You are now listening to Cryptid Cocktail Party.
Welcome back to another episode of Crypto Cocktail
Party, a show where we have a few drinks, share
a few laughs, take a dive into the unknown. I'm
your very sick host, Dave, and I'm joined as
always by my wonderful co -host, Sarge. But we
also have another guest today, Nash Hoover, returning
guest. He's the host of Chasing Legends. Sorry,
my throat's fucked up. What's going on, man?
How's it going? Good, guys. Thanks for having
me back on. I'm excited to... Excited to be back
talking with you fools. Hopefully you can stump
me this time. Yeah, I don't think that's going
to happen, but it's nice. Dare to dream, guys.
Yeah, it's nice of you to pretend. What's funny
is that when I was putting the clips together
for this, you're the only guest I think that
we have on where I actually have guests like
clips prepared for some reason. I don't know
why, but the McKellie and Bembe sounds were still
in my mixer and I had to just now replace them.
Well, yeah. I mean, what's going on? Anything,
anything new, exciting, anything? No, nothing
really at the moment. It's just kind of, you
know, it's taking her day by day here in the
frozen tundra of Minnesota. Ooh. Yeah. That's
well, among other dangers currently. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Anyways, Sarge, how are you? I'm magnificent.
I'm still riding high from our in -person meeting.
Yeah, it was a lot of fun. That was a good time.
So I got sick that weekend, but you didn't get
sick? No. No. You suck. I'm still fine. I hate
that. He's clearly stronger than you. Very much
so. He goes to the gym. I do this. I have to
go to the gym so I can haul this giant head around
and not look weird. All right. So I'm really
just building muscle to take some of the focus
off of my massive head. Just only doing neck
workouts? Basically, yeah. You look like Alex
Jones, just neck. Just a thick -necked man. All
right. So I got an episode for you guys today.
I don't think it's not a cryptid. It's more of
a mystery, I guess. It's something that I've
been fascinated with. So I guess before we get
into anything, I want to set the scene for this
week's episode real quick. So picture this, guys.
It's late at night. You can't sleep. You're bored,
or maybe you're just doom -scrolling your own
thoughts in your head. So you do what any normal
person would do living in the modern era of technology
that we are currently in. Watch porn. No, that's
you turn on your old AM -FM radio, and you're
scanning through the stations trying to find
something, anything. listen to you know maybe
you're hoping to land on loveline or coast to
coast am or some other weird late night shit
but then instead of hearing music or a dr drew
you hear this fuck you oh i'm so fucking excited
I fucking love number stations. Well, I guess
I'm banned from ever coming back. But that's
it. That's all you hear. You just hear that.
There's no introduction, no explanation, nothing.
Just that repeating over and over and over. So
what was it? Who was it? And why was it? Well,
that's what we're going to try and figure out
today. Because this week, as Nash guests, we're
going to be covering number stations. what are
number stations well i'm assuming nash is very
familiar with them sarge do you are you familiar
with number stations at all oh fuck yeah yeah
what do you so oh yeah this is a thing man i
love this i discovered this a long time ago uh
and i forget what i was on i was on some website
or something where they it was like a long form
article about it and then anytime Like a decent
YouTuber puts up a video on number stations.
I'm just glued to it. Yeah. And Nash, what's
your background with number stations? Yeah, I
mean, they kind of came across my radar years
ago. I think a friend of mine actually kind of
brought them to my attention because he had found
some website that kind of had like an archive
of kind of the more famous ones and he was able
to kind of go through it and listen to all of
them. But yeah, just like Sarge said, you know,
it's kind of one of those things where, you know,
anytime someone come across some, something of
somebody talking about one, you got to kind of,
you know, no pun intended tune in and hear what
they have to say about it. Cause it's, yeah,
it's interesting. It's, it's a pretty wild phenomenon.
