I’ve Been Hearing Something Creepy On My Radio, Someone Is Trying To Contact Me And I Think I Know Who

I had a really special bond with my grandmother. A lot of girls will say that, but I think ours was deeper. Different. We had this electric connection, a current of energy that ran between us like crackling livewires. When she passed away at the ripe old age of 92 I should’ve just been happy to have her as long as I did but instead it felt like I’d lost a limb, a part of me that had always been there and left an ache in its absence.

We used to listen to AM radio together. It was our thing, you know? One of my earliest memories is a long-ago Christmas when all the other grandkids were running around, hyped-up on sugar and the high of toys fresh out of their packaging, ignoring my grandmother as she sat near the antique radio she kept in the living room. Family members chattered all around us but she had this look of determination on her face as she pressed her ear to the speaker, trying to hear over the racket of holiday chatter. She turned the dial slowly, paused to see if the station held any interest for her, then continued to turn it in a careful, practiced motion.

I was only 4 but I was instantly drawn to it, to her; something about the way she was in her own little world despite all the activity around her just seemed so soothing. I remember toddling over to her and plopping down by her feet. I remember pressing my ear near the speaker, too, and mimicking the resolve I’d seen her wearing.

Gramma smiled at me. She ran her free hand, the one not turning the radio’s dial, over my hair and said,

“Will you help me listen, Alice?”

And I did. I helped her listen, for that Christmas and many years to come. We never stayed on one channel very long but that didn’t matter because we had something special, something just between us. We listened to AM radio together and I grew up knowing that it wasn’t what you heard that mattered, it was who you heard it with.

After her funeral I went home, the deviled eggs I’d eaten at the post-burial reception sitting heavy in my stomach. I knew she was gone but it was so hard. To keep on going like everything was okay. How could it be okay when I was never going to sit at my Gramma’s feet again, watching her delicately-wrinkled face as she scanned the stations with unending patience?

A few years ago, I’d bought a record player, one of those all-in-one deals where you could play albums or CDs or cassette tapes but I knew I really wanted it for the radio. It was made to look old-fashioned but it held none of the elegance that Gramma’s did, a leftover from the days when household entertainment was required to function as both décor and furniture. I found myself staring at it then, my feet aching in their black funeral pumps, my eyes raw and red from crying.

I sat on the floor in front of the radio, removing my heels so I could cross my legs Indian-style. Before I knew what I was doing I had switched it on and taken the tuning knob between my fingers. The familiar sound of static and a faintly alien hum filled my living room; I relished it for a moment before I started to turn the dial, slowly, just like Gramma used to.

It never took very long to hit the religious holy-rollers, the ones who shouted of Jesus’ love and hate in equal fervor. I never cared for what they had to say but I adored the way they spoke, each word elongated and over-enunciated until it seemed to have a whole new meaning. The doh-MIN-yun of Gawd! YEW, the fayth-full and HO-lee ones… in Cuh-ryst GAWD’S guh-lo-ree!

I listened to the man boom on about something called a “quickening” and raising the dead up from hell before turning the dial again.

Next up was a commercial for a restaurant in Spanish. Apparently they had “fajitas el grande”! A velvety-voiced man described this fantastic dish and an artificial high-pitched voice agreed with him; I instantly pictured a cartoon ant wearing a tiny sombrero and laughed despite myself. I turned the dial again.

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Classical music now. Something very authoritative that made me think of troops storming the beaches at Normandy. It could’ve easily gone along with those black and white newsreels they used to show before movies back in Gramma’s day. I felt a twinge of sadness, but somehow it didn’t hurt as badly as I expected; the radio was doing what it always had. With or without Gramma here, its gentle staticky hum was soothing.

I kept turning the knob, letting the different voices and music wash over me. I half expected to look up and see her sitting on the couch above me, smiling.

I passed a twangy country station and then suddenly I hit a patch of fuzz, followed by a keening whine. It droned on even though I passed it, I should’ve passed it, the stations weren’t that far apart and yet the radio whined, a sound that seemed to buzz through my very bones.

