Boris Karloff appeared regularly through the first season and occasionally through the rest of the run. the real meat of the program were the stories.

Sarcastic Hosts and fun opening patter, of course, won't scare anyone. It wasn't unknown for a well meaning studio maintenance person to take it upon himself to oil the offensive chair, forcing the sound man to verbally imitate the squeak.

Brown quickly jumped into studio chair and got the creaking squeak that was needed, and the chair was adopted for the rest of the shows run. On the opening broadcast a door was tried to replicate the sound, but it didn't come across. Producer Himan Brown remembered a squeaky door in the basement that always gave him chills. One auditory trademark of the show was the squeaking door that opened and closed each episode. The 1945 season saw Lipton Tea coming on as sponsor, and featured cheery Mary Bennet as spokesperson who would chide Johnson and later McGrath for their dark and macabre humor. 'Raymond' would set the standard for later horror program hosts like Ernest Chappell on Quiet, Please and TV's Crypt Keeper on 'Tales from the Crypt.' The Host and the rest of the show would be accompanied by the voice of Lew White's organ, which could raise or darken the mood at will, and always provide a dramatic 'stinger' when Death was near. 'Raymond' delighted in painfully bad puns and poking fun at the audience who he was sure would soon be suffering from knee-knocking fright. McGrath dropped the 'Raymond' moniker, but 'Your Host' maintained his mocking humor. When Johnson left the show in the middle of the 1945 season for Army service he was replaced by Paul McGrath.

The original host of the show was Raymond Edward Johnson. The show takes a departure from other thriller anthologies by opening the episode with campy tongue in cheek humor. Raymond was a big part of the 'fright factor'.

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