It's not something that's super common anymore,
but yeah, years ago back in the heyday of. the
you know standard radio yeah it was kind of more
you know it was in the cold war like espionage
yeah yeah we'll get into that i'm sure fun fact
all of them are available on spotify you can
just listen to them it's amazing yeah this is
called the conet project you can just go on you
can listen there's hundreds of them all on one
station so oh so yeah so for anyone out there
who doesn't know Number stations at their core,
their anonymous radio broadcast, usually heard
on shortwave radio that consists of voices reading
a sequence of numbers or letters or both. Sometimes
they'll start with some sort of tone or a short
piece of music. Other times it just cuts straight
to the message. almost all of them follow kind
of like the same like rigid structure the transmissions
will always start with at like a specific time
usually right on the hour or the half hour a
voice will begin reading groups of numbers or
letters or a combination of the two usually in
sets of like four or five and each group is read
slowly and clearly and the messages will then
be repeated multiple times and it just ends there's
no sign off or explanation it's just radio silence
after that now To someone who just happens to
stumble across one of these messages, it just
sounds like nothing, just noise. But that's because
it really wasn't meant to make sense to everyone.
And what really makes these stations truly stand
out is how consistent they are. Most of them
have been following the same schedule for years,
sometimes decades. They'll use the same voice,
the same intro sounds, the same formats over
and over and over again. Not unlike this show.
What's weird is that they are almost never interfered
with. No public agency has ever claimed responsibility
for them, but they also aren't treated like pirate
radio, if you know what I mean. They're just
kind of allowed to exist, which is weird. But
yeah, so that's kind of what number stations
are. So do you guys want to hear some? Fuck yeah.
All right. Yes. Yeah, don't tease us, bud. So
first up, they call this the NATO phonetic alphabet.
Yankee. Houghton. Foxtrot. Yankee. Houghton.
Foxtrot. Group. One. Zero. Group. One. Zero.
Text. Text. November. Lima. Sierra. That was
my favorite because I just like the way they
say November. Yeah. It's crazy because it's kind
of hard to pick out the accent. Yeah. So, Nash,
you got hotel way before I did. I was like, what
the fuck is she saying? Yeah, it's Yankee Hotel
Foxtrot. It's not spelling anything specific.
It's just random. Yeah. It's the same letter
sequence over and over again, but it's... I wonder
if it's like a code to a cipher or something.
It could be. And then, yeah, because then there
was the group one zero. Yeah. Yeah. So this one
was active from the 1970s and it went silent
or sometime around like 2011. It transmitted
multiple times a day on like a super strict schedule.
And shortwave hobbyists were actually able to
track where this one was being broadcast from
and trace the source to Israel. So that's cool.
Oh, geez. Nice. Well, we're getting canceled.
It was somewhere in the Tel Aviv, central Israel
area. Same building as the DHS Twitter account.
Before you go on, do you know if the message
ever changed? No, they're always... Yeah, no,
the messages are always the same thing. from
to from 1970 up until 2011 that's the message
has never changed there's only one that we'll
get to that kind of intermittently has changes
but it's more so like the location than what
is being transmitted location is where it was
broadcasted from or yeah um all right so this
next one is called the swedish rhapsody and it
is a nightmare and i hate it I think I've heard
this one before. I don't like it. I don't like
it. Fuck it. This is music you hear before a
Victorian child disembowels you. It's not good.
Like you hear this while a guy in a plague doctor
mask is winding a thing that's slowly pulling
out your intestines. The ice cream truck full
of corpses. And then just a German child reading
numbers. Yeah, that one sucks. Meanwhile, people
all over the world are running through their
door to catch up to the ice cream truck. So this
one was first logged in the 1950s and was active
all the way up until 1998. So this one is actually
one of the very few number stations that has
been kind of like solved. It originated from
Poland, and we know this thanks to declassified
records from Polish intelligence, and it was
declassified in around like 2014. So this one
we know where it came from and what it was used
for, which I'm sure you can figure out what it
was used for, but we'll get into it later. And
then next up we have, this is probably the most
well -known number station to ever exist. It's
called the Lincolnshire Poacher because of the
song that plays in the beginning. Yeah, there's
another creepy song, sorry. I feel like everyone
knows this one. Yep. This is just a guy who's
really proud of his Casio keyboard. 3, 9, 7,
1, 5. 3, 9, 7, 1, 5. So it's just that, and then
it just repeats the creepy -ass song over and
over again. So this one was first detected in
the early 70s, like most of them, and eventually
went silent in 2008. So this one broadcasted
daily. but sometimes on multiple frequencies
at once, which strongly suggests that this was
like a state -level kind of operation and not
some hobbyist doing it. And wouldn't you know,
when the signal was tracked, it was tracked back
to a Royal Air Force base in Cyprus. So it was
British. Oh. I was going to say, the voice sounds
British. Yeah. Well, I also picked that up from
the song. The name of the song. Yeah, it's very
British. And then finally, there's a million
of these, but the last one I have for you is
called UVB -76, a .k .a. The Buzzer. So this
one is just a consistent buzzing sound, but rarely
every once in a while there will be a voice message,
and this one does change from time to time. I'm
sure you can guess right away almost where this
one comes from. of course we are located in America
we are Americans it's so Russian yeah So that
one's just that, and then it ends in just a bunch
of buzzing sounds. So this one was detected also
in the late 70s, and this one is still currently
active, and it runs 24 hours a day, seven days
a week. Originally, the broadcast was traced
to somewhere just outside of Moscow, but moved
to now be broadcast somewhere near St. Petersburg.
