Lighthouse Horror Podcast - I Work the Night Shift at a Radio Station. We Have STRANGE Rules

Episode Date: July 23, 2025

Story written by Stephen & Rachel of Lighthouse Horror. For usage rights or more information, please contact us at [e-mail] Art from NinerioMore of the artist’s works at ninerioartsOriginal YouTube link: I Work the Night Shift at a Radio Station. We Have STRANGE Rules.      Merch: lighthousehorror.shopFor more stories like this one, check out my YouTube channel: Lighthouse Horror | YouTube Patreon: Lighthouse Horror | PatreonSocial MediaINSTAGRAM - @lighthousehorror FACEBOOK -  Lighthouse HorrorTIKTOK - Lighthouse HorrorMusic:Lucas King - YouTubeMyuu - YouTube IncompetechDarren Curtis Music - YouTubeThank you for listening to this scary story! If you enjoyed this new creepypasta story, please check out some of my other horror stories. We'll be uploading new episodes every week, featuring ghost stories, haunted encounters, mysteries, true stories, creepypasta, and anything supernatural and paranormal. Don't miss out on the thrill and suspense that await you in each episode!

My name's Fred. I'm 28 years old, and I work as a DJ at a college radio station that's been running since the 70s. I also teach part-time. Communications Department. I show the students how to hold a camera without shaking, how to angle the light so it doesn't bounce off your forehead, how to speak into a mic like it matters. Most of them are still figuring out how to sit up straight. You'd be surprised how many people forget their posture the second a camera's on him. I'm not full-time faculty or anything fancy. I don't wear a tie. I wear jeans and a flannel shirt most days.

And if it's cold, I throw on a zip hoodie with the station's old logo across the back, a sort of disco ball with headphones. The kids think it's retro. It's not. It's just old. By day, I babysit undergrads with cameras. By night, I play 70s disco at 2 in the morning from a dusty, booth with faded carpet and a wall of old soundboards. And I mean old. Some of the sliders have

tape labels from DJs who are probably grandfathers now. There's one board that still says, do not touch this knob, Jerry, and red sharpie. Nobody knows who Jerry is. The board still works, mostly. I didn't plan on ending up here. It started as a joke, really. After college, there's this weird limbo time where you're too old to be a student, but not quite settled into being a grown-up. You take odd jobs, weird gigs, things that don't look good on a resume, but pay just enough to keep your lights on. This was one of those jobs. I figured I'd run the station for a semester, maybe two, while I figured out what I actually wanted to do. And that was four years ago. Now, I've got keys to three different rooms in the media building.

My own parking space, even though it's technically visitor, and a drawer in the break room fridge labeled Fred Do Not Touch, which everyone touches anyway, usually just for the creamers. It's not a glamorous life, but it's mine. The hours are weird, but steady. I get weekends off and we don't do summer classes, so I get a full three months every year. to do nothing. I tell people I use the time to work on music, but really I just sleep.

Or take the same long walk every morning to the same corner store where the same guy behind the counter asks me if I want my usual. I do. There's a rhythm to the job. A slow, easy beat. Like one of those old disco tracks with the long intros, nothing happens fast. The students rotate every semester, and they're all full of energy at first. They wear their little lanyards and carry notebooks they'll stop using after the third week. I teach them how to sit behind a desk without fidgeting. I let them pretend to read fake news from fake teleprompters in a fake morning segment. They love it. They ask questions like, is this what the real news is like? And I tell them, no. This is more honest.

