Engel Williams
GHOST RADIO OF 1969
by Engel M Williams
In the summer of 1969, while some five hundred thousand people were bound for the first Woodstock festival, an equally large number were chasing radio waves across the country.
It started like this: in June of ‘69, a reunion party descended on a tiny diner off Interstate-15, a couple hours outside Salt Lake City. As to be expected by a group of old classmates trying to save face and brag about their careers, wives, and cars, they made a lot of noise. So much noise that Jerry Miller found it difficult to hear the music.
You see, Jerry wanted to be an entertainment writer. The magazine he wrote for wanted him to cover national news. Woodstock had been announced a few months before and the preliminary lineup had been released in March. Shortly before the noise inside the diner had reached a critical level, Grateful Dead’s newly released Dark Star Pt. II had caught his attention. Grateful Dead was due to play at Woodstock that August, and Jerry was nursing the idea of taking off and going. How the hell was he supposed to become an entertainment writer if he didn’t just go and do the thing?
Trouble was, if he went, he might be out of a job.
With a lot of mumbling and grumbling, he got up that night and went over to the radio. Quite uncoordinated and unfamiliar with the stations (what did a man from Northern California know about Utah radio stations?), he ended up losing the station in his bid to simply raise the volume. A cry went up from the diner as a whole, startling him and ultimately sending the tuning even more out of range. Frantically trying to find the original station and with the attention of the party now fully on him (“What kind of decent man can’t find a simple station?”), he continued messing with the knob until he finally came upon something.
A man’s voice was speaking over the air, nice and slow, like you’d speak to a cornered animal or a crying child. He was talking about—well, no one was quite sure. In the few minutes of stunned silence, he bounced from topic to topic, real smooth, the way politician’s or comedians do, when you can’t help but follow along. He covered men in space, spiritual journeys, and a lot of things that Jerry had never considered. But most significantly, he said various things that wound their way into the hearts of those people in the diner. After a while, Jerry turned to the waitress and asked her about the station.
She had no idea. She hadn’t heard it before. No one had.
Jerry Miller walked out of that diner that night long after the station had gone silent with a renewed purpose. Gone were his fancies of making the two thousand mile trek across the country to Max Yugel’s dairy farm to cover the festival performances. He was now solely focused on the mystery of this station that no one had ever heard of. He researched all the radio stations broadcasting in the area, including the registered and illegal ones. He went as far as going out and interviewing locals. He found enough people that agreed they’d heard stations that they’d never been able to find again. He found those who remembered the man and what he’d said, the way that he’d spoken about things that fit them so specifically, it was like he knew all of them personally.
And after a few weeks of traveling up and down the state, Jerry Miller published his article on the Utah Ghost Station. It was a hit to say the least. People didn’t just read it, they lived and breathed it. That summer, all anyone could talk about—besides Woodstock—were radio stations and conspiracy theories. Hundreds of people flocked to Utah, their cars and vans brimming with equipment for tracing radio signals. The state enjoyed a steady increase in tourism, parents feared their children were being brainwashed by the signals they were chasing in their free time. News stations covered the national sensation, experts went on talk shows to try and either debunk the rumors or talk about how plausible it was. Jerry Miller built up a cult following. His magazine encouraged him to go wherever he wished and he took full advantage of that. Over the course of the summer, he wrote two more articles on the Utah Ghost Station, all with witness accounts, contributions from experts, and a clear passion that was impossible to miss. He had found his calling. He decided he would have been terrible at entertainment writing anyway.
Torn between going east for the festival and heading west for the ghost station, America enjoyed a summer of excitement. The Apollo 10 mission had occupied headlines for a while, then the July Moon Landing diverted much of the attention from the ghost station craze. Fans of Jerry Miller’s ghost station were angered when government officials put out a statement dismissing the plausibility of a station that didn’t exist. It became a controversial topic quickly, and after a few more weeks of debate, it was decided that it was just a conspiracy theory. Much of the fanbase gave it up, though by no means was it abandoned. There were still thousands who lived the craze, who submitted to magazines with their theories, and traveled and listened to broadcasts constantly.
There were very few rewards.
The thing about ghost radio stations is that they are hard to find. There is no specific time for the broadcast and one has to understand that there is no guarantee for the station to regularly and continuously broadcast. And in the late ‘60s, when amateur broadcasting was very much illegal without a license, one didn’t advertise the fact that they were doing an illegal broadcast. The way you found out about them was either purely by accident or by word of mouth. For a while after the craze began, thousands were claiming that they were hearing the same station as Jerry Miller. A majority of those were debunked. Copycats popped up, and the FCC started to crackdown on bootleg radio. Things turned bleak. What made the existence of the ghost station least plausible was that Jerry Miller never did hear that station again.
