Greetings my friends. This is Peter Lee, welcoming you to The Nightwatch. Follow me now, to where terror begins, and life ends. Come with me… on The Nightwatch!
Peter Lee wrote, introduced and narrated this series of horror shorts that were syndicated as five minute fillers through the Mutual Broadcasting System in the late 1970s. His British accent gave dramatic flair to these gruesome snapshots of fear! (Not to be confused with the live ride-along 1954 police crime series Night Watch)
Originally designed to be a five day a week show aired just before the 11:00 pm Nightly News, it lasted only a few weeks due to its grisly, blood-soaked nature.
For a night filled with these rare killer tales, pay a visit to Paul McGehee’s Time Machine!
In 1975, ten of Peter Lee’s favorite original flash fiction segments were collected and released on an LP titled The Nightwatch: 10 Tales Of Horror , (produced by ex-BBC sound engineer Tom Courtenay-Clack.) The reverse album sleeve details some of its production history:
Hello, my friends and welcome to the first Nightwatch album. On it you’ll find ten of my favorite tales from my Mutual Broadcasting System Inc. series that is running now on more than 300 radio stations throughout the nation. I thought you might like to know that all of the stories in the radio series, and of course, this special collection, are entirely original. They come to you via the sweat of many brows including particularly Tom Courtenay-Clack’s and Bill Smith’s, the production and engineering talents who conjure their brilliant music and sound effects behind my voice and words. Many, many hours of thought and labour were poured by them lovingly into each tale, and the series, or more particularly this album, could never have come into being without their genius. The Mutual Broadcasting System has worked wonders too in making “The Nightwatch” the most widely heard and most popular radio series of its kind in America. More than 2 million people hear “The Nightwatch” daily– a prodigious achievement for which they have my heartfelt thanks. I hope you enjoy my first album often. I wish you frightening, nay terrifying listening, my friends.
-F. Peter Lee
