Not for decades. Listening posts are unmanned and really nice communication receivers like the Icom IC-R9500 are used remotely over internet and everything is recorded digitallyonto servers. Only bits and pieces get played back later down the road of analysis is needed. Also Hobbyists listen to this all day for fun.
I'm an experimental musician who's been doing industrial music and noise music since the 80's and I've found that some of the best strange sounds to record and mess with come from shortwave radio. It's an amazing resource for a musician to get interesting stuff to play with. You can always find strange sounds, number stations, conversations that are just.. out of tune.. All fantastic to toss into an audio editor and work into a tune somehow.
@@sophiacristina same I was on this video specially trying to look for a sample that gave that kinda vibe because I had heard they sampled from this compilation.
Part 1: Extinct stations Three note oddity (0:34) Drums and trumpet (1:13) 8 note rising scale (2:07) Gongs and Chimes (3:07) Faders (3:55) Part 2 : Rare stations Backwards Music Station (4:45) The Crackle (5:30) Yosemite Sam (6:06) The Workshop (6:26) 3 day mystery (7:06) Wop wop (7:45) Part 3: Active/Regular stations High pitch Polytone (8:22) Grasshopper (9:38) Pip (10:16) Squeeky Wheel (10:59) The Buzzer (11:48) Slot Machine (12:32) The Chinese Robot (13:03)
I've herd UVB-76 when Emergency Alert System in the United States some how got Transmitted to UVB-76 on Television due to a Power Hack but I do know UVB-76 is Spooky sound and its Big Frightng Noise like Pip and Squeaky Wheel but the Buzzer is Creepy sound . All I can see is on my Tv is Coded messages that are written in Russian like peoples names like Ivan Anna Noki Boris and numbers
Feels like UVB-76 is a big Threat like its a Call sign for Russian Milltary for a War or Ghosts out of the field but there can be Ghosts around the world 🌎 🕵️♂️ Spying on People usually at night and sometimes Emergency Alert System would Acted up Repeating itself over and over again its so annoying and terrifying and then you see Terrifying photos on TV screens with Ghost Spying on you or people dead with Black lines across there eyes those are Ghosts
@@thomasnativo6491 The female voice was, north east 3366358, 3385358, 3685538..... All I heard was in 7 digit format and end in 8 Does it give you any hints ?
UPDATES: “High-Pitched Polytone” and “Backwards Radio Station” are now inactive. Also, “drums and trumpets” is was still around until 2010, but on a private radio wave channel broadcast from MoD Aird Uig, Scotland, UK from 1993. The station it’s self is actually Scottish. I went to the abandoned site at Aird Uig (On the Outer Hebrides). It is Abestos contaminated, but one building the locals want to convert to a museum with a history exhibit, restaurant and whale listening post. Hope you found this useful.
I don't think it would be Scottish as the station was speaking a Slavic language, probably Bulgarian, so the countries speculated on the video are more likely to have run this station
I remember coming across a particularly chilling Chinese broadcast once. It would play segments of Chinese pop music from 90's/2000's in various warped states, sort of like a sound collage. And it repeated nonstop. But then on occasion, there would be an interruption. I only ever heard two kinds. One is a quote from the Tao Te Ching being spoken in what sounded like Cantonese by an elderly woman. This would repeat around 6 times before the music would come back. The only other interruption, which I had only heard once and scared the shit out of me, was what sounded like a small child sobbing and an angry man shouting numbers in Mandarin. A sharp tone would hold out for a while, then a quote from the Buddha would be recited in what I think was Tibetan, but might have been Nuosu, I'm not exactly sure, but then weird sound collage would play again.
This is hard to believe. But if you really did hear this broadcast, I suggest the child crying and angry man shouting were contrived to sound scary or creepy.
Hey I have this number station and it's 610-620khz. And there was a loud, LOUD buzzing noise but once every 30-50 minutes it said numbers in Morse code. (I know Morse code) I do have to say I tried this out on another radio and I heard nothing.
It's creepy because there's a reason these were broadcast on shortwave. Shortwave isn't nearly as popular, can be picked up all around the world, and there's plenty of frequencies to choose from.
This is one of my all-time favorite videos on the entire internet. There's something uniquely fascinating about this kind of stuff that has kept me coming to this exact video for years and years.
i love how the most upbeat ones are usually the creepiest. "Drums and Trumpets" for example. it sounds triumphant, but deeply sinister all at the same time.
@@epicstimulus282 i was about to comment the same thing. simon mason's site has an extended version of the conet project version of drums with the bugle intro.
Used to stay up all night listening to STASI numbers stations as a kid. Went to the STASI museum in Berlin. If anyone is interested,ask the museum guards and they have a tone of info on East German numbers stations, including a photo of the woman who actually is used for the voice. Shit isn’t so creepy when you actually see the room it was all recorded in and the people who used it.
As somebody that had SW on his boombox in the 80s I loved listening to these creepy-ass stations and falling asleep to them. Screw aliens & ghosts - this stuff is far creepier! All of these were created for a reason
Shelby When I was in the Navy, I had a similar boombox. You should have heard the shit flying around Guantanamo Bay. Low-powered stuff, mostly - lots of communist propaganda (in plain English, apparently aimed at US servicemen!), even some 'Tokyo Rose' kind of stuff (you know, taunting the American personnel and so on), and a whole bunch of freaky electronic sounds. My ship went there for training in preparation for a Med cruise in '86; I even used to have a handful of tapes of some of those signals. Wish I had them today.
I think I just watched the most interesting video I ever watched on youtube. Thank you so much for this. SW seems to be an incredible world. I just got a SW receiver module for my modular synth and realise the SW world is a deep and possibly dark place of great interest. Great video too. Love the font you used.
