A 1970s Supernatural Short by Sable June

“Some stations never stop broadcasting — even after everyone’s gone.”

It was 1976. The air crackled with cigarette smoke. Vinyl hissed like rain. Loneliness hummed quietly behind every FM dial.

Darla Mae worked the late shift at WQRI. It was a sleepy Wisconsin radio station known for Fleetwood Mac. It also provided weather updates and the occasional missing-person report. She liked the quiet of it. She enjoyed the slow spin of the turntable. The amber glow of the “ON AIR” sign was reflected in the studio glass.

It was just her and the music.

Until one night, it wasn’t.

At 2:13 a.m., as she cued up “Rhiannon,” a warped voice bled through the static. At first she thought it was feedback — but then it said her name.

“Darla Mae…”

The sound was faint, like someone whispering from inside a drainpipe. It vanished before she breathe, leaving only the hiss of dead air. She checked every dial, every switchboard light. All was fine. Too fine.

The next night, she replayed the segment. And there it was again:

“Darla Mae… the lake.”

Mirror Lake lay just a mile down the road — a place no one swam in after dark.

By Friday, curiosity had curdled into obsession. She wrote down every word the voice spoke — Friday. Bring the light. Underneath.

So Friday night, Darla parked by the lake with her flashlight and the reel recorder. The crickets were silent. The moon poured silver over the water.

The voice led her to the shoreline.

“Underneath…”

Her light caught something in the shallows — the tip of a wooden radio tower antenna, half-rotted, tangled in vines. A microphone cord snaked beneath it. She pulled.

A hand surfaced.

Pale. Waterlogged. Wearing a headset like hers.

The corpse’s lips twitched, as if replaying old words trapped in the lungs.

“Thank you for listening to WQRI…”

When they found Darla the next morning, she was standing knee-deep in the lake, whispering call signs to no one. The recorder was gone. The body too.

The station shut down within the week.

But if you ever drive along Highway 14 on a fog-drowned night and tune to 94.7 FM, you catch the faint hum of a broadcast — a woman’s trembling voice signing off between waves of static:

“This was Darla Mae…

and you’ve been listening…

from the other side.”

⸻

🕯️ Author’s Note

I wrote this beneath the hush of a half-moon, while an old transistor hummed softly beside me. There’s something sacred about the 1970s. It was a decade that felt both alive and haunted. Every song on the radio carried a secret.

If you listen closely tonight, maybe you’ll hear one too.

— Sable June 🌙