A few weeks into what should have been Jonathon Nelson’s senior year of college, he found himself at a crossroads.
Metaphorically speaking, Jon had been at a crossroads for a long time. It began when his high school sweetheart walked away from him—and consequently their relationship—at his birthday dinner. It was when his mother called him from the hospital and told him that his father’s heart had given out. It was obvious he had lost his way when he received the letter from U.C. Berkeley notifying him that unless he managed to find a way to pay the tuition in two week’s time, he would be dropped from his classes.
Now he was quite literally at a fork in the road. Jon hadn’t known where he was going when he got into his ‘63 Rambler. He had been on the road for about a few days now, driving aimlessly and staying in cheap motels, not caring where he went as long as it carried him far away from Berkely. He faced following I-40—which would carry him home to Arizona—or following I-15, which would carry him away to what he thought of as a blissful opportunity to avoid the consequences of his life.
Jon had never been particularly brave and the idea of driving home to his father lying weak in a hospital bed was abysmal. He turned his car around and went back the way he came. I-15 and I-40 met right outside of Barstow, California. He found a gas station and parked in a dark corner. He took a good few minutes to cry.
Jon wasn’t a bad person—or at least, he didn’t think he was. He had gone through life always doing what he thought was right. He was polite always, even when he thought he was being taken advantage of. He held the door for women, always paid for the meal on dates, and never swore or said slurs. In the words of his ex-girlfriend, he never did anything because he wanted to, he did things because he thought he had to. Right now, Jon didn’t want to go home. He didn’t want to face his mother, to tell her that he likely was not going back to U.C. Berkeley and that he had been broken up with. He didn’t want to have to look his father in the eye and admit that he wasn’t the man his father had wanted him to be. He also had a deep fear that something would happen while he was on the road and he wouldn’t make it in time to talk to his father for the last time. He knew perfectly well that the longer he dawdled, the less time he would have.
But he still couldn’t quite bring himself to get back on the road and speed home. So he cried. And cried some more.
A couple saw Jon alone in his car, crying quite shamefully. Most people, upon seeing a twenty two year old crying in his car would turn away. But Mary Perkins and Adam West were of the belief that sometimes you were meant to be in the right place at the right time. And it just so happened that this crying man presented an opportunity for them.
Mary went over and knocked on his window, smiling sweetly as Jon hurriedly wiped his eyes and rolled down the window.
“Everything alright in there?” she asked. Jon gave an unconvincing nod and she smiled at him again, this time genuine. “You been on the road long?”
“A few days now.”
“Not as easy as you expected, I’m guessing?” She hardly waited for a response before she went on. “My boyfriend and I—he’s in the bus over there—we’ve been on the road for years. First time we drove for about a day and a half I thought I’d go mad.”
He didn’t really know what to say to that, so he spent a few moments sniffling to himself, trying to avoid Mary’s bright gaze. She stared at him sadly, the way an adult observed a crying child.
“You ever heard of Jerry Miller’s ghost station?” Mary said suddenly.
Jon shrugged. “Same as everyone else, I suppose. What about it?”
“My boyfriend and I, we’re searching for it. Wanna come along?” At Jon’s face, she quickly said, “It’s harmless fun. Mostly driving around, singing along to whatever pops up on the radio. And stories. We can tell you some of the things we’ve seen on the road. I figure it might help take your mind off whatever’s bothering you. You look like you could use an adventure.”
By no means was this a normal question, but Jon reckoned he had nothing much to lose. Part of him wanted to tell her to go away. But the dominant side of him found her kind of comforting. Hadn’t he been wanting a reason to go anywhere but home? Being on the road with other people would be a welcome distraction from his loneliness. So he agreed.
The only thing that Adam said when Mary returned to him and told him that Jon would be following along was, “Another charity case?”
Mary just rolled her eyes at him and gestured for Adam to take a seat.
Mary and Adam drove one of those Volkswagen microbuses. It was a real pretty one, custom painted a bright yellow color, and with stickers from places they’d been. They had converted much of it into a bedroom crossed with a living room of sorts. Mary directed him to an overly frilly cushion chair that immediately threatened to swallow him whole. There, he sat, fiddling with his fingers in discomfort.
Adam, at the wheel, turned onto I-15. Mary leaned out the window, hair billowing around her face, and gave him one of those smiles again from the mirror. It made him feel a bit hopeful, that maybe this foray might be just what he needed. He was starting to realize that she was one of those people that knew just when you needed a smile. They drove a few hours out onto the highway, past diners and gas stations and lonely looking towns. Some way into the desert, Adam turned down the radio. He fixed dark eyes on Jon through the rearview mirror.
