# Don't turn around! - Arch Oboler 'Lights Out' episode **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 8, 2020, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-turn-around-arch-oboler-lights-out-episode/920075 "2020-09-08T01:05:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2020, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-turn-around-arch-oboler-lights-out-episode/920075/1 "2020-09-08T01:05:34Z")
I’m trying to find a video (audio) of an Arch Oboler play. It may simply be called Don’t Turn Around, but I don’t know. All I could find was this bit of script from a cached site: > Turn off the lights. Turn on the radio. Now sit with your back to the radio, alone in the dark. And listen to a sinister voice tell you that something… something is creeping up behind you… reaching for your neck. But don’t turn around. > > And then, suddenly… ID? Or better yet, a YouTube recording? ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2020, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-turn-around-arch-oboler-lights-out-episode/920075/2 "2020-09-08T15:31:35Z")
Sounds like an adaptation of Fred Brown’s “Don’t Look Behind You” [Gravetapping: "Don't Look Behind You" by Fredric Brown](https://gravetapping.blogspot.com/2015/03/dont-look-behind-you-by-fredric-brown.html), which opens " Just sit back and relax, now. Try to enjoy this; it’s going to be the last story you ever read, or nearly the last. After you finish it you can sit there and stall awhile, you can find excuses to hang around your house, or your room, or your office, wherever you’re reading this; but sooner or later you’re going to have to get up and go out. That’s where I’m waiting for you: outside. Or maybe closer than that. Maybe in this room.” ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2022, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-turn-around-arch-oboler-lights-out-episode/920075/3 "2022-09-01T01:55:08Z")
Bumping after two years. Has this shown up anywhere? I’m still not finding it. FWIW, I only hear it once; at a film fest or a revival theatre. The house lights were turned off, and they played the recording. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2022, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-turn-around-arch-oboler-lights-out-episode/920075/4 "2022-09-01T02:25:21Z")
[Here’s a list of all the Lights Out episodes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Lights_Out_episodes) and here’s a collection of [11 hours worth of episodes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjH8wjvXQWA). Unfortunately, not every episode has a description, and there are no titles that are like “Don’t Turn Around” but maybe something will ring a bell. For those of you who never heard of Arch Obeler, he wrote a script called _Chicken Heart_, which terrified a young Bill Cosby so thoroughly that Cosby later did [a sketch about his reaction to hearing it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE0hHEtkkQA) ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2022, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-turn-around-arch-oboler-lights-out-episode/920075/5 "2022-09-01T02:51:19Z")
And the Fat Albert version of that sketch terrified me ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2022, 11:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-turn-around-arch-oboler-lights-out-episode/920075/6 "2022-09-01T11:35:14Z")
> [@Kent\_Clark](#): > > For those of you who never heard of Arch Obeler, he wrote a script called _Chicken Heart_, which terrified a young Bill Cosby so thoroughly that Cosby later did [a sketch about his reaction to hearing it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE0hHEtkkQA) He also wrote and directed a science fiction film (_The Bubble_, later re-released as _The Incredible Invasion of Planet Earth_. It was a 3D film. about a town that’s surrounded by an impenetrable bubble that I’m sure didn’t influence Stephen King’s _Under the Dome_ at all. ---
**Author:** ![Hermione1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/d07c76/32.png) [@Hermione1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hermione1)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2022, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-turn-around-arch-oboler-lights-out-episode/920075/7 "2022-09-02T01:29:34Z")
I first heard of Arch Oboler and “Lights Out” (though I learned about Chicken Heart through the Fat Albert version) through Stephen King’s nonfiction book Danse McBare…I mean Danse Macabre. He had a whole chapter on radio and how effective it could be as a tool to frighten, and he gave a lengthy description of Oboler’s chilling “A Day At The Dentist.” (That was remade for British radio–a show called Fear on Four–in the late eighties/early nineties, and was more explicit about the victim’s past crime than 1940s radio was allowed to be.)