An Almost True Short Story
There’s a patch of farmland outside Ottumwa that nobody calls home, but four families still pay taxes on. No structures. No livestock. Just fence posts and weeds. Every few years someone tries to use it. Plow, graze, run fiber optic. Nobody finishes.
Soil’s too rocky, they say. Signal drops. Cows just walk away.
A half-mile east of that nowhere parcel, if you turn the dial slow between 108.3 and 108.7, something comes through. Just for a few minutes. Only when the air feels heavy.
No call sign. No music. Just a low hum and a dry voice, the kind that sticks to the inside of your ear. Slow, monotone, catching like someone about to clear their throat but never does.
The voice lists names. Three, sometimes five. Then the weather. Not current, just a fact.
“Barometric pressure in Newton falling.”
“Fog east of Mason City.”
“Barometric pressure in Newton falling.”
“Fog east of Mason City.”
Then it gives an elevation.
“Elevation: eight hundred twenty-nine feet.”
“Elevation: eight hundred twenty-nine feet.”
And then silence.
People called it a prank, a glitch, bleedover from NOAA weather radio. But nobody found a source.
In 2009, the FCC ran a sweep. Three engineers in a van, spectrum analyzers, coffee in thermoses. They covered sixty miles. Logged every blip.
They found nothing. 108.5 was clean. No bleed, no static, no trace.
That same week, all three engineers got postcards. Mailed from different towns. Blank, except for one number, written in blue pen.
Each one: a known elevation. Town centers. All within fifteen miles of that field.
They didn’t go back.
You don’t hear the station in town—only out past where the poles lean and the gravel kicks up. There’s a gas station outside Agency where the cashier swears it comes in clear by pump four. Turn the ignition, don’t start the engine, hand on the roof. She says it doesn’t work if you’re in a hurry.
She wrote down the names once. Six in a row. Only one matched the paper—a trucker, Lawson Kern, who jackknifed on 63 just north of Eldon that morning.
The others—no obits, no missing persons, no birth announcements.
Still, the voice said them like a priest at a funeral.
A man in Burlington built his own receiver just for 108.5. Custom parts, hand-built dial, mounted in a cooler to keep the signal stable. He says one name came twice.
Eleven months apart.
“Wheeler. Claudia. 828 feet.”
He checked every cemetery. Closest he found was a grave with no first name. Just WHEELER. Buried at a church sitting precisely 828 feet above sea level.
He didn’t think much of it—until the second time.
That came a week before the headstone went up.
That came a week before the headstone went up.
Last year, a science teacher in Keokuk borrowed gear from the ham club. Tried triangulating the signal. Ran the data through three laptops. Narrowed it to a point east of Batavia. That field.
He went out on a Saturday.
Came back Sunday.
His wife said he smelled like wet stone. Mud on the car roof. Passenger seatbelt buckled.
He doesn’t teach anymore. Moved to Arizona. Says the FM dial doesn’t go that high out west.
The regulars keep listening. Men with notebooks and soldered rigs. They don’t try to solve it. Just record.
Last time the voice came through, it said:
“Whittaker. Juno. 830 feet.”
“Fog east of Mason City.”
“Barometric pressure steady.”
“Elevation: unknown.”
“Whittaker. Juno. 830 feet.”
“Fog east of Mason City.”
“Barometric pressure steady.”
“Elevation: unknown.”
That was four weeks ago.
No one’s heard it since.
But if you stand long enough in that field—real still, nothing running, no wind—you might hear it again. Not loud, not clear.
Just a voice, naming what’s already been written down somewhere.
Like a reminder. Or a roll call.
At least that's what I was told.