The Ghost Radio in Scotland

Remember The Twilight Zone?

Reader Mike sent this along,and it has all the makings of a great episode of that Rod Serling series:

A 70-year-old radio at a Scottish heritage centre has been picking up vintage broadcasts featuring Winston Churchill and the music of Glen Miller.

The Pye valve wireless at Montrose Air Station, a heritage centre that tells the story of the men and women who served there, has no power and is not connected to any source of electricity. [. . .]

The vintage radio set is kept in a recreation of a 940s room. Several people have heard Second World War era broadcasts including the big band sound of the Glenn Miller orchestra and speeches by Winston Churchill. The broadcasts come on at random and can last for up to half an hour.

Can’t you just see it? Serling steps out from the dark: “Graham and Aileen Philip volunteer at a historic air station where, in World War II, RAF flyboys returned from a mission to drink tea with a bit of warming brandy, while the Yank’s big bands played on the wireless. But their duties this week have become a shift through time and space, into the Twilight Zone…”

The segue, of course, would be a camera pulling back from an elderly middle-aged, mustachioed Englishman sipping his tea at the snack-and-souvenir counter of the air. On the walls are old propaganda posters advising the populace about blackouts; Churchill is on the wall looking resolute. The man’s cheery wife, behind the counter winks at him and said, “let me put a little heart into the cuppa, dearie…” as a few veterans and their wives and grandchildren wander in. The men, all on the other side of 70, want to relive a moment when they were needed; when their lives were purposeful and had meaning beyond their own pleasures. The kids are bored beyond words.

Well, you know what would happen. Is it true? Who knows. Probably not. Fun to think about, though.