The Dead DJ Who Broadcast From a Locked Shed at Dawn

The Dead DJ Who Broadcast From a Locked Shed at Dawn

A reel-to-reel tape ran inside a locked transmitter shed at 6:41 AM on March 11, 2019, playing a forty-two minute call-in show voiced by a man who had been dead for sixteen years - and the shed’s combination had been set thirty-one years earlier by another dead man. How did a forty-dollar Ampex tape machine, bought at an estate sale five months earlier, end up connected to a transmitter through a replacement board no one at the station had installed?

In this episode, you’ll hear the sequence of discoveries at WKDL in rural Pennsylvania: the utility lineman who found the machine, the station engineer who noticed the unlocked switch and correct replacement board, and the station manager who listened to the tape twice and said nothing. What can the physical evidence and the forty-two minutes of warm, local radio tell us about what really happened that morning?

Person: Donna Wells Date: March 11, 2019 Location: Keswick, Pennsylvania Duration: 42 minutes Device: Ampex reel-to-reel machine (ten-inch reels)

- The tape began playing at 6:41 AM on March 11, 2019. - The voice on the tape belonged to a man who had been dead for sixteen years. - The transmitter shed was secured by a combination set thirty-one years earlier. - The auxiliary input port had been locked out since 2015 and was found unlocked with a Belar FMM-one board installed. - The Ampex machine had been sold at an estate sale in October 2018 for $40 cash to a roughly sixty-year-old man in a green jacket.

To listen to this podcast ad-free and access premium episodes, try our subscription with a 14-day free trial at obomedia.com.

© 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved. This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: [email protected].