jumped to her from her late father when she kissed him farewell at his funeral. The finance investigates and learns that her parent had been a famous ventriloquist and his dummy was named Mr. Dullagham.

33. The Crushed Rose

Air Date: 1951-04-09

34. The Witness

Air Date: 1951-04-16

35. THE FONCECILLE CURSE

Air Date: 1951-04-23

The heir of the old aristocratic Fonceville family takes his bride to the ancestral castle, where a hereditary madness takes over his dreams, one that tries to induce the murder of his new wife.

36. Grey Reminder

Air Date: 1951-04-30

Charlotte is distressed by the letters addressed tor her new husband that mysteriously appear at their door. Kenneth refuses to discuss their contents, but they clearly disturb him. Fearing he's seeing another woman, Charlotte demands to know who's writing them. She's shocked to find they're from his domineering first wife who seems intent on controlling him even in death.

37. The Lost Will of Dr. Rant

Air Date: 1951-05-07

A Boston librarian is drawn into a ghostly web of deceit as he helps a beautiful heiress recover her stolen fortune by finding a missing will written in a rare version of the Talmud.

38. Dead Man's Coat

Air Date: 1951-05-14

By opening the grave of a recently deceased man and putting on his coat, a person will supposedly be granted invisibility. A bitter man with scores to settle decides to put the superstition to the test. He forces his reluctant butler to join him in his scheme of grave-robbing and murder.

39. Cat's Cradle

Air Date: 1951-05-21

Former hometown football star George Logan pays an unexpected late night visit on Phyllis and Bob at their country home. Down on his luck, he's obsessed with having never fit in, and holds a grudge against the world. His one talent is weaving a string into a cat's cradle and, he claims, using it to cast spells and murder people who get in his way. A skeptical Bob call it nonsense so an irate George is determined to prove him wrong.

40. The Pattern

Air Date: 1951-05-28

Al March is tortured by his failure to have stopped the bombing of an Army barracks in 1945 Germany. Awaiting surgery, he tells his sister that the two men and a woman he killed the night before were the same ones who had planted the explosives. Even though they had died in the blast, they had been chasing him for the past six years because he lived and they didn't.

41. THE MARTIAN EYES

Air Date: 1951-06-04

42. Pit of the Dead

Air Date: 1951-06-11

43. Dead Freight

Air Date: 1951-06-18

44. The Passage Beyond

Air Date: 1951-06-25

The ghost of Lady Anne continues to walk down the stairs, knife in hand, and into the secret passage where she murdered her domineering husband. She vividly demonstrates her disapproval of Rodney's attempt to conduct an affair with a visiting friend of his wife.

45. THE ADAM BEGOT

Air Date: 1951-07-02

The car carrying cultured Geoffrey, brutish Claude and eligible Kay swerves off a cliff and into a mysterious valley. Surprised by the weird vegetation and climate, they come to believe they've traveled back in time 50,000 years. An encounter with an unfriendly caveman results in all three being held captive in the wild man's cave.

46. The Meddlers

Air Date: 1951-07-09

Cecil Crofton shows up at the backwoods, hillbilly shack of Purdy with a wild proposition on how the two can split a million dollars. Crofton as figured out that a ton gold that once belonged to the Confederacy is buried locally, in the cellar of a house that had burned down and was rebuilt. Purdy figures rightly that it's the old Larro place, but the abandoned house is cursed by the ghosts of Larro ancestors from the Civil War.

47. THE DEVIL IN GLENCAIRE

Air Date: 1951-07-16

Steenie, the best piper in all of Scotland, is about to be evicted if he doesn't pay his owed rent. After selling his pipes to raise the money, a mysterious stranger appears, ready with a deal: it involves Steenie's money, bagpipes--and his immortal soul.

48. Zero Hour

Air Date: 1951-07-23

49. The Fingers

Air Date: 1951-07-30

50. The Faceless Man

Air Date: 1951-08-06

Francis Carvel visits a plastic surgeon to erase a lifetime of ugliness from his face. Now handsome, he returns to the French inn where, a year earlier, an lovely woman had spurned his affection. Complicating Carvel's plans is a new traveling companion, a disfigured man in bandages who knows everything about him.

51. The Man With the Watch

Air Date: 1951-08-13

A New York City detective is investigating the disappearance of over 200 people. Before vanishing into thin air, each person has reported a dream involving a fat man with a bizarre watch who convinces them to join him on his planet of Aleria.

52. Follow Me

Air Date: 1951-08-20

1. Mrs. Manifold

Air Date: 1951-08-27

In 1890s London, Mrs. Manifold runs a boarding house for sailors on the waterfront. New hire John hears from a customer that her wine-guzzling husband, Ambrose, long ago disappeared and that some say she killed him. The old lady gets jumpy when a strange man reeking of wine signs the register "Ambrose Manifold.

2. Blackwood Hall

Air Date: 1951-09-03

3. Prophet of Darkness

Air Date: 1951-09-10

4. To See Ourselves

Air Date: 1951-09-17

5. Rappaccini's Daughter

Air Date: 1951-09-24

6. Will-O-the-wisp

Air Date: 1951-10-01

7. Dark Image

Air Date: 1951-10-08

On their honeymoon, a new husband brings his bride to the ranch he grew up on. The wife is soon traumatized by the antique bedroom mirror once owned by the husband's deceased former love. The dead girlfriend appears in the reflection, wanting to trade places with the newly-married woman.

