I woke to a faint hiss, the kind that creeps in when you’ve left the television on after midnight. My bedroom was dark, the only light spilling faintly from the streetlamp outside my window. But the sound wasn’t coming from outside—it was inside my house. Inside my room.
I sat up, heart already beating faster than it should, and glanced around. At first I thought maybe my phone had glitched or the heating system was acting up. But then my eyes fell on the wooden nightstand across the room.
The old radio sat there.
It wasn’t mine, not really. I’d found it tucked into the back of the closet when I moved into the house. A boxy little thing with a cracked dial and fabric speaker screen, probably older than me by a few decades. I’d plugged it in once out of curiosity, but all it gave was a burst of static and the faint scent of dust burning on old wires. After that, I left it alone, convinced it didn’t work anymore.
But now—now it was on.
The red indicator light glowed faintly. A gentle hum filled the air, followed by that endless static whispering out into the stillness. I glanced at the clock on my nightstand: 2:14 a.m.
I should have unplugged it. I should have yanked the cord from the wall and shoved the thing back in the closet. But something about that noise pinned me in place. It wasn’t just white noise. It was… patterned. Like if I listened closely enough, I might understand it.
I swung my legs out of bed, moving slowly as though the radio itself might hear me. The wooden floor creaked under my weight, each step feeling like a warning. I leaned close, squinting at the dial. It hadn’t moved since the last time I touched it, stuck halfway between stations, needle trembling slightly.
The static filled my ears, scratching at the edges of my thoughts. And then—I swear I heard it—something beneath the hiss. A sound like a breath. A pause. A whisper so soft it felt like the words slid directly into my skull instead of passing through my ears.
“...hello?”
I froze. My skin prickled. It wasn’t possible. Radios don’t whisper your name. Radios don’t breathe.
I stumbled back, hitting the corner of the bed with my knee. The whisper was gone, drowned out again by the fuzz and hiss. My throat was dry, my brain working overtime to rationalise. Maybe I was half asleep. Maybe it was some late-night frequency bouncing in from far away.
The sensible thing would have been to turn it off. But when my hand reached toward the dial, the static spiked sharply, like feedback screeching across a microphone. I snatched my hand back instinctively, and the noise settled into its steady hiss again.
I stood there for what felt like hours, staring at the thing, until finally I pulled the cord out from the wall. The glow faded. The static died. The silence was worse.
Climbing back into bed, I tried to steady my breathing. Just an old radio, I told myself. Just interference. My eyes flicked to the digital clock glowing beside me. 2:19 a.m.
I closed my eyes. Sleep didn’t come easy, but eventually the weight of exhaustion pressed me down into it.
The next morning, sunlight poured through the blinds, and everything seemed embarrassingly normal. The unplugged radio sat silent on the nightstand. I considered throwing it in the trash right then and there, but some stubborn part of me resisted. Maybe I wanted proof it had really happened. Maybe I didn’t want to admit I’d been scared of nothing.
By nightfall, I had almost convinced myself it had been a dream.
Almost.
Because when I checked the plug before bed—just to be sure—I found it back in the wall socket.
I knew for a fact I hadn’t done that.
And yet, the cord lay there, firmly plugged in, waiting.
Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model
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