Join us on Fri­day at a lit­tle after 12 noon or 4pm Pacif­ic time for anoth­er episode in the land­mark radio dra­ma series The Black Mass, cre­at­ed by the late Erik Bauers­feld and his col­leagues at the Paci­fi­ca radio sta­tion KPFA in Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia, over fifty years ago. In 30 chill­ing tales of mys­tery, imag­i­na­tion and the human mind, The Black Mass brings you some of literature’s most haunt­ing sto­ries, by mas­ters of the craft — many of whom are best-known in oth­er fields.

Note that the episode will not start until the track play­ing at the top of the hour has fin­ished, so the actu­al start time of the episode will be a few min­utes after the hour.

Today: 9 — “Esmé” by H H Munro (Saki)

Hec­tor Hugh Munro (18 Decem­ber 1870 – 14 Novem­ber 1916), bet­ter known by the pen name “Saki” and also fre­quent­ly as H. H. Munro, was a British writer whose wit­ty, mis­chie­vous and some­times macabre sto­ries sat­i­rize Edwar­dian soci­ety and cul­ture. He is con­sid­ered by Eng­lish teach­ers and schol­ars as a mas­ter of the short sto­ry, and often com­pared to O. Hen­ry and Dorothy Park­er. Influ­enced by Oscar Wilde, Lewis Car­roll and Rud­yard Kipling, he him­self influ­enced A. A. Milne, Noël Cow­ard and P. G. Wodehouse.

The Black Mass art­work was cre­at­ed by Ter­ry Lightfoot.