I don’t even know how nor when I got hip to numbers stations. I saw some stuff about them online in the early oughties, but I’d somehow known of them for years. I grabbed the official free DL of The Conet Project from the Irdial Discs website, which is by turns creepy as fuck, dull, bizarre, unsettling, and occasionally hilarious. It began as a 4-disc set, but a 5th was later complied and released. It took forever to find that one, but its various weirdnesses were worth the travail.
I DL’d lotsa goodies from Simon Mason’s now sadly defunct (but on The Internet Archive) website, including his book and some radio documentaries about them.
Ringway Manchester is one of the go-to youtube chaps re: all things radio, shortwave and otherwise, esp the bizarre.
Ringway Manchester has also put together a playlist of his numbers station videos.
ETA:
My mother V much disliked numbers station recordings, esp their usually rather staticky low quality. She actually forbid me to listen to the recordings of them! I was in my 30s, so I laughed at her once I got over the initial shock of being given such an absurd order.
I wish I could have talked to my dad about this. He retired from the CIA about 1973, but this seems like such low tech it could have been used for sending secret messages back then. Of course it may have been too secret for him to divulge anything – if he knew about it. Compartmentalized secrets and all that.
love the numbers stations and Conet Project recordings of same! (i think i may have interacted with you about this at TOP. you turned me on to that 5th album.)
listening to the recordings reminds me of learning about amateur radio with my stepdad. he encouraged me to become a licensed “ham” some 40 years ago.
today, those recordings are often played as the daily soundtrack to my work in my shop. the droning, static-y sound lends to a certain state where i am working without listening; being in the moment without having to parse lyrical voices into meaning. just… numbers repeated. this is why i prefer music in any other language than english or spanish, as i don’t pause to make sense of the words. free-form soundscapes that are conducive to my work state. kind of like what Elizabeth Fraser did with Cocteau Twins…
Mr Mason’s site re-published a story about a numbers station’s being used to pass messages to a family who were set to escape E Germany.
The man who told the story was a child at the time. His mother had to be ahem elsewhere when a crucial msg was due, so she told him to keep an ear on their shortwave radio. He did so, and took down the numbers as requested.
She was V proud of him, esp when asked how he knew the msg was really for them. He told her it was because the five either had or had not (it’s been ages, and I can’t remember) been pronounced funnif rather than funf.
She gave him a big hug, even tho the only way he could have known was by eavesdropping when other msgs had been broadcast, which he’d naturally been forbidden to do.
They did successfully make their escape, and I believe they - or he - eventually wound up in The States.
It’s so cool that you listen to that while working in your shop XD
My ears get an occasional “taste” for them, and it’s great having the news stories/doccos about them, as well as recordings of the broadcasts themselves.
Lemme see if I can find an accessible recording of Tracking the Lincolnshire Poacher, my favorite thingy about numbers stations. Mr Mason is even featured.
A UK government minister was finally forced to publicly admit, “These [numbers stations] are what you suppose they are. People shouldn’t be mystified by them. They are not for, shall we say, public consumption.”
It was also stressed that listening to numbers stations was still illegal in the UK.