Little bit of engineering info on XPH/Polytone (don't know if this is known already): 1. The slow tones at the beginning are sent at a rate of one tone per second and repeat very slowly - probably there as a station ID or to help operatives tune their receiving equipment. 2. The repetitive high pitched tones (which I swear sound like Fur Elise) are alternating between two frequencies at a rate of 8 tones per second. They alternate 10 times. This is probably to get the receiver synchronized with the tone timings. 3. After that, the lowest tone (which I guess is a sort of "marker tone") plays 10 times in a row, also 8 per second. Probably more time synchronization. 4. The station then plays groups of 5 tones with that same "marker tone" in between each group. The tones are still sent at a rate of 8 per second. I saw about 9 different tones (not including the marker tone) used in the groups, with a frequency separation of 50 Hz. No tone ever repeats twice (except in step #3). 5. The second transmission (the higher pitched one) follows the same scheme, but this time the marker tone is the highest. My guess is there was no pitch difference, but rather the folks who made the recordings had their radios set to different SSB modes. So, we can conclude: a) Whoever designed the XPH transmitter REALLY likes multiples of 5 and 10. b) This is pretty clearly some kind of slow MFSK and not actually intended to be heard as audio. c) The system transmits 3 bits per tone, 15 bits per group, at a rate of 3/4 groups per second, or about 11.25 bits per second. (And you thought *your* WiFi was slow...)
@@justinkern1804 That is my understanding of it. It is intended for some kind of modem to decode. Likely the order of the 14 different tones encodes encrypted text, which is then decoded by another circuit - or possibly the decryption is manual using a known key schedule.
I Don't know if High Pitch Polytone is terrifying or dope af. It sounds like something you would hear either in a club or in Silent Hills PT on the radio.
I think my brother and I heard some of these oddities while playing around with our grandfather's Hammerlund short wave radio in the basement of his house. We turned the knobs and paused on any signal we came across, and it seems to me we heard some of this stuff back in the 1970s.
+Mark McKinney well it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that people are still using airwaves to send messages. probably more so now than ever.
+Jonny Jonny i am a ham, and i like a lot strange sound and digital transmission system, i have a lot of knowledge in ham radio. your videos have an original style and i'm not very good in videoediting. I have a youtube channel (500 subs and 350000 views) if you want i can help you with the ham video, and to this video togheter. i would appreciate it a lot.
+Jonny Hey Jonny, I wanted to let you know that most of these are cold war number stations, these are actually kind of rare to find, they air different times every day/week/month/year. Some where left from the cold war, they where used to pass on secret messages to agents/spys. Just in case you did not know. :D
This is gold. Reminds me of being a kid playing with the old transistor radio in the dark at night with my brother...terrified that we were communicating with the dead. Simple times.
The most interesting station calls came from the Eastern block from the 50's to 70's... Even the 'normal' ones are highly interesting ; got me a whole disk full of 'm...I remember as a kid to be glued to the station dial....Those old tube radios made it even more mysterious....
I remember hearing these as a kid in the early 90's with my Christmas shortwave radio. Thanks for brining back memories. Are there still weird transmissions out there?
I remember on occasion when I was off sick from school or late at night I used to listen to the radio and sometimes scanning the short wave band and coming across these calling signals. This was back at the height of the cold war and they always seemed (and still do) disturbing, mysterious and otherworldly.
The lulz. I've always been pretty deep into noise/weird glitch electronic music but I've never really heard a musician/noise artist really capture the distinctly unsettling atmosphere of these stations. I'm imagining something like a pitch-black take on ambient Boards of Canada or Broadcast's side projects, or the Ghost Box label, but with like early NWW or even Ryoji Ikeda levels of austerity. I really wanted the Pye Corner Audio/ Not Waving "Intercepts" split to take this direction but alas they did not. Still a good release.
I picture some mild mannered school teacher perhaps, coming home from a hard day of trying to teach his young adolescent school students American history.. Off comes the coat and hat, curtains drawn. Bottom drawer in a secret compartment out comes the trusty short wave and decoder book awaiting instructions from mother Russia.. Oh the good old days of espionage and counter intelligence. Awesome video thanks for the kicks - I love short-wave radio. Been a fond friend over the years fighting insomnia...
@@ChainsawChuck13 When I was still a little kid my father used to go on and on about hippies and communist - though he was crazy. As I grew into an adult it slowly started to sink in. The whole communist and social agenda was being taught at first our collages and now in our kindergartens. He was right we have been being infiltrated since before the cold war. Seems to me they have made some progress in the last 50 years or so. We need to wake up.
WHY I CANT SEE, THAT I AM THE ‘ME’, THAT I WAS BORN INTO AND WHAT’s THE SOURCE OF YOUU? IN YOUR HEAD, IN YOUR HEAD, IN YOUR HEAD, AND YET YOU BELIEVE ITS TRUE WELL, YOU DO, LIKE YOU KNEW ANYTHING NEVER NEVER
I have listened to these types of stations in the past and have also questioned their utility. The "three note oddity" is really a mystery, unless it was designed to somehow be a beacon to perhaps indicate good propagation on some frequency.
If you wonder why some of these sound so "creepy", it's because they were on tape recordings, and as the tape keeps playing over the years it starts to corrupt, making the sounds off tone and "eerie"
I'm not sure which one, but one of the broadcast activated my cat. She's been at the edge of my bed for some time listening and staring at my phone. I'm thinking she's a sleeper agent now.
+fred fuchs It could be because they're mysterious signals that have no explanation from the Cold War played on shortwave radio in parts of countries lots haven't been to.
Cool stuff. I thought of a Russian gulag for the workshop. The high pitch polytone reminded me of some 1980s Nintendo video games. Maybe the slot machine is some Japanese Admiral playing pachinko while he's at sea. ☺
I’ve been a shortwave listener now since 2017, there’s always something about numbers stations and oddity signals in general that both fascinates me to no end and also fills me with unease and dread even after like 6 years of trawling the bands.
When I was in Moscow back two weeks ago, I really received the "UVB-76 buzzer" signal in a hotel room even though the signal was not so clearly heard...