Some of them laugh. Most of them don't get it. But yeah, and I love it. I love all of it. I love the smell of the old carpets in the booth. I love the way the mic feels warm after you've been talking into it for an hour. I love the blinking red on-air sign above the door, even though it buzzes sometimes and we've never been able to fix it. The studio itself hasn't changed in years. The main booth still has that old show. shag carpet on the walls. It's supposed to be for soundproofing, but really it just makes the place feel like the inside of a van from 1978. There's a window between the booth and the control room, and half the time it's fogged up from the AC running too long. The paperwork. My gosh, it's a nightmare, don't get me wrong, we have to log everything. Every track we play, every second we're on air, every student who touches the equipment. There's a folder in my desk just for

incident reports, though we've only had two in the last three years. One kid tripped over a cable and broke a light. Another tried to bring his hamster on set for a live animal segment. It went exactly how you'd think. The coffee's free in the break room, which helps. It's terrible, but it's hot, and it comes out fast. There's a vending machine that takes quarters and only quarters. The best part, though, it's the students. They're so full of ideas, full of questions. They remind me of myself, back when I still thought being on air meant something big. There are some strange things though.

And I'm not talking about the usual haunted campus stuff. You know the stories? Cold spots, lights flickering. Some girl drowned in the pool in 1972 and now her ghost checks IDs at the front desk or whatever. No. I mean strange things. Things with rules. We have rules in the booth. Not your usual safety rules. Stranger ones. Specific. Odd. They're written on a laminate sheet inside the booth tacked to the cork board under the broadcast schedule. Nobody knows who wrote him. But I have been here four years and I have seen what happens. when you break one. So, if you're still with me, buckle up. I've got stories. And every single one starts with a rule. The first rule is simple. Stay inside during your entire shift. Now that might sound easy. You're thinking, Fred, why would I even leave? It's 2 a.m. You're in a booth,

there's music playing, coffee in the break room, why leave? Exactly. That is the right way to think. But sometimes people do. And that's where things go wrong. They call it the graveyard shift for a reason. I used to think that was just a figure of speech, a way of saying late as hell without sounding dramatic. But here on this campus, it feels more literal. See, there's a church about two blocks from the station. It's an old one. Brick with stained glass windows that always look wet, even when it hasn't rained. I think it used to be part of the college, maybe back in the day when they had nuns teaching Latin or something.

Now it's just there. Some students still go to Sunday Mass, not many. Right next to that church, and I mean right next to it, like the lawn just rolls into it. is the town's local graveyard. Now, why the hell would the city graveyard be placed next to a college campus? I have no clue. Maybe it ran out of space. Maybe it was just convenient. Maybe some city planner had a weird sense of humor. Give the kids a dorm, a cafeteria, and a direct view of death. Ask the mayor, I'm just the DJ.

Anyway, you can see the graveyard from the back hallway of our building. There's a little service exit behind the sound booth leads out to a loading dock. If you stand there and squint, you can see the fence. It's not a tall fence, maybe four feet, chain link, topped with those twisty metal bits that never seemed to rust. Thing is, people say weird stuff happens down there at night. And no, I don't mean college kids passing around beer and brown paper bags. That happens too. But that's not what I'm talking about.

And it's not pranksters either. We've had our share of dumb kids throwing toilet paper over the trees or sticking plastic forks into the quad grass. But even those guys don't mess with the graveyard. They say, and by they, I mean just about anyone who's worked a late shift on this campus. that you don't go near that place after dark. I used to roll my eyes at that. But there's something about that place, something that makes your skin feel too tight

if you stare at it too long. One of the old tech guys, Rick, been around since the 80s, still has a ponytail on a pager, told me something once. We were both refilling the vending machine with quarters, and he just sort of set it without. looking up. Don't mess with somebody's home. He said. I thought he was talking about the graveyard being creepy. He said, no man, I mean that literally. That's their home now. The dead. It's their

place. And they don't like company. It's rude, right? Imagine you're trying to sleep and some college kids stumbles in, knocking over the lamps. a bunch of noise. You wouldn't like it either, he said. Then he handed me a snickers and walked away like he hadn't just said the creepiest thing I'd ever heard. I didn't believe it then. Not really. But over the years, I've heard stories, little ones. Like how phone alarms go off if someone steps outside after midnight, or how all of the campus cats stare at you. If you'd try leaving through the front door. But then, there's the big story, the one we don't talk about much.

