Number Stations

[Nash]

This is an odd one and, if you listen to the samples, just a little bit spooky too.

http://www.damninteresting.com/number-stations/

[Antcliff]

What a strange find Nash! The recordings are spooky indeed.

What great old spy stuff.

[Magpie Jane]

Weird they are. Very.
I remember these mysterious messages on the shortwave, during the 1950es (early Cold War years).

Matt Merritt has a wonderful poem about the phenomenon: "Request Hour at the Numbers Station".
You can see it here: http://www.ninearchespress.com/Hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica%20Extract.pdf . . . on page 30.

Jane

Everything looks better by candlelight, everything sounds more plausible on the shortwave.

[k-j]

This should be in the "Poetry Discussion" forum.

Superb recordings.

[Antcliff]

Jane,
that poem by Merritt was just the thing.
they must have been even odder as a child...but fun.
seth

[Magpie Jane]

Seth,
Odd, yes. For an imaginative eight-year-old the Number Stations were a powerful fertiliser of fantasies. At one point I seriously considered the possibility they might be secret messages from God. I even discussed the matter (briefly) with my grand-aunt who was a Major in the Salvation Army.
Ach, ye saints and prophets of Motala, Hilversum, and all the other esoteric stations . . . where are you now?
Perhaps I'll write about them some day.
Jane

[bodkin]

Wow, I remember these.

I think that soviet-era spy activities is the best explanation, if you tuned-in to the Moscow overseas broadcasts they had something of the same nature, attention-grabbing snatches of music, or sequences of xylophone notes, followed by messages of encouragement for possibly imaginary "comrades" in various places. But <ComputerScience>the bandwidth must have been minute</ComputerScience> just enough to say "carry on" or "come home".

I'll go read that poem now... and probably wish I had thought of it first.

Ian