Transmissions from the Fringe

Weird, true, and told without blinking. Short dispatches from the edges of the real, in the Wolfman's voice — Paul Harvey meets Art Bell from a station that shouldn't exist. From GZS and Niche of One.

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Episode 25 · 00:04:41

Dead Mountain

Nine experienced mountaineers cut their way out of their own tent from the inside, and ran barefoot into a Siberian night at forty below. Not one of them made it back to it.
Episode 24 · 00:04:18

The Mask

For about ninety seconds one night in nineteen eighty-seven, someone reached up, took hold of the airwaves over a major American city, put on a rubber mask, and to this day not one soul knows who it was.
Episode 23 · 00:04:22

Flight 19

Five bombers went out over the water and never came back. Then they sent one plane to find them, thirteen men in a flying boat, and a tanker crew watched that one become a pillar of fire on the sea.
Episode 22 · 00:04:25

Object in the Woods

A small-town radio newsman got to the woods before the Army did. He took photographs, he recorded the witnesses, and about a week later two men in suits made sure you would never hear any of it.
Episode 21 · 00:04:35

Rendlesham Forest

A deputy base commander of a United States Air Force installation walked into an English forest at three in the morning with a tape recorder running, and half a lifetime later you can still hear his voice climb.
Episode 20 · 00:03:24

The Recruitment

On a winter night in twenty twelve, a message appeared on the internet looking for a very particular kind of person, and the people who solved it were never heard from again.
Episode 19 · 00:03:22

The Book That Won't Be Read

There is a book six hundred years old that no one alive can read, and the people who tried hardest to crack it were the best codebreakers their countries ever produced.
Episode 18 · 00:03:35

The Black Knight

There is a satellite that has been circling the Earth for thirteen thousand years, watching us, and the truth about it is stranger than the lie.
Episode 17 · 00:03:13

The Visitor

In the autumn of twenty seventeen, something came in out of the dark between the stars, rounded the sun, and left, and it is the first such thing we have ever caught in the act.
Episode 16 · 00:03:35

The Star That Forgets to Shine

Fourteen hundred light years from here, in the constellation of the Swan, there is a star that keeps going dark for no reason anyone has been able to prove.
Episode 15 · 00:03:02

The 52-Hertz Whale

Somewhere in the North Pacific there is a voice that has been calling for more than thirty years, in a register no other whale will answer.
Episode 14 · 00:03:12

The Golden Record

Every story on this show so far has been us, down here, listening to the dark. This last one is the other direction. This is what we sent back.
Episode 13 · 00:03:07

The Reply

In nineteen seventy-four we shouted one sentence at the stars. Twenty-seven years later, something wrote an answer in a field of wheat.
Episode 12 · 00:02:58

The Child Voice

Of all the coded voices that lived on the shortwave dial, the one that frightened people most sounded like a little girl.
Episode 11 · 00:02:58

The Bloop

In the summer of nineteen ninety-seven, the bottom of the Pacific Ocean made a noise so big it broke every rule we had for what is down there.
Episode 10 · 00:03:05

It Is Not an Aircraft

A young pilot flew out over the water at dusk, started describing something to the man on the radio, and got about as far as a person can get before the sentence stopped.
Episode 9 · 00:02:50

The Hum

Most people in the world have never heard it. The ones who have cannot make it stop.
Episode 8 · 00:02:51

The Hessdalen Lights

There is a valley in central Norway where the lights come down into the hills, and for once the scientists went up to meet them instead of laughing them off.
Episode 7 · 00:02:48

Vrillon

On a Saturday evening in southern England, the news was running, and then for about six minutes the news was not in charge of the channel anymore.
Episode 6 · 00:02:53

The Ghost Ship

Out in the Strait of Malacca, between Sumatra and the Malay coast, two ships caught the same distress call on the same night, and what it said was worse than silence.
Episode 5 · 00:02:48

The Lincolnshire Poacher

Somewhere a tape deck clicked on, played a few bars of an old hunting song, and then a woman started counting.
Episode 4 · 00:03:05

Seventy-Two Seconds

The universe has said exactly one word to us, and it said it in the summer of nineteen seventy-seven. ...you're tuned to G Z S, one ninety-seven point seven, and this is Transmissions from the Fringe. August fifteenth, nineteen seventy-seven. A field outside Delaware, Ohio. Ohio State University ran
Episode 3 · 00:03:06

The Intrusion

There is an hour of the night when the television stops talking to you and starts talking to itself.
Episode 2 · 00:03:09

The Long Echo

Some nights you talk to the sky. Some nights it talks back. ...you're tuned to G Z S, one ninety-seven point seven, and this is Transmissions from the Fringe. Late summer, nineteen twenty-seven. A Norwegian civil engineer named Jorgen Hals sits at his receiver outside Oslo, listening to a shortwave
Episode 1 · 00:02:58

The Buzzer

Somewhere in the forests west of Moscow, a machine has been clearing its throat for fifty years.