The Screaming Woman

Originally Aired: March 1, 1955 Suspense #587, "The Screaming Woman," presents a chilling tale of childhood terror that no adult will believe. Young Margaret Leary is cutting through Mr. Kelly's vacant lot on Thanksgiving Day when she hears something horrifying: a woman's desperate screams coming from beneath tons of freshly dumped dirt and debris. The voice seems to be coming from the area where a large concrete pipe, the neighborhood children's makeshift fort, has been completely buried. Frantic and terrified, Margaret races home to get help, but her pleas fall on deaf ears. Her mother dismisses her story while cooking Thanksgiving dinner, and her father treats it as nothing more than childish imagination run wild. Despite Margaret's increasingly desperate attempts to convince her parents, they refuse to take her seriously. Her father reluctantly accompanies her to the lot after dinner, but when the screaming woman falls silent in his presence, he becomes convinced his daughter has a fever and locks her in her room for the rest of the day. Now Margaret faces an impossible dilemma: a woman is buried alive and dying beneath the ground, and she is the only one who can hear the screams.