“So,” Adam started. “I don’t think I caught your name, son.”
Mary gave her boyfriend a look. “I told you, honey, his name is Jon.”
“Where’s home for you, Jon? I noticed your plates but where’re you headed?”
Good question. Jon still didn’t know. As much as he was uncomfortable being in the bus with them, the idea of being on the road on the way home terrified him more.
“Not sure,” he decided. “Thought I’d just drive until I figured it out.”
Adam nodded, face dark and serious in the rear mirror. “Just thought I’d ask. You look like you’re somewhere around college age.”
“Twenty two, sir.”
“Ever been?”
“I’m sorry?”
“To college.” In the mirror, those eyes were piercing. Jon looked out the window instead, a hot flush beginning to go down his face. “You seem the type. White collar shirt and letterman jacket and all that.”
Jon thought for a few moments before responding. “I don’t think it suits me very well,” he said, carefully.
Jon told him about U.C. Berkeley. That he’d done three years of business and economics, started his fourth, only to be stopped short. He told them how his breakup had been the last straw for him. How he’d just wanted to be anywhere else except for Berkeley. That he didn’t know where to go from here.
Adam nodded solemnly. “You remind me a lot of my brother. A month out from graduating, he dropped out of school, sold all his things, and shipped himself across the ocean all the way to Hawaii. Should have seen my father’s face when he found out. Thought the man was going to drop dead right in the kitchen.”
Jon shifted uncomfortably.
The older man continued, “He spent about four months over there, roaming the islands and what not. I can’t even imagine what kind of trouble he got up to but one day, a letter came home. Real fancy, official looking paper. Light as all hell too. You’d think someone had mailed a receipt for some groceries and a stick of gum or something. All it was was one page—one tiny, little paragraph. My brother had gotten himself into a bad scrape. Said he needed us immediately. When we finally got to the hospital, they told us he’d died five minutes into our flight.”
Jon swallowed and wiped sweaty palms on his pants. Mary was looking off into the distance sadly, though her hand now snaked across the emptiness of the bus to cradle Adam’s.
“Now, I’m not saying that dropping out of college will get you killed, son. Hell, if I were you I’d do it too. All I’m saying is, you’ve got around eighty more years ahead of you, Jon. Not finishing college doesn’t mean that everything gets flushed down the drain. This doesn’t even mean that you won’t go back. There’s time. Whatever the hell is chasing you all the way out here into the desert, just remember there’s always time.” His hands were clenched tightly around the wheel. It felt as though the bus were trembling a little. “My brother. He thought he didn’t have time. So, he rushed. Did everything he could. Did it all a little too fast maybe. Burnt himself out like a match.”
Silence descended in the Volkswagen. After a few minutes, Mary reached over and turned the radio up again.
“If you don’t mind me asking,” Jon said, “if you’re looking for a ghost station, why are we listening to Bowie?”
Adam cleared his throat. “Good question. The simple answer is, we’re not going to find it out here that easily.”
Mary turned around. “The idea around a ghost station, Jon, is that it’s pretty damn hard to find.”
Though he knew she said it jokingly, Jon’s cheeks burned with shame. She must have noticed because she shot him a soothing glance and reached behind her for something.
“Why don’t you have a look at that?”
It was a well used map of the country. Nice and big, with a thick red link webbing across the Western United States. There were other markers as well, circles drawn in blue ink and words scribbled out with a heavy hand.
“That’s everywhere we’ve been in the past few months,” she said. It was obvious from the jut of her chin that she was proud of it. “Adam and I’ve been chasing that signal all over the west coast since we heard it.”
Jon raised an eyebrow. “You’ve heard the station?”
Mary nodded. “And I can see you won’t believe me. But, yes, Jon. We really have. Care to tell another story, honey?”
Adam smiled grimly. “Just like you, son, when we first heard about that Miller article we thought it was a load of crap. Me and Mary, we enjoy thinking about the unknown, but we like facts as well. Science. What Miller was saying… well, it didn’t sound very plausible now did it honey?” Mary shook her head. “Miller was sprouting all this crap about lessons and phantom radio stations and how signals like that work and—well, I just couldn’t help thinking it had to be made up.
“So, beginning of the summer, Mary and I walked out of our doctor’s office for the last time. We… had wanted a family for a very long time. That day…” Adam shook his head. Mary was staring out into the night, the hand that had lovingly held her boyfriend’s now bunching the fabric of her dress. “Well, it felt like everything was falling apart. I mean, looking back it probably wouldn’t have worked anyways. I think the two of us are best built for the road. That’s no life for a child you know?
