Sound effects are to our ears what pulling a rabbit out of a hat is to our eyes. It's the art of deception. It's creating images in the minds of radio listeners, and from the 1930's to the late 1950's, often referred to as The Golden Age of Radio, there were millions of listeners tuned in to their radios all day, every day, waiting to be deceived.
 
The creative minds and talents of those men and women who worked in the field of Sound Effects Production let listeners think they were hearing a giant worm hungrily devouring people in their sleep when actually what they were hearing was the movement of a sound effects technician's hands in a bowl of wet spaghetti.

Or how about the gnawing of thousands of starving rats as they chased Vincent Price to the top of a lighthouse in the classic Escape tale Skeleton Key? How on earth did they get all those rats to gnaw on cue? Well, in fact they didn't. The "gnawing" was created by several sound effects people chewing on ears of fresh corn.

Of course when Superman smashed through a wooden door to rescue Lois Lane, the sound was real, wasn't it? No. A wooden mallet, set up next to a microphone, was simply being used to smash a few of those old wooden berry boxes. By the way, more than a few sound effects people had to visit their dentist to have slivers removed from their gums and lips after creating the sound effect of a ferocious animal gnawing on a wooden structure. You see, the sound effects people were actually gnawing on those wooden berry boxes. 
 
How about using wind chimes for the sound of sunlight, or a rubber glove being twisted and stretched for the sound of a human body being turned inside out by aliens investigating the human species on the sci-fi series XMinus One?
 

And then there was the horrific ending of a Suspense episode entitled The Diary of Sophronia Winters, when the insane Sophronia waits at the top of a staircase. As her husband turns his back to her, she plunges an ice pick deep into the base of his skull. The sound chilled millions of listeners to the bone, but in reality the sound was actually that of an ice pick being driven into a head of cabbage.
 

The sounds created were only limited by the creative minds of the people in the Sound Effects Production department. But despite all the neat sound effects that could be created, what made them convincing was the imagination of the listeners. How frightening or believable the created scenes were depended on the listeners involvement with the words and sounds that came from their radio speakers.

Involvement is what made radio magic, the involvement of sound and imagination. Little wonder radio was called the "Theatre of the Mind."
 

Remember, when you hear a horrible radio villain cutting off the fingers of his helpless victim, a sound effects technician is cutting up a nice fresh carrot. Salad anyone?
 

You can exercise your imagination by listening to lots of sound effects on Portsmouth Community Radio Audio Theatre every Tuesday evening from 6 to 8 pm with host John Lovering.