Lights Out, which began on January 1, 1934, was initially"a midnight mystery serial to catch the attention of the listeners at the witching hour.

 

Created by Wyllis Cooper and then taken over by Arch Oboler, versions of the series aired on different networks, at various times, from June of 1936 to the summer of 1947 and the series eventually made the transition to television. Lights Out was one of the earliest radio horror programs predating Suspense and Inner Sanctum.

 

By 1939, Oboler had launched ARCH OBOLER'S PLAYS which were really updated versions of his original Lights Out Scripts.  In 1940, it was called EVERYMAN'S THEATER and then PLAYS FOR AMERICANS briefly in 1941.

 

By the fall of 1942, he was back with a new version of Lights Out (most of what we have here is from this era) which was mostly made up of new performances based on the 1930's scripts.

 

In the years that followed, Oboler continued with variations of his Lights Out series as late as 1972 with a total of 216 episodes produced.