“Anyway, we just took off that day. We packed everything up into the bus and went off. At that point the article had gotten a lot of attention. I remember that day Miller went on the radio for an interview and he just kept talking about this station. And the more we listened, the more it seemed like the kind of thing we needed.
“So we drove out to Utah. At first we went around the same area that Miller had originally been in. But he’d said something about how radio waves can bounce all over depending on the frequency, you know, and whether it’s night or cold. We ended up stopping at this gas station. Mary was having a hard time of it and I was, well, I’m not the most patient man out there. Right when we needed it most it came on. All of a sudden there’s this man and he’s talking about dead ends and changed dreams and life and all this stuff. It was almost too good to be true. And then he said something. And this is the important part, son. He said, ‘The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.’”
All Jon could think was, Did they think no one had ever read Hemingway?
Mary saw the expression on his face and frowned. She reached into the dashboard and pulled out a notebook. It was clearly well-loved, and for a moment, Jon regretted that he didn’t feel passionately enough about anything to love it so much. She shoved a page in his face and pointed a finger at what she wanted him to see.
“Right there,” she said.
The whole page was filled with quotes and annotations and interpretations. Entire passages had been scribbled out only to be rewritten beneath, albeit with a few words switched around.
“That line right was something we’ve been saying back and forth to each other since we met,” Adam huffed. “Not a rare quote, we know. But it doesn’t end there. We heard the broadcast for about three minutes. And during that time, he said three different things that are personal to us. That no one else knows. Everything we could remember, we wrote down in that book right there.”
Jon scratched his head and tried not to look as skeptical as he felt. He’d taken a psychology course his first year of college and learnt all about people convincing themselves of something being real though it would be impossible. Sort of like believing that your dead loved one came back in the form of a butterfly or a pet. From the looks of it, Mary and Adam had a strong case of it.
Adam shrugged. “I don’t care if you believe or not. It’s enough that we do. And thousands of people out there believe it too.”
He felt a bit uncomfortable. He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked to Mary, who he was now starting to associate with a comforting presence. Like she knew he needed it, she gave him another million dollar smile.
“We’re trying to catch up with some other folks like us. We usually rendezvous somewhere out here, but the location changes all the time.” She pointed out into the dark desert, the horizon a hard black line. “Tracing those signals isn’t easy. That’s what Adam’s doing now. We have a mobile transmitter and tracker. We know the frequency they usually broadcast at, but we’re still a little out of range. Once we lock in, we’ll know and follow it back to them.”
They drove for a while again in silence other than the radio, though after a while that went silent too. Mary was humming something under her breath, relaxed with her feet crossed in front of her and an elbow cocked on the window. Despite her nonchalant attitude, her eyes constantly watched the display on the radio.
“—three miles off I-15… left past… ranch.”
At Jon’s expression, Mary quickly said, “It’s just the other people we were talking about. We’re all out chasing different leads, so when it comes time to rendezvous, it’s easier to just send out a broadcast. It’s good news actually. Usually we’d all meet the last day of the month at the same diner that Jerry Miller heard the broadcast. This means they have a lead.”
Adam doubled back about four different times, then smacked the steering wheel with a whoop! as he finally found where he needed to be. The directions led them off the road into the open desert and they drove in silence for a while.
Mary pointed to something in the distance and shut the radio off.
Peeking through the glass and past the glow of the headlights, Jon could just make out a gathering of cars parked in a row.
The more hardcore fans of Jerry Miller’s ghost station spent weeks and months on the road. They went from state to state, tracking radio signals and trying to lock onto their elusive radio station. They had figured that the broadcast could be coming from basically anywhere in the country. They had dedicated members on both coasts, and communicated with each other via a magazine that they created specifically for their theories and findings.
These people that Mary and Adam were meeting with covered part of the west coast, primarily circling Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. Like Mary had said, they usually tried to meet with each other on the last day of the month to exchange updates.
Adam parked the minibus alongside the other cars and went over to join what looked to already be a meeting in progress. Jon got out a bit more slowly, warily eyeing his surroundings. Mary just laughed softly and gestured for him to follow along.
There were only nine of them total. Jon couldn’t help but wonder how you were supposed to find a radio station that didn’t exist with only nine people. They were all varying ages which surprised him. He’d expected them to be similar to Mary and Adam—breaching forty, trying to reclaim the glory days of feeling young. But three of them looked to be his age, one looked to be younger, and the rest were sprinkled between their twenties and thirties.
“Mary and Adam! Was wondering when you’d show. How’s the chasing?”