The Workshop, I discovered this on Medium Wave (UK) sometime around 1990. A local radio station was changing frequency, so I was scanning through to hear the test transmission purely out of interest. But on the way, I hit upon a signal which sounded silent at first. But when I turned up the volume, there were workshop noises identical to the ones in this video. It broadcast constantly, it intrigued me. Now I know of numbers stations, it only poses more questions than it provides answers. It's interesting to see that first reported discoveries date back to the late 90's, because I can 100% assert that I heard it some time in the late 80's to early 90's.
actually, it makes me kinda sad to think that all of this is mostly in the past now. A millisecond encrypted data burst on a cell phone now does what these transmission used to do. I used to enjoy hunting these oddities on my ham radios.
Yeah, but the cell phone transmission is tracked and stored by default, at this point. The radio transmission is a little bit harder to get a handle on.
I first heard of these kinds of things when I was about 9 in a kids’ magazine article. I didn’t really google a lot of things back then, but there’s some kind of closure in actually hearing these now as an adult and actually thinking they’re cool
I think the music and tones in part one were used to help the operatives tune in, similar to the way that shortwave broadcasters used to use interval signals.
Logic says that the developers at Rose Engine probably used this video as a reference when they selected the Three Note Oddity for Signalis. Probably heard that one and instantly knew they wanted it. And yet it was INCREDIBLY creepy for me to open this video and have the Three Note Oddity be the VERY FIRST one. I expected it would show up, like, halfway through.
i think they acctually used a few of these in game? im sure the radio station you switch too to open the vault in the introductory radio puzzle sounded familiar, or maybe the station you use to open the magpie box on rotfront? such an interesting genre of horror and it made watching this video so much more unnerving
the fact that these existed and were broadcasted at some point just.....creeps me out I don't know what to say about it its just....soldiers were tuning into these and understood them in some way
People thinking about gov doing good for the people, that presidents and politicians are saviors and etc. Yet, there are things beyond a president power, and non-classified brutal thing that happens in the dark that the people are not going to EVER know. Spies around the world that are know only by the government that deals with him dealing with things that may end to death or worse. If a military guy gets a spy and send him to a dark room without cameras, nobody knows what will happen, since thy are spies and shouldn't even be known to begin with. All that happening all the time and daily, and people think they can trust the world we live in. This false sense of security while we are jailed inside the powers of a very strong elite shadow-realm. That thing is creepy as hell!
As a kid in the early 60s, I listened to SW static. The "Slot Machine" comes the closest to the one I remember as frightening me so badly the first time I heard it that I ran out of my bedroom. It took me a long time to gain enough courage to go back in & change the station as fast as I could.
I know the "Wop Wop" station! It's on my channel as what I believed to be a numbers station, and a friendly RUclipsr identified it as a CODAR station. Now I have a name too. I also recorded the Buzzer, which I might do again sometime in its own video.
Because Russia is into scary military technology like America is into "dude like if I get 100 subs I'll force this guy at the mall to drink 100 Jamba juices" videos
Yosemite Sam was solved, actually. Some guy who worked on the station explained that this was some kind of test system, and they needed it to transmit something. That particular line by Yosemite Sam just happened to be the first audio file that they had on hand, and so that was what the station transmitted.
The "Yosemite Sam" transmission has been solved a few months ago. Turns out it was a guy developing RF software for his company in New Mexico. He would receive a payload from the customer in order to develop the software. Turns out the payload was of some random mp3 the customer had, and it happened to be a sound byte of Yosemite Sam. According to the source, it probably wasn't the military wanting these tests.
What a great trip down memory lane. Hearing 'The Gong Station' brings back memories, and I heard a couple extinct ones I'd never heard. "The Workshop" sounds like classic Russian random noise jamming using a rooftop microphone. Quite tickled to see High Pitch Polytone is still around, and I've never heard of voice on The Pip - thank you! The Buzzer is still live as of October 2020. Chinese Robot sounds like a NewStar (Taiwan) jammer - I recognized the NewStar voice, albeit thrown in a blender. Thank you sir! Great fun!
high pitch polytone has been extinct since i think either 2003 or 2005, however some of it's successors, XPA, XPA2 and XPB are around. you can see when they broadcast on priyom.org
The creepiest thing about this is that there's always the possibility of someone watching this to relive some nostalgia of how they used to use these to do the bidding of the USSR by listening to these.
This takes me back to the late 1980's, while listening on my Vega radio. I figured out the numbers stations were linked to spy transmissions. Very much of this ties into The Ipcress File theme. I bet GCHQ had their work cut out.
This is a very under appreciated area of global affairs, the pervasiveness of keycode messaging and compartmentalized information and what it implies about the management of events and plans over the course of decades. It’s essential to understand the principles of sigint somewhat to understand current affairs.
These are all very creepy but very interesting. Because I live in Canada there aren't really any known stations which I'd be able to pick up with a shortwave radio. I'd be lucky to get the Backwards Music Station or Yosemite Sam in my area, and Atencion is probably out of the question. I'm also too far to pick up any of the interesting European stations like MDZhB. I don't think Canada has operated any numbers stations (if so - why?) and if it did I'm unaware of them. I'm also unaware of any stations that might be or have been operated near the border. The United States doesn't really have any need to spy on Canada, so there probably are none nearby, though some could have been operated in Alaska as it's close to Russia.
I imagine if a lot of these old stations were from the Cold War or earlier, the coded messages probably say something along the lines of “The War is over”
Signalis fans will hear this and say “ayo this a bop, turn that shit up”
real
HEELL YEAH
on god I will
i always was in with shortwave weirdness and loved signalis for this
Me it's me I'm the Signalis fan you didn't have ti call me out like this
Whenever you think you have it rough, just remember- somewhere, somebody's job is to listen to the Chinese robot all day.
"Pause it for a second!"
Lol
Not for decades. Listening posts are unmanned and really nice communication receivers like the Icom IC-R9500 are used remotely over internet and everything is recorded digitallyonto servers. Only bits and pieces get played back later down the road of analysis is needed. Also Hobbyists listen to this all day for fun.
