For more than 50 years the shortwave radio spectrum has been used by for unknown purposes - perhaps by the world’s intelligence agencies - to transmit secret messages.

The Numbers Stations transmit in many different languages, employing male and female voices repeating strings of numbers or phonetic letters day and night, all year round.

The voices are of varying pitches and intonation; there is even a German station (The Swedish Rhapsody) that transmits a female child’s voice.

One might think that these espionage activities should have wound down considerably since the official end of the cold war, but nothing could be further from the truth. Numbers Stations (and by inference, spies) are as busy as ever, with many new and bizarre stations appearing since the fall of the Berlin wall.

A variety of recordings of these Numbers Stations have been collected by the Conet Project - the first comprehensive collection of Numbers Stations recordings released to the public.

A 4-CD collection of Numbers Stations recordings is available as free MP3 downloads from the Internet Archive. Freaky stuff to sample.

Check out the example below. Let me know if you recognize the music, too!

 

 Numbers Station Samples [1:30m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download