The speaker was a man with a beard that desperately needed a trim. With a start, Jon realized that Jerry Miller was standing there in front of him. He looked nothing like he’d expected. He didn’t look as though he lived in a basement, writing lewd articles and trying to dissuade people from their path. Rather, he looked happy. There was dust relatively all over him and his hair was windswept, but there was a twinkle in his eye and laugh lines starting to form around his eyes.
Adam shook his hand. “Nice to see you again, Miller. Same as always. Haven’t picked the signal up again since we heard it the first time.”
Miller looked at Jon. “Who’s this? New recruit?”
Jon struggled to keep the confusion off his face. He couldn’t understand why Adam and Mary hadn’t mentioned that they knew Miller, and that they were on their way to meet him.
Jon shook his hand. “Jon. And no, sir, I’m just tagging along with them for now.”
“You can call me Jerry. Nice to meet you, Jon. And as for your luck, Adam, I don’t have much either.” He gestured at a pair of boys who looked like they were due home for curfew. “This is Andrew and Lee. These two here picked up the broadcast last week for the first time. Found them a couple hours out from the border of Arizona. Figured they’d appreciate some hands-on experience.”
Adam nodded at the boys. “If I’m correct, Miller, those two heard the station for what’s likely the last time.”
“You think we can only ever hear it once.”
Adam nodded grimly. “Makes sense if you look at the witness accounts. Doesn’t matter what people do. Listen to the same station you heard it from for forty eight hours and it’s just white noise. No one’s ever heard that broadcast twice. Seems the pattern is once and then never again."
They all looked so crestfallen, Jon couldn’t help but feel disappointed too. He scuffed his shoes in the dirt and tried to look anywhere but at them.
“Makes sense actually. I’ve been trying to work with some folks about rooting out the fake witness accounts. Now that you mention it, I think you could be right. Makes tracking the signal, kind of impossible. But I wonder…”
Jon looked up to find Miller looking at him curiously. “You said you weren’t a recruit. Have you ever heard the broadcast, Jon?”
When he shook his head, Mary asked, tentatively, “Would you like to?”
Sittin in Miller’s ‘64 Ford, Jon realized that he had been set up. Adam and Mary had surely come upon that hypothesis long before they came across him in the parking lot. It could have just as easily been someone else going through a difficult time. They’d simply thought that someone like him, who was at a crossroads of his life would be likely to hear the broadcast.
They set him up in Miller’s car and told him to do whatever he thought felt right and then left him alone. Jon rested his head on the steering wheel, unable to come to another conclusion besides how stupid this was. While he was listening, the others would be in their various cars, trying to pick up any signals that would be coming in. If Jon theoretically found the station, they’d possibly be able to lock onto its location and then bingo.
He sighed. There was nothing else to do other than try to humor them. After it failed, he was determined to ask one of them to drive him back out into the desert to his Rambler.
He switched on the radio and lazily began flipping through the stations.
The thing about things like this, is that regardless of your personal beliefs, existence is not arguable. You can believe or disapprove of something all you want, but there is no changing the truth. It was almost comical how quickly the broadcast came on.
Jon’s fingers stilled on the dial as the broadcaster’s voice came trickling over the air.
“Life is unavoidable in all its definitions. Regardless if you’re ready, it comes at you and it doesn’t stop. If you think of it like a spin on the ferris wheel at the fair, you can’t get off until it’s over. All that screaming you’re doing when you reach the top isn’t doing anything to the wheel, it’s affecting you. Shaking affects you, not the wheel.
“So, when it comes down to it, you have to go. Ain’t anything else to do other than follow the turn of the wheel. Girlfriends come and go. Things fall away and your dreams come crashing down. Doesn’t mean it’s over.
“Go.”
The others let him stay in the car as long as he wanted. Jon cried for what was the second time that night. He cried for all the things that he’d lost and all the things that hadn’t gone his way. When he was done, he quietly asked Mary and Adam to drive him back to his Rambler.
They did so, Adam more kind than he’d been all night. They’d gotten what they hoped was the right signal, and as soon as they said their goodbyes they roared off in the night, the yellow minibus disappearing in the dark.
Jon didn’t waste any time. He drove until he made his way back to I-40 and then he followed it home.
In winter of 1969, Jerry Miller wrote his final article about the Utah Ghost Station. He wrote that the signal had been traced. He didn’t say where. It wasn’t important. All that mattered was that it was real.
The controversy continued for a while more. Miller had been lacking in his article. Critics thought that there were too little details. Even the supporters were upset when the broadcaster wasn’t revealed. All Miller said was that it had been traced by a pair of native Virginians who lived on the road, and that they couldn’t have done it without the help of a man who had lost his way.
And that was that.