This is the last Eerie October post.

I've thought about posting this story ever since I started blogging. I've never quite worked up the guts to do it, though, because I know that there are people who'll think I'm crazy. Others might read it and think that it's nothing much worth talking about.

And still there are others, I suppose, who might read it and nod in recognition.

I guess a little background is necessary.

I graduated high school in 1987, intent on pursuing a career in commercial graphics. I intended to leave for college that autumn, and to make a little spending money and have some fun over the summer, I got a job at one of the two local radio stations.

Long story short, college never happened. I fell in love with radio. I spent four years at that station. I might still have been there, playing 45's (do they still make 45's?) and reading the weather forecast, if they hadn't automated the station in '91 and laid off all the DJs.

When that station laid us off, I had two choices: stay in radio and try to find another gig, or get a straight-world job. I tried the straight route first, going to work as a retail salesman at a local department store. I was there less than two months. Real work just wasn't for me.

I applied for jobs at other radio stations, but I had no immediate takers. I eventually got on as the continuity director at a middle-market station in West Virginia, but that wasn't for two years. In the meantime, I went to work at the other local small time radio station, just so I'd have a paycheck while I shopped my resume around.

Getting on at the other station was easy. For starters, this really is a small area. There are only two radio stations here, and at least half at the people at either of them had worked at the other, as well. The manager of the other station had tried twice to hire me before the first station laid me off... and once I realized that work in the straight-world wasn't for me, I was ready to take him up on his offer. I left the retail store job on a Tuesday morning and was working at the other station that afternoon.

The radio industry is kind of a closed circuit, especially in a small town. Not only did the two local stations share a lot of the same employees over the years, but we also knew a lot of each other's dirty laundry. I'd heard from various people over the years that Station Two was haunted, and if I thought about it at all, I suppose I thought it was kinda neat. It must be cool, I supposed, to work in a building with a little bit of local folklore.

Of course, shortly after I went to work at the second station, I started asking questions about the ghost stories. Some of the employees, but only a few, told me not to worry about it, that there was nothing to it. Others told me that it would probably only be a matter of time before I saw and heard enough to be able to make up my own mind about the situation.

It crossed my mind that all of this might be a practical joke or some kind of "initiation" for a new employee who'd come to work from the competition. I almost expected some sort of elaborate scheme to scare me by some of the other DJs. Disc jockeys are famous for playing elaborate practical jokes on each other (I could fill this blog with tales of practical jokes I either pulled off or had pulled off on me). Still, there was something about the way that my new co-workers would tell these stories. There wasn't a glint of humor or scheming in their eyes. At least none I could see. Some of them seemed reluctant to talk about it. I supposed that I'd find out soon, one way or the other, if there was anything to the stories or if I was being set up for a real hum-dinger of a joke.

There were a few different stories about the station and the property it was built on. Within a week or two of my employment there, I guess I heard them all. I never did anything to look up and verify any of the stories I heard... never checked local property records, never looked into the history of the area, never did anything remotely investigative. I suppose I might have done so if my experiences with the haunting at the radio station were intriguing or mildly interesting... but they weren't. My experiences with whatever it was at the radio station were terrifying.

One of the stories about the property involved an old man named "Jake" who had owned the property around the turn of the last century. Apparently, the county had taken the property from him because he wasn't able to pay the taxes on it. The story went that he died alone and destitute, swearing that he'd return to his land eventually.

Another story had it that a house on the property had been rented out to a young couple who were having marital problems. The story was that the woman was cheating on her husband, and that she and her boyfriend lay waiting for the husband to come in from work one night, ambushed him, and cut his throat. The story continued that the wife became so guilt-ridden and depressed about what she'd done that she hung herself in the house within a few days.

Then there was the story about the first owner of the radio station itself. According to that story, the man who'd built the station and originally owned it had been a terrible alcoholic with an awful temper. He had been given to particularly violent tantrums, I was told, and used to swear oaths against God during the worst of his fits. According to the story, he'd was at the station one day, trying to get an old mimeograph machine to work and having trouble with it. As he got more and more frustrated with the machine, his swearing and yelling became more and more heinous, and finally he dropped dead of a massive heart attack, right there in the station.

Everyone referred to the presence at the station as "Jake," however. Even though everyone believed that there were multiple presences at the station, they just called them all "Jake," and left it at that.

I was told that sometimes, blood-curdling screams could be heard in the station, late at night, while only the DJ on the air was on the premises. I was told that ghostly figures could be seen in this room and that, from time to time. I was also told that strange and sudden knocking on the walls and ceiling were common, and that from time to time, objects would fall from shelves and counter-tops... objects that had been securely and safely placed a moment before.

I was also told that Sunday mornings were the worst times to be in the radio station. Being a small town southern radio station, we played gospel and Christian music and church services from 6:00 AM until noon on Sunday mornings. I was told that whatever it was at the station seemed to despise Christian music and preaching, and that as soon as I worked on a Sunday morning, I'd be able to make up my mind about the stories.