Insane
LMAO!! And then pursue whatever the message is...and God help them if they screw up or fail the mission.
I'm an experimental musician who's been doing industrial music and noise music since the 80's and I've found that some of the best strange sounds to record and mess with come from shortwave radio. It's an amazing resource for a musician to get interesting stuff to play with. You can always find strange sounds, number stations, conversations that are just.. out of tune.. All fantastic to toss into an audio editor and work into a tune somehow.
Got an example? I'm, not clever enough to try to get this into music.
@@JP-pq9xi ruclips.net/video/Rrr5WY_Nyaw/видео.html
I want to know how to make music that gives those same feelings... I would even say this is the kind of 'music" i aim to make one day...
@@cobaltnightmare5920 I love Boc...
@@sophiacristina same I was on this video specially trying to look for a sample that gave that kinda vibe because I had heard they sampled from this compilation.
Part 1: Extinct stations
Three note oddity (0:34)
Drums and trumpet (1:13)
8 note rising scale (2:07)
Gongs and Chimes (3:07)
Faders (3:55)
Part 2 : Rare stations
Backwards Music Station (4:45)
The Crackle (5:30)
Yosemite Sam (6:06)
The Workshop (6:26)
3 day mystery (7:06)
Wop wop (7:45)
Part 3: Active/Regular stations
High pitch Polytone (8:22)
Grasshopper (9:38)
Pip (10:16)
Squeeky Wheel (10:59)
The Buzzer (11:48)
Slot Machine (12:32)
The Chinese Robot (13:03)
I've herd UVB-76 when Emergency Alert System in the United States some how got Transmitted to UVB-76 on Television due to a Power Hack but I do know UVB-76 is Spooky sound and its Big Frightng Noise like Pip and Squeaky Wheel but the Buzzer is Creepy sound . All I can see is on my Tv is Coded messages that are written in Russian like peoples names like Ivan Anna Noki Boris and numbers
Feels like UVB-76 is a big Threat like its a Call sign for Russian Milltary for a War or Ghosts out of the field but there can be Ghosts around the world 🌎 🕵️♂️ Spying on People usually at night and sometimes Emergency Alert System would Acted up Repeating itself over and over again its so annoying and terrifying and then you see Terrifying photos on TV screens with Ghost Spying on you or people dead with Black lines across there eyes those are Ghosts
The Chinese Robot sounds very creepy but totally Scary
@@thomasnativo6491 are you superstitious?
@@thomasnativo6491
The female voice was, north east 3366358, 3385358, 3685538..... All I heard was in 7 digit format and end in 8 Does it give you any hints ?
UPDATES: “High-Pitched Polytone” and “Backwards Radio Station” are now inactive. Also, “drums and trumpets” is was still around until 2010, but on a private radio wave channel broadcast from MoD Aird Uig, Scotland, UK from 1993. The station it’s self is actually Scottish. I went to the abandoned site at Aird Uig (On the Outer Hebrides). It is Abestos contaminated, but one building the locals want to convert to a museum with a history exhibit, restaurant and whale listening post.
Hope you found this useful.
I don't think it would be Scottish as the station was speaking a Slavic language, probably Bulgarian, so the countries speculated on the video are more likely to have run this station
High Pitched polytone is still very active.
I catch it often
@@tbuddy888 very true
isnt the backwards music station just feedback
Jeremy Corbyn ruclips.net/video/lXThsWgpdfw/видео.html 🤣
the guy who made "high-pitched polytone" was tired of waiting on his sound cloud
"BRUH CHECK OUT THIS SICK BEAT I MADE"
In actual fact it's just a simple way of transmitting numbers.
Isaac Krehbiel
“hunnids on my wrist,
hunnids on my wrist,
got a nigga in my butt,
playin wih my neck,
gotta make this session brisk”
High pitch polytone is pretty banging tbh
No party playlist is complete without it!
Sounds kobaryo like
Underground. Just add a 909 kick and hat.
It’s a banger
@@zxczvxzzv how kobaryo just appeared out of nowere lol
I remember coming across a particularly chilling Chinese broadcast once. It would play segments of Chinese pop music from 90's/2000's in various warped states, sort of like a sound collage. And it repeated nonstop. But then on occasion, there would be an interruption. I only ever heard two kinds. One is a quote from the Tao Te Ching being spoken in what sounded like Cantonese by an elderly woman. This would repeat around 6 times before the music would come back. The only other interruption, which I had only heard once and scared the shit out of me, was what sounded like a small child sobbing and an angry man shouting numbers in Mandarin. A sharp tone would hold out for a while, then a quote from the Buddha would be recited in what I think was Tibetan, but might have been Nuosu, I'm not exactly sure, but then weird sound collage would play again.
This is hard to believe. But if you really did hear this broadcast, I suggest the child crying and angry man shouting were contrived to sound scary or creepy.
Hey I have this number station and it's 610-620khz. And there was a loud, LOUD buzzing noise but once every 30-50 minutes it said numbers in Morse code. (I know Morse code) I do have to say I tried this out on another radio and I heard nothing.
It's creepy because there's a reason these were broadcast on shortwave. Shortwave isn't nearly as popular, can be picked up all around the world, and there's plenty of frequencies to choose from.
This is one of my all-time favorite videos on the entire internet. There's something uniquely fascinating about this kind of stuff that has kept me coming to this exact video for years and years.
its so true! if i remember correctly, i think when i found this i ripped it onto an mp3 and listened to it on my ipod in a creepy playlist lol
yeah same!
I miss this old Internet. No one is trying to sell you anything, it's just curiosity for its own sake.
4th time back lol I want someone to do an update on this!
i love how the most upbeat ones are usually the creepiest. "Drums and Trumpets" for example. it sounds triumphant, but deeply sinister all at the same time.
Yep, not on this video is a supposedly British one 'The Lincolnshire Poacher' (you'll find it easily on YT), I find it quite haunting and impersonal
dieselboy87 drums and trumpets are often preceded by military funeral music
No it doesn't. That's your own personality being reflected into your interpretation.
