What happens
Waterhouse, a traveller who has spent time in Africa, visits his friend Pollock in London, where Pollock is wasted, frightened and convinced he is haunted by a grinning face. Pollock tells how, during an expedition in West Africa, he took a carved wooden idol from a village and later struck a local man who tried to recover it. Waterhouse warns him that the local sacred objects carry serious consequences, and the story follows the curse that Pollock believes has followed him home. This is the Escape episode 'Pollock and the Porroh Man' by H.G. Wells, broadcast on CBS on October 29, 1947, with Barton Yarborough as Pollock and Louis Van Rotten as Waterhouse.
West Africa, a village on a lagoon and a river, a steamer bound for Freetown, and later London
Characters: Pollock, Waterhouse, Barreia, the Porroh man
Listen for: Pollock's account of the idol, the struggle at the river, and the drawn-out haunting that leads him to believe he is cursed
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.