The Last Broadcast

The Last Broadcast

“You shouldn’t be here.”

Elias froze. The voice came from the spirit box in his hand… a man's voice buried beneath static. It sounded distant, as though someone was at the very edge of a walkie-talkie’s range. Elias stared at the modified scanner as it swept through the AM and FM bands. Static hissed continuously. Then the voice returned.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“Hello?” Elias leaned closer. “Is there someone there who'd like to communicate with me?”

He'd asked that question hundreds of times. It never stopped feeling ridiculous. As a professional paranormal investigator, he spent his time debunking supposed hauntings. Disembodied voices were carried on drafts; footsteps were old pipes; flickering lights were faulty wiring. The human brain jumped to conclusions, but Elias dug for rational answers—and when he couldn't find one, he kept looking.

“Who am I speaking to?” He asked again.

Nothing.

Elias scoffed and leaned back in the chair in the lobby of an old, abandoned motel here in Bellweather, Ohio. On January 25, 1987, the entire population had vanished. Police and search teams scoured the surrounding area. There were no bodies. No explanation. Eventually, the investigation went cold, and Bellweather had been left to rot. Now only empty streets, abandoned buildings, and boarded windows remained. Over the years, people who'd ventured into the abandoned town had reported strange voices, unexplained sounds, and shadowy figures. Elias had heard such stories before he’d come to Bellweather to find out what exactly happened to its missing residents. He'd come prepared to separate fact from folklore. He hadn't expected the folklore to talk back.

The voice burst through the static. “Danger.”

Elias sat up quickly. “What's dangerous?”

“Radio station.”

Elias glanced toward the window at the town’s old radio station: a squat brick building with its facade stained by decades of rain and nature. A rusted antenna tower rose from the roof. Above the entrance, faded blue letters spelled out WXVR 90.7. Weather-beaten speakers hung beneath the eaves.

“What's at the radio station?”

At first, there was only static. Then, “Danger.”

Elias stared at the device, waiting for another response. Nothing came. His mind began considering the alternative explanations. He could have picked up someone else’s transmissions… or someone could have been playing with him. Even the most convincing evidence could be something mundane once it was examined closely enough. Only one problem: no one knew he was here, and these intelligent responses made it unlikely he was receiving someone else’s transmissions.

Elias clipped the spirit box to his backpack, walked out of the motel, and crossed the street. If the old radio station held a piece of the puzzle, he wasn't going to walk away because some voice was warning him. Besides, if this was a hoax, he wanted to know how they’d done it. Weeds pushed through the cracked pavement as Elias approached the station's front door beneath a crooked, peeling awning. Elias tried the handle. Locked.

“Not a problem,” he muttered with a smirk. He unzipped his backpack and retrieved his lockpick kit.

The voice broke through the static. “You came prepared.”

Elias frowned. “Can you see me?”

A beat of static. “Maybe.” The voice sounded almost amused.

Elias rolled his eyes. “Very funny.”

Seconds later, the lock clicked. Elias pocketed his tools and pushed the door open. Stale air and the smell of damp plaster greeted him as he found himself in an old lobby. His flashlight swept across dusty couches, scattered magazines, and a pane of glass separating the lobby from a broadcasting studio. Photographs covered the walls, showing employees standing beside microphones, gathered around a cake, or grinning behind mixing consoles. The only sound was his footsteps on crusty carpet and crumbling plaster.

One man appeared in photograph after photograph: dark-haired, probably in his late twenties, with a crooked grin that suggested he'd never met a silence he couldn't fill. In one picture, he sat in the radio booth, one hand wrapped around a microphone. Beneath it, a brass nameplate read: NATHAN RIGGS, The Voice of Bellweather Radio

Elias left the photograph behind and crossed the lobby into the corridor. The first door on his left opened into the broadcasting studio. 

His flashlight swept across an old cassette deck, completely dead and unpowered. Inside sat a tape, its label marked in faded ink... 

JANUARY 25, 1987.

Finally. Something tangible.

He ejected the cassette and loaded it into his own battery-powered player. Rewinding to the beginning, he pressed Play. Static filled the studio for a moment. Then a song began to play, and a few seconds later, a man's voice, bright and welcoming.

“Well, hellooo, Bellweather! It's eight o'clock on this beautiful morning. January twenty-fifth, and it's me, Nathan Riggs, the voice of our lovely town.”

Elias went still. He knew that voice. It was the same voice speaking through his spirit box. He unclipped the spirit box. 

“Are you Nathan?” 

For several seconds, he heard only static. Then… 

“Yes.”

Elias’ heart skipped. A memory surfaced: a debate weeks earlier where a medium had dismissed his skepticism with a smile. “Just because you've eliminated alternatives doesn't mean there isn't a paranormal explanation. You'll soon see for yourself.”

As the memory faded, Elias scoffed while clipping the spirit box back onto his backpack; one strange experience didn’t prove all ghost stories true. The recording continued as he looked around the room. He found an open broadcast log beneath a stack of papers. The page was dated January 25, 1987. It listed the station's scheduled programming: songs, interviews, advertisements, and announcements. Handwritten notes beside the entries recorded what actually aired and any changes made that day. He quickly scanned the morning’s entries and the entries of the days before. Nothing unusual. 

