(Introductory Audio Collage by Author, Jennifer Waits. Additional Production by One Thousand Bird’s Jackie! Zhou)

“Is anybody listening? Is something out there?” Many late night radio DJs get an eerie feeling pondering these questions while alone in the studio. Similarly, when we hear audio disturbances or unexplained noises over the radio, our thoughts sometimes veer toward the supernatural.

Despite being around for over a century, radio can still feel like magic. Sounds mysteriously traveling through the ether can bring up spooky associations, providing excellent fodder for horror, thriller and sci-fi. Villains, like ghosts, aliens, Satan and stalkers, that harness radio as a tool for terror highlight a constellation of mythologies and fears related to technology, radio, sound and solitude.

Radio is often described as one of the most intimate forms of media, in which the disembodied voice of the announcer can feel like it is speaking directly to you. It’s not surprising that listeners might feel that the DJ is by their side in times of solitude. Radio station owner and DJ Stevie Wayne plays on that dynamic in her on-air persona in the 1980 horror film classic The Fog, describing herself as “your night light,” and flirtatiously suggesting to her radio audience that they “stay up with me and I’ll figure out some way to keep you occupied.”

Taken to an extreme, some listeners may feel too close a relationship to the voice on the radio – like the stalker fan in the 1971 film Play Misty for Me. Staying up into the wee hours to tune in to her favorite DJ Dave Garver, she was delighted when he recognized her voice from her late night calls to the station. Initially flattered by his number one fan, Garver was unprepared for her deadly attraction.

But what happens if the voice on the air is disrupted? Or when the voice begins to narrate and describe a terror seen only to them? In both the original and remake (2005) of The Fog, DJ Stevie Wayne is perched on the edge of the sea, watching as a sinister fog rolls in, bringing unwelcome visitors with it. One of the first indications of the unseen invaders happens sonically, with dogs barking for hours and pay phones simultaneously ringing all around town. Eventually, we have full-on breakdowns, with tape players changing speed on their own, strange voices appearing on tape, power outages, and gauges and instruments going haywire.

Radio interference is also a harbinger of doom in the 2019 sci-fi film The Vast of Night. It’s the 1950s and teen switchboard operator Fay Crocker hears otherworldly sounds over the local Cayuga, New Mexico radio station and is mesmerized. Much of the town is occupied at a high school basketball game, so she has a hard time finding anyone to corroborate her findings. Even the station DJ Everett Sloan jokes on-air about “the five of you out there listening.” He initially suspects it’s another station crossing with their signal, asking Fay, “Did it sound Mexican?” But she responds that “It sounded like something that could be unsafe.”

This idea that something unsafe could be traveling through the airwaves taps into global fears, both in the early days of radio and even today, about radio being used for mind-control and for disseminating propaganda. This is taken to ridiculous extremes in the campy sci-fi film Bad Channels (1992), in which aliens take over small town radio station KDUL and use its newly boosted 50,000 watt broadcast signal to kidnap women. Shock jock Dan O’Dare ushers in the station’s new rock format, which hypnotizes female listeners, teleporting them to the alien’s lab in the studio. While the main villain is the alien; heavy metal, Satanism (KDUL is 666 AM), and sex are woven into the plot, clearly referencing cultural debates about musical content.

The feared evil of metal music is more artfully depicted in the 1986 film Trick or Treat. Eddie, a disaffected “headbanger” teen, is left despondent after his musical icon Sammi Curr dies. A radio DJ friend consoles him by giving him Curr’s final, unreleased recording: a studio demo on acetate. After Eddie spins the record in his bedroom, the spirit of the dead rocker is released and hidden messages calling for revenge and violence are unlocked when the record is played backwards. After copying it onto cassette, more mayhem ensues and a girl ends up in the hospital following a demonic attack while she listened to the album on her Walkman. Tension builds as midnight on Halloween approaches, when the demo is scheduled to be played over the radio. Eddie races to stop the broadcast, as he worries about the reach of the angry ghost of Sammi Curr, saying, “He could come out of anything that picks up a signal anywhere - any radio, any stereo, anything.”

While many of these radio-facilitated spirits are conquered by heroic DJs and friends, some are not so lucky. In “The Flip Side of Satan,” a 1971 episode of Night Gallery, DJ J.J. Wilson has just arrived at his new graveyard shift gig from midnight to 6am at the unoccupied, tiny, remote station KAPH. He is seemingly in charge of the airwaves. But something odd happens. While his theme song is upbeat and funky, J.J. is confused when the first record he spins sounds like a dirge. We see a Satanic face and later a ghostly female figure. While he announces groovy track titles like “Good Vibes,” the music in the studio sounds increasingly like a horror movie soundtrack, intertwined with a hellacious voice chanting “Oh, Lucifer.” There’s feedback in the headphones and J.J. tries to shut down the station. After a power surge, we hear “The Prince of Darkness will receive the condemned.” And that’s the end of our DJ. It brings to mind a scene from The Fog, when late night DJ Stevie Wayne refers to midnight as “the witching hour.” And, as we’ve seen, in many of these films and shows, danger is lurking when perhaps we feel the most vulnerable: late at night, when it’s quiet and we are alone. In those moments, unexpected sounds, like static and feedback (not to mention demonic screeds and alien wails) can provoke anxiety. Expected sounds, like music and a DJ’s voice, are a balm.