With Halloween right around the corner, we delve into the spooky side of sleuthing with mysteries involving voodoo, curses, and other hexes. Nick Carter’s new client believes her physician practices black magic instead of medicine in “The Drums of Death, or Nick Carter and the White Witch Doctor” (originally aired on Mutual on March 25, 1944), and real-life master magician Blackstone explains how he faced down the living dead in “The Riddle of the Seven Zombies” (originally aired on Mutual on July 17, 1949). Michael Shayne falls into a case of supernatural revenge and a man who supposedly cannot be killed in the syndicated mystery “The Man Who Lived Forever,” and Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall battle a voodoo murderess who kills with poisoned darts in a syndicated episode of Bold Venture. Finally, Dick Powell heads to Haiti to investigate an eerie death threat in “Little Chiva” from Richard Diamond, Private Detective (originally aired on ABC on March 23, 1951).

The skies are unfriendly this week as three old time radio heroes face danger in the air. First, Boston Blackie is due in with evidence to send a notorious gangster to the chair…but his airplane disappears! Richard Kollmar stars as the gentleman thief turned gumshoe in this syndicated mystery. Then, Orson Welles recreates his Third Man role in “The Hard Way” from The Lives of Harry Lime, a syndicated story that finds Lime catching a flight to trouble in the charter airline business. Finally, Bob Bailey is Johnny Dollar in a five-part mystery that begins when a plane goes down. It’s “The Flight Six Matter” (originally aired on CBS between January 30 and February 3, 1956).

The Maltese Falcon premiered in movie theaters eight eighty-four years ago this month, and we're celebrating the anniversary of one of Hollywood's best mystery pictures with a showcase for its stars - Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, and Sydney Greenstreet. We'll hear each of them headline a radio mystery, and all four of them together as they recreate their roles in a radio adaptation of the film. Lorre stars in a locked room mystery from the pen of John Dickson Carr - "The Moment of Darkness" from Suspense (originally aired on CBS on April 20, 1943). Ms. Astor may be a murderess in "The Silent Hands" from Inner Sanctum Mysteries (originally aired on CBS on May 13, 1944). Greenstreet is Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe in "The Case of the Impolite Corpse" (originally aired on NBC on December 8, 1950). And Bogart co-stars with Lauren Bacall in an episode of their syndicated mystery drama Bold Venture (known as "Forged American Pasports"). Finally, all four stars reunite to present The Maltese Falcon on The Lady Esther Screen Guild Theatre (originally aired on CBS on September 20, 1943).