“Shit,” I muttered, shaken out of my soothing place. I turned the dial back and forth, trying to get away from the terrible noise. When it seemed like I couldn’t escape it I finally gave up and reached for the power knob to turn the radio off.

“Help me,” a voice whispered, and I was so surprised I fell back on my butt, nearly taking the knob with me.

Surely I hadn’t heard what I thought I did. It was just my well-trained ears looking for voices in the static as I had since I was young. That was surely what it was, just a mistake, but the whine had faded away, leaving nothing but dead air in its place and what I could’ve sworn was the sound of someone breathing heavily.

Another moment passed as I sat there, legs crossed like a child, staring at the faux-vintage speakers of my radio.

“…water’s high,” said a different voice this time, and I felt my mouth go dry.

The first one had been a man, very clearly a man in distress if I was being honest with myself, and the second was a woman. I heard them talking again, quietly to each other, as though someone had put a hand over the microphone so they could speak privately.

“Hear, put your ear to it,” the woman’s muffled voice murmured. “See, it’s working, just let me do it.”

“It’s a radio play,” I said to my empty living room. “It’s a radio play, or someone fucking around on a CB—“

“SOS,” said the woman’s voice, more clearly now. She spoke with confidence but there was something behind that, something that told me she was trying to hold herself together. “SOS. We’ve – no, Fred, stop—“

“Speak!” the man’s voice cried, and he sounded as though he had already fallen apart. It was horrible to hear; he almost seemed to be drunk, his words slurring together, but it was stretched thin by panic. If it was a radio play it was a good one.

His voice was much louder than hers had been, as though the microphone was right up against his mouth.

“Please,” he shouted, “oh, it’s rising, oh, oh…”

He began to cry.

I got to my feet and turned off the radio.

I don’t know how long I stood there before I left the living room, went to the kitchen to make a sandwich. It was a radio play, that’s all it was, or someone trying to screw with the few people who still listen to AM radio, and I suddenly needed to make a sandwich, do the laundry, clean the bathroom, do anything except think about that radio and what I’d heard come from it.

---

I went to bed early that night but sleep didn’t come. I laid beneath the sheets and stared at the ceiling. I thought about the voices in the static. The man, and the woman.

“It’s not real,” I said to my empty bedroom. “Someone wanted to scare you and they did a good job, but now you can forget about it and go to sleep.”

Instead, I got out of bed and padded quietly to the living room. The radio sat there on its little table, silent and waiting like a snake ready to strike.

I had left the dial tuned to the station – if you could even call it that – where I’d heard the voices. Carefully, knowing it was the wrong thing to do, I turned on the radio.

“Help,” the woman said at once, her voice still steady yet undeniably afraid. “Help us quick, the water’s getting in, I can feel it—“

“You’re right,” the man said dreamily from somewhere nearby. He sounded more drunk than ever but I was certain he wasn’t.

“Fred,” she said, urgent. “No, Fred, come here just a moment—“

“It’s HOT,” the man who must’ve been Fred declared in the stubborn tone of a child. “I just need to get out—“

“You can’t, oh Fred please…”

There was a sound of a struggle as the woman tried to stop Fred from getting out of wherever they were. It took a minute or two before she returned to the microphone.

“58,” she said, and fear shone clearly through her brave façade this time. “338. Send us help.”

“Help, help,” Fred echoed. “I need air, Amelia, I need air…”

It was too much. I knew now this wasn’t a radio play, or even a cruel joke. They were in distress, that much was obvious, but without a transmitter it was only a one-way show. I couldn’t respond, I couldn’t comfort them – hell, I had no idea where they even were, or if I could send an ambulance to them. I was stuck in my living room, in my pajamas, useless.

“Amelia,” Fred called plaintively. “Amelia, things are bad…”

Fred was crying again. The woman, Amelia, went on like she couldn’t hear him.

