
"Hitchhiking Corpse - Inner Sanctum" is a classic episode of Old Time Radio Stories, featuring original radio performances and timeless storytelling.
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Tammy
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Narrator/Host
Good evening, friends of the creaking Door. This is your host inviting you into the inner sanctum. Come in. Come on in. Oh, come on. We love company. Simply can't do enough to them. We've got lots of games custom designed for our guests. They have Simply Slave. The favorite's called a tiscuit. A casket. But the game we play best is called Revival. Oh, it's wonderful. You pass out and we try to revive you. If we don't, you don't. And now for our eerie spell, the hitchhiking corpse. Climb up on the driver, Steve. Sit close to the driver. Sean o', Hara, a bewitched man with deep set eyes. Hear what he has to tell about the beautiful corpse of Madoc County. The girl who lost her head over him.
Sean O'Hara
Eileen. The last time I saw her, she was standing where she always waits for me. The rain on a little white bridge where the road takes a bend around Moon Hollow. I could hear her call for me to stop. But I wasn't going to stop for her. Not anymore. My mind was made up to that. And then a lightning flash burned over her like a million lighted candles. And she was standing there where she always waited for me. Without her head. Eileen had lost her head. Am I right? In my mind now I'm wondering. These things I know. These things that I saw. Was it a dream? A man's imagination gets tipsy when he drives a great silver van 400 miles. In the loneliness of the night, Eileen the first time I saw her, she was standing where she stood the last time. On a little white bridge near Moon Hollow. Climb in, miss. Ah, yeah. Sit deep in your seat with your head low. It's a black mark in the book for me. If the company inspectors see you riding in the cab, I'll be docked.
Eileen
They won't see me. Only you can see me, son.
Sean O'Hara
Only I can. Why you're calling me by name?
Eileen
No, I'm making up a name for you.
Sean O'Hara
But it is my name. Sean. Sean o'.
Morgan
Hara.
Sean O'Hara
It's an uncanny bit of making up you just did, miss.
Eileen
Try, Sean. If you try, you too can do an uncanny bit of making up.
Sean O'Hara
With your hair like it is and your face. Just one name suits. Only one name.
Eileen
And my name.
Sean O'Hara
Eileen.
Eileen's Grandmother
I am Eileen.
Sean O'Hara
And just where are you riding to?
Eileen
To Madock County. But someday, not tonight.
Sean O'Hara
Maiduck county is a good 80 mile ride from Moon Hollow. Is it someday, I heard you say.
Eileen
Yes. Someday I'll be riding to Madoc county. And it will be you who will take me there.
Sean O'Hara
There's little to that. I always pass through Madoc. It's on my route.
Eileen
My people came from up there. It's big house. We once had. A great big house without windows.
Sean O'Hara
Without windows, you say?
Eileen
There is a great hall and a great long table with my people sitting round it. The living and the dead.
Sean O'Hara
The living and a house without windows. And now it's the living and the dead. You're a pretty one. But you're as batty as a loon.
Eileen
Am I really a pretty one to you, Sean?
Sean O'Hara
Sure. Pretty hair. Eyes to light up a man's dream. Dainty little hands. The two of them fit into one of mine. The face.
Eileen
A face, Sean.
Sean O'Hara
No. The face I cannot praise.
Eileen
Why not?
Sean O'Hara
With all the war paint on it. If. If I didn't bite my tongue, I might say that what I see smeared over your cheeks. His. His blood.
Eileen
Don't bite your tongue, Sean.
Sean O'Hara
You're getting out. Trust Sha har to pick up a gibbering farm girl who smears her face with chicken blood. Good night to you.
Eileen
Good night, Sean. I'll be waiting again tomorrow night at Moon Hollow. I'll be watching for you.
Sean O'Hara
I watched her go sailing off in the mists as high as my eyes could go. I could see her riding into the sky like. Like a night witch. And then blowing into the smoke of the moon. There had to know, Eileen. I dreamed her up in my fat head. A man's imagination gets tipsy when he drives a great silver Band in the loneliness of the. Away. Up I pulled into the yard behind old Morgan's diner to sleep the night from 2 to 6. Curled up on my cab like I always did. I'm a hearty man and a steady sleeper, not given to dreaming. But this night, bad luck to me. I dreamed. She was leaning over me. Eileen with the moon in her eyes. And now the blood was wet on her cheeks and running down in big red beads to splash my shirt.
Eileen
The old mill house in Medoc where the water falls in Medoc.
Sean O'Hara
The old mill house in Medoc where the water falls.
Eileen
The old mill house in Medoc where the water followed me. You must see that the dead.
Sean O'Hara
See that the dead. Eileen. Eileen.
Truck Driver/Companion
Eileen.
