Delightfully creepy.

I heard about the Conet Project on CBC a few years back. This project documented radio signals, heard on shortwave, that consist of what is believed to be spy codes, and compiled them into a set of what may be the creepiest albums in existence.

An opening signal, perhaps a buzz, a tone, a melody from a music box. Then a voice, systematically, monotonally reading off a series of numbers in any number of languages: English, German, Swedish. A closing signal. And that's it. Just a voice, reading numbers off in to the silence of a cold, black night.

From Simon Mason:

"The Conet Project is an encyclopedic document of the anomalous and uncanny broadcasts from numbers stations. A number station anonymously transmits synthesized voices reading sets of phonetic letters and / or numbers. While there is no organization that has yet claimed responsibility for these transmissions, it is assumed that the CIA, MI6 (British Secret Intelligence Service), MOSSAD (Israeli Intelligence Service), and the renamed KGB are among those who operate the numbers stations. It is also assumed that these transmissions are encoded with a "one time pad" cryptosystem which uses a string of random numbers for both encryption and decryption. Assumption and innuendo surround these transmissions, but the conspiracy theories alone do not do justice to the aural terror that these transmissions invoke. The lo-fi shortwave radio hiss, the calculated recital of German numbers by a Swedish girl, the music box which punctuates the beginnings and ends of these transmissions, and the incomprehensibility of "the Buzzer" (a mechanized pulse which buzzes 24 hours a day shifting in frequency at the top of every hour) have all of the makings for a Throbbing Gristle track, yet it is precisely the lack of intent in creating aural terror that gives these recordings substance."

There's a sample recording over here, should you wish to listen for a bit.

BRR. I don't know what it is about these recordings that gives me the willies, but they do. When I listen to them, I'm instantly cast back to the 70s, reading books that I probably shouldn't have been reading about spies and intrigue. Books like the original Bourne Identity, where secret money transfers between banks were conducted using weekly packages couriered from country to country, where microfiche was embedded under the skin of one's hip to help you carry your secrets, where men wore tapered shirts and had thick sideburns and had to speak to each other using complicated codes they deciphered using little notebooks that they carried everywhere. Hearing these recordings makes me feel cold and dark and vulnerable, like these dead, disembodied voices carry the fate of the whole world, if only you knew how to decode it. Secrets anyone can hear, but that nobody can understand, not even the person reading them.

Was it that easy? Did the entire world sleep while the messages that twisted their fates drifted by them in the ether?

Ooooh, so delightfully creepy.