The Crystal Man by Edward Page Mitchell Episode #365

Edward Page Mitchell | April 26, 2025

The Crystal Man by Edward Page Mitchell Episode #365
Edward Page Mitchell

THE CRYSTAL MAN

Episode #365 · Written by Edward Page Mitchell · Narrated by Scott Miller

A late-night collision on Fifth Avenue leads a rational man of science into a baffling mystery—one that defies every trusted sense. When the truth is finally revealed, he’s drawn into the tragic secrets of a man who can walk unseen through the world.

A seemingly mundane collision on a dark New York street thrusts a logical, careful observer into a mystery that challenges every assumption he holds about the physical world. The Crystal Man opens like a detective tale, with careful clues and deductive reasoning, but the story soon pivots into something far stranger. Items move on their own. Doors open without hands. Footsteps sound without bodies. And a voice, familiar yet bodiless, asks for help with a desperation that cannot be ignored. At the center of it all is Stephen Flack, a brilliant but doomed experimental subject whose body has been transformed by radical scientific experimentation—leaving him transparent, untouchable, and exiled from the human experience. His tragedy is not just physical but deeply emotional, rooted in a fragile love story that becomes the beating heart of the narrative.

Mitchell deftly balances humor, suspense, melancholy, and scientific speculation, blending them into a tale that feels surprisingly modern for its 1881 publication. The narrator’s attempts to reconcile rational thought with the impossible are entertaining and often poignant, while Flack’s backstory—his devotion to his work, his misguided passion, his irreversible fate—creates a haunting emotional undertow. The final scenes carry a weight that elevates this story beyond early science-fantasy curiosity into something enduringly human, touching, and mournful.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Edward Page Mitchell was far ahead of his time. As an influential editor at The New York Sun, he quietly published stories that introduced major science fiction concepts decades before they became staples of the genre: invisibility, teleportation, time travel, mechanical augmentation, and more. His work remained obscure for nearly a century because he never collected his stories into books. When rediscovered by scholars in the 1970s, Mitchell was recognized as one of the earliest truly visionary American science fiction writers—an innovator whose bold ideas predated H.G. Wells and influenced the foundation of modern speculative storytelling.

In The Crystal Man, Mitchell’s creativity shines with particular force. It is inventive, thematically rich, surprisingly emotional, and packed with ideas that modern readers will instantly recognize as central to the genre he helped shape. It’s a story that blends science with sorrow, mystery with longing, and logic with the inexplicable—an unforgettable tale from a writer who deserves far wider recognition.

LISTEN TO THE STORY

Listen to The Crystal Man by Edward Page Mitchell — a gripping vintage science fiction mystery of invisibility, lost love, and science gone too far.