Ham radio contacts attributed to a deceased operator
The host reads an email letter said to come from [quote withheld] about the writer’s father, an avid ham radio operator who died on April 22, 1987. About a week and a half after the death, the writer says, they sat in their father’s backyard radio shack and heard operators calling the father’s call sign and arranging to meet him. They went on the air and told the operators the father had died. The letter ends with the writer’s guess that the father stayed around briefly to say goodbye. The host remarks that the story affected him.
This clip comes from the source recording. AI chose where it starts and ends, so it may start or end a little early or late. The word-for-word transcript is not published. You can hear the source recording on the Internet Archive (file “Ghost to Ghost 2010.mp3”, starting at 7:40). Is this you, or someone you know? Ask for a correction or removal.
The story as told
This is a letter read on air by the host, said to come from [quote withheld] The writer says their father was an avid ham radio operator who built a radio shack in the backyard. The father died on April 22, 1987, at 53, of a massive heart attack. About a week and a half later, the writer went out to the shack around 9:20 p.m. to watch television and listen to the father’s radio, half-listening to local chatter. The writer says they heard someone calling the father’s call sign. They held no license, so they did not answer. About thirty minutes later they heard an operator calling for the father. The two operators told each other he was not around, and each said the father had spoken to them the night before and said he would be around at about that time. The writer says they then got on the radio and told the operators the father had died on the 22nd. The writer reports that the operators replied that they had talked to the father many times in the last week and that he had set times for them to be around. Three more operators came on and said the father had talked to them too. After about an hour of talking, answering questions, and receiving condolences, the writer logged off using the father’s call sign [quote withheld] The letter closes with the writer’s guess that the father [quote withheld] The host says, [quote withheld]
Reported events, in order
- 0:47
The letter states that the writer’s father, an avid ham radio operator, died on April 22, 1987, at age 53, of a massive heart attack.
- 0:54
About a week and a half after the death, the writer says they went out to their father’s backyard radio shack to get away from people at the house.
- 1:13
Around 9:20 p.m., while half-listening to local chatter, the writer says they heard someone calling the father’s call sign. The writer had no license, so did not respond.
- 1:21
About thirty minutes later the writer says they heard another operator calling for the father. The first operator told the second that the father was not around.
- 1:31
The writer reports that each of the two operators said the father had talked to them the night before and said he would be around at about that time.
- 1:52
The writer says they got on the radio and told the operators the father had died on the 22nd.
- 1:55
The writer says the operators told the writer they had talked to the father many times in the last week and that he had set up times for them to be around.
- 2:09
During the conversation, the writer reports, three more people came on and said the father had talked to them too.
- 2:15
After about an hour of talking, answering questions, and receiving condolences, the writer says they logged off using the father’s call sign for the last time.
- 2:30
The letter ends with the writer’s guess that the father stayed around briefly to say his goodbyes. The host comments that the story affected him.
Claims
Each claim is labeled as something the person telling the story noticed (observation), what they made of it (interpretation), something others told them (hearsay), or something the host said (host statement).
- observation· 1:13
The letter writer says that about a week and a half after their father’s death they heard someone on the ham radio calling the father’s call sign.
- observation· 1:21
The writer reports hearing a second operator calling for the father about thirty minutes later. The writer says the two operators told each other the father “wasn't around.”
- hearsay· 1:31
According to the letter, both operators said the father had spoken to them the night before and told them he would be around at about that time.
- hearsay· 1:55
The operators reportedly told the writer they had talked to the father many times in the week after his death and that he had set times for them to be around.
- hearsay· 2:09
The writer says three more operators came on during the conversation and said the father had talked to them as well.
- interpretation· 2:30
The writer’s own conclusion is that the father stayed around briefly to say goodbye.
Scores, with reasons
An AI model gave these scores using a fixed set of scoring rules (scoring-v1). They are editorial judgments and rough guides, not the odds that anything paranormal happened. How scoring works.
A firsthand witness is at the center of the story, and the letter gives specifics that could in principle be checked. But it reaches us only as a letter read by the host, and its central claim, radio contact after the death, depends on unnamed third parties. Component estimate: source proximity 14, specificity 15, internal consistency 16, alternative explanations 9, calibration 11, for a total of 65. That is reduced to the secondhand-account cap of 60.
Evidence for and against
- The letter gives concrete anchors: a date (April 22, 1987), an age (53), a cause of death, a place (“Lincoln, Nebraska”), a time ([quote withheld]), and a physical setting (the backyard radio shack).
- The sequence is consistent and moves in order: hearing the call sign, waiting half an hour, the exchange between the two operators, then the writer’s reply.
- The writer states their conclusion tentatively, [quote withheld] rather than asserting it.
- The story reaches the audience secondhand, read by the host from an email. The writer is not present to answer questions.
