Elaine Rost stars in a Jack Buttram story about ESP and spirits and the possibility of messages from Blackbeard the pirate to find his buried treasure. It could be a different story, however, the ESP-skeptical husband suddenly develops an interest in it, perhaps to make her believe, in her words, to “make me think thoughts that don’t belong to me.”
It is a needlessly tedious story and it is easy to lose patience with it. Someone is killed and you’re supposed to wonder if the messages facilitating the act are real or not, and then listeners are supposed to say “oh, that was spooky, I never thought that would happen.” Sorry, this is Suspense. Listeners deserve better than that.
Elaine Rost plays “Margo Reed,” a wife who is haunted by vivid “dreams” that she believes are messages from the dead. She considers them an example of Extra Sensory Perception (ESP). Her husband, Charles, humors her a bit, and decides they need a break from things will help her mental well-being. They will take advantage of an offer from his aunt to a coastal home she owns in the Carolinas. Needing a book to bring along, she picks up a book about piracy and the Spanish Main. (The “Spanish Main” referred to the Caribbean Sea and north coast of South America where Spain had colonies in the 16th and 17th centuries). When they arrive in the area, they get a driver to take them to the home in Teach’s Cove. The area is named for the pirate Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, who roamed those shores with other pirates in the early 1700s. The driver tells that last year that the previous owner died there from a “terrible cut” that was believed accidental. That death occurred during the “Pirates’ Moon,” which usually refers to the brightest full moon where their nefarious activities, such as burying their treasure (usually stolen), could be done more easily than darker times of the lunar cycle when tides might be too low for them to get far inland by waterways from the shore.
As evening changes into nighttime, Margo feels the need to be in the cabin, locked safely inside. She senses that something is trying to communicate with her. Charles is concerned about the voices she ie hearing. He arranges for the driver to pick them up earlier than they originally planned, fearing that she may be having a relapse of her issues. The driver warns them to avoid “moonlight strolls” along the beach. He says it in a way that he believes some of the pirate legends of the area. It’s a surprise that it’s Charles who opens one of the pirate books, and finds a map of Blackbeard’s travels in the area. He reads that Blackbeard’s favorite weapon was a cutlass, a short, curved sword. He would carry a few of them on his person when engaged in his confrontations. As listeners, we are to start thinking that it was the “terrible cut” that only a cutlass could deliver that killed the person in the cabin in the prior year. Suddenly, they hear a scream outside, and Charles runs out of the house to find out where it came from, and can’t. Margo has an ominous feeling she will hear the scream again the next night. (Part of the Blackbeard legend is that he was guillotined, and his head and body thrown overboard, and the headless body was swimming looking for his head, and those living on shore for years later wouldhear winds on shore that sounded like a man yelling “where’s my head?”).
The next day, Charles finds something sticking out of the sand, which Margo recognizes as a “planchette,” an instrument for communicating with the dead. She knows a lot about it, and tells Charles it is evil. (Today, more people are aware of Ouija boards, and a “planchette” was a precursor to such an instrument. It is a small board supported on casters, typically heart-shaped, its shape like the “heart” symbol in a deck of cards, gives the episode the name “Blackbeard’s Ace” referring to the “ace of hearts”). The planchette has a hole that is fitted with a pencil, and is used for “automatic writing” assisted by a medium whose hand is guided to write by spirits of the deceased, such as in seances.
Charles is fascinated by it, and uses it that night, with no results. Later that night, Margo finds the planchette in the kitchen; she begins to suspect that Charles is trying to send her over the edge again, to “drive her out of her mind” by making her think that Blackbeard put it there for her. The loud scream is heard once more after using the planchette, and they realize the message written is “KILL CHARLES.” There is a scuffle between Margo and Charles, with a bad ending. The next morning, the driver arrives and finds Margo in a state of shock, and Charles is dead. He has a “terrible cut” just like the man who died last year.
Margo wonders if the planchette was real. The driver explains there were many planchettes distributed in the area, the result of a when a gambling ship that sunk there a couple of years prior. They kept washing up on shore, and had little value, and were definitely not antiques. She remains convinced that the planchette she found led to her messages and that those messages were real.
The program was recorded on Wednesday, April 18, 1962. The session start and ending times are not known.
The surviving network aircheck includes network news and sports after the episode. The sports report is clipped during a commercial, and the recording ends there.
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https://archive.org/details/TSP620429
THE CAST
Elaine Rost (Margo Read), Bob Dryden (Jed), John Thomas (Charles Read)
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