@@KandiKlover nobody thinks you're witty
@@epicstimulus282 i was about to comment the same thing. simon mason's site has an extended version of the conet project version of drums with the bugle intro.
Used to stay up all night listening to STASI numbers stations as a kid. Went to the STASI museum in Berlin. If anyone is interested,ask the museum guards and they have a tone of info on East German numbers stations, including a photo of the woman who actually is used for the voice. Shit isn’t so creepy when you actually see the room it was all recorded in and the people who used it.
That's really awesome. Is there any sort of documentary on it?
Something about this REALLY creeps me out.
DrHillbillyShow the wop wop sounds more like a Subaru on a poor microphone
Thou art not alone
It reminds me of the cold war and Chernobyl and those super creepy gas masks
Yep. Some spooky shit right here
Same..why did I click on this..and before bed ! 😫😱
As somebody that had SW on his boombox in the 80s I loved listening to these creepy-ass stations and falling asleep to them. Screw aliens & ghosts - this stuff is far creepier! All of these were created for a reason
Shelby And unlike aliens and ghosts, numbers stations actually exist.
Shelby When I was in the Navy, I had a similar boombox. You should have heard the shit flying around Guantanamo Bay. Low-powered stuff, mostly - lots of communist propaganda (in plain English, apparently aimed at US servicemen!), even some 'Tokyo Rose' kind of stuff (you know, taunting the American personnel and so on), and a whole bunch of freaky electronic sounds. My ship went there for training in preparation for a Med cruise in '86; I even used to have a handful of tapes of some of those signals. Wish I had them today.
u might wanna look into the concept of hauntology. i also think these sounds here are very soothing "music"
"Screw aliens & ghosts", eh? I mean, hey, to each their own, I ain't gonna judge.
nahhh ur pfp is evil i thought i had a hair on my screen
I think I just watched the most interesting video I ever watched on youtube. Thank you so much for this. SW seems to be an incredible world. I just got a SW receiver module for my modular synth and realise the SW world is a deep and possibly dark place of great interest. Great video too. Love the font you used.
TheMonohub wat was the modular SW u got ?
Turns out High-Pitch Polytone isn't actually a numbers station, it's just some guy playing on his Commodore 64.
it's somebody playing crazy bus
rzeka ikr
Or is it?
Commodore 64??? ZX Sinclair Spectrum rules...!!!
Sounds kinda like the Metal Gear NES soundtrack.
Little bit of engineering info on XPH/Polytone (don't know if this is known already):
1. The slow tones at the beginning are sent at a rate of one tone per second and repeat very slowly - probably there as a station ID or to help operatives tune their receiving equipment.
2. The repetitive high pitched tones (which I swear sound like Fur Elise) are alternating between two frequencies at a rate of 8 tones per second. They alternate 10 times. This is probably to get the receiver synchronized with the tone timings.
3. After that, the lowest tone (which I guess is a sort of "marker tone") plays 10 times in a row, also 8 per second. Probably more time synchronization.
4. The station then plays groups of 5 tones with that same "marker tone" in between each group. The tones are still sent at a rate of 8 per second. I saw about 9 different tones (not including the marker tone) used in the groups, with a frequency separation of 50 Hz. No tone ever repeats twice (except in step #3).
5. The second transmission (the higher pitched one) follows the same scheme, but this time the marker tone is the highest. My guess is there was no pitch difference, but rather the folks who made the recordings had their radios set to different SSB modes.
So, we can conclude:
a) Whoever designed the XPH transmitter REALLY likes multiples of 5 and 10.
b) This is pretty clearly some kind of slow MFSK and not actually intended to be heard as audio.
c) The system transmits 3 bits per tone, 15 bits per group, at a rate of 3/4 groups per second, or about 11.25 bits per second. (And you thought *your* WiFi was slow...)
So this is a slow drip binary signal giving info or what? It's not meant to be heard but rather deciphered?
It's likely to be decoded digitally via some kind of acoustic coupler device, like how old internet modems used to work.
@@justinkern1804 That is my understanding of it. It is intended for some kind of modem to decode. Likely the order of the 14 different tones encodes encrypted text, which is then decoded by another circuit - or possibly the decryption is manual using a known key schedule.
Just search for "XPA2 station decoding" on RUclips
Baud rate not the worst by shortwave standards
These are so creepy but satisfying
How is it satisfying?
Thanks, people tell me that a lot.
@@RobBob555 hahahahahahaha wtf :P
@@RobBob555 best comment ever dude
Totally Creepy
This is incredibly interesting, thanks for the video.
+Kadi wop wop sounds like a Subaru
High Pitch Polytone didn't have to go THAT hard
some poor government worker in 2002: let's call this one "wop wop"
(everyone else in the room nods solemnly)
I Don't know if High Pitch Polytone is terrifying or dope af. It sounds like something you would hear either in a club or in Silent Hills PT on the radio.
It is dope af
What clubs have you been going to lol?
William Billiamson RIGHT
It's for sure the intro to an underground chiptune artist's debut album. Dope for sure.
sounds like PacMan from Atari 2006
I think my brother and I heard some of these oddities while playing around with our grandfather's Hammerlund short wave radio in the basement of his house. We turned the knobs and paused on any signal we came across, and it seems to me we heard some of this stuff back in the 1970s.
The 70s really were the best time for Number Stations, what with the Cold War in full swing.
+Mark McKinney well it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that people are still using airwaves to send messages. probably more so now than ever.
Cool, I don't have that luxury. I can't find an app and I can't find a real shortwave radio. LUCKY YOU
phantom freddy
Here's something for starters websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901
Sidorovich or websdr.org
‘Eight note rising’ is Boards of Canada.
so damn true
BOC totally
Probably the best youtube video ever IMO, well done, do video like that about ham radio or new version of this one. thanks 73
+Jonny Jonny i am a ham, and i like a lot strange sound and digital transmission system, i have a lot of knowledge in ham radio.
your videos have an original style and i'm not very good in videoediting. I have a youtube channel (500 subs and 350000 views) if you want i can help you with the ham video, and to this video togheter. i would appreciate it a lot.
