Before ‘Twilight Zone’: The Forgotten First Horror TV Series
It won’t be long now until horror buffs mark the centennial anniversary of The Television Ghost. The groundbreaking 1931 television horror anthology told murderous tales several decades before shows like Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story, American Crime Story, and Monster compiled frightening stories, making many consider it the first ever horror TV series. But don’t expect any celebratory Television Ghost screenings: Without known footage remaining, the production is deemed lost media.
Premiering on August 17, 1931, on the Columbia Broadcasting System’s experimental television station, W2XAB, and airing until February 15, 1933, The Television Ghost ranks as television’s first dramatic anthology, according to the Encyclopedia of Television Shows. The show had Bill Schudt as announcer and George Kelting and Artells Dickson as the title character, who presented tales of murders from the perspective of the victims, per IMDb.
But because all footage from The Television Ghost appears to be lost, we only have contemporaneous press to rely upon for details. Luckily for us, there was a lot of coverage…
The Television Ghost was one of the TV industry’s first experiments
View this post on Instagram
W2XAB, which went live on July 21, 1931, just weeks before The Television Ghost’s premiere, broadcast a visual signal of just 20 frames per minute that would accompany an audio signal from the related radio station W2XE, according to Television Obscurities. Viewers in the Northeast experienced The Television Ghost’s visuals, but listeners across the country heard the Ghost stories through Columbia’s radio network. And on July 21, 1932, W2XAB marked its one-year anniversary by combining its video and audio signals in a unified signal, the site reports.
One newspaper clipping, circulated recently on Reddit, billed The Television Ghost’s namesake as television’s “first mystery character” who was “raising the hair” of viewers and listeners.
“Weird scenic and sound effects contribute to the spine-chilling effect of the specter shown above in his role as the shade of a murderer,” that clipping reads. “Naturally, since ghosts are nameless, this one is anonymous. And considering the Eighteenth Amendment, isn’t it startling to learn that spirits are now being sent through the air?” (The Eighteenth Amendment, repealed in 1933, prohibited alcohol, including spirits — ba da boom.)
The ghost made Halloween 1931 especially spooky for viewers
A 1931 teaser in the Times Union gave a preview of the program’s Halloween plans for the following night: “Halloween will be duly celebrated by Columbia’s television station W2XAB tomorrow when the Television Ghost, unidentified mystery character, takes things in his own hands to thrill and chill lookers-in and listeners-in. The Television Ghost, who stalks the radio waves regularly on Tuesday nights will be given free rein of the visual studios and will demonstrate, among other things, how one ghost can become three ghosts without a magician in the picture.”
Another newspaper caption reads: “Halloween will be a busy night for this Television Ghost, who stalks up and down the wave of W2XAB to prove that sprites are in the air even in this day and age.”
The character even scared passersby at CBS headquarters
Apparently, the Television Ghost character gave frights in person, too. The Daily Star reported in October 1931, per Television Obscurities, that the faux-apparition was “causing some commotion around the CBS building’s twenty-third floor,” where W2XAB had its studio.
“To date he has popped around corners to frighten one soprano, one supposedly brave lightweight fighter, and one of Columbia’s porters, who dropped his broom and departed at excessive speed,” the Star added.
A 1932 column in the Brooklyn Eagle described the Ghost vying with The Shadow, narrator of W2XAB’s The Detective Story Magazine Hour, for the role of resident scarer: “The Shadow has a competitor. Visitors who wander about the Columbia corridors are just as liable as not to run into either the heavy cloaked Shadow or the white-sheeted Television Ghost. Both take keen delight in passing by studio windows and past darkened yet much frequented passageways just to give the visitors a thrill.”
Many more horror anthologies came to the small screen after The Television Ghost
Everett Collection
The Television Ghost may have been television’s first dramatic anthology, but it wasn’t the last, and many successors were horrifying in their own right. The horror anthology Lights Out leapt from radio to television in the 1940s. Alfred Hitchcock Presents brought one of cinema’s most fearsome filmmakers to TV in the 1950s. The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits kept the anthologized thrills and chills going in the 1960s. And since then, we’ve gotten TV shows like Tales From the Darkside, Tales From the Crypt, Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, and Creepshow. And those shows have a 1930s Ghost to thank!