About three years ago, someone on the night shift went missing. His name was Will. I didn't know him well. He was just filling in. I think it was between jobs. One of those guys who shut up with a clipboard and a new set of headphones ready to learn the ropes. Nice.

It's a nice guy. Quiet. He used to hum along to earth, wind, and fire. One night during his shift, he left the building, said he was going to stretch his legs. He never came back. At first, we all figured he quit. People do that sometimes. It's a college job. You don't need to hand in two weeks' notice if you're just running late-night playlist and drinking stale coffee. But when he didn't show up the next week, and his stuff was still in his desk.

People started asking questions. A week later, they found him. In the leg. Face down. Lungs full of water. No signs of struggle. No bruises. No injuries.

Just drowned. Fully clothed. Still had his lanyard on. The cops came by, asked their questions, made us hand over the CCTV from the station. We all crowded into the control room, expecting to see nothing, maybe a glitch, maybe him just walking out and never coming back. But the footage showed something different.

It showed Will walking out the back exit, hands in his pockets, whistling, calm as anything. He walked right past the dock, past the face. and toward the graveyard. That was the last time anyone saw him alive. I still remember the angle of the camera all grainy and flickering like it always was, the way the motion light turned on just long enough to show his face before he stepped into the dark. After that, the rule got written down, taped to the booth wall,

laminated, red marker, So now, even when I'm bored, even when the booth is hot and the hallway smells like old burritos and I really want to stretch my legs. I don't. I stay right here. Where it's warm, where it's safe. Where the music plays and the lights stay on and the back door stays locked. I keep the walks for when the sun's out.

The second rule is just as simple as the first. Keep the show running no matter what. If you've ever worked in radio, you probably already know what dead air is. Dead air is silence. It's when the station is live, the transmitter's on, and there's nothing going out. No music, no voice, no commercials, just nothing.

Doesn't sound like a big deal, but it's basically the worst thing you can do as a DJ. It means you've messed up. It means you weren't paying attention. And most of all, it means you've made people uncomfortable. No one likes silence on the radio. That's the whole point of the job, to keep it moving. Keep people company while they drive or work or lie awake at 2 a.m.

wondering why they're still awake. When it's quiet, people notice it pulls them out of their lives, makes them start thinking, sometimes too much. That's why DJs talk so much. Even when we've got nothing to say we fill the space. Weather updates, birthday shoutouts, long rambles about the history of a song no one asked for. Doesn't matter. It's not about what you say.

It's about not stopping ever. We even have an alarm for it. If there's more than five seconds of silence, the high-pitched tone goes off in the booth. Loud enough to make your ears ring. than any fire alarm. First time I heard it, I thought something exploded. It only ever happens when someone's new or something breaks. You've got to be really out of it to let air go dead. But sometimes it's not your fault. Sometimes the silence creeps in anyway. I remember the first time it happened under my shift. It was a Wednesday, around 3.10 a.m. back when we still did a

listener's choice segment. I was flipping through vinyl, trying to find the right earthwind and fire track for a guy who claimed he'd just gotten engaged. I guess September felt romantic to him. I was mid-sentence when everything cut out. Mike was on. Turntable was spinning, but the board light blinked red, dead air, and the alarm screamed. I panicked of course. It every button I could reach. Switch to tracks, turned to knobs. Nothing. It only lasted 10 seconds, but the second the sound kicked back in, the phone rang. Now that's not unusual by itself. We get calls, request. Sometimes someone just wants to say hi or complain that a track played last week wasn't the original version. But this one felt strange. I picked up and said,

said my usual. You're on air with Fred at WZNU. What can I spin for you? There was a pause. Then a woman spoke. Her voice was soft, polite, old-fashioned almost. She sounded like someone reading from a script, but gently, like she'd rehearse the call in her head for days, she said. I was wondering if you could play just the way you are by Billy. Joel. That was our wedding song. Me and my husbands. I said, sure, yeah, no problem. When was the big day? Another pause, she said. August 9th, 1979. Now I know people love their oldies, but most of our callers weren't even born in the 70s. I figured it was someone pulling a prank.