+Jonny I will send you an email in case you need to ask me something, thanks anyway
+Jonny Hey Jonny, I wanted to let you know that most of these are cold war number stations, these are actually kind of rare to find, they air different times every day/week/month/year. Some where left from the cold war, they where used to pass on secret messages to agents/spys. Just in case you did not know. :D
+Jonny and if you dont mind, could you please send me a list of these stations?
*****
Thanks dude, because im buying a shortwave raido and want to see if i can get these number stations to work :D
I know what the 3 Note Oddity means. It means that the call cannot be completed as dialed. Please hang up and try again.
Lmao
Yes. I know that sound is common on European phones.
It sounds like that because that is he interval signal
You're right. Here where I live we call it "too-la-leet". It's absolutely hilarious for me to see there are people who treat it as a mystery lol.
I have to come back and watch this video from time to time because it's so cool. Thanks for making it!
east Germany, Russia, USA: numbers, noises, film lines
France: *quack* *quack* *quack* *quack* *sounds of ducks making out*
benji tout court 😂
The new Daft Punk album sound weird.
lmao
XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
Timber Micka oh my god
This is gold. Reminds me of being a kid playing with the old transistor radio in the dark at night with my brother...terrified that we were communicating with the dead. Simple times.
It breaks my heart knowing that number stations will never be as creative as this.
Late 80s to early 2000s was the hayday of number stations.
The most interesting station calls came from the Eastern block from the 50's to 70's... Even the 'normal' ones are highly interesting ; got me a whole disk full of 'm...I remember as a kid to be glued to the station dial....Those old tube radios made it even more mysterious....
You should upload them, would be very interesting to hear them if they are unique
“FOR THE LAST TIME MASON, WHERE. IS. THE NUMBER STATION!!”
MASON, WHAT THE HELL IS A ROTFRONT?
@@watchmebarelywrite WHAT THE FUCK ARE LESBIANS MASON?
I remember hearing these as a kid in the early 90's with my Christmas shortwave radio. Thanks for brining back memories. Are there still weird transmissions out there?
There are definitely plenty of unexplainable transmissions out there, you just have to look for them :)
I remember on occasion when I was off sick from school or late at night I used to listen to the radio and sometimes scanning the short wave band and coming across these calling signals. This was back at the height of the cold war and they always seemed (and still do) disturbing, mysterious and otherworldly.
I like this Autechre album.
i like this merzbow album
beepst I like this Nurse With Wound album
The lulz. I've always been pretty deep into noise/weird glitch electronic music but I've never really heard a musician/noise artist really capture the distinctly unsettling atmosphere of these stations. I'm imagining something like a pitch-black take on ambient Boards of Canada or Broadcast's side projects, or the Ghost Box label, but with like early NWW or even Ryoji Ikeda levels of austerity. I really wanted the Pye Corner Audio/ Not Waving "Intercepts" split to take this direction but alas they did not. Still a good release.
Stereolab's Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements has that atmosphere, to me.
You kidding me? This has Squarepusher written all over it. ;P
I picture some mild mannered school teacher perhaps, coming home from a hard day of trying to teach his young adolescent school students American history.. Off comes the coat and hat, curtains drawn. Bottom drawer in a secret compartment out comes the trusty short wave and decoder book awaiting instructions from mother Russia.. Oh the good old days of espionage and counter intelligence. Awesome video thanks for the kicks - I love short-wave radio. Been a fond friend over the years fighting insomnia...
dang did shortwave radios helped with your insomnia
Lol are you sure the stations weren't causing your insomnia
You may be right considering that education is one of the first things the Communists wanted to get control over
@@ChainsawChuck13 When I was still a little kid my father used to go on and on about hippies and communist - though he was crazy. As I grew into an adult it slowly started to sink in. The whole communist and social agenda was being taught at first our collages and now in our kindergartens.
He was right we have been being infiltrated since before the cold war. Seems to me they have made some progress in the last 50 years or so. We need to wake up.
Late night listener were ya?
The backwards music station sounds like someone trying to play the recorder in the middle of an orchestra that forgot to tune their instruments.
*insert terrible recorder meme*
That's my favourite one :)
Whats the point of backwards music all it is Scratching sounds and Static noises
The Wop Wop sound totally Scared me
The Trumpet and Drums sounds awesome because you got the Drum Cadence
7:08
sounds like something death grips would sample
8:42 FINAL BOSS REACHED
only gamers will understand
When I got to that point in the video, I laughed my ass off
+Ben Winters omg thank you i thought the same thing lol
+Ben Winters LOL. Exactly. When that came on, but husband said "Shit man, do we need fire power from this point on?"
that bit sounds like it would make a pretty sweet guitar solo.
Honestly your one of my favourite youtubers.
13:03 will wood reference 😳
YOU CAN NEVER KNOOOOOOOOOOOOW
song with five names!!
WHY I CANT SEE, THAT I AM THE ‘ME’, THAT I WAS BORN INTO
AND WHAT’s THE SOURCE OF YOUU?
IN YOUR HEAD, IN YOUR HEAD, IN YOUR HEAD,
AND YET YOU BELIEVE ITS TRUE
WELL, YOU DO,
LIKE YOU KNEW ANYTHING NEVER NEVER
Real
RAAAAAHHH
"Wop Wop"
I guess France isn't too fond of Italians
rzeka hey you made r/oldpeoplefacebook
Who is France fond of 😂
Yes, yes, we haven't been able to stand each other forever
And I anxious ly say, for the French every opportunity is good to break the boxes to Italy
LOL
Many spies where just accidentally activated, well done.
Gavin Bradley “accidentally”
The sleeper agents are not sleeping anymore.
Someone called me?
