Title: The Witch Drums of Salem
Air date: September 11, 1938
Plot summary: Salem, 1692. One Dame Anna West is being burned at the stake for witchcraft. Just before the fire is lit, her husband Captain Daniel West yells in protest that his wife is innocent. In response Rev. Wood and all the other goons in Salem decide to burn him too. Just before he's dragged to the fire, however, Captain West beats the "witch drums" he brought back from Africa (he's a slaver), and calls down a curse on the Wood family for all time.
Cut forward not quite 250 years. Lamont Cranston and his "loyal companion" Margo Lane are on their way to visit her Aunt Henrietta in Maine when they see a commotion going on in a Massachusetts town. A boy, David Wood, had been found dead in a well on the West property. David's brother Tommy hysterically accuses Anna West, a young girl who lately has been The Shut-In in the West mansion, of being a witch, and of murdering Tommy. (Anna has been beating the witch drums in the cellar.) Anna's uncle and guardian Jonathan West angrily confronts the Woods, insists that the boy's death was an accident, and orders them to get off the property.
Lamont and Margo watch all this go down, and they smell a rat. Lamont's suspicions are confirmed when, despite the incompetent local authorities ruling accidental death, Lamont observes that David Wood was strangled. It's a case for The Shadow, who enters the West house and discovers that Jonathan West, along with his African servant Ma Wombi, are holding poor Anna West captive in the house—and that they killed David Wood.
Tropes:
- Artistic License – History: One of many depictions of Salem that have witches being burned. All the Salem "witches" were hanged.
- As You Know: There's a lot of this, like hysterical young Tommy still noting Jonathan's arrival by saying "Here comes her uncle, Jonathan West," or Jonathan spelling out the exact blood relationship in the conversation by saying "My ward, Anna West, my brother's child."
- Burn the Witch!: The unfortunate Dame Anna West was burned in Salem in 1692, and her husband was burned with her when he stepped up to her defense.
- Busman's Holiday: When Lamont's flipping through the radio, Margo specifically reminds him that they're having a weekend getaway and he needs to be avoiding all news that might make him want to get in action as The Shadow. So naturally they come across a suspicious death in the next town they visit. Margo actually wants The Shadow to investigate so she releases Lamont from his promise.
- Dissonant Serenity: The 1938 version of Rev. Wood is weirdly calm and polite after his son is discovered dead in a well, telling Tommy not to make such a fuss.
- Distant Prologue: A prologue in 1692 and the Salem witch trials, before the story jumps forward to Lamont and Margo in 1938.
- For Doom the Bell Tolls: A church bell tolls in a creepy way as Dame Anna West is sentenced to death in 1692.
- He Knows Too Much: The reason young David Wood was killed. He made his way into the West mansion and found out that Jonathan West was holding Anna prisoner and filling her with drugs.
- Perception Filter: One of the occasional examples of someone being able to pierce The Shadow's "power to cloud men's minds." Ma Wombi's voodoo powers alert him to the presence of "another white man" in the West mansion, and he gets out of the room.
- Third-Person Person: Ma Wombi the servant refers to himself in third person throughout.
- Writers Cannot Do Math: Dame Anna West is said to be the great-grandmother of 1938 Anna West. That's not nearly enough generations to cover 250 years.