Happened sometimes. Still, I had the record, so I played it. Thought that would be the end of it. It wasn't. She called again the next night. Same time. Asked for the same song. Then again, two nights later.

Always polite, never loud or rude. I started recognizing her voice. She had a kind of calm that stuck in your ears, like church bells heard from a distance. Eventually I asked her name, she said. Mary, Mary Glass. That name stuck with me. Felt old somehow.

I told one of my friends about it, a journalist who works out of the city. He's the type of guy who digs through public records for fun. I figured he'd laugh. Instead, he called me. me back the next day. Hey Fred, you'll know something weird? He asked. Always.

She's dead. Who? I asked. Mary Glass. Died in 1979. Car accident. Three months after a wedding, says so in the archives. There's even a picture.

Looks a little like my grandma. like my grandma," he said. I thought maybe it was someone using her name, maybe a relative, some weird college project. But we kept getting the calls. Even now, sometimes during the night shift. When things go quiet for too long, the red light on the phone blinks. No ring. Just blinks?

And if you answer, which I don't anymore, you'll answer. You'll hear her. Always polite. Always thankful. The weirdest part. She doesn't know she's dead. She talks like she's still living in it. 1979. Tell stories about her husband mowing the lawn, about getting ready for their honeymoon, about the way her dress fit funny at the shoulders. Like it's all still happening. The problem is, when you're Once you pick up, she keeps calling, no matter what tracks playing, no matter what segment. She finds a way to break in. We had one intern, Cole, who thought the whole thing was fake, picked up on purpose, laughed

and played along. But his next three shows were a disaster. Every time he tried to talk, the mic would cut out. Every time he played a record, the sound would bend. and slow. And the phone kept blinking, nonstop. We finally had to pull him off the schedule. He didn't come back the next semester. Now we just don't answer. Let it ring, let it blink, whatever happens don't stop the show. You see, the dead think dead air is an invitation. That's silence. The kind you only get at 3.17 a.m.

when the world's holding its breath. That's when they slip through. People fill the spaces you leave empty with our own hopes, wishes, opinions. And that's true for the dead, too, especially the ones who don't know they've passed on. So we fill the air every second, even if we have to ramble, even if we just hum into the mic. I have told every new DJs, the same thing, don't let the silence settle. Not even for a moment. Because once you've invited the dead in, it's hard to get them out. The third rule might sound strange if this is your first time working radio. Rule number three. Ignore station number seven. You probably don't know what I mean by that. That's fine. Most people don't when they're new to this job. It's one of those things that

doesn't come up in normal conversation. But if you spend enough time in this building, working the booth late at night, you'll learn fast. Sometimes Station 7 will call. You'll be in the middle of a track, maybe sipping your coffee, maybe flipping through the weather script, and then the phone rings, or the fax machine starts, or your email pings with a subject line that just says green FM. You'll look at the number. It won't show up like a normal call. No area code, no ID. Just a number seven.

Sometimes it's written out. Station 7 calling. Sometimes it just says 7. Ignore it. Don't answer. Don't reply. Don't even open the message if you can help it. The first time it happened to me,

I was halfway through a BG set. More than a woman spinning on the turntable when I knocked over my coffee. The mug tipped in. and clattered against the console, spilling lukewarm coffee across the playlist log. I swore under my breath and grabbed a handful of napkins from the drawer. That's when the phone light blinked. Bright red. Silent.

Just one word on the screen. Seven. I wiped my hands and reached for the receiver, still shaking droplets off my fingers. Before I could pick it up, the light shut off. No ring, just that quick flash, then nothing. The booth felt off after that. I couldn't explain it, but something in the room had shifted, like the moment you realize someone's been standing behind you longer than they should have.

