Sleep No More 1956 (ep05) Over the Hill, The Man in the Black Hat

We begin with episode 03 and finish with episode 21.
Nelson Olmsted was one of the last great radio horror performers. Born Leroy Nelson Olmsted, Jr. on January 28, 1914, in Minnesota, he was raised in Texas, where he became an announcer for local radio stations. For the album notes on his Sleep No More album, he offered a bit of biography:

“By the time I moved to WBAP in Ft. Worth... the announcer's life seemed endlessly sterile. What to do about it? Dramatic shows cost money and there were no budgets. The cheapest drama for radio I could think of was good literature, read aloud. Especially the work of that great dramatist who never wrote a play - Edgar Allan Poe. WBAP gave me some time with which to experiment. That was way back in 1939 - and it worked. By 1940 the storytelling show was on NBC for a 10-year run.”

Olmsted's skill at narration, and in assuming the voices of each character as he told the tale, led to a variety of programs, such as Story for Today and World's Greatest Stories. In 1956 he starred in one of the last gasps of radio horror, NBC's Sleep No More, a half-hour that usually featured two dramatized short stories from Olmsted, with an introduction from host Ben Grauer.

- From Horror Stars on Radio by Ronald L. Smith
Of the 21 episodes of Sleep No More, here are the 18 (and a half) currently in circulation. Most are in high quality FLAC (lossless) and Mp3, pulled from good sources. Unfortunately, a few only seem to be available in low quality sound.