Sean O'Hara
If there was no Eileen, I'd been dreaming. Dreaming. But the radio was playing loud enough to wake the dead. The dreaming man doesn't trust on the radio. Eileen.
Morgan
You always wake up like a war in line.
Truck Driver/Companion
What?
Morgan
What? It's me, Morgan. I guess you've had all the music you need to wake you up.
Sean O'Hara
It was you who turned my radio on.
Morgan
Me, it was. Were you thinking the radio turned itself on?
Sean O'Hara
I. I had a dream about a girl.
Morgan
A nightmare is more like what you had. The looks of here you were thrashing about in that seat and beating yourself in the face with your fist.
Sean O'Hara
Beating myself? Why is that?
Morgan
With a blood all over your shirt.
Eileen's Grandmother
Blood?
Morgan
Stop looking bewitched, o', Hara, and look in your truck mirror to your nose. You gave yourself a nosebleed in your sleep. And that, my boy, was no dream.
Sean O'Hara
I was an hour late for unloading in the Cloverville depot.
Truck Driver/Companion
Oh, hang on.
Morgan
Yeah, right.
Truck Driver/Companion
Come over to the van a minute. Where the Lotus can't get an air full.
Sean O'Hara
You're acting funny.
Truck Driver/Companion
We got everything off the inventory calls for, but there are three other items. I threw a canvas cover over them before the boys got a look at them. Did you look into your van?
Sean O'Hara
What? What's under the canvas cover?
Truck Driver/Companion
Red coffins, o'. Hara. Three old pinewood coffins. Want to tell me something?
Sean O'Hara
What? To tell you. Sure. I almost forgot about those coffins. It's a side job. Some yokel undertaker down by Moon Hollow. I'm to drop them off somewhere, save them, track and check charges that way and make myself twenty dollar side money.
Truck Driver/Companion
Quit lying to me, o', Hara, and to yourself.
Sean O'Hara
Lying, you say? But it's a factory. Positively a fact. And I'm giving you half of the $20 for covering me. Wasn't one to pass up $20 for trucking three empty coffins.
Truck Driver/Companion
The coffins aren't empty, O'. Hara. And you never took a job from any local undertaker either.
Sean O'Hara
Yeah, you seem to know a lot about something.
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Truck Driver/Companion
I was born and raised here.
Sean O'Hara
What is there to know?
Truck Driver/Companion
For one thing, the Red Headed Witch of Moon Hollow. Maybe you might be trucking the dead for her. Eileen or any name you give her. She was Katie to a trucker named Conway who had your run once. To hear Conway tell it, Katie or Eileen was always trying to get him to take her dead out of Moon Hollow to somewhere else.
Sean O'Hara
Tomato carriage to the old mill house or somewhere.
Truck Driver/Companion
Anyhow, that's how the story usually goes. But what she's really out to do is drive you crazy.
Sean O'Hara
How do you know there is such a girl?
Truck Driver/Companion
Those pine boxes in there. I saw them on Conway's truck once. Like they're on yours now. Conway dumped them right back in Moon Hollow. Take my advice. From now on, pass the redhead up, jam your accelerator to the floorboard and go past her. At 80
Sean O'Hara
I don't know what I'll do. What I did, bad luck to me on the trip back was look for the waterfalls and the old mill house. When I came to the Maidak county line, was there an old mill house where the waterfalls, I was wondering. Or was I a man looking hard to lose his mind? I brought one of the caskets to the ground. It wasn't empty, but there wasn't much weight to it either. I opened. Held the dead all right, but not the face or the body of the dead. It was only the skeleton. A skeleton of someone dead more years than the mind can imagine. There was a waterfall in the deep woods. The music of water and Eileen's voice splashing in it. There was an old mill house down below the rock. A stone house without windows, like Eileen at sea. I pulled an old rusted bolt and opened the door to one great room and a table. It went from wall to wall. It was old. The flying dust could blind a man so he'd only see what his tipsy imagination would want him to see. I saw Eileen. Eileen standing before me with her arms out. Like a thin shadow. My eyes could see. See through to the wall.
Eileen
Go bring the caskets shun. Go bring the dead. Whom?
Narrator/Host
Well, here's something terribly new in thumbing a ride. A witch hiker. And a neat switch too, on the old boy meets girl formula. This one's boy meets ghoul Eileen. Now there's a funny lass dead set on getting ahead. And if she keeps up the pace, she'll have o' Hara Shaun of his sanity any mile. Now let's get back beside our bewitched trucker.
Sean O'Hara
A man's imagination gets tipsy when he drives a great silver van in the loneliness of the night. But there was an old mill house where the water falls. As Eileena said, there's. It was there I left three caskets of the old dead passing Moon Hollow. On the way back, I stopped in at Morgan's Diner for some warm and coffee. It was just old Morgan putting his profits into the screaming jukebox.
