“Whispers in the Airwaves: Tales from My Haunted Radio Station”
Chapter 1: The Graveyard Shift
My name is Rory Michaels, and I run the graveyard shift at a radio station that squats like a lonely metal box in the middle of the Arizona desert. Not the pretty kind of desert with painted cliffs and tour buses—this is just heat, scrub brush, and an endless flat horizon. The town we technically serve is two hours away, and most nights, I’m not even sure the signal reaches that far.
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I didn’t take this job for the music. Half the time, it’s 70s soft rock and AM gold—the kind of stuff your uncle gets drunk to at Thanksgiving. I’m pretty sure the only people listening are either half-asleep truckers or retirees who never figured out Spotify. I’m not even here for the journalism, not really. I’m here because strange things happen out here—lights in the sky, unmarked roads that show up on no map, old stories whispered by people who’ve lived too long in the middle of nowhere. The kind of stuff that doesn’t make it into newspapers because no one wants to risk sounding crazy. That’s the stuff I’ve always been chasing.
Chapter 2: A Lifelong Fascination
When I was ten, I stayed up all night cataloging supernatural sightings in our county library. I memorized cryptid classifications instead of baseball stats. I convinced myself my house was haunted just so I had an excuse to camp out in the hallway with a tape recorder. My parents didn’t love that. They kept telling me I’d grow out of it, that I’d stop filling notebooks with blurry photographs and hearsay. But I never did. I just got better at hiding it.
By the time high school came around, I figured out how to make it look like a phase. I joined the yearbook team so I could sneak into the darkroom. I wrote essays on historical architecture so I could visit condemned buildings without raising eyebrows. I stopped talking about the occult out loud, but I never stopped writing about it. I kept everything in old spiral notebooks I hid under my mattress. My parents thought I was finally coming around. They wanted me to go into something practical—engineering, maybe, or law—but all I wanted was to get closer to the edge of the map.
Chapter 3: The Job Offer
So I told them I was majoring in journalism, which was technically true. What I didn’t tell them was that I picked the program at a college with a folklore archive and a decent paranormal research club. I spent more time in the university basement flipping through microfilm than I did in lectures. I interviewed conspiracy theorists and amateur demonologists for class projects. I wrote a paper once comparing cult behavior to early fan forums and got an A. After I graduated, I knew I wasn’t cut out for cable news or lifestyle columns. I wanted a mic. I wanted a quiet place where I could speak into the dark and maybe—just maybe—someone strange would speak back.
That’s how I found the station. I answered a job listing that had no company name, no salary listed, no contact number—just a P.O. box and four words: Late night radio host. I applied right away. A week later, I got an envelope in the mail with a station badge and a set of keys. There was a note attached that said: Start Monday. Don’t be late.
Chapter 4: The Setting
Most nights, I sit behind the mic while the desert hums outside. I cue up tracks, flip through the little notebook I keep beside the console—filled with sightings, rumors, things people swear they saw. And when the moment feels right, I lean in, press the button, and start talking. “Welcome to radio station KMCR… out in the middle of nowhere.”
Oh, I should probably tell you about the only other radio host in this joint. My radio co-host is Christian. He works the same shift I do—overnight—and he’s the only person I ever really see here. We share the same small control room, the same crusty coffee machine, and the same busted vending machine. Most nights, it’s just the two of us sitting a few feet apart with our own microphones and mismatched mugs, trying to stay awake and make the show sound halfway decent.
Chapter 5: The Unusual Station
Christian’s about my age—early twenties, maybe a year older—but you’d never know it. He’s got this nervous energy, like he’s always expecting someone to tap him on the shoulder and tell him he’s doing something wrong. I think that’s why we get along. He doesn’t make fun of my weird interests. He doesn’t ask too many questions when I go off on one of my rants about haunted highways or Cold War mind control experiments. Sometimes he just nods and lets me talk. Sometimes he laughs. Sometimes he looks uncomfortable, but he stays. That’s more than most people.
The station itself is called KMCR, but that doesn’t really mean anything. It’s not affiliated with a network. It’s not part of any big media group. It’s just a squat one-story building made of faded stucco and heat-warped glass sitting at the edge of a long, cracked service road. There’s no sign out front. No one’s ever dropped by to ask for a tour. It feels like it’s been forgotten on purpose.
Chapter 6: The Strange Occurrences
Inside, the layout’s simple. Two main recording rooms—Studio A and Studio B—a narrow hallway lined with shelves of old vinyl, and an office space no one uses. There’s a breakroom with a fridge that makes a high-pitched noise when the compressor kicks on and a storage closet that never seems to stay closed. Someone’s rigged the front door with a keypad, but the code never changes. There’s a cleaning crew that comes by during the day, but I only ever see them after lunch. There are maybe twenty people on payroll, if you count the janitors and the guy who fixes the tower when it gets hit by lightning. I’ve never met most of them.
The only real structure we have is this thing called “The AM Show.” It’s a loose segment that kicks off around 1 a.m. and runs until we get bored or the next batch of songs needs cueing up. Officially, it’s supposed to be a casual hour of commentary—news, politics, entertainment, whatever’s trending. Unofficially, it’s my favorite part of the night because it’s the only time I get to talk about the stuff I care about: UFOs, government cover-ups, unexplained disappearances, and weird calls from listeners who claim they’ve seen things they can’t explain. I steer the conversation there whenever I can.
Chapter 7: The First Strange Story
There’s a rhythm to it now. Christian does the weather and the local updates. I dig into the weird files I keep under the console. We pass the mic back and forth. Some nights we barely talk. Other nights we can’t shut up. It just depends on how tired we are and how long the coffee holds out. But tonight? I’m wide awake, and I’ve got a few stories up my sleeve—just some things that’ve been happening out here over the past couple of months. Odd little moments. Strange sightings. Stuff I’ve been jotting down in my notebook between song breaks, waiting for the right time to share. Turns out, that time is now.
So, folks, if you’re on the road, in your kitchen, or lying awake in a dark room with nothing but the hum of your radio for company—this is your heads up. Buckle up. Top off your coffee. We’ve got a long night ahead.
Chapter 8: The Radio Station’s Background
I found out about the station’s background on my very first day, thanks to Christian. I got there about an hour early—something I always do when I start somewhere new. It helps me settle in and figure out what’s what before things actually get going. The sun was still up when I pulled into the lot. The station looked even smaller in person than it had in the photo they mailed with my badge.
One-story building, beige stucco that had peeled in spots, antennas leaning at weird angles. There was only one other car in the parking lot. Eventually, I killed the ignition, grabbed my backpack, and went to the front door. The keypad worked on the first try. They’d written the code—1717—on the back of the ID badge. I thought maybe someone would be waiting inside to give me a tour or at least say hello. But the place was empty. Quiet.
Chapter 9: The Photo Album
The control room was down the hall on the left. I dropped my stuff, took a look at the schedule, checked the audio levels. Everything seemed fine. No instructions beyond “play tracks from the 70s folder and fill air time with banter.” The playlist was already queued up for the night. Someone had set it to auto. I didn’t even need to do anything until the AM Show kicked in.
So I figured I’d make a cup of coffee. There was an espresso machine mentioned in the welcome packet—a cheap model, probably bought during a sale. I looked around the breakroom first, but all I found was the regular drip pot and a box of sugar packets that had hardened into cubes. I tried a few cupboards—plates, instant noodles, dust. No machine.
