Haunted

You come home on a cold and stormy night only to hear the reassuring sound of lively conversation in the next room. When you enter the room, you hear voices laughing, telling familiar jokes that make you smile. But your friends are not actually your friends. They’re co-hosts of a podcast, one that ended years ago. You left your TV on, and it’s streaming old episodes. A chill runs up your spine, as you realize you are utterly alone.

Spooky, right?¹

OK, so you can see why I’m not a horror writer. I am quite squeamish, actually — an eye-coverer at movies, someone who leaves the room to avoid the sight and sound of gore on TV. And yet, I do not like to suspend my disbelief for ghost stories or supernatural tales (unless they take place in outer space. A haunted ship? No thanks. But a haunted spaceship? Love it). 

Horror as a genre, and as a motif, is unavoidable in radio. The two have been together from the beginning, and even before that. After all, there is something baseline-creepy about listening to voices of people, distant both in time and space, that we cannot see. We tell ghost stories in the dark, and the eye-lessness of audio opens a door to the paranormal.

The intersection of creepiness and communication became much clearer when I read Jeffrey Sconce’s book Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television. Sconce is struck by the way new electronic technologies seem to sprout supernatural echoes almost as soon as they emerge. He starts off with the rise of Spiritualism in America in the 1840s, just a few years after the first wire-telegraph messages were sent by Samuel Morse. In 1848, the Fox Sisters of Hydesville, NY, set off a national mania for seances and communicating with spirits via a “medium” (and no, the double-meaning of that word is not lost on Sconce). The Fox Sisters became famous for interpreting mysterious rapping sounds made by ghosts in the same way telegraph operators interpreted the mysterious dots and dashes of Morse Code.