The next morning, I told Rick about it. He was crouched at the vending machine, swapping out quarters. He didn't look up when I spoke. You had a call come in last night. Missed it. The screen just said seven. You ever seen that before? I asked. He paused for a beat, slipped another coin into the slot. He asked me if I answered. No, knocked over my coffee, barely missed it, I said. He nodded slowly, quiet, and he said that's probably for the best. He fished a candy bar out of the tray, still didn't look at me.

And he told me that Station 7 used to be local, and they've been off the air for a long time. That was all he said. Then he walked off. Now in radio, when we say a station's gone dark, we mean it's gone off air. Could be temporary, loss of funding, technical problems, whatever. But sometimes it's forever. We call those dark stations, still listed in old registries, but gone. Static. Ghost on the frequency. Station 7 was one of those.

Back in the 70s, it was a real place. Green FM 959. They used to broadcast from a big farmhouse on the edge of town. Rumor was, it started as a hippie operation, all incense and protest songs. But if you ask the older staff, they'll tell you it was something else entirely. A cult. Back then, that wasn't so unusual. New Age stuff was all over the place. Love, freedom, barefoot dancing in the fields. And sometimes, yeah, religion. Home-made religions. The kind where everyone smiles too wide and no one ever leaves. Station 7 was popular, though. Played the biggest hits. Always had collars. People said the music had this warmth to it, like it.

hugged you through the speaker. And then one summer, the whole place burned down. Now, survivors, some say it was an accident. Some say it wasn't. Either way, the building's still there, or what's left of it.

The land never sold. The town just built around it, like trying to avoid eye contact with a bad memory. And yet, they still call Station 7 still rings us sometimes We've got faxes with full playlist Handwritten

Neat cursive With dates from 1974 Artist no one plays anymore Jingles that don't exist in any archive Once a new intern replied to one of the emails Hit reply all like it was a joke typed Ha ha ha

You guys still broadcasting from the afterlife He didn't sleep for two days after that. Wouldn't tell us why. There are other dark stations out there, too. Not just here. There's one in Nebraska, next to an old goat farm. I don't know what happened to them, but the story goes that the animals kept breaking free, always running toward the transmitter tower.

They stopped fixing the fence after the third time. There's another in New York. used to sit under a bridge. No DJ. Just a looped voice reading poetry and crying. People said the broadcast made you feel like jumping. They shut it down after the third body. One in Chicago. I've only heard stories. People claim it was a doorway to something else, like a hallway that never ends. They say you could hear footsteps in the background of their track. Most of them don't reach out, but Station 7 does. So here's the rule. Ignore them. The fourth rule is easiest to follow, in my opinion. Rule number four, leave a cup of coffee

by the door at the end of your shift. At the end of each night, after the last track fades and the booth goes quiet, we do a wrap-up. It's informal, just whoever's still around, usually a student intern, sometimes one of the tech guys if something broke mid-show. We go over how the broadcast went, make sure everything ran clean, and talk through anything strange that might have happened. A faulty mic, a late call-in, something skipping on the turntable. Little things like that matter more than you'd think. These meetings are called post-mortems.

That's the actual term. people use it all the time, a breakdown after the fact. I always thought it sounded too dramatic for what we do. But the name stuck. Even the new kids start calling it then after a few weeks. They're like how serious it sounds. We don't have a real conference table or anything. Most of the time we just sit on the edge at the stage in Studio B, legs dangling off the side, drinking whatever's left in our cups. I like hearing how the students describe the night. They know, notice different things, energy in the room, tone of voice, weird silences that only they seem to catch. Sometimes they surprise me. Once everyone's had their say, they start heading out.

One by one they grab their bags, check their phones, and disappear into the hallway. The doors shut behind them. The lights turn off, one switch at a time, and then the building is still. That's when I go to the back kitchen. Not the nice one with a new coffee machine. The smaller one, with a warped counter and the peeling linoleum floor. The old fridge buzzes when it runs, and there's always a slight smell of burnt toast, even when no one's cooked anything. It's tucked away behind the break room, down a short hallway that never feels quite long enough.

