So think about this, you're outside late at night, you've got your portable radio with you, and you decide to stop whatever you're doing and turn it on. After some fiddling with the tuning you hear what sounds like a children's song being played on a small digital instrument. The song plays twice, and then stops. After a few more seconds you hear what sounds like a woman with a British accent state a series of numbers...
Seven.....Seven.....Nine.....Eight.....Three.....Two.....Four...
The sequence goes on like this for a while, and then, after a few repetitions, you hear the same song you heard at the start, and then, the radio goes quiet.
If you found yourself in this situation (and it'd be very rare for you to do so!) then you'd just have been witness to easily my favorite form of audio: The Number Station.
Number stations were typically used by various government agencies to relay encoded messages. The key to decode these messages would only be known by the sender and the receiver, but they could be heard by anyone that happened to be tuned into the specific frequency would hear the numbers as they were read off.
Does this still happen today? I can't say for sure. After their use in the government they have been used more frequently in various niche horror and mystery media. The idea that you can come across a broadcast of just someone saying numbers over and over again has a sort of mystery to it, as well as a healthy dose of creepy.
MK: I woke you up to listen to this
NIC: I was already awake.
MK:Sure.
(Numbers station tape plays numbers in French)
NIC: Carl van Sant's tape?
MK: Right.
NIC: Okay, so...
MK: There's something I missed before.
NIC: What something?
MK: You know how I told you the numbers were doubled by Morse code under the main transmission?
NIC: Right. You also told me that wasn't...unusual.
MK: It's not. But I still can't believe I missed this.
NIC:Missed what?
MK: The number that was repeating. 4-7-3-7-8-6-1-1-1-1.
-TANIS, EP 108: Raywood, WA: Population 1
Nowadays a numbers station could theoretically be in lots of places, such as a lost website, the HAM Radio network, on a payphone if you dial the right numbers, the list goes on and on.
Whenever I talk about this phenomenon to other people, they always tell me that they find it creepy. I haven't been totally able to relate, but after talking to my friends some more, I have been able to synthesize the main worry to be: "What if I hear something I'm not supposed to?"
Now, from a practical standpoint, you could easily say "You aren't, that's the point of the numbers", but more so than that, I feel like Numbers Stations feels a bit too much like Dark Forbidden Knowledge to a lot of people. Honestly, when I listen to the old static recordings, I get that vibe. I can't say for sure why it doesn't scare me, though. Maybe it's because of the various Dark Unknown things that followed me as I grew up in the middle of the forest (see some other posts for that), but the strangeness is...comforting? I can't say, it's just something I enjoy. That's not to say I don't find these recordings and broadcasts creepy; I do! I just really revel in the creepiness. It's like a very cold hug.
We found the site uninhabited. Evidence strongly suggests it was evacuated a week prior to our arrival. It contains several pieces of well-maintained radio equipment, a diesel generator (found running when we arrived), numerous partially burned records, and over twenty logbooks (all written in Russian). These books describe broadcasts received by the station. The oldest entry is dated to 1947.
We also found two phrases carved into a desk. Angent Browning translated them from Russian:
DO NOT LET HER FINISH
TELL HER ALL IS WELL
On the second day at approx. 0730 hours, an automated alarm sounded. We later determined this alarm is triggered by incoming broadcasts. Upon activating the radio's speakers, we heard a young woman speaking in Russian. Agent Browning informed us that this woman was counting downward, and had reached '76'.
After a short debate, it was decided that the most prudent course of action would be to follow the instructions on the desk. Dr. Browning interrupted the broadcast with the provided phrase ("все хорошо", or "ALL IS WELL"). The voice stopped. A tone played, and the broadcast ceased.
-SCP 3034
I also feel a weird duality with the concept of these stations. The first part is that I want to find one. I want to go out into the night with my portable radio, spend days listening to the international free radios on the internet, and just....find something. Something that I can't explain, that hasn't been already analyzed by scholars and archivists for many years.
The second part of this is that I want create this. I want to be the one sending out the broadcast, where only someone else knows the meaning of the numbers being spoken, but many others will hear it and not know why it's there, or what it's for.
Until then, though, I guess I have the Conet Project to listen to whenever I need it, usually to help me sleep at night (while making sure it doesn't scare my partner).
Particularly, my favorite track is this one.