Morgan
O'. Hara.
Sean O'Hara
It's you, Nobody else.
Morgan
I've been waiting all night for you to come.
Sean O'Hara
I stopped for a time in May.
Truck Driver/Companion
Duck
Sean O'Hara
agitated the way you look if I slipped out on you for a meal. No, I don't understand the looks of you.
Morgan
The shoebox. It's for you, you see. Your name's written on it. Charlo. Her.
Sean O'Hara
And left by whom?
Morgan
The devil's own daughter, Oharra. Her face was enough to send a
Sean O'Hara
man hiding in his car. But a face all sniff with blood, was it?
Morgan
You have seen her too?
Sean O'Hara
We are old acquaintances by now. When I left Morgan's prying eyes, I opened the shoe box. It held a small white envelope. An old rusted tin can. I opened the envelope. Two tickets there were to a costume party in the Moon Hollow firehouse for the next night. And the tin can full of money. A showering of Indian pennies and buffalo nickels. Coins with a grit and tarnish of years on it. Like some miser had saved them in a secret nook of the kitchen that was too much for a tired working man to puzzle out. My poor head would have none of it. I had a lot oh to hold back that night. It was time enough for puzzles. Another night she'd be standing on the little white bridge where the road takes a bend. And then I would put my questions to her. She was standing there the next night, watching for me, calling for me to stop.
Eileen
John, stop. Sh.
Sean O'Hara
Her hair was wild as before and her face the same. Her dress was changed. It was a costume now. She was wearing all silk and gaiety, like she was dressed up for a party.
Truck Driver/Companion
No.
Sean O'Hara
Yes. Eileen.
Eileen
You weren't going to stop for a fact, Noel.
Sean O'Hara
You'll not be riding in my cab now. Not be trucking your dead ancestors anymore. Not for a barrel of nickels and pennies.
Morgan
Here.
Sean O'Hara
Take your money back.
Eileen
No. It was grandmother's savings. She wants you to have it.
Sean O'Hara
Oh, so there's a grandmother too, is there?
Eileen
Yes.
Sean O'Hara
And when will she be riding along to the old mill house?
Eileen
Tonight, Jean. She will ride with you tonight. And after that, I'll be riding with you to Madoc too.
Sean O'Hara
And that settles the count of your people.
Eileen
No. It still leaves you, Sian.
Sean O'Hara
Me? Am I hearing you say me?
Eileen
Yes. You too will sit at the long table in the great hall of the dead. You will sit beside me.
Sean O'Hara
Alive, is it to be? Or dead?
Eileen
Dead, Sean, like us.
Sean O'Hara
And what will snuff me out? A hearty man like me, without a sickness.
Eileen
You will just die. Your heart will just stop.
Sean O'Hara
My heart will stop.
Eileen
You don't want to sit beside me.
Sean O'Hara
It's not by way of wooing a lady.
Eileen
Charles.
Sean O'Hara
Yes?
Eileen
I mean, do you like my costume?
Sean O'Hara
I do. And what's it for?
Eileen
To dance at the firehouse. I thought you would take me.
Sean O'Hara
I think not.
Eileen
Then I will go alone. Good night, Charles.
Sean O'Hara
Compliments of the evening to you, miss. But instead of sleeping in old Morgan's yard, there I was just before the midnight hour. In the costume of a trucker with a tottering mind. And looking for Eileen in the firehouse. I found her in her silken gaiety with a gentleman. Japanese lanterns were dimmest. Wearing a mask like the others were. But not dancing like the others. Eileen.
Eileen
Shan.
Sean O'Hara
You're not surprised I came.
Eileen
I knew you'd come.
Sean O'Hara
You're not dancing.
Eileen
The music is stopped.
Sean O'Hara
It's unmasking time. Midnight's not a minute away. The callers announce you.
Narrator/Host
Everybody listen.
Tammy
Midnight.
Morgan
Everybody unmasked.
Sean O'Hara
You're not unmasking. I leave you.
Eileen's Grandmother
Unmask me. Sh.
Sean O'Hara
All right. I'll speak again. Say my name again.
Eileen's Grandmother
Shando. Hana.
Sean O'Hara
Your voice. Start. The voice of Mylene.
Eileen's Grandmother
I am not Eileen. Put your hand to my mask, son.
Sean O'Hara
You're an old lady.
Eileen's Grandmother
I am old. And the life you see is the last I have to show. Look at me. For the last time. Ohara. I am Eileen's grandmother.
Sean O'Hara
But I learned she was here. Hand was in mine. Dressed in a costume with a silken gaiety you're now wearing.
Eileen's Grandmother
Eileen slips away to leave me with you. You have business with me now, Charlotte.
Sean O'Hara
Business, you say?