“N.Y., N.Y.,” she said. “N.Y., N.Y.”

“Let me out of here!” Fred screamed, and I shut off the radio again. It was too much. I couldn’t take it.

---

The next day I called my best friend, Maggie. I wanted to listen more, to see if they were still there, but I couldn’t do it alone.

When I answered the door she gave me her patented Maggie “Look Of Disapproval”.

“Have you even slept since the funeral?” she demanded as I let her in. I guessed the makeup I’d slapped on didn’t hide the dark circles under my eyes.

“Not really, but it’s not because of—“

“Oh Alice,” Maggie sighed, her face scrunching up with concern. Before I could finish she pulled me into a tight hug. “I know you miss her, but she’s in a better place.”

I fucking hated that phrase. I’d heard it a thousand times since Gramma had died and it never failed to make me angry but I needed Maggie’s help so I ignored it.

“Yeah, I know,” I said, working my way out of her hug. “That’s not why I called you, though. I need you to do something for me.”

“Anything,” my best friend said at once. Good old Maggie, she couldn’t resist a victim in need. I led her to the radio in the living room and motioned for her to sit on the couch.

“Okay, just listen.”

I took a deep breath. I turned on the radio. I waited.

Nothing.

The dead air hummed with what became an infuriating buzz. Maggie stared at me with an equally infuriating look of empathy.

“Wait a minute,” I said, holding up my hand so she couldn’t start telling me how it was okay, everyone grieves in different ways.

“Alice—“

“Just wait a fucking minute, okay?” I snapped, and she closed her mouth.

The static droned on. I think she gave me about five minutes, a lot longer than I would’ve given someone else in my place, before speaking again.

“What am I supposed to hear, Alice?” Maggie asked gently. I pressed my ear up against the speaker and listened for another few seconds before sighing and turning back to her.

“Nothing. It was stupid. Forget I even said anything.” I sat beside her on the couch. She pulled me into another hug.

“It’s okay,” she murmured, and I let myself be hugged because in all honesty it felt pretty nice. “You’re grieving, everyone handles it in different ways.”

I rested my head on her shoulder as she went on and I thought about the voices on the radio, the people I couldn’t help. If it was real (and by now yes, I was sure that it was) then they had most likely died in whatever terrible accident they’d been in. That was why the station was empty now. It wasn’t that I’d never heard it in the first place – I could still hear them, the fear in Amelia’s voice, the delirium in Fred’s.

We hugged for a little while, visited for a little longer after that, and as soon as Maggie left I turned the radio on. One last time, I figured, to be sure. To be absolutely positive they were gone and there was nothing I could do.

“—take it away, Howland!” Fred’s voice crowed inexplicably.

I jumped, both surprised by his immediate response and confused as to what that could even mean. He hadn’t been here when Maggie was, there had been nothing on the airwaves, so how could it be I was already hearing him again?

There was a cry of hysterical laughter before I heard Amelia again.

“N.Y., N.Y.,” she said, just as she’d been saying when I turned off the radio earlier.

“How is this possible?” I whispered. My empty living room didn’t answer.

It was almost as if they’d picked up exactly where I’d left them.

“N.Y., N.Y., N.Y,” Amelia went on, and I could faintly hear Fred mimicking her in the background. Fred was losing it.

“Mary,” he said when Amelia paused for breath. “Oh, Mary, Maaaary…”

“God damn it, Fred,” Amelia said, sounding for the first time like she might be losing it too. “Please shut up, for the love of God, N.Y., N.Y.—“

“Ohhh, if they could hear me,” Fred moaned. “Mary—“

I switched off the radio. I waited a few minutes. I switched it back on.

“Maaaary,” he moaned.

I switched off the radio again.

I couldn’t make anyone else hear it. Somehow, I already knew that. Maggie’s presence had caused them to go away, but when I came back alone they were right here waiting for me.

I couldn’t help. There was nothing I could do but listen.