Of course, right off the bat, I was assigned the Sunday morning, 6:00 AM till noon shift. My regular shift was weekday afternoons, noon til 5:00 PM... but we all had to have a weekend shift, too, just to make sure there was coverage of those hours.

I listened to the stories with some degree of fear, but I was also a bit skeptical. I had to give them credit; if these stories were fake and part of an elaborate joke, they'd really cooked up some doozies. If my co-workers were planning to scare me, they really had their hooks in me right away. They sure seemed to be taking all of this seriously... but the coincidence between the supposed activity on Sunday mornings and my Sunday morning shift seemed a little questionable.

To be honest, I don't remember if I had anything happen on my first Sunday morning or not. It might have been a couple of weeks before that one Sunday morning... the one I'll never forget... when things went all to hell.

I think I'd been on the air about half an hour or so when the knocking started. First, it was on the walls... first this one and then that. I waited for the "Gotcha"... waited for a co-worker or two to jump out and have a laugh, but it never happened. It seemed that I really was in the building alone.

After a while, the knocking started on the ceiling. Not just random knocking, either... rhythmic knocking, in time with the music I was playing... but increasing in loudness and force, as though something was saying "I hear that music, and I don't like it." The knocking would go on sometimes for twenty or thirty seconds, and then stop.

The things that happened when I was actually talking on the air were the worst, though.

I'd "crack the mic" (as we used to say) and start reading live ad copy or the weather forecast, or what have you, and the tape racks to the left and right of me would begin swaying, as if someone was pushing them from behind. There was no question about it now, I was scared. I was scared out of my wits. What was happening now could not, as far as I could see, be chalked up to a hidden co-worker. What was happening now was impossible for me to explain.

Something was in the building with me, and it didn't like me.

The last straw came when I went over to a large shelf of records in the back of the room. I sat down to look for a record on the bottom shelf, and as I looked through the stack, I heard it:

WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!

Something or someone was in the next room, immediately on the other side of the wall, and seemed to be kicking the wall not two feet away from my head. That was it.

I put on a tape of an hour or so worth of gospel music and I went out and sat in my car. Trembling. The tape had long pauses between the songs, and a DJ is supposed to be there to start music from another source, or to start another form of audio, as soon as a song ends. Too bad, though. I wasn't going back in there. Nothing doing. Those five or ten second gaps of "dead air" would just have to do.

The DJ who let me off at the end of my shift pulled into the parking lot about fifteen minutes before his shift began. As soon as he saw me in my car, he started smiling. He got out of the car and said "Did Jake get ya this morning?"

I let him know, in a long, rambling, terrified rant, that SOMETHING had indeed gotten me, that I'd had enough, that I'd raise the roof if it turned out to be a co-worker or group of co-workers who'd been responsible for what was going on, and that I was going home. He just smiled. No, he assured me, it wasn't a co-worker. It was real. It was Jake. And, now that he'd broken me in, he'd probably back off a bit.

He did, too. For the rest of the time I was at the station, Sunday mornings were mild compared to that one. There'd still be knocks and occasionally things would move on their own, but for the most part, Jake seemed satisfied that he's established my place in his personal pecking order.

Over the year and a half that I was at the station, I actually got somewhat friendly with Jake. All of us did. It was a way of staying sane, I suppose. One of the legends about Jake was that he loved Hank Williams, Sr. If you were at the station late at night and heard knocking on the ceiling, it was common to treat it as a request for Hank, Sr. from Jake. "Alright, Jake, I'll play some Hank," you might say... and put on Your Cheatin' Heart or On The Bayou. Anything to keep Jake happy.

There are a few other specific incidents about Jake that are worth mentioning here. Some of them are personal, and a one was related to me by someone who seemed to really believe what she was telling me. I didn't for one minute think she was pulling my leg, anyway. I'll relate those stories now, starting with the personal ones.

The radio station had a broadcast studio and a production studio, both of which faced each other and both of which allowed a view into the station's lobby. Both studios had large picture windows to allow a clear view of most of the rest of the station. On the particular night of this incident, I was in the production studio with another employee, producing a thirty second commercial for some local business. The disc jockey on the air was about to end his shift, and the disc jockey who was going on after him was in the studio with him. The disc jockey who was about to get off was waiting for a friend of his, who was going to meet him at the station. The guy he was waiting for was named Joey, and he was a local musician who'd been to the station a number of times. Nobody expected Joey to knock at the front door, he'd been there so frequently that we all expected him to just walk in when he arrived. Besides, all of us knew Joey and were friendly with him, so nothing could have been more casual than him coming by the station.

Anyway, I was in the production studio with "Jim," another DJ... and "Marc" and "Wayne" were both in the broadcast studio. As I said, we all had a clear view of the lobby from both studios, although since it was past business hours, the lights were off in the lobby. Still, it wasn't that dark out there, thanks to the light from the two studios.

From where "Jim" and I sat, we saw a tall, dark figure... very distinctly human and very distinctly real... walk though the lobby. Great, we thought, Joey must be here. Let's walk out and say hello. When we got to the lobby, we saw "Marc" and "Wayne," who'd both walked out of the broadcast studio, expecting to greet Joey themselves. The only problem was, there was no one in the lobby. All four of us had seen someone walk through the lobby... but when we converged on the lobby from two different ends and turned on the lights, there was nobody there.