The red mug sits on the top shelf of the cabinet. Everyone knows it's there. Wide handle, heavy ceramic, chipped near the rim. Bright red. The kind of red that doesn't fade with time. You grab it, rinse it out, and make one last cup of coffee. Just black, no sugar, no cream. You set it about the door.

Not the front entrance, not the glass one with a campus seal. The side door next to the soundproof hall. The one people forget is even there. right under the emergency lot. That's where the mug goes. You place it carefully on the little wooden bench against the wall. Handle turned outward. Steam rising.

If you're quick enough with a brew. Then you leave. I never skip this step. No one does. Not even the students. If I forget to remind them, they'll remind me. It's just something we do. I asked Rick about it.

once, back when I first started. He told me it was a habit, said the person who closes the station has always left something behind, going all the way back to the 70s. Coffee most times. Once, he said, someone left a bottle of Coke and came back to find the cap unscrewed and the label peeled off. The red mug became the standard. Rick also said something I never forgot. He told me his grandma believed red was a color that could. be seen from the other side, not just noticed, but understood the color of blood, the color of breath, life clinging to the edge of everything. He said coffee was the drug of the living. And maybe, if the other kind of folks were passing through, they'd see the red, smell

the coffee, and move on. Nobody watches the mug. Nobody stands around to see who or what takes it. But every morning, when the first person unlocks the building, the cup is empty. Doesn't matter how early. Doesn't matter if the person opening is a student or a janitor or one of the professors checking in early for a recording session. The cup is always empty. One time, I decided to leave early.

Figured the intern could lock up. long night, didn't feel like waiting around. I skipped the coffee, told myself it was tradition, nothing more. Next morning, the back door was open, just an inch, like someone had pushed it, but didn't step through. No one had checked in yet. I made the coffee after that, every single night. I don't know if it matters. I don't know who drinks it. Maybe it's superstition. Maybe it's the only thing keeping the walls here from falling inward. All I know is that this place runs smoother when the mug is full and warm before I leave. You don't always need answers. Sometimes you just need to follow the rules. Well, it's been four years in change since I first walked into the station.

Just meant to be a gig. Few semesters while I figured things out. A pause between what I thought was college life and whatever came after. But I stayed. Some people keep photo albums. Some people keep journals. Me? I've got playlists.

Dozens of them. Labelled by date, mood, weather. I can tell you exactly what I was doing on a rainy Thursday three years ago just by a what track I queued up. The records never lie. I've seen the rules posted on the wall thousand times. Most folks stopped noticing them after a while. They blend into the corkboard, somewhere between the fire escape diagram and the outdated flyer for improv night. But I look at them every shift. Make sure they're still there. Make sure nothing's changed. Because the rules work, I have followed them every one.

Stayed inside, kept the airwaves full, ignored the calls I wasn't supposed to answer, left the coffee, always in the red mug, always warm, always gone by morning. And in return, the station has stayed quiet, mostly. There are nights the booths feel just a little too still. Lights take a second longer to come on. The mic buzzes faintly, even when it shouldn't. I don't mention those things in the post-mortem. No reason to spook the new kids. They'll find their rhythm soon enough.

Rick says he's probably retiring next year. He didn't make a big deal out of it. Just mention it while cleaning the vending machine. I think he's tired, and I don't blame him. The building's starting to show its age. Carpets worn down to the threads in the sound booth. Sealing tile over Studio B still leaks when it rains too hard. But the signal's clear.

The turntables are still spinning. Last week, one of the students lingered after class, said she liked the quiet hours, asked if I thought she could handle the night shift. I asked if she was good at following instructions, and she said yes. I told her to memorize the rules. She nodded.

Some places run on schedules. Others run on people. This one runs on rituals, and they only work if someone keeps them going. If you ever take this job, good luck, and follow the rules.