I sat down in front of the radio and crossed my legs. I watched it as I had when I was a child and Gramma controlled the dial with an almost magical ease but I didn’t touch the dial. I listened.

“I can’t reach the airport,” Amelia said, close to tears. “No one’s answering, I can’t get through to anyone—“

“The water’s knee deep!” Fred shouted, and this was the first time he sounded at all like he really knew what he was saying. This was the voice of a man who had surfaced from insanity just to see how bad things really were. “Let me out! LET ME OUT!”

There was the sound of another struggle. I could hear Amelia telling him no, a thick thump as one of them pushed the other somewhere in what I now assumed was the cockpit of a plane. The airport, the water, the radio – they had been flying and they crashed, most likely into the ocean. I thought of the Malaysian plane that went missing earlier in the year and shuddered. Somehow I knew this wasn’t the same plane but they had almost certainly suffered a similar fate.

“Where are you going?” Amelia demanded, her voice hitting a panicked pitch I hadn’t yet heard. “We can’t bail out, Fred, the water’s coming up, just look—“

Another thump, followed by a cry that was definitely Amelia. It might have been my imagination but I thought I could hear the sound of fingernails scrabbling against glass and metal.

“Oh, ouch,” she whispered, almost to herself. Fred kept babbling, lapsed back into delirium.

“Are you so scared,” Fred demanded, “that you won’t even try? You won’t even try? You won’t even try to get out?”

“Oh Jesus,” I said, and I hadn’t even known I’d said it until I heard my own voice echoing in the empty room.

There was a sudden eerie silence.

“What?” Fred asked, but Amelia shushed him, getting closer to the microphone.

“I heard something,” she hissed. “Hello, hello, is anyone there?”

My tongue felt stuck to the roof of my mouth but I forced myself to speak again.

“I’m here,” I said, and what she said next made my blood run cold.

“This is Amelia Earhart.” I barely had time to digest this before she went on. “South 391065 Z. 3E MJ3B. Z38, Z13, 8983638.”

Amelia Earhart?

I stared at the radio.

This was a joke, for sure, someone was fucking with me but no, I’d listened this long that I knew it was no joke, and how the hell was someone fucking with me when they could hear me through the radio? What kind of joke was that? How would anyone pull something like that off?

I didn’t know what she’d just said, didn’t understand any of it because of course I didn’t. It had been meant for an air traffic controller, or an airport, someone who knew what those codes were. It’s who she thought I was, not some dumb 27 year old girl whose grandmother had just died, whose grandmother was the only reason she’d even switched on the radio in the first place.

“Hurry,” Amelia said, and the hope in her voice broke my heart.

“I’m sorry, I can’t,” I whispered. What else could I say? How could I explain that we were separated not only by thousands of miles – if my memory of where Earhart was lost was correct – but nearly a hundred years? That what we were doing was scientifically impossible? That she’d been declared dead in absentia since my late grandmother was a girl?

“Are you there?” Amelia begged, and here the transmission began to grow fuzzy.

“I’m here,” I said, but now Fred was babbling again in the background.

“George,” he said, “get the suitcase in my closet…”

“…hear me? Can you hear me?” she shouted, trying to speak over him.

“Mary, hey, Mary!” Fred had the microphone now and he was screaming into it. He started to say more and broke down in tears. When someone spoke again, it was Amelia.

“Amelia Earhart,” she said again, stressing the name as if she hoped whoever heard it might try a little harder to find her, get there a little faster.

“You can’t be doing this,” I murmured. I touched the faux-vintage speakers of my radio. “This isn’t possible—“

“Fred, please—“ There was another scuffle before Amelia exhaled sharply. “I’m sorry, what did you tell me to do? What do I do?”

I didn’t say anything. I had pulled out my iPhone and was looking up ‘Amelia Earhart’, trying to find more information. I hadn’t even thought about her since I was a kid and we learned about her in the passing way you learn about everyone who was once important to America. I couldn’t even remember when she’d gone missing.

“SOS,” she cried as I pulled up her Wikipedia article.