So some of these ran for decades, some shut down
quietly, some are still going on, which brings
us to the obvious question. Why? Let's dive into
some theory, starting with the obvious and most
mostly proven one, which is espionage. Right.
Yeah. These broadcasts are easily one of the
best ways to send instructions to people who
are operating covertly without ever identifying
who the message was for or where it's going or
even really where it's coming from. Instead of
direct messages, the information is turned into
numbers or letters or tones and broadcast openly.
So any asshole with the radio can hear it, but
only the intended recipient. knows what to do
with it if that makes sense yeah uh that's why
the messages sound like a mishmash of nonsense
like they're supposed to the listener already
knows when to tune in what frequency to listen
to and how to interpret what they hear so there's
no back and forth no confirmation no response
they just listen write it down decode it that's
it and from an intelligence perspective this
is fucking perfect like There's no digital trail.
There's no phone records. There's no internet
traffic to intercept. They're using antiquated
technology that anyone can use, which makes it
harder to trace. And because it's a broadcast,
there's no way to tell who actually received
the message. You can't trace it back to any specific
person because it's broadcast to everyone and
in no specific place. It also explains why these
stations ran for so long, like unchanged. If
something works and doesn't get compromised,
just don't fuck with it. Just keep using the
same voices, same format, same schedule year
after year. And it also explains why governments
never officially acknowledge them or try to shut
them down because admitting they exist would
mean admitting what they're used for. You can't
do that. That's just why would you? It's interesting
to me, though, that most of them like the message
doesn't change over like a 30, 40, 50 year period.
It almost makes you think that there's something
else in the transmission that they're supposed
to be listening for that's maybe mildly different.
Well, that's kind of what I was thinking. I was
wondering if the message is actually in what's
not being said. Maybe it's in slight variations
in the time between them saying things. that
could be that could be what you're actually supposed
to look for kind of like a reverse morris code
almost like the silence is because the few yeah
because the few word just literally repeats the
same thing over and over again and then there's
like the the bit of gaps in between and it starts
again and there's gaps in between yeah it almost
kind of maybe that's what they're that's like
the decipher is the your your code is the time
between Yeah, the silence are kind of like the
dots and dashes of a Morse code rather than the
actual numbers having to be deciphered. That
makes sense. But then the other thing that I
was thinking of too is that these are all playing
and they haven't changed. But when you think
about the countries that are involved, they're
countries that are still relatively stable nations
right now. So I'm wondering if those codes would
change if there was a nuclear attack. Right.
Or if there was like an invasion. Well, it's
funny. It's funny to me that that Russian one
is still. Yeah. Sarge, you kind of picked up
on something there. So these stations, they just
quietly operate in the background and quietly
disappear when they're no longer useful. But
what if Sarge and Nash, these number of stations
aren't just mundane bureaucratic tools? What
if it's something more, more doomsday scenario?
This theory, which is my favorite, is known as
the doomsday signal slash dead hand theory. And
this is where the number stations go from being
just haunted lullabies meant for 007 and become
a little bit more existential. So the idea behind
this theory is that some of these broadcasts,
especially the ones that continuously transmit,
aren't meant to send instructions at all. They're
meant to signal that everything is normal. And
the message isn't what's being broadcast. It's
the fact that the broadcast is still happening.
