Doctor Grimshaw's Sanitorium - Old Time Radio Sci-Fi

This week on The Shiver Show, co-hosts Mary Labrie and Greg Flynn invite you to go undercover with a wonderfully unsettling X-Minus One classic, Doctor Grimshaw’s Sanitorium (1955).

Written by Fletcher Pratt in 1934, and adapted for radio by George Lefferts, this tale is in the style of a found manuscript, penned by private detective John Doherty, a man who is now missing. 

As the story unfolds, Doherty suspects that something sinister is going on behind the locked doors of Doctor Grimshaw’s exclusive sanitorium. Patients disappear. Deaths are whispered away. And the treatments? Let’s just say they’re… experimental.

Like any sensible hard-boiled detective, Doherty does the only logical thing—he checks himself into the sanitorium under the pretext of needing treatment for his alcoholism. It’s a decision that proves both brave and catastrophically unwise. Once inside, reality begins to warp, paranoia sets in, and all hell breaks loose.

What makes “Doctor Grimshaw’s Sanitorium” such a standout is its fearless genre-blending. It’s science fiction, horror, and noir crime all rolled into one. Mary and Greg explore what makes this old time radio drama so creepy, and why it still sends shivers.  

So slip into a drafty hospital gown (yes, those ones that open up at the back), and prepare to be part of the mad experiment that is Doctor Grimshaw’s Sanitorium.

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