- The writer does not address ordinary explanations. The writer’s statement that they were “only half listening” leaves open that they misheard routine radio traffic.
- The key claim, that the father spoke to operators after his death, rests entirely on what unnamed operators are said to have told the writer.
- The host says he will not give the rest of the call letters, so the station cannot be identified.
- It is not clear whether the operators’ claimed conversations with the father happened before or after April 22.
- 0:47
- 2:30
- 0:30
What the model inferred (not said on air): The component weights, and the decision to treat a host-read email as a secondhand relay, are my judgments, not statements in the broadcast. The host does not evaluate the letter’s reliability.
This is essentially the letter writer’s assertion, plus claimed witnesses who are unnamed and never heard. It has some specifics that could be checked (place, date, partial call sign), but none were checked on air. That places it in the 11 to 25 range.
Evidence for and against
- The letter gives specifics that could be checked, but none were checked: a place (“Lincoln, Nebraska”), a date and age, a partial call sign, and a time.
- The letter claims several witnesses. Five operators in total are said to have spoken with the father.
- No document, recording, logbook, or photograph is examined on air. The host only reads a text he says he received by email.
- The operators who are said to back up the story never speak on air and are never named, so what they said cannot be assessed.
- Only part of the call sign is given, so the station and the operators cannot be identified.
- It is not possible to tell whether the host had the full text of the letter, including the complete call sign.
- 0:34
- 2:09
What the model inferred (not said on air): Placing it in that range is my use of the scoring guide. The host does not say whether anyone tried to verify the letter.
Hearing strangers ask for a father who died days earlier, from inside his own radio shack at night, is eerie. But the story is warm and about saying goodbye rather than threatening. It never turns to harm or lasting dread.
Evidence for and against
- A dead man is reported to be making radio contacts and setting appointment times with living operators about a week and a half after his death.
- The writer describes sitting alone at night in their dead father’s shack while this traffic went on.
- The tone is affectionate and elegiac rather than threatening. The letter closes on the father’s love of radio and his goodbyes.
- There is no physical contact, no harm, no threat, and no visible figure anywhere in the story.
- The letter gives little sense of the room or the writer’s state of mind, so the atmosphere is only lightly sketched.
- 1:21
- 2:30
What the model inferred (not said on air): Creepiness is an entertainment judgment about the story as heard. The writer does not say they were afraid.
The [quote withheld] idea is common. But the way it happens is distinctive: after-death ham contacts arranged in advance with other operators, ending with the son using his father’s call sign one last time. The model score for originality is 65. How novel the story is compared with the rest of the archive is provisional until it can be compared.
Evidence for and against
- The contact is said to arrive not through a vision or a voice in the house but through amateur radio traffic, in which the dead man is reported to have made appointments with other operators.
- The story turns on radio procedure, such as call signs and logging on and off. The writer signs off [quote withheld]
- The underlying idea, a recently dead person lingering briefly and then leaving, is very common in ghost lore. The writer’s closing line states that familiar idea directly.
- No comparison with the rest of the archive is available for this story, so the published originality value would be provisional.
- 2:03
- 2:23
What the model inferred (not said on air): The 65 is my estimate from the content alone. The part of the score that compares the story with the archive depends on the archive and cannot be worked out from this story alone.
Scoring confidence 0.75 · analysis confidence 0.80 · checked against outside sources: no · evidence available: A letter, described by the host as received by email, read aloud on air; no document examined or displayed on air; First-person account inside the letter, relayed by the host, not spoken by the writer; Claimed second witnesses (five operators in total) who do not speak on air and are not named; Partial call sign, place, and dates stated but not checked. The originality score blends the model's score (65) with how rare the story's details are across the archive. This method is still provisional.
Ordinary explanations to consider
These are possibilities only. None is a finding about what happened.
- The writer may have misheard or misattributed ordinary amateur radio traffic. The writer was not paying close attention, and did not respond or identify themselves. · The writer states they were “only half listening” to the local chatter before hearing the father’s call sign, so mishearing or misattributing routine ham traffic is one possibility.
- Some or all of the contacts the operators describe may have been ordinary transmissions made before the father’s death, with the operators unaware of the date or confused about it. · The operators place their conversations with the father at “the night before” and “the last week,” periods that straddle the death on April 22, so the timing of the contacts is unclear.
- The stations heard were ordinary operators who had known the father and arranged schedules with him while he was alive. The writer, with no license or log, had no way to identify them. · The host gives only part of the call sign, and the operators are unnamed, so the stations heard cannot be identified from what was said on air.
What stands out
This is not a haunting or a visitation. The writer describes the dead father as still using his hobby’s radio network. Other operators report that the father arranged times to be on the air. The encounter ends with the writer using the father’s call sign one final time. The writer never reports hearing the father’s voice.
Related stories
Matched by shared recurring details, categories, and wording.