Take, for example, the Russian buzzing signal
we listened to earlier. That one runs for 24
hours a day, seven days a week. As long as that
signal continues, everything is fine. If it were
ever to stop permanently, that would mean something
catastrophic has happened, say, for instance,
a nuclear strike. According to this theory, the
signal acts essentially like a heartbeat. As
long as it's there, the command structures are
still intact. If it goes silent, it could trigger
an automatic response, a .k .a. retaliation without
human input. It's like a dead man's switch. A
system designed to ensure that even if leadership
is wiped out, they can still fuck you up. And
there is some validity to this theory. Because
during the Cold War, the idea of an automated
system like this absolutely existed. Both sides
were terrified of what's known as a decapitation
strike, which is the idea that leadership could
be wiped out before they could give any orders.
So systems were designed to make sure that someone
or something would respond no matter what. Well,
yeah, because didn't Russia have almost a dead
hand thing where even if it detected a nuclear
strike, it just would launch all of its arsenal
at all of its enemies? And then it's theorized
that it's still active, even though they were
like, oh yeah, we turned it off. Yeah, it's pretty
much that. Which is funny because like so many
times they have almost irradiated the entire
planet by accident. Yeah, what was that one time
where they detected something, it was like a
system glitch and they thought a missile was
coming, but luckily the guy that was like on
the radar station or whatever was like called
and was like, hey, is this legit? Instead of
like pushing the button. Well, I think that's
also the premise of the song 99 Red Balloons.
Is it really? Yeah. Somebody apparently had released
a bunch of balloons and the radar picked it up.
It's a nuclear strike and it's just a bunch of
fucking balloons. Could you imagine if that's
how we all went out? This is like a bad birthday
party gone wrong. It's a boy. Just turned into
a fucking fallout. Yeah. It's a bad gender reveal
party. It just turns into a fucking nuclear holocaust.
What are we going to do with all these balloons?
Just set them loose. Some guy's running. No!
And it's Fallout. But the thing about this theory,
where it kind of falls short, is that some of
these ongoing stations have gone silent before.
There have been outages, maintenance gaps, even
weird moments where other audio came through
the frequency, and none of those moments ended.
with the world descending into chaos. Now, that's
not to say that they can toggle that on and off
as needed for whatever reason, like for repairs
or something like that. I'm just saying it's
happened and we're still all alive. Or maybe
it's possible that some of these number stations
do operate in that capacity and others are strictly
for passing information along. I mean, it could
be a combination of the two. Yeah, and there
could be backup stations that we don't know about.
Like if that one goes offline, they know to switch
over this frequency to make sure. And that could
be why the Russian one switches between two different
points. Yeah, and why the British one is in Cyprus.
Yeah, well, the British one's not running anymore.
That one's... Yeah. Now, once you step away from
spies and nukes, the next leap people take is
usually pretty obvious. What if these broadcasts
aren't meant for humans at all? So the argument
for we're trying to contact aliens starts with
the numbers themselves. Math is one of the few
things we as humans assume would be universally
understandable. Why we assume that extraterrestrials
would have adopted. Arabic numerals, I have no
idea. Or the military phonetics. Yeah. But if
you're trying to communicate with non -human
intelligence or whatever, numbers kind of make
more sense than words, I guess. People who buy
into this theory make it a point to talk about
how bland and emotionless the broadcasts are.
The voices are flat. The pacing is robotic from
Russia. I can understand. Yeah. Yeah. There's
no inflection. There's no urgency. There's no
attempt to sound remotely human or friendly.
It's just information. They also like to point
to the nature of the broadcast. Like they're
not targeted. They aren't sent from point A to
point B. They're just blasted out into the void,
which they say feels more like a beacon than
an actual broadcast. Now there's another version
of the theory that flips it. and suggests that
the stations are actually relays and they're
rebroadcasting messages that come from somewhere
else using a format that we can generate, but
we just have no idea what the fuck they're saying.
Now, obviously, there's zero evidence for any
of this, obviously, but people like it. Yeah.
Weird. There's no evidence, but people still
believe it. It's almost like all conspiracies,
most conspiracies are bullshit. I almost said
all there and I apologize. I can see how they
might come to the conclusion. Like the broadcasts,
they don't behave like normal human communication.
And the ones that have been going on forever,
like they don't adapt, they don't respond, and
they don't care who or if anyone at all is listening.