@@sophiacristina we out here
We makin it out the bed with this one 🔥🔥🔥
I have listened to these types of stations in the past and have also questioned their utility. The "three note oddity" is really a mystery, unless it was designed to somehow be a beacon to perhaps indicate good propagation on some frequency.
I was told it was East German
Why does "The Gongs" sound like the gates of hell being opened?
Blue Moon it sounds like satanic sayings
I reckon it was intentionally used cuz it sounds creepy AF 😱😫
Blue Moon RIGHT💀
Cuz they are opening
To me, they sound like hell's bells ringing
If you wonder why some of these sound so "creepy", it's because they were on tape recordings, and as the tape keeps playing over the years it starts to corrupt, making the sounds off tone and "eerie"
I'm not sure which one, but one of the broadcast activated my cat. She's been at the edge of my bed for some time listening and staring at my phone. I'm thinking she's a sleeper agent now.
these terrify me. I don't know why
+fred fuchs It could be because they're mysterious signals that have no explanation from the Cold War played on shortwave radio in parts of countries lots haven't been to.
Fear of the unknown. One of the most basic human fears.
Probably just how "lonesome" and ominous they are.
I dunno. I guess I associate it with the apocalypse because its lonsome and ominous.
+fred fuchs Like there's still a lone number station still operating after a nuclear war?
Cool stuff. I thought of a Russian gulag for the workshop. The high pitch polytone reminded me of some 1980s Nintendo video games. Maybe the slot machine is some Japanese Admiral playing pachinko while he's at sea. ☺
This polytone recording (in the video) kinda sounded like a beat to be honest
I’ve been a shortwave listener now since 2017, there’s always something about numbers stations and oddity signals in general that both fascinates me to no end and also fills me with unease and dread even after like 6 years of trawling the bands.
Most of these are data transmissions, for atmosphere reseach or just placeholders for military stations. Very interresting!
When I was in Moscow back two weeks ago, I really received the "UVB-76 buzzer" signal in a hotel room even though the signal was not so clearly heard...
The Gongs gave me nightmares for a long time. now that i'm watching it again i'm probably gonna stay up again, lol
Same here ;-;
The Workshop, I discovered this on Medium Wave (UK) sometime around 1990. A local radio station was changing frequency, so I was scanning through to hear the test transmission purely out of interest. But on the way, I hit upon a signal which sounded silent at first. But when I turned up the volume, there were workshop noises identical to the ones in this video. It broadcast constantly, it intrigued me. Now I know of numbers stations, it only poses more questions than it provides answers. It's interesting to see that first reported discoveries date back to the late 90's, because I can 100% assert that I heard it some time in the late 80's to early 90's.
High-Pitch-Polytone Was LIT
Has Fusion gone too far IKR
the thing that creeps me out is all these stations probably has meanings
it HAS a meaning
I'm addicted to this stuff
Zachary The Gamer so am i
Coincidence?
*_-I think not-_*
actually, it makes me kinda sad to think that all of this is mostly in the past now. A millisecond encrypted data burst on a cell phone now does what these transmission used to do. I used to enjoy hunting these oddities on my ham radios.
Yeah, but the cell phone transmission is tracked and stored by default, at this point. The radio transmission is a little bit harder to get a handle on.
That "High-Pitch Polytone" sounds like a Cannibal Corpse solo.
+The Barbermeister The wop wop sounds like a Subaru
+The Barbermeister I think I actually have heard some Subarus that sound like that actually
ye
Yeah, I've heard a Subie that sounded like that. Its gaskets were blown...
It doesn't. HPP sounds like webdriver torso
I first heard of these kinds of things when I was about 9 in a kids’ magazine article. I didn’t really google a lot of things back then, but there’s some kind of closure in actually hearing these now as an adult and actually thinking they’re cool
13:02 The Chinese Robot With Five Names
His ass just went “WHY I CANT SEE, THAT I AM THE ME, THAT I WAS BORN INTO!”
I think the music and tones in part one were used to help the operatives tune in, similar to the way that shortwave broadcasters used to use interval signals.
the Morse code at the end says "THANK YOU FOR WATCHING"
as a bulgarian im happy to see our country finally involved in analog horror
also i can confirm the voice is bulgarian
the gongs was probably the most creepy of the bunch
Go to the STASI museum in Berlin. They actually have the room where that was recorded and broadcast. After going there it’s not that creepy anymore
@@stratojet94 been to that museum it was pretty cool
@@stratojet94 That's going to my bucket list
I have to say UVB-76 is the most Scariest sound gives a lot people Nightmares
@@thomasnativo6491 iconic does not equal scary
Oh look, my grandpa's favorite album! (Quite possibly unironically too because he did code shit in the airforce in cold war times.)
Logic says that the developers at Rose Engine probably used this video as a reference when they selected the Three Note Oddity for Signalis. Probably heard that one and instantly knew they wanted it.
And yet it was INCREDIBLY creepy for me to open this video and have the Three Note Oddity be the VERY FIRST one. I expected it would show up, like, halfway through.
i think they acctually used a few of these in game? im sure the radio station you switch too to open the vault in the introductory radio puzzle sounded familiar, or maybe the station you use to open the magpie box on rotfront? such an interesting genre of horror and it made watching this video so much more unnerving
(repeated from another video)
0:34
babe wake up, remember that promise?
A dream about dreaming
Is this the apx twin station
the fact that these existed and were broadcasted at some point just.....creeps me out I don't know what to say about it its just....soldiers were tuning into these and understood them in some way
People thinking about gov doing good for the people, that presidents and politicians are saviors and etc.
Yet, there are things beyond a president power, and non-classified brutal thing that happens in the dark that the people are not going to EVER know.
Spies around the world that are know only by the government that deals with him dealing with things that may end to death or worse.
If a military guy gets a spy and send him to a dark room without cameras, nobody knows what will happen, since thy are spies and shouldn't even be known to begin with.
All that happening all the time and daily, and people think they can trust the world we live in.