Later, when Joey did get there, he was greeted by four very freaked out DJs.

Another time, I was sitting in the broadcast studio talking to another DJ. I wasn't on the air, I was just there at the station hanging out. I think it's relevant to say that sometimes "Jake" incidents would be so few and far between that we'd have enough time to let our guard down a little bit... which only meant that the next time something happened, we'd get that much more scared. Anyway, this particular time, I was sitting in the broadcast studio when something walked past me on my left. It wasn't generally very clear, it seemed to be composed mostly of smoke, and it was gone almost as soon as I'd seen it. Still, for the brief couple of seconds that I could see it, I could make out the seam of a pants leg. It was that close to me, and that one small bit of it was that clear. Then, before my eyes could really lock in on it, it was gone. Of course, I left immediately, leaving behind one ticked off DJ who thought I should have the courtesy to stay with him until his shift ended.

A third time, I was on the air doing a live call-in program. This was a Saturday morning program, and since we didn't have a receptionist at the station on Saturday mornings, the DJ had to man the phones, take the calls, and do the on-air part all by himself. This meant that your hands were really full. As I said, the broadcast studio had large picture windows, one of which was right in front of the broadcast board, so when you sat there doing a call-in program, you had to face that window. The whole time I was doing that call-in program on that particular Saturday morning, something was outside that window, mocking me. That's the only way I can describe it. It was like a cloud of smoke, it appeared to be about a foot high and about two feet wide, and was hanging right about where head-level would have been if someone had been standing there. It seemed to be moving back and forth, left and right, as though it were dancing for my benefit. I was convinced then, and remain convinced now, that whatever it was, it knew I was there, it knew I was scared, and it was enjoying itself. Finally, it went down the hall and disappeared. I never saw it again.

Other DJs saw and heard things like this all the time. One of them, a guy who has remained one of my best friends, saw the form of someone hanging from the ceiling in the same area where I'd seen the "dancing cloud." I didn't see it, but he told me about it, and I'd bet my life that this guy wasn't lying to me. He's like a brother to me, and I believe him.

Another DJ told me that Jake used to pick out records for him to play. He'd ask Jake if there was anything he'd like to hear, and as soon as the words left his mouth, a record would fall from the shelf to the floor.

This last story, though, is the one that scares me the most. This is the one I think about sometimes when I wake up at night. It didn't happen to me, but I believe the woman who told me about it. She told me with the same tone and attitude one might use to describe a terrible car-wreck one had survived. She might have been lying, or she might have imagined all of it... but I don't think that was the case. I believe her.

This woman had worked at both local radio stations, like I had... but in the opposite order. She'd started out at the second station, where she'd been the general manager when she quit and came to work as the sales manager at the station where I got my start in radio. I'll call her "Jane."

A few months after I started working at the second radio station, I ran into her. She asked me how it was going, I told her it was OK. I also told her about Jake, and asked her if she'd had any encounters with him/her/it while she was there. This is the story she told me, after at first saying that she didn't want to talk about it:

While she was the manager at the station I'd gone to work at, Jake-related activity reached a real high. People were starting to quit their jobs because of it. People were terrified to come to work. One DJ claimed to have felt cold hands around his neck and to hear laughter while he was on the air one morning. He was freaked out. Something had to be done.

"Jane" decided to find a clergyman who'd be willing to exorcise the building. She wasn't able to find anyone willing to try that, but did find someone who said he'd come to the station and give a blessing, with the hopes that doing so would settle everyone's nerves.

When the clergyman got to the building, he left after just a few minutes. He didn't give the blessing. He said that it just didn't "feel right," and he was in a hurry to leave.

"Jane" placed a few more calls, and found someone else who was willing to come the next day and give another blessing.

That night, at home, in her bed, "Jane" was awakened by something at the foot of her bed in the middle of the night. She said she couldn't see it distinctly, that it just seemed to be a dark cloud of some kind. Nonetheless, it was able to communicate with her. She didn't really tell me how it communicated, but she made it clear that it was getting through to her. It begged her not to have another clergyman in, and to leave it alone. It begged her not to make it leave it's home. She told it that it needed to leave, that it didn't belong here with us anymore, that it needed to go on to where ever it was supposed to be.

It started crying, she said. Then, it became angry. It took on a threatening tone. It told her that it knew her children.

"Jane" told the second clergyman not to come the next day. Within a month, she was working at the other radio station.

So that's my story. That's why I believe in ghosts.

I think about all of this from time to time. Now and then I'll tell people about it, and the stories usually hold people's attention pretty well. Sometimes, I chalk it all up to something explainable... mass hysteria, or delusions, or some sort or electrical problem at the station that caused odd sounds and images to seem to appear.

Sometimes, though, even all these years later, I remember it all like it happened five minutes ago. Sometimes I wake up remembering it, in fact. When that happens, I lay awake, stare at the ceiling, and listen....

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Other Eerie October posts:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6