Eileen's Grandmother
Take me to Madoc County. The old mill house. Where the water falls. I'll be waiting to ride with you. Harra don't belong.
Sean O'Hara
I drove the lonely night to the Maida county line with my freight of storage eggs and can coats and the dead in a pine box. The old grandmother and her silks was in her casket. I didn't bother to ask whose job it was. I put the CO questions to Eileen the next time she waited for me. Where the road takes a bend around Moon Hollow. And she was there like I know she'd be, pointing her thumb to hit your eyes.
Eileen
Don't stop, bully.
Sean O'Hara
But I didn't stop this last time. I did what the checker at Lacy said Conway failed to do and what I must do. I passed her up. I pushed the gas accelerator to the floor and passed her by and aiming. Where the highway bends into Moon Hollow. But I didn't leave Eileen behind her. She was on the seat beside me.
Eileen
You didn't want to stop, Sean.
Sean O'Hara
She was beside me.
Eileen
Without her head, I'm dead, Sean. Dead. Now drive me to Mado County.
Sean O'Hara
The imagination gets tipsy. The sheriff of Mehta county is one to know it. And the doctor beside him looking at me with eyes of pity, is one to know it too. I hear them talking to me, but the words go sailing into the smoke of the moon. I listen, but I do not understand.
Morgan
You ran over her on the bridge down in Moon Hollow last night. A 20 ton truck. Ohara. Her head was severed. I'll tell you all you need to know about Eileen Grant. Her grandmother and her people, they were run out of the old mill out of Madoc county about 30 years ago. Native superstition did that. The family was thought to have. Well, call it evil powers. Where'd she take Eileen? To Ohana. Eileen? What did she do with the body?
Sean O'Hara
I'll take you to her.
Eileen's Grandmother
Come.
Sean O'Hara
I'll take you to her. I took them, the sheriff and the doctor, to the old mill house where the water falls. Here, Sheriff, Is Eileen and her people sitting around the table in the Great hall of the Dead
Morgan
to do this? To set them around the table like that? You. You couldn't be in your right mind, man.
Sean O'Hara
No, I couldn't be. And I'm the one to admit that I'm not in my right mind to sit here beside Eileen.
Eileen
Now
Sean O'Hara
what can there ever be between a man and a girl sitting and rotting in an old mill with her ancestors looking on.
Morgan
O'. Hara. O'. Hara. Say, Doc, take a look at him.
Sean O'Hara
O' Hara's dead.
Morgan
Dead.
Sean O'Hara
To.
Morgan
To sit down and.
Sean O'Hara
And die. Just like that.
Morgan
Just like that.
Sean O'Hara
Sheriff Ohara's heart just stopped.
Morgan
As if he willed it to stop.
Narrator/Host
Now that o' Hara's given up the ghost. There's a job open, somebody. As a special inducement to insanity, a pretty girl goes along with every trap. Oh, sorry, friend. I can't tell you which of the two jobs is the more harrowing moral. Oh, sure. I've got one carved right here on my vertebrae. This is for any motorist who runs across Eileen. Give her the go by Bob, or she'll get you is dead. Mileage.
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Podcast: Old Time Radio Stories | Old Time Radio
Host: Old Time Retro Radio
Date: July 29, 2026
Episode: Inner Sanctum – “Hitchhiking Corpse”
This classic episode from the legendary Inner Sanctum series weaves a chilling tale of a truck driver haunted by a mysterious hitchhiker. It beautifully blends old-world superstition, gothic horror, and surreal psychological suspense, all anchored by the eerie, wisecracking narrator. The story follows Sean O'Hara, a lonely trucker who picks up a strange woman named Eileen at Moon Hollow, only to find himself spiraling into a world of ghosts, cursed family secrets, and the line between the living and the dead. The mood is atmospheric, drawing listeners into both folklore and madness.
[01:07] Host/Narrator:
[02:11]—[05:47] Sean O’Hara & Eileen
Notable quote:
[05:57]—[08:19]
[08:42]—[09:46]
[10:09]—[11:18]
[11:18]—[13:04]
[14:26]—[19:21]
Memorable exchange:
[20:08]—[22:34]
[23:01]—[24:07]
Notable ending:
[24:20] Narrator/Host:
The language throughout is poetic, colloquial, and eerie—heavy with Celtic undertones and dark folklore, punctuated by the trademark grim humor of the Inner Sanctum host. The episode teases the audience with the blurred edges between the natural and the supernatural, building relentlessly to its tragic, fateful end.
“Hitchhiking Corpse” is a quintessential morsel of vintage radio horror, blending gothic Americana and supernatural suspense. Driven by a haunted, unreliable narrator, the listener rides shotgun through a psychological ghost story where every shadow might hide the dead—and every warning comes too late. It’s a must-listen for those who savor the macabre elegance and audio chills of classic radio drama.