They just kind of exist in our world. And there
are a million more theories about what they might
be, but we don't have time to cover all of them.
So let's talk about what we do know about these
stations. well first we know the broadcasts are
real they've been logged recorded and monitored
for decades by people all around the world we
know they're deliberate they follow schedules
they use consistent formats many of them ran
for years sometimes decades without changing
up anything we also know that some of them were
traced to real physical locations like military
bases and government facilities in a few rare
cases official records confirmed what they were
and what they were being used for And we know
they didn't all stop when the Cold War ended.
Some went quiet in the 90s, some lasted into
the 2000s. And like we heard, there's still one
going on today in Russia. What we don't know
is how many of these stations ever existed, how
many were actually used for meaningful communication,
or how many are active right now. We don't know
who was listening, how often the messages that
people received were acted on, or what, if any,
of the broadcasts ever actually meant. Sorry
to interrupt you. Do we know... like when the
first one was ever like heard like do we know
when these kind of started well i think dave
didn't you say 1950s i think that's well that
was like one of the ones that like ran until
the 50s but i was wondering if maybe there was
maybe they started longer or earlier than that
i think with what i read is that one of the first
ones to ever was like i think honestly like world
war one like they really they didn't last long
i think it was just during the war they were
going on It wasn't like the Cold War where it
started in the 50s and then ended in the 2000s.
These were shorter ones. That was the first time
number stations were used was during World War
I, World War II era. But yeah, the first one
to be discovered and last as long as it did was
the one in the 50s, the Swedish Rhapsody one.
That must be what I read and I just misunderstood
what they were saying because I thought they
said... number stations started to appear in
the fifties, but that's crazy. World war one.
Yeah. They weren't. Yeah. I don't know if they
were considered number stations. Cause like I
said, they weren't, they didn't last as long
as like, I don't think it'd be, I don't think
they could be categorized as like the cold war
number stations that we know today. Right. That
was just one of the first examples was they used
them back in like the early world wars. Sorry.
I ran out of breath. Okay. Sorry. We're boring
you. No, no, I can't. My, my chest and face are.
So congested. I'm on a bunch of Dayquil right
now. Yeah. But anyways, it's that uncertainty
and mystery is why I'm completely fascinated
with number stations. They sit in this weird,
uncomfortable space between some mundane bullshit
and like existential dread. On one hand, they're
literally just radios and numbers and schedules,
boring shit. But on the other hand, they represent
systems operating quietly in the background of
our world, transmitting things that we were never
meant to truly ever understand. There you have
it, guys. That's number stations. That's all
I have for you. A little bit of a shorter episode
this week, but Nash, starting with you, how are
we feeling about it? Do you have any theories
of your own? Do you have anything? Wasn't there
like a John Cusack movie about this in like 2010?
Probably. I feel like that was back when he was
making Doomsday movies. He made a lot of those
doomsday movies, I feel like. He did. Yeah. One
could argue, what was it, Room 237? Oh, yeah,
I know what you're talking about. 2013, look
at me. Yep, Cusack. What's it called? The Number
Station. It's called The Number Station? Yeah.
I got to watch that. I didn't even know it existed.
All right. Put that on my fucking letterbox.
It's got a 5 .6 out of 10 on IMDb. Oh, hell yeah.
So you know it's good. All right. 31 % on Rotten
Tomatoes. Oh. Uh -oh. That's less good. Hell
yeah. All right. But yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Nash,
how you feeling? You good? But you got anything
you want to add to this? Anything you got? Yeah.
I mean, I feel like this is kind of one of those
things where there's just so many theories and
never any real answers. because I want to say
I read somewhere once that it was theorized that
a lot of the ones that were kind of being picked
up were not like legit government and it was
just people fucking around basically. Yeah. But
that was obviously after they had kind of gotten
popular. I think a lot of the ones from, you
know, World War I through the Cold War were definitely
real government use situations. I think a lot
of, I mean, like I said, you don't really hear
about them really much anymore. I feel like like
10, 15 years ago, it was just, we kind of came
like almost like a creepypasta type thing. Yeah.
That's when I, that's really when I started to
hear about it was like 10 years ago. Yeah. And
Sarge, how are you feeling? I fucking love it.
