Dark Adventure Radio Theatre’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth
I work for a small software company in Champaign, Illinois. I live in St. Charles, about three hours away. I spend a lot of time in the car. I’ve learned to love audio books.
In the past three years I’ve listened to The Old Man and the Sea, To Kill a Mockingbird, all seven Harry Potter novels, Stephen King’s Dreamcatcher, Isabel Allende’s Zorro, and dozens more.
It’s how I get the bulk of my reading done these days. If I had someone to read fiction submissions to me in the car, I swear we could publish Black Gate weekly.
Late last month, as Highway 47 was smothered in fog and I made my way carefully through a desolate winter landscape, I popped an adaption of H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” into the CD player. It was, hands down, one of the best audio experiences I’ve ever had.
“Innsmouth” is one of Lovecraft’s most well-known stories, a creepy and wonderfully atmospheric tale of a young tourist stumbling off the beaten path into a shadowy New England fishing village with a dark history and a rather nasty aversion to visitors — especially those who ask too many questions. It originally appeared in a minuscule edition of 200 copies in 1936, the only book Lovecraft published in his lifetime.
Dark Adventure Radio Theatre has transformed the story into a 77-minute radio play just as it might have been broadcast in the 1930s, with a large cast of talented actors, terrific sound effects, and original music. You’ll hear the creak of doors, ominous footsteps, the muttering of hostile crowds, and the sounds of a frantic rooftop escape from an unknown something, pounding through the walls.