He then came to the evening’s entries. The handwritten annotations stopped abruptly around six o’clock PM, but the scheduled programming continued past six o'clock. He raised an eyebrow. Local newspapers had reported the radio station stopped broadcasting around six. Was this when the town disappeared?

He left the studio to investigate further. Across from him, an old office stood next to a closet with outdated radio gear. The other doors were locked, except for one that led downstairs to a basement filled with radio equipment and an old gas generator. As he searched, the old broadcast played in the background; Nathan chatted with listeners, announced the weather, introduced songs, and read ads. It was surreal to think that by day’s end, Nathan and everyone else would vanish without a trace.

“Well, Bellweather,” Nathan’s voice spoke from the recording, “Don't you worry. I'll be playing our anthem soon. Wouldn't leave you all hanging, would I?” A pause, followed by a laugh. “Nah, you know I would. But trust me, it's coming.”

“Nathan,” said Elias, “What did you mean by ‘our anthem’?”

“Our song,” Nathan replied through the spirit box. “Our town’s song.”

Elias thought for a moment. Anthems united people or honored a shared history or mindset. Nations had their national anthems. Colleges had their alma maters. If this town had an “anthem”, it would have been a popular song. Maybe that logbook held some answers. Back in the studio, Elias scanned the broadcast log for a recurring track. He found it: Home Before the Morning by The Sundowners, played repeatedly right up until the handwritten notes stopped at six o'clock PM—the exact moment the town went silent.

This must be their anthem, Elias thought as he searched the nearby shelves and drawers until he found a cassette bearing the same title. He took the broadcast recording from his cassette player, replaced it with the new cassette, and pressed Play. Bright guitars and a steady drumbeat filled the studio. It was a catchy upbeat pop-rock tune, definitely from the late 80s.

“Good song, right?” Nathan asked.

“Not bad.”

Then came four sharp knocks on glass. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock.

The sound came from somewhere near the far wall. He waited. 

Four more knocks, louder this time, before his cassette player suddenly fell silent. Elias pressed a few buttons to see if the silence was due to any damage to the tape. Nothing. The player itself wasn’t responding, as if it were out of battery.

“What the hell?”

Then he noticed that the spirit box had gone silent, too. No more static.

A third set of knocks sounded. Elias stared at his malfunctioning equipment. The timing was unsettling, but coincidence remained possible. Elias had heard every sort of ordinary sound mistaken for a haunting. Old buildings creaked. Pipes contracted. Loose fittings shifted with temperature. Even though these knocks were deliberate and evenly spaced, maybe someone was outside. Maybe a branch was striking a window. 

Elias followed the sound out of the station and around the building’s side. His flashlight swept across the station's brickwork and settled on a high window, right where he heard the knocks. There were no nearby trees. No footprints in the weeds, no ladder, no sign of anyone else. 

Then he heard a melody. Faint. Distant. Ethereal. No lyrics, no clear rhythm, and no obvious source. It sounded almost like someone singing from deep within the woods. Elias turned toward the trees. The melody seemed to surround him. He stepped off the pavement, then another. His attention narrowed until the woods no longer seemed threatening. He wanted to hear the singing more clearly. He wanted to know who was out there. His feet kept moving.

“NO! DON'T!”

Elias stopped as though jolted awake as the spirit box crackled to life.

“Don't follow the song,” Nathan warned through the static.

Elias unclipped the spirit box and held it up, still staring through the woods. “What was that? What was singing?”

“I don’t know.”

“You heard it before?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Before,” Nathan replied. “Before I...” A pause. “Don't play the anthem,” Nathan warned. “It will make things worse.”

“How do you know?” Elias could sense the fear. “Is that what happened to you? Is that how the town disappeared?”

Static hissed. “I don't remember.”

Elias frowned. “What do you remember?”

“In the studio. Played the anthem. Heard singing. Followed it. Then…” Nathan's voice fell off into static before coming back. “Don't play the anthem.”

Elias rushed to the station, took a seat in the lobby. He opened his notebook to take notes of everything that had happened. As he did, his cassette player flickered back to life. The battery indicator showed a healthy charge. He rewound the anthem and pressed Play. The bright guitar riff filled the room. A low vibration shuddered through the floor. Several knocks rang through the station. The walls trembled, and something rattled on a shelf.

Elias stopped the tape. The shaking ceased. The knocks stopped. Silence swallowed the room.

That can't be a coincidence, he thought.

According to the log, the anthem had played right around the time the town disappeared, and now it seemed to provoke something within the area. The wordless melody had drawn him toward the woods, just as it had seemingly drawn Nathan before his disappearance. He thought of the Sirens of Greek mythology and the Nøkken of Norse folklore, creatures said to use music to lure people toward danger. Perhaps Bellweather's residents had heard something calling them away.

