Cool story that no one will understand or listen to but I wanna tell it anyway because I never got a chance.
Long story short, there are these things called "numbers stations", they are very real, and they're presumed to be related to encoded military endeavors. They're not hard to find if you know where and how to look—the mystery lies in knowing who is transmitting them over the radio waves and what they mean. They've been around since post WWII (possibly prior) and have been widely documented in niche communities. You can find recordings of them online like the Lincolnshire Poacher, UVB-76, G03 Gongs & Chimes, and many more. Very bizarre sounding things.
So here's my story. When I was about 18 years old, before SW and before I was active on EP, I had been researching these numbers stations and listening to recordings of them online for awhile. I was familiar with just about all of the ones that had been found and recorded, which, at the time, I thought was all of them.
I decided to go buy myself a specific type of radio capable of receiving them so I could listen to them in real time, myself. And yes, after a lot of experimentation, I managed to catch a thing or two. Mostly just random people messing around on the airwaves, or scientific research arrays occupying certain bands. Nothing mysterious or secretive, all publicly available and transparent stuff.
Then one night, sometime after midnight, when I was the only person awake in the house, I caught something different. It sounded like a bicycle chain spinning. Possibly an electronic recreation of one. It just squeaked and rattled, on and on.
I remember lying in my sleeping bag on the floor in my brother's room (because I was weird and liked to do that), everything pitch black, nobody awake, no sound in the house except this repeating bicycle chain noise I was picking up. It went on for several minutes. Every so often, maybe about 2-4 minute increments, a new sound would be added. The best way I can describe the whole thing is like if someone had this bicycle chain I mentioned, spinning round and round, and they occasionally fastened some sort of trinket or device onto the chain, to make a new sound every time it looped around. Things like sleigh bells or a spoon or some sort of metal wire, each item gradually being hooked onto this cyclical contraption, one by one. Of course, I don't know the exact items making these sounds, these descriptions are just my best effort at describing something I could hear but not see.
And it all had a sort of electronic undertone to it, again like it was all synthesized, intended to resemble real mechanical sounds.
So with these 2-4 minute additions slowly introducing themselves, they would gradually add together and become louder and louder. What was once just this shy little squeaky chain became a cacophony of rattling metallic instruments all making their own unique and distinct noises. Then, suddenly, an eerie and prolonged bell struck—loud, deep in tone, resembling a large bell tower but obviously electronic in the way it just droned on persistently with a sort of hard-cut repetition. For about a full 30 seconds this "bell" drowned out all the other noises including the original "squeaky chain". Gong-ong-ong-ong-ong-ong . . .
Then silence . . .
Then the quiet chain would start again . . .
Repeat. Each "instrument" slowly being fastened to the "chain", minutes going by, it gets loud, the bell. Repeat.
I honestly don't know what any readers (if any) are imagining it sounded like. Like I said it's hard to describe the sound of something I didn't know the source of. I still remember it fairly vividly. And I was halfway between excited and terrified, being the only person around to hear it, in the dark of night.
What makes this all the more strange is that in all the months I had spent researching this stuff, I had never heard of this particular transmission anywhere. And I never heard it again, nor have I heard of it from anyone else, ever.
The thought that chills me the most is that where I lived, I believe I was mostly only able to pick up local transmissions. So this may have been something close by, and we lived on the outskirts of town, with mostly just trees surrounding us. People too, but not a vast amount of them.
So I could be wrong in any number of my reasonings but I believe I picked up a coded message that was broadcast locally, transmitted one time and one time only, not heard by anyone but whoever it was intended for, and myself.
It was hard to sleep that night with my curiosity still burning after the transmission stopped. I tried desperately to find it again. But eventually I just accepted that it was gone and I went to sleep.
I tried in the following weeks to find it again. Never did.
Still, over a decade later, no one else has talked about or recorded this broadcast, to my knowledge.
I feel like I found a lost treasure and re-lost it. 😆
There ya go, my weird story that probably no one will read or understand and I won't bother proofreading it. I'm sending it as is. You're welcome.
So here's my story. When I was about 18 years old, before SW and before I was active on EP, I had been researching these numbers stations and listening to recordings of them online for awhile. I was familiar with just about all of the ones that had been found and recorded, which, at the time, I thought was all of them.
I decided to go buy myself a specific type of radio capable of receiving them so I could listen to them in real time, myself. And yes, after a lot of experimentation, I managed to catch a thing or two. Mostly just random people messing around on the airwaves, or scientific research arrays occupying certain bands. Nothing mysterious or secretive, all publicly available and transparent stuff.
Then one night, sometime after midnight, when I was the only person awake in the house, I caught something different. It sounded like a bicycle chain spinning. Possibly an electronic recreation of one. It just squeaked and rattled, on and on.
I remember lying in my sleeping bag on the floor in my brother's room (because I was weird and liked to do that), everything pitch black, nobody awake, no sound in the house except this repeating bicycle chain noise I was picking up. It went on for several minutes. Every so often, maybe about 2-4 minute increments, a new sound would be added. The best way I can describe the whole thing is like if someone had this bicycle chain I mentioned, spinning round and round, and they occasionally fastened some sort of trinket or device onto the chain, to make a new sound every time it looped around. Things like sleigh bells or a spoon or some sort of metal wire, each item gradually being hooked onto this cyclical contraption, one by one. Of course, I don't know the exact items making these sounds, these descriptions are just my best effort at describing something I could hear but not see.
And it all had a sort of electronic undertone to it, again like it was all synthesized, intended to resemble real mechanical sounds.
So with these 2-4 minute additions slowly introducing themselves, they would gradually add together and become louder and louder. What was once just this shy little squeaky chain became a cacophony of rattling metallic instruments all making their own unique and distinct noises. Then, suddenly, an eerie and prolonged bell struck—loud, deep in tone, resembling a large bell tower but obviously electronic in the way it just droned on persistently with a sort of hard-cut repetition. For about a full 30 seconds this "bell" drowned out all the other noises including the original "squeaky chain". Gong-ong-ong-ong-ong-ong . . .
Then silence . . .
Then the quiet chain would start again . . .
Repeat. Each "instrument" slowly being fastened to the "chain", minutes going by, it gets loud, the bell. Repeat.
I honestly don't know what any readers (if any) are imagining it sounded like. Like I said it's hard to describe the sound of something I didn't know the source of. I still remember it fairly vividly. And I was halfway between excited and terrified, being the only person around to hear it, in the dark of night.
What makes this all the more strange is that in all the months I had spent researching this stuff, I had never heard of this particular transmission anywhere. And I never heard it again, nor have I heard of it from anyone else, ever.
The thought that chills me the most is that where I lived, I believe I was mostly only able to pick up local transmissions. So this may have been something close by, and we lived on the outskirts of town, with mostly just trees surrounding us. People too, but not a vast amount of them.
So I could be wrong in any number of my reasonings but I believe I picked up a coded message that was broadcast locally, transmitted one time and one time only, not heard by anyone but whoever it was intended for, and myself.
It was hard to sleep that night with my curiosity still burning after the transmission stopped. I tried desperately to find it again. But eventually I just accepted that it was gone and I went to sleep.
I tried in the following weeks to find it again. Never did.
Still, over a decade later, no one else has talked about or recorded this broadcast, to my knowledge.
I feel like I found a lost treasure and re-lost it. 😆
There ya go, my weird story that probably no one will read or understand and I won't bother proofreading it. I'm sending it as is. You're welcome.
