Photo: Tom Organ / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
SEASON 2 · ALL SIX PARTS · OUT NOW
In October 1977, an Air Force station on a ridge above a small Pennsylvania town went dark.
Nobody ever explained why. The only thing left behind was a steel door with two lines stenciled in red, and the second line was never explained either.
DO NOT LISTEN.
The Station is here. All six parts dropped on Halloween night, so there's no waiting a week between chapters. Start tonight and you can hear the whole thing, beginning to end, in just under two hours.
If you've been with the show for a while, you know where Midnight Signals usually lives: in the legends, the folklore, the strange history, and the stories people have been passing around in the dark for centuries. The Station is different. It's the first Midnight Signals Story, a tale with no legend behind it at all, told in the same late-night voice, built from scratch for this show.
What's behind the door
On the last Saturday of June, four friends who have just graduated from high school, Nora, Eli, Cass, and Dev, climb Copper Ridge above the town of Harlow, Pennsylvania. They're looking for Site Kestrel, the station that shut down without a word in 1977. Behind a rusted fence they find the door. Behind the door they find a room full of machines, and a single reel of tape still threaded in a recorder, as if someone meant to come back for it.
Eli gets the old generator running. Dev presses play.
And on the drive back down the mountain, Dev begins to hum.
One reel. Still threaded. Photo: Badseed / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
From there the story spreads the way a sound does. Out of one bedroom and into Harlow's little AM station, out of Harlow and onto the evening news, and from the news into every phone, speaker, and siren on Earth. By the time the world realizes it should stop broadcasting, it learns something worse: a world that can't broadcast can't hold itself together.
How to listen
In order, all the way through, ideally late. Each part ends somewhere you won't want to leave, and they were written to be heard back to back. Headphones are recommended. Yes, we see the irony.
The episodes
PART 1 · DO NOT LISTEN · 16 MIN
The climb, the door, the tape. Everything begins with one press of a button.
MIDNIGHT SIGNALS
The Station, Part 1: Do Not Listen
A real Cold War Air Force station, 1973. Site Kestrel is fiction. Places like this were not. Photo: U.S. Air Force, Opheim AFS, Montana / Wikimedia Commons, public domain
PART 2 · THE TOWN · 16 MIN
At 6:03 a.m., the host of Harlow's morning show stops in the middle of the weather. Eleven hundred households are tuned in.
MIDNIGHT SIGNALS
The Station, Part 2: The Town
PART 3 · THE FALL · 18 MIN
At 2:19 a.m. on the first of August, two hundred million phones go off at once. Then the world is ordered to go silent.
MIDNIGHT SIGNALS
The Station, Part 3: The Fall
PART 4 · THE QUIET · 19 MIN
Eleven miles off the coast of Maine, four hundred survivors live by rules painted on plywood. No speakers. No humming. No singing. Then a storm washes a working radio ashore.
MIDNIGHT SIGNALS
The Station, Part 4: The Quiet
The real coast of Maine, where Gannet Rock would sit. Photo: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
PART 5 · THE SOURCE · 23 MIN
A brass key, a hand-drawn map, and a walk across a silent America, following the long lines of people who are all heading the same way.
MIDNIGHT SIGNALS
The Station, Part 5: The Source
PART 6 · THE ANSWER · 23 MIN · FINALE
The night of the spring equinox. A reel marked Complete. And the story isn't over when the towers go dark.
MIDNIGHT SIGNALS
The Station, Part 6: The Answer
A note before you press play
Most episodes of Midnight Signals start with something that already exists out there: an old legend, a piece of folklore, a strange chapter of history. The Station started with nothing but a locked door and a question. It's the first time I've built a story entirely from the ground up and told it start to finish, the way I'd want to hear one at two in the morning. It won't be the only one, but these will stay rare. The legends are still the heart of this show.
If The Station gets under your skin, I'd love to hear about it. Just hit reply. I read every one.
— Russ
Help the signal spread
Midnight Signals is an independent show, and the only way it grows is by word of mouth. If you made it through all six parts, the best thing you can do is send The Station to one person who likes a story in the dark, and leave a rating wherever you listen. Follow along on Instagram at @midnightsignalsshow and on TikTok at @midnight.signals.
Image credits. All images are from Wikimedia Commons and used under their stated licenses. No changes were made apart from resizing. Header: "Hannington transmitter lights the sky" by Tom Organ, CC BY-SA 2.0. Tape recorder: "Revox D-36 reel-to-reel tape recorder" by Badseed, CC BY-SA 3.0. Radar tower: "FPS-7 Radar Tower 1973, Opheim Air Force Station, Montana" by the U.S. Air Force, public domain. Lighthouse: "Pond Island Light" by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, CC BY 2.0.
The Station is a Midnight Signals Story and a work of fiction. Midnight Signals blends history, folklore, and dramatized storytelling. Some names, places, and events are fictionalized or illustrative. Characters are fictional, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.