Radio Detective Story Hour Episode 271 – Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper

Radio Detective Story Hour

This podcast offering is only tangentially a detective story of sorts. It does involve investigations by individuals, potential suspects, potential crimes, and a resolution of sorts. And like many of my features, it comes based upon a short story. The story is from the sometimes strange mind of writer Robert Bloch. Bloch is probably best known among the public at large as the writer of the story upon which the classic Hitchcock film, Psycho, is based.

In 1943 Bloch published “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” one of the author’s first unique stories and not an imitation of H.P. Lovecraft, whom he had admired since before his writing days. Previously, his stories were mostly imitations of Lovecraft’s style.

In 1945, the story was adapted and aired over the Molle Mystery Theater, but like much of this series audio, it is only available via the Armed Forces Radio’s Mystery Playhouse. The adaptation is relatively faithful for the first 20 minutes, then creates a completely different final scene to end it. Unfortunately, if you have read the original story which appeared in Weird Tales in July 1943, there is a sort of third act to this story and possibly the best written scene in the whole story, in my opinion. The third major scene takes place in a seedy bar on a cold, foggy November night in Chicago’s south side, wonderfully described by author Bloch. You can read the original story online by going to the link below.

Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper in Weird Tales

The music under is from the series Twin Peaks and is written by Angelo Badalamenti called “Fire Walk With Me”