Lights Out was created in Chicago by Wyllis Cooper in 1934, and the first series of shows ran 15 minutes on a local station. In 1935 the show was picked up by NBC and was reformatted to the standard half-hour length. Cooper stayed on the program for a while as writer, but when another writer on the show, Arch Oboler, was promoted to director and host the series took off.
Each show began with an ominously tolling bell, over which Oboler read the cryptic tagline: "It...is...later...than...you...think." This was followed by a dour "warning" to listeners to turn off their radios if they felt their constitutions were too delicate to handle the frightening tale that was about to unfold. Naturally, the intended—and successful—effect of this was more tantalizing than off-putting.
Oboler's horror tales made effective use of sound effects and atmosphere. Listeners were treated to the ghastly sounds of skulls being crushed and people being eaten. One episode, 1937's "Chicken Heart", is said to have frightened listeners almost as badly as Orson Welles' Mercury Theater presentation of The War of the Worlds did the following year. A winking sense of self-referential humor sometimes livened up the proceedings; in "The Coffin in Studio B", a group of actors rehearsing an episode of Lights Out meet a curious fate. While many of the episodes may seem dated today, many more retain their ability to generate chills.
An example of how influential Oboler's stories were is evidenced by how many were remade in different media years later. 1942's "What the Devil" is about a man driving along a highway, menaced by a truck whose driver he cannot see; this may have later inspired Steven Spielberg and writer Richard Matheson when they made the TV movie Duel. The television episode "The Martian Eyes" starred Burgess Meredith as a man whose glasses enable him to see Martian invaders who have disguised themselves as normal people; this idea was reworked by John Carpenter in 1988 in his satirical They Live.
Oboler went on to Hollywood to write and produce a number of films, including the notorious 3-D schlock-fest Bwana Devil. Prized by collectors today, extant episodes of Lights Out are nonetheless sparse; many of the originals are lost.