In a shortwave radio, a woman's voice recites numbers, never stopping for decades

Radio hobbyists tuning into shortwave at night occasionally come across a strange station: no music, no news, only a woman's voice, in a flat tone, reciting numbers over and over: "Seven, three, four, nine, two..." Some are male voices, some are children, some are machine-synthesized.

There is often a fixed piece of music at the beginning, or a humming sound. For example, there is a station in Britain that always plays a folk song called "The Lincolnshire Poacher" at the beginning, over and over.

These stations are called "number stations", and they have existed since the Cold War. Many countries around the world are suspected of using them, but no government has ever admitted it.

The general explanation is that they are for spies stationed abroad. The spy has a one-time codebook that only he and headquarters possess. At a certain fixed time, he turns on the radio, tunes to a certain frequency, hears a string of numbers, compares them with the codebook, and knows what headquarters wants him to do. Because the numbers are random, without the codebook, no one can crack them.

In 1998, the United States arrested a group of Cuban spies. Later court documents mentioned that they listened to shortwave number stations and used computer programs to turn the numbers into messages. This is considered to have confirmed the statement from the side.

No one knows who those numbers are being read to, and no one knows who is listening.

Among these stations, there are a few that are said to have been broadcasting for forty years.

#Paranormal #网络转载 #世界奇闻