8. I SPY

Air Date: 1951-10-15

A survey taker makes a startling discovery when she visits the home of two very paranoid, eccentric, elderly collectors of odds and ends.

9. The Deal

Air Date: 1951-10-22

A man makes a deal with a mysterious businessman in order to get rid of his high spending wife.

10. The Veil

Air Date: 1951-10-29

Ambitious defense attorney David Stevenson has high political aspirations and believes his romance with a nobody like Sylvia Willis will only hold him back. Calling in a favor from a murderer he once saved from conviction, he has his bride-to-be shot. Sylvia, however, is not so easily silenced. She demands justice and forces the great attorney to defend himself before a jury of the dead.

11. The Chamber of Gloom

Air Date: 1951-11-05

12. The Beast in the Garden

Air Date: 1951-11-12

13. Friday the Nineteenth

Air Date: 1951-11-19

14. BEYOND THE DOOR (AKA) FAR OFF ISLAND

Air Date: 1951-11-26

15. The Silent Supper

Air Date: 1951-12-03

Dede attends the silent supper, a ritual the single Bayou women conduct to foresee their future husbands. Old voodoo woman Miss Watkins had told Dede that she'd meet her husband at the supper that night. Miss Watkins has the misfortune of meeting up with troublemaker Jean Duval, who stabs her and steals her silver. Then, uninvited, he crashes the silent supper.

16. The Angry Birds

Air Date: 1951-12-10

Bird lover Waldo Bryan leaves behind his big city art career to live in the country. His wife, Adele, has turned hateful, angry that he made her give up the city life. To get even, she lets Waldo's beloved parakeet out of it's cage to be killed by her cat. The birds outside seem to know of Adele's evil deed and turn on her, turning her into the caged one.

17. Perchance to Dream

Air Date: 1951-12-17

Jeff Morgan reads a story in a pulp fiction magazine exactly like one he'd written and filed away years earlier. His meeting with the author, Frank Joyce, is eerie; he already knows everything about the man without having met him before. Convinced Frank is his doppelganger, Jeff panics when he dreams Frank steps onto an elevator that malfunctions and plunges fifteen stories. Frank just scoffs at his frantic warning.

18. This Way to Heaven

Air Date: 1951-12-24

19. Of Time and Third Avenue

Air Date: 1951-12-30

20. THE SCHOOL FOR THE UNSPEAKBLE

Air Date: 1952-01-07

21. Blood Relation

Air Date: 1952-01-14

22. The Intruder

Air Date: 1952-01-21

23. The Third Door

Air Date: 1952-01-28

24. The Chain

Air Date: 1952-02-04

25. Cries the String

Air Date: 1952-02-11

26. The Eyes from San Francisco

Air Date: 1952-02-18

27. The Perfect Servant

Air Date: 1952-02-25

28. Private - Keep Out

Air Date: 1952-03-03

29. The Upstairs Floor

Air Date: 1952-03-10

A husband rents the same upstairs apartment where he and his late wife once lived. Despite his claims of being married, the elderly landlady feels that something is not quite right. After weeks, she's yet to meet the woman. In fact, she's never heard so much as a sound coming from upstairs floor.

30. The Borgia Lamp

Air Date: 1952-03-17

31. Another Country

Air Date: 1952-03-24

A mysterious stranger enters a home uninvited, drawn from the street by the haunting music of Beethoven's "Geister (Ghost) Trio" that three musicians are performing. The pianist is immediately smitten with the woman of obvious wealth and status, soon proposing they marry. She says it is impossible, as the man would be forced to choose between her or his music.

32. The Pit

Air Date: 1952-04-07

33. THE MEN ON THE MOUNTAIN

Air Date: 1952-04-14

34. A Lucky Piece

Air Date: 1952-04-21

35. For Rent

Air Date: 1952-04-28

36. A Journey Into the Shadows

Air Date: 1952-05-05

37. The Green Thumb

Air Date: 1952-05-12

38. Little Girl

Air Date: 1952-05-19

39. The Death's Head

Air Date: 1952-05-26

40. Night Walk

Air Date: 1952-06-02

41. Blind Man's Bluff

Air Date: 1952-06-09

42. Nightmare

Air Date: 1952-06-16

43. The Coins of Death

Air Date: 1952-06-23

44. The Lonely Albatross

Air Date: 1952-06-30

45. THE GUEST IN ROOM THIRTEEN

Air Date: 1952-07-07

46. The Bog Oak Necklace

Air Date: 1952-07-14

47. Death Trap

Air Date: 1952-07-28

48. Man in the Dark

Air Date: 1952-08-04

49. The Killer's Moon

Air Date: 1952-08-11

50. Twist of Fate

Air Date: 1952-08-18

51. DEATH IS A SMALL MONK

Air Date: 1952-08-25

52. The Verdict

Air Date: 1952-09-01

53. The Red Rose

Air Date: 1952-09-08

54. The Darker Night

Air Date: 1952-09-15

55. Flight Thirteen

Air Date: 1952-09-22

56. The Hollow Man

Air Date: 1952-09-29

57. WHEN WIDOWS WEEP

Air Date: 1972-01-15

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Rating

5.3/10

Release Date

1949-07-19

Episodes

161 (3 seasons)

Status

Ended

Cast

Production Companies

Admiral Corporation

Erwin, Wasey & Co. Inc.

NBC

NBC