The Wraith is often derided by pulp aficionados as the Shadow's bastard son. The critique is not without some basis. The pair's careers are very similar and strongly connected.

In 1939 Pacific Oil and Gas (oddly enough located on the Atlantic coast) was taking a beating in the home heating market from Blue Coal. Pacific O&G attributed Blue Coal's success to their hit radio program, The Shadow. The Shadow had already spawned many imitators like The Whistler and The Inner Sanctum's Raymond. Pacific decided to jump on the bandwagon and sponsor its own mystery program The Wraith.

Like the Shadow, the Wraith originally began as a narrator and did not take a direct role in the stories. The shows were adaptations of stories already published in Jones & Rhodes' All-Suspense magazine. With the Shadow's success in pulps as well, Jones & Rhodes decided to follow the lead and make the Wraith a character starring in his own adventures. The job of filling out the Wraith's character fell to Benjamin Turner.

Never one to hesitate in building on the work of others, Turner leapt to the task. The key to the Wraith's character and the thing that made him different from the Shadow, came when Turner decided to actually look up the word wraith in the dictionary. He discovered that a wraith was not just a ghost or specter but "an apparition of a living person in their exact likeness seen usually just before their death."

The Wraith then, rather than clouding men's minds to become invisible, gained the power to change his appearance. He would confront villains with their crimes cloaked in the villain's own appearance often frightening them into confession and occasionally suicide. The power to change his appearance also made it easy for him to disappear into a crowd.

The originality ends there. Like the Shadow, The Wraith was in reality a wealthy man about town, Nigel Cane. He was usually accompanied by his female companion the lovely Miss Jessica Platt. For a switch he ripped off the Green Hornet's car, Black Beauty, with his own Silver Specter.

The Wraith radio program lasted only one season (Pacific O&G decided to get into the quiz show biz instead.) His literary incarnation lasted until Jones & Rhodes demise in 1957 but never made it to the air.

© 1999 Dominic Lopez