This false sense of security while we are jailed inside the powers of a very strong elite shadow-realm.
That thing is creepy as hell!
i think some of these are used in navagation , like markers for cold war bomber crews. triangulating positions
As a kid in the early 60s, I listened to SW static. The "Slot Machine" comes the closest to the one I remember as frightening me so badly the first time I heard it that I ran out of my bedroom. It took me a long time to gain enough courage to go back in & change the station as fast as I could.
8:24
I'm sure Someone playing Crazybus
Lol, I thought that too
I know the "Wop Wop" station! It's on my channel as what I believed to be a numbers station, and a friendly RUclipsr identified it as a CODAR station. Now I have a name too. I also recorded the Buzzer, which I might do again sometime in its own video.
Why does all the creepy stuff come from Russia...
EMMETT MAY or East Germany
Because Russia is into scary military technology like America is into "dude like if I get 100 subs I'll force this guy at the mall to drink 100 Jamba juices" videos
Cause it's Russia.
When is Russia not scary af?
Scariest Urban Legends Come From Japan 😨😨😨😨😨
Your Neighborhood Friendly Bernkastel/Mariuteau im from russia am i scary for you?
No Lincolnshire Poacher :(
it's so fascinating that will wood used this random ass thing in his song. shoutout to the person who pointed this out first
Yosemite Sam was solved, actually. Some guy who worked on the station explained that this was some kind of test system, and they needed it to transmit something. That particular line by Yosemite Sam just happened to be the first audio file that they had on hand, and so that was what the station transmitted.
wop wop will be the next hot edm single
LOL!
no it won't
PROFANITY!
snaplet games Who fucking cares? It's not like it's fucking hurting anyone. Fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck.
krookyj yaa you tell em!
The "Yosemite Sam" transmission has been solved a few months ago. Turns out it was a guy developing RF software for his company in New Mexico. He would receive a payload from the customer in order to develop the software. Turns out the payload was of some random mp3 the customer had, and it happened to be a sound byte of Yosemite Sam.
According to the source, it probably wasn't the military wanting these tests.
I can't watch this with sound my dog keeps going nuts
hella hatake rip
What a great trip down memory lane. Hearing 'The Gong Station' brings back memories, and I heard a couple extinct ones I'd never heard. "The Workshop" sounds like classic Russian random noise jamming using a rooftop microphone. Quite tickled to see High Pitch Polytone is still around, and I've never heard of voice on The Pip - thank you! The Buzzer is still live as of October 2020. Chinese Robot sounds like a NewStar (Taiwan) jammer - I recognized the NewStar voice, albeit thrown in a blender.
Thank you sir! Great fun!
high pitch polytone has been extinct since i think either 2003 or 2005, however some of it's successors, XPA, XPA2 and XPB are around. you can see when they broadcast on priyom.org
I'm pretty scared of number stations right now.
Wonderful broadcast thank you for sharing. "Faders" gave me awful goosebumps and a feeling of existential dread.
The creepiest thing about this is that there's always the possibility of someone watching this to relive some nostalgia of how they used to use these to do the bidding of the USSR by listening to these.
the high pitched polytones sounds like a really low tech midi of Master of Puppets
+TheLittleNorwegian hahaha yeah
I wonder what joel would think
+marvin buxton i sure hope he would agree with me
What has been heard cannot be unheard 😂😂😂
Svinja ugh creepy
This takes me back to the late 1980's, while listening on my Vega radio. I figured out the numbers stations were linked to spy transmissions. Very much of this ties into The Ipcress File theme. I bet GCHQ had their work cut out.
Late 70s/early 80s: i was a Kid and fascinated and scared at the same time
00:01 was used as the whale tracker transponder frequency in The Voyage Home - Star Trek IV
It has a weirdly fire beat to it ngl
This is a very under appreciated area of global affairs, the pervasiveness of keycode messaging and compartmentalized information and what it implies about the management of events and plans over the course of decades. It’s essential to understand the principles of sigint somewhat to understand current affairs.
The first one isn't hUngarian but German, East German more specifically.
The second one is Yugoslavian and not Bulgaria.
Yeah, Drei is 3 in German. Hungarian is like „Három" which doesn't match up with the German numbers Acht, Null, Drei
@@ratatwang659 it was obviously the German language. The enigma ID begins with G so it is a German Language Number Station
This is more creepy than any horror story
13:04 hey! i've heard this in a Will wood song!
What song?
@@bem555 The song with five names, i believe
As we all sleep tonight; someone, somewhere is tuning in to the shortwave radio to decipher these cryptic tones and numbers.
3:07 this East German thing is……oddly terrifying
The Chinese robots and the Polytones freaked me out. More please! Also, Wop Wop was cool. I loved them all.
These are all very creepy but very interesting. Because I live in Canada there aren't really any known stations which I'd be able to pick up with a shortwave radio. I'd be lucky to get the Backwards Music Station or Yosemite Sam in my area, and Atencion is probably out of the question. I'm also too far to pick up any of the interesting European stations like MDZhB. I don't think Canada has operated any numbers stations (if so - why?) and if it did I'm unaware of them. I'm also unaware of any stations that might be or have been operated near the border. The United States doesn't really have any need to spy on Canada, so there probably are none nearby, though some could have been operated in Alaska as it's close to Russia.
Get a SSB radio and you can pick up stuff from all round the world
I also live in Canada near the us border in Ontario i can receive hm01 from Cuba and mainly brother stair. I use a another radio for ssb bfo
I think Cuba had some nubers stations, at some point. Radio Habana Cuba is one station you can probably get all over the americas.
Not HPP or the Drums and Trumpets or the slot machine or the faders
@@MisterTalkingMachine I picked up Radio Havana Cuba many times.
I imagine if a lot of these old stations were from the Cold War or earlier, the coded messages probably say something along the lines of “The War is over”
5:18 omg that is so unsettling, that noise!!
High-Pitch Polytone reminds me of the music from Great Bay Temple in Majora's Mask.