Suspense Sundays (116) Room 203

Suspense was a radio series from 1942 to 1962.  I have a fondness for "Old Time Radio" as we call it now, and Suspense is my favorite show.  It sets up weird, dark, scary, or intriguing stories with a plot twist in the end, and all in half an hour.  For Suspense Sundays I'll give a short review of an episode.

"Room 203"

Air date: October 4, 1959
Starring Ellen Burstyn

>>Episodes here<<

Chris and Toni Stewart are celebrating their anniversary by returning to the hotel of their honeymoon.  Through a window, Toni sees a man strangling a woman in Room 203.  The manager checks, but no one has been in that room for the past 48 hours and there's no sign of any disturbance.  Toni still maintains she saw something, but she has a secret.  She had been in a hospital some years ago for a mental breakdown.

While the whole mental hospital was a bit of a twist to a story that I feel is pretty common of a someone seeing something that couldn't have happened, to only have that thing come true - this story does make the most of the concept with even more interesting twists.  I did think the title Room 203 was just innocuous enough to indicate that this would be a properly scary or unsettling story, but that's not really the case.  This is a pretty straightforward suspense tale.