Radio brings the sounds of imagination into play for a creepy, audio fright-night performance

Sound-effects artists Tim Greer (left) and Michael Towle peer through a door used to create sounds for the radio broadcast.Christopher BlankSpecial to The Commercial Appeal

If you've ever whacked a honeydew melon with a baseball bat, you might be surprised at how closely it sounds like blunt force trauma to a human skull.

Rebecca Greer and Robert Arnold rehearse a horrific scene for tonight's Halloween broadcast of scary stories on 91.1 WKNO-FM, produced by Chatterbox Audio Theater.

Sound-effects artists Tim Greer (left) and Michael Towle peer through a door used to create sounds for the radio broadcast.Christopher BlankSpecial to The Commercial Appeal

Not that Tim Greer has a real life point of reference for it. Or so he says.

And when Michael Towle jabs the tine of a hammer into a head of lettuce, then twists it, slowly and with meaning, we hesitate to question his experience with such a procedure when he assures us that this is what it sounds like to rip a man's eyeballs out of his head.

You don't ask these guys a lot of questions. You just nod, and trust that they know what they're talking about when they say that their job is to get inside your brain, one way or another.

With a baseball bat.

Or a claw hammer.

On most of their victims, however, they use a microphone.

Tonight, those who tune in to radio station 91.1 WKNO-FM in search of bright classical music may find themselves hypnotized or repelled by the sounds of the macabre. Of monsters and murderers, of creepy crickets and cannibals.

For the second Halloween in a row,

Chatterbox Audio Theater will take over the station's airwaves from 7 to 9 p.m. with a series of terrifying radio plays. Like radio dramas of yesteryear, the performance is completely live, with actors reading from scripts, a musician playing creepy music on a keyboard, an engineer twisting knobs on a soundboard, and two sound effects experts tearing apart celery stalks (you'll be amazed at how much it sounds like breaking bones, they tell us, as we slowly back away).

"Our mission is to do everything the way it was done years ago, with as little editing as possible," said Chatterbox's executive director Robert Arnold. "Part of the fun is finding ways to fill in all the blanks of your imagination."

Chatterbox Audio Theater was founded in 2007 by a group of local actors and radio theater buffs. They started out by uploading their self-penned scripts to their Web site chatterboxtheater.org.

Thrillers and horror stories were an immediate specialty for the group, and Chatterbox even won an Ogle Award from the American Society for Science Fiction Audio for an original horror series, "The Dead Girl."

More than 130 people have since worked with the nonprofit organization to produce live audio shows, from comedies to children's stories.

Kell Christie, artistic director of Theatre Memphis and one of the voices on tonight's show, says that radio theater still has its allure.

"I'm a fan of hearing stories. I love those long complex sentences," she said. "I'm somebody who can't watch a scary movie, but I love getting creeped out by what I hear. It appeals to a part of the brain that doesn't often get touched because we're so visually oriented."

At Wednesday night's rehearsal in one of WKNO's spacious new studios, the small troupe of performers took turns at the microphones. In one story, a woman exacts a gruesome revenge on a cheating husband and his mistress.

In another, a "slithering beast" attacks a group of people.

This is when sound effects artists Greer and Towle get busy. The duo stand behind what appears to be a prop table, except the props are there to make noise.

A metal pipe pressed against a block of dry ice creates the squeal of a terrifying monster. A handful of manicotti squished between Towle's fingers mimics the slimy movement of the creature.

"A lot of it is just playing around things until you find the sound you want," said Towle, who has been with Chatterbox for a year. "You can read online and see how some people do it. But sometimes you just stumble across something that sounds just like what you need."

p>Chatterbox Audio Theater's "Halloween Show 2009"

From 7 to 9 tonight on radio stations 91.1 WKNO-FM Memphis and 90.1 WKNP-FM Jackson. The show will also be streamed live on wknofm.org and posted on chatterboxtheater.org.

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