Staring at his notes, Elias entertained a terrifying hypothesis. Folklore was full of territorial entities that guarded their domains and purged intruders. Perhaps the spirit had claimed Bellweather's residents the same way. Elias packed away the recorder and notebook. He had no proof the song was responsible for the shaking, or that the two melodies were connected. He had no proof that there was in fact anything paranormal. He was sure there a rational explanation for what he'd experienced, but there was one thing he knew for sure: he didn’t want to hear that melody again. He didn’t want to feel himself not in control again.

“Right,” he muttered to himself. “Time to go.”

The flashlight flickered. Knocking erupted at the front door, loud enough to rattle the frame. Then, the melody returned. Elias felt its pull before he could think. His feet shifted toward the door, but he clamped a hand around the armrest of the chair.

No. Not this time.

He forced himself away from the entrance and toward the hallway door. The crooked lobby photographs seemed to tilt toward him as he opened the door to the studio and the rest of the station. He wrenched the door open, expecting the hallway. Instead, the corridor elongated, walls breathing inward as he stumbled past a second studio door he’d never passed before. When he finally forced the office door open, there was no desk, no paperwork. Only the lobby, waiting for him again.

What the hell? “Nathan?”

The spirit box hissed without answering.

Elias shut it and tried the door. The same lobby stared back.

“It's not real,” he muttered, though he no longer believed it.

He raised his flashlight toward the lobby’s door. Its beam faded halfway down the corridor, swallowed by a darkness that seemed to deepen with every passing second. Then he looked at his hands. His fingers had grown translucent. In the dark glass of the recording studio beside him, his reflection was gone.

Elias turned his flashlight down the other end of the hallway. The hallway changed, stretching far beyond what was there before, replaced by an unending hallway lined with doors. His skin felt cold, distant, as though his body belonged to someone else. The station wasn't merely trapping him. It was taking him. Then the spirit box went dead.

“Nathan!”

Only the knocking remained, now coming in pairs like a heartbeat. Knock, knock. Knock, knock. The melody pressed into Elias's thoughts. Haunting. Tempting. Taunting. He could stop fighting. He could follow it out of the studio and into the woods. Whatever waited there seemed easier than fading away in an empty building.

He shut his eyes and dug his nails into his palm. Even faint pain was something real.

Think, Elias. Think.

The anthem had initially triggered the knocking and shaking. Nathan had warned him not to play it because it made things worse. But the luring melody had drawn Elias away only after he played the song, and it had drawn everyone away when it played all those years ago. What if the anthem wasn't strengthening the entity? What if it was resisting? What if it didn’t like the song? The thought was absurd. It was also the only one that offered an escape. 

If this spirit despised the anthem—the community tether that played before the vanishing—broadcasting it might act as a repellent. He couldn't prove the theory, but waiting for certainty meant disappearing. He needed power. 

The generator. 

Steadying himself against the wall, Elias descended the stretching basement stairs toward the unit. Keeping one hand against the wall to steady himself, he made his way to the basement to the generator. The stairway seemed to stretch beneath him as he descended and approached the generator. He looked into the fuel tank. Only a little fuel remained. He pulled the starter cord. The engine coughed and died. On the third attempt, it roared to life. The basement lights flickered overhead. Elias raced upstairs, pulled the anthem cassette from his recorder, and loaded it into the deck. His hands were almost transparent. He switched on the studio speakers.

The opening guitar riff filled the room. The walls shuddered. Knocking erupted from every direction, furious and frantic. The lobby returned, fading back into reality, and the photographs settled into their frames. Elias's fingers began to regain their color. It was working. He stumbled toward the studio’s door. In his head, the luring melody swelled. The station lurched, the lights flickered, and the lobby twisted again. The song was reaching only the building's interior. It was fighting the entity, but not enough. The anthem belonged to Bellweather. It had to reach the town entirely.

Elias rushed back into the studio towards the transmitter controls. He switched on the broadcast and activated the exterior speakers. The anthem burst through the rusted speakers beneath the eaves and crackled out over the radio frequency. Its guitars and drums rolled into the empty streets, past deserted houses, and toward the woods.

The knocking became a frantic barrage as the station convulsed around him. Elias stared at his hands. They were solid again. His reflection had returned to the dark glass: pale, frightened, and alive. Now was his chance. He didn’t wait for another sign. He snatched up his bag and ran. The front door opened without resistance. 

Elias ran to his car as the song played through the external speakers. He turned the key in the ignition and began to drive off. As he did so, he frantically tuned the car’s radio to 90.7. Static hissed from the speakers. Then a guitar riff emerged through the noise—faint but unmistakable.

Home Before the Morning.

Elias gripped the steering wheel and drove until the station vanished behind the trees. Only when Bellweather was far behind him did he realize his hands were shaking. The farther he drove, the more the song dissolved into static, until only static remained. He drove in silence for a long moment, listening to the hiss. 

He couldn't prove a ghost had spoken to him, nor that the woods had tried to claim him. Questions would be asked, rational explanations weighed. But for the first time, Elias understood that uncertainty wasn't impossibility. He drove on in silence, finding the static oddly comforting.