Our final Halloween offering is a reairing of one of Gremlin Time's original programs from back in the early 1980s, which we would reair even then around this time of year. 'The Cat Man' by Byron Liggett and presented by RED RYDER. An author named Foster comes to the South Pacific to find solitude on an island he has purchased, where he can live and write. He hires the story's narrator, Capt. Rogers, to transport himself, his belongings and about six, male and female cats to the isolated atol. Over the next three years, Rogers watches in horror as the felines multiple into the hundreds, and is unable to stop fate's appalling inevitability.
This is the original broadcast version, the master recordings have been lost. So the music background is a little choppy due to the mixing of records and reel to reel tapes in real time behind the reading. The music includes excerpts from 'The Rite of Spring', performed by Herbert Laws, the piano solo is Sun Ra playing 'Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child', with excerpts from the movie soundtracks of 'White Witch Doctor' and 'The Thing From Another World'.
I originally found this story in a paperback collection of horror stories from 1961 Things With Claws edited byWhet and Halli Burnett published by Ballantine Books. And have found nothing about the author Byron Liggett.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN
- KBOO