"The Weird Circle. In this cave by the restless sea we are met to call from out the past stories strange and weird." (abrupt cut) "Phantoms of a world gone be speak again the immortal tale: The Hand."
This episode, first broadcast on December 19, 1943, is an adaptation of a story with the same title by Guy de Maupassant, first published in 1883. The adaptation took the basic premise of the original story - an English peer on a long sojourn to France, deathly afraid of a severed human hand - removed ambiguity, the framing story, and its narrator, and added more characters to interact with Sir John Rowell, including a daughter, a family friend turned suitor to same (also the new narrator), and a neighboring doctor. The original was somewhat unsatisfactory, but this one ties things together much too cleanly for my taste.
The outro again integrates a credit to the United States Armed Services Television and Radio, not heard since Episode 4.
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