Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-10502460-20180523023011

No one knows who wrote or produced the radio play called "Murder at a Barn" that aired in the sleepy Iowa town of Cedar Brook on the evening of July 10th, 1948. There was a local AM station that played short, one-act thrillers during the evening and night hours, but "Murder at a Barn" was aired on a channel that wasn't used by any station in the vicinity. Dozens of locals reported listening to the play in their living rooms or cars, but none seemed to have heard it in its entirety.

What is agreed upon is that the play was a thriller, probably one act, was advertised as being live during commercial bumpers, and had a narrator with a stereotypical exaggerated creepy voice. Most people seemed to have tuned in right about when the conflict was being revealed. The main character, one Thomas Burkeley, had discovered his wife was having an affair with his office coworker. After a brief struggle with his conscience, expressed in the words of the narrator, he resolved to murder them.

"Now Thomas, his soul consumed with rage, his mind overtaken by jealousy, has determined to murder his wife and her lover. All night he lies awake, concocting the perfect hateful scheme. Will he carry through with his vengeful deed, or have a change of heart? Find out, dear listener, after these messages."

Despite what the narrator said, none of those who listened to the original broadcast of the play ever remembered there being a commercial break. The play just cut to the next scene. Thomas called his wife and asked her to meet him at a remote barn. He then called her other lover, and, disguising his voice, pretended to be her brother, and said she had asked to meet with him at the barn for an urgent talk. The "castle thunder" stock sound played a couple times as the narrator set the stage for the confrontation.

Incidentally, there was a storm approaching Cedar Brook at this time.

The two adulterers arrived at the barn and, expressing confusion to each other about the meeting and their reasons for being there, were interrupted as Thomas stepped out of the shadows. His wife had time to ask "Thomas, what are you doing here?" before being cut off by two stock gunshots. Thomas then poured kerosene over their bodies and lit the barn on fire.

Then the play ended. There was no formal outro or credits. The station returned to dead air.

But within minutes of the end of the broadcast, the all-volunteer fire battalion was called to the scene of a fire at a barn. Two charred bodies were found inside, a man and a woman. They were never identified, and the owner of the land on which the barn was built had abandoned the property years ago and then died. Some years later a farmer who had been grazing his animals on the land successfully filed an adverse possession claim.

From that night in 1948 all the way until the 1990s, people in Cedar Brook claimed to have heard complete or partial broadcasts of that play on that same dead frequency at the bottom of the AM dial, late at night or during the wee hours of the morning.

Mark didn't know any of this when he was driving his rig past the town at around 2 in the morning in July of 1996, listening to the play. Weather was blowing in, and he was eager to get to the next rest stop. He did think it an odd coincidence when he saw a burning barn up ahead as the play ended, but he was mainly concerned with radioing the State Patrol.

They found two bodies, again both male and female, though the barn was on a different plot. Once again, the owner had died and after some investigation of records it turned out the county had owned the land for some time. Word is that the broadcasts of the play stopped after that. 