Tales of the Grave: Graveyards in Old Time Radio

Conventional wisdom holds that the only two things that are unavoidable in life are death and taxes. Of the two, only taxes can  attempted to be evaded with any degree of certainty. Although it may be avoided for a long time (hopefully, a blessedly long time), sooner or later everyone who was born will know death.

A hallmark of every human culture is how they treat their dead. Some spend so much effort and resources preparing for death and entering the afterlife that there seems little left to put toward enjoying this life. Others venerate their dead ancestors but look upon death as a reason to celebrate life. Some societies have a tradition of ceremonially burying their dead, usually with a physical memorial marking the burial spot. Others practice ritual cremation for reasons of sanitation while some primitive peoples expose the bodies of their honored deceased to the elements, allowing nature to reclaim her own.

In European tradition, a graveyard is a burial place on the grounds of a church. Although this has the advantage of giving survivors the comfort of knowing that their deceased loved ones lie in consecrated ground, it is only a matter of time before a graveyard is filled. In some instances, space in the graveyard may be reclaimed by exhuming the bones from the oldest dead and reinterning them in an ossuary, often in crypts in the walls or below the floors of the church.

With the population which accompanied the beginnings of industrialization, it became obvious that traditional churchyard burial could not keep pace with the needs for burial space. Municipal cemeteries are sometimes the property of the community which they serve, but often the property is owned and managed by a private joint-stock company. Usually, these commercial facilities welcome deceased without regard to religion, although accommodation is made for the religious beliefs of the deceased and their survivors.

An important aspect of any cemetery is that it is a place for the deceased to rest, undisturbed, in the ground. Therefore, there are few crimes as unforgivable as grave robbing. Matt Dillon faces bad guys who steal the bodies of Indians from their sacred graveyards on Gunsmoke and in the Challenge of the Yukon the ground is so rich there are gold nuggets in the graves to tempt robbers.

Whether you live as a hero or a villain, the grave is where you are going to wind up, but some manage to influence the normal world from beyond the grave. Lux's adaptation of "Smilin' Through" is a tale of how love can last beyond the grave, but more often the deceased reach back into this world to reveal the guilty party who ushered them out of it. After her nervous breakdown, the woman's notebook reveals her killer from beyond the grave on The Hermit's Cave. After Joker Barton's widow gets out of prison and looks for his fortune on Big Town but even though Joker is beyond the grave he manages to get the last laugh.

Graves get filled by the gruesome results of living, but before they can be filled they need to be dug. Yours Truly Johnny Dollar tells us "How the Grave Digger's Spades turned to Trumps". Bea Benaderet plays a convincing grieving mother at her son's graveside in "History of a Mug" on Arch Oboler's Plays.

It is natural to expect that the journey to the grave is a one-way trip, but on Inner Sanctum it seems as though the bodies just won't stay buried. Returning from the grave is the theme of "The Black Seagull", "Cause of Death", "The Corpse without a Conscience", "Death Demon", and "The Man from the Grave". The return is less of a surprise on Molle Mystery's "Angel Face" because the villainess has the nasty habit of burying her victims alive!

A requirement for a proper grave is ground to dig it in, something that seafarers are often in short supply of. Suspense tells the story of "A Watery Grave" and the War Shipping Administration tells of the Graveyard of the Atlantic on It's Maritime.