GZS 197.7

It did not launch. It leaked. A postwar signal nobody licensed, coming up through the floor of Nashville on a frequency that does not exist, and it has been playing ever since.

Every Signal Corps transmitter sold cheap off a surplus lot after the war bled onto frequencies the factory never intended, and for that first year every ham operator in three counties was chasing ghosts on his own dial. What came up through the floor of Nashville was not one of theirs. It found Nashville Below the way water finds a crack in a foundation, and it has been finding new rooms down there for eighty years. Nobody on the roster was hired. They just turn up already on air.

Graveyard Signal has run seven to four since the start, the hours after the building above empties out and the one below gets busy. The Custodian has kept the halls since before anyone on staff today started, and nobody has worked up the nerve to ask how long. Brother Dewey Sparks pitches his tent in that stretch too, invisible unless you already know it is there, preaching the same four minutes every night: the landlord left a long time ago and nobody told the office. Nothing on this station has learned how to perform for a crowd, and midnight to four is where that shows most.