The Time Box

Jake Howard, doing research for his newspaper on an inventor named Dryden Harper who lived in the late 19th century, discovers a wooden box in an excavation being dug on a site which once was the location of Harper’s laboratory. The box explodes in his hands, and Howard finds himself in 1880 talking to Harper’s daughter, Priscilla. She takes him to her father, who shows the reporter several of his inventions and also asks for one favor. Because he is from the future, Howard is asked whether Priscilla’s current boyfriend is to be apprehended for the murders of ten young women. Dr. Harper thinks he will be.

CBS Radio Mystery Theater is a radio drama series created by Himan Brown that was broadcast on CBS Radio Network affiliates from 1974 to 1982, and later in the early 2000s was repeated by the NPR satellite feed. In New York City it was not aired by the then all-news WCBS but by its originating station, WOR, which produced and announced it as simply Radio Mystery Theater.

Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 4.0. Updated Jul 16, 2026.