The Furnished Room
1940s Radio Production
Produced and Directed by William Spear
Written by Lucille Fletcher

Source: archive.org

https://archive.org/details/SUSPENSE2

"Only... won't it make you blue to see the old place again?

Blue? Why should it?

Well... memories... you know?

That's just what I want to find; memories...  everything just as it was."

An interesting audio production first broadcast sometime in the mid 1940s.  Mrs Hawkins, an elderly landlady is surprised to receive a visit from her previous tenant, Mr Jennings, who had decided to vacate the upper floor of the house after his first wife Mable passed away unexpectedly in the 'furnished room' upstairs.  Mr Jennings announces that he is, "setting up housekeeping again" to which Mrs Hawkins takes to mean that he has taken a second wife and wishes to re-rent the furnished room upstairs.  As the tale unfolds it becomes clear that Mr Jennings has lost his mind and that there is no new Mrs Jennings, at least in the flesh and Mr Jennings is attempting to recreate the room exactly as it once was and in doing so, revisiting the past, or bringing the past into the future and freezing time.

When concerning place there is always an element of the future past, in the sense that a room is able to serve as a time capsule, existing on multiple plains, and in 'The Furnished Room' the aspect of time past and memory is embodied in the madness of Mr Jennings and projection of abject horror created by the thought of what upstairs is essentially an empty room.  To follow Zizek on his theory of the levels of the home being related to the levels of human consciousness, the upstairs being likened to the psychoanalysts superego, the thought for Mrs Hawkins as the live in landlady, the natural matriarchal superego of her home of another female occupying the upstairs bedroom and denying any access to either the living quarters or herself creates a fear of banishment and a sense of the unjust.  The thought of the stranger being, "upstairs all day" unnerves Mrs Hawkins and prompts Mrs Hawkins to ask Mr Jennings to leave, informing him that she prefers, "neighbourly folk" to occupy the furnished room.  

The exploration of the furnished room is a recurring theme in the radio horror genre with notions of occupancy, surveillance and 'not staying' being enforced.