It's so cool. I don't, I don't know what it is.
I desperately want to know what it is, but at
the same time, I feel like it's been built up
so much of my mind at this point. That anything
that I find out is just going to be a fucking
disappointment. Yeah, maybe. And I also love
the variety in the number stations. We listened
to a couple today, but I remember hearing one
recording where there was a guy reading a poem.
Yeah, there's some ones out there that are really
in -depth that just have some pretty crazy messages
kind of being said in them. that obviously means
nothing, but it's, it's always gibberish. It's
always nonsense. Yeah. Whatever. And I remember
there being one where you could hear a kid talking
in the background. I think I know what you're
talking about. Yeah. And so it's like, this guy's
probably just doing this, running this number
station. Kids in the back playing the shut up.
I'm trying to shut up. I'm preventing nuclear.
Trying to activate the sleeper agents. There
was a, there was one that actually was coming
out of. New Mexico, I think. It went silent pretty
recently, but it started out with a short data
burst, because sometimes they'll burst out these
little compressed things of data real quick.
And then it was Yosemite Sam. Oh, yes! That one
creeped me out a lot, actually. That was good.
There's a ton of theories about them. There's
one theory, the sleeper agent one, it's just
awakening winter soldiers everywhere, but not
in a cool way. It was just like a way to tell
teams that they're good to go do whatever it
is they're doing, not like fucking Manchurian
candidate shit. Right. And then there's other
theories that they just were, it was like psychological
warfare. Like we, like they started playing them
and we would just waste all of our time trying
to decipher them instead of like actually like
the governments don't do psyops. Yeah, that never
happens. Yeah, so that was another one. But yeah,
I fucking love the number of stations. I've been
obsessed with them for a while now. Me too. Probably
around the same time. Yeah, like 10 years ago,
15 years ago, something like that. But it was
good. But yeah, that's all I got. Hopefully you
guys enjoyed it. Hopefully everyone listening
enjoyed it. I loved it. That was incredible.
Yeah. It made me so happy. I didn't want it to
end. I fucking, I could talk about number stations
for hours. I wish I had more energy. No, I get
it. That's okay. I'm going to go Google them
now and just. fall down a YouTube rabbit hole.
Like I said, if you go on fucking Spotify, just
look up the Kona projects and literally every
single one, you can just listen to them, make
a playlist. I got to say, my poor kids. I have
them for the next two days. And I'm just going
to force this down their throats. I think what
I'm going to do starting today is I'm just going
to have it on repeat. So that way my fucking
Spotify to rap for 2026 is just... Just number
station. You listen to 370 hours of number station.
I wonder if you could start your own number station
and then track who drives by your house. Maybe
the government's like, aha. All right. With that
out of the way, Nash, you got anything you want
to plug? Anything you want to promote? Where
can people find you? All that good stuff? Chasing
Legends on YouTube and Paraflix. Yeah. Hopefully
some new stuff coming out this year or being
at least filmed this year. Might be doing two
shows potentially for Paraflix. Hell yeah. Awesome.
We'll see. All right. And I'll put links on where
to find you and all that stuff in the episode
description. Sarge, you got anything going on?
I've got nothing, but my friends in the Haunted
By podcast are doing a live show in good old
Quincy, Massachusetts. So if you happen to be
in the worst part of Massachusetts, you can go
to the second worst part of Massachusetts, which
is Quincy. You're not really selling this live
show for years. The worst part, at least in my
experience, is Brockton. Look, it's worth the
trip. It's worth the trip. It's in Marina Bay.
It's at a very cool brewery called Break Rock
Brewery. It's only $11. It's worth it. I'm going
to be there bringing some friends, so it should
be a good time. Hell yeah. Where was I? What
were we talking about? Oh, we were plugging stuff.
Number stations. We were plugging stuff. Got
it. Yeah, so... Follow Sarge on all his socials.
You can find him at the link on our Instagram,
which is at Cryptic Cocktail. Follow us on TikTok,
Cryptic Cocktail Party. Leave us a five -star
rating review wherever you can. It really helps.
I think that's all I got. And with that out of
the way, Nash, normally Sarge says goodbye and
I love you to the audience, but do you want to
do the honors? Sure. Goodbye, audience. I love
you.