Somehow Mark and I ended up on the subject of weird stuff you can listen to on a short wave radio. One of my favorites are "numbers stations". Below is an excerpt from a wikipedia article on the topic....
Numbers stations generally broadcast artificially generated voices reading streams of numbers, words, letters. They are in a wide variety of languages and the voices are usually female, although sometimes men's or children's voices are used. Evidence supports popular assumptions that the broadcasts are used to send messages to spies. This usage has not been publicly acknowledged by any government that may operate a numbers station,
Normally I would throw this into the "look out for black helicopters on the horizon" conspiracy theorist trash can....but about a year ago I actually heard a Spanish numbers station on my radio. I wouldn't have believed it unless I heard it myself. Is it really for spies? Who knows....but you have to admit its a little weird... Want to hear one for yourself? Click below for a Cold War era recording in German...
HINT: you need to be patient and let the "weird" music play through before you hear the voices.
Below is a recording of a different English station...
The Conet Project is a CD containing recordings of various numbers stations. The Wilco album "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" is named after a famous numbers recording. I couldn't find the complete version on YouTube but I did find a snipit at the beginning of the compilation recording below. You should recognize the voice from a song on the album.
I think the music and sounds are just as weird as the actual voices.