1937. Gramma would’ve been 15.

“Will you help me?”

I stared at the black and white photo of a woman with short, curled hair. Not pretty in the conventional sense, but striking nonetheless. She was smiling like she knew something you didn’t.

“Will you please?” Amelia said, her voice breaking. I swallowed down the lump in my throat.

“I can’t,” I whispered.

There was a long pause. I felt a hot tear slide down my cheek and I wiped it away with the heel of my hand. I wanted to turn it off, I didn’t want to hear any more, but something in me knew that if I did I could never listen to the AM radio again. It was selfish but I knew I’d lose my soothing place, the thing my grandmother and I had shared and still meant so much to me. If I didn’t listen to the rest Amelia would be here every time I turned the radio on, right where I’d left her, begging me for help.

“All right,” she said at last. Tired, but determined. “All right.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, but I knew she’d stopped listening to me and I had to keep listening to her.

“What are you doing?” Amelia’s voice again, farther away, like she was looking elsewhere.

“Amelia, here,” Fred said quickly, and I could hear him pounding on something. “The door, quick, let me out!”

“It’s knee deep, you can’t – stop—“

Fred made some incoherent sounds, mostly just yelling and gasping. At last he screamed,

“I can’t make it! You have to help me!”

I heard some splashing and the metallic grunt of a door creaking open.

“Son of a BITCH—“ Amelia cursed, then I could barely hear them at all, a great rushing sound began to drown them out. I remember thinking at least they had gotten out, at least they had a chance, before Amelia said one last thing.

“Are you here?” she called, and I knew she was talking to me, even though she sounded far away.

“I’m here,” I said, pressing my face close to the speakers. “I’m here.”

“Tell them,” Amelia cried. “New York, tell them, Betty, tell New York—“

And then, nothing.

The same dead air I’d heard when I switched on the radio for Maggie. They were gone.

I sat in front of the radio, cross-legged, stunned.

My grandmother’s name was Betty.

It’s taken me a long time but I think I’ve figured it out. I think I know what happened.

I think, maybe, on that day in 1937, my grandmother heard it first. Listening to the radio like any kid her age would’ve done back then. Scanning the channels. Looking for something good.

I think she heard them, Fred and Amelia. I think she was the only one who heard them.

I think she felt as helpless as I did, sitting there with no power to do anything except listen as two people met their untimely deaths in the Pacific Ocean. I think it haunted her.

It’s just a theory. All I know for sure is that my whole life, my Gramma was listening to the radio. Scanning the channels. Looking for something. And then I joined her, a little girl fascinated by how her grandmother’s fingers turned the dial. I was the very reason she couldn’t hear it anymore but I like to think I helped; maybe she needed not to hear it, sometimes. With me there, she couldn’t – that theory I proved to myself with Maggie, and countless others after that.

But she did hear them again, I know it. Because I discovered what Gramma did. The next morning, when I turned on the radio to begin searching for a new station, I heard Fred again.

“Help me,” he whispered, and even though I should’ve changed the station, even though I wanted to, I couldn’t.

I always knew my grandmother and I were connected.

Every time it ends, it starts over again. Fred begs me for help. Amelia tells him to put his ear to the radio to see that it’s working. It all starts over again.

And the reason I can’t turn it off? The reason I can’t change the station? The reason my grandmother spent all those years with her ears to the speaker, trying to find their transmission?

Every day, I think they can hear me a little more. They’ve stopped calling me Betty. They ask me, they ask Alice for help. Every day, I try to calm them down, promise them it will be okay.

I think maybe next time, I can actually help them. I think I can get Fred to shut up so Amelia can focus. I think I can tell Amelia to switch frequencies, maybe find an airport or someone in the airwaves who can rescue them.

They’ve been jumping around. Never on the same station twice, not since the first time they looped back to the beginning. I have to find them.

So I sit, my ear pressed to the speaker, turning the dial, turning the dial, turning the dial.

Maybe next time.