TALES OF THE SOUTHWEST: A RADIO GHOST STORY

A scene from The Great American Southwest: Looking across the scrub and juniper at the south side of the Capitan Range in Lincoln County, New Mexico.

by Grant McGee

Not too long ago I woke up in the middle of the night, a doorbell jarred me out of a sound sleep.

i looked at the time on my bedside clock: 1:30. I settled back under the covers.

I don’t have a doorbell. 

I noted the time in case something happened to someone from my circle of family and friends that morning, that way I’d know they had dropped by to say goodbye. I believe in cosmic woo-woo stuff like that.

That’s happened to me twice: When my mom died a couple of years ago and when a fellow disc jockey clocked out when I lived in Arizona.

It’s been 22 years since Chris the morning disc jockey called me a half-hour after he died in a car wreck. Some might say I’m mistaken...that he called me....but that’s what I believe. 

I was operations manager for three radio stations under one roof. The boss thought I was “too country” for his country station so he made me his ops manager. I was glad, at least I got to keep a job. Chris was the morning DJ at the rock station. He was very popular. 

The last time I saw Chris he was on his way out the radio station door on a sunny Friday afternoon.  His work day was done.

“Have a great weekend, Grant.”

I looked up from writing a commercial, “You too, Chris.” I watched as the screen door closed behind him and he walked off into the afternoon sun. Later I would wish I’d said something better. I think we feel that way when someone we know is abruptly yanked off the stage of life.

Saturday morning my phone rang at 4:30. It was an automated voice. Many radio stations these days have an automated alarm system that calls a list of people when something goes wrong with the equipment. I was second on the list.

“Station three. Intruder, fire, flood.”

I hadn’t heard this message before from “station three,” the rock station. I'd gotten calls about station one and station two but not station three.  I entered a code into the phone and went back to bed. I lived a half-hour away. If something was wrong at the station the engineer, first on the list, ought to be able to handle it.

That morning after I woke up I was bothered by something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Around 10 a.m. I had an urge to call the station. Silly, I thought, it’s Saturday, no one’s there. But the urge to phone in was strong.  

The general manager answered. 

If I expected no one to be there I REALLY didn’t expect the GM to be in the building.

“What are you doing there, Ken?” 

“Grant, I need you to come in, Chris died this morning.”

“What?” I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me.

“He and a friend were on their way back from a party in Tucson when his pal fell asleep at the wheel.  They ran off the road and into an embankment.  Chris wasn’t wearing his seat belt. He went right through the windshield. I’m here with a trooper going through our files trying to find next of kin.”

Ken went on to tell me he needed me and another DJ to come to the station right away and re-voice all the commercials that Chris had on the air.

“We can’t have a dead man’s voice on the air,” Ken said. “It’s not right.”

Days later when things settled down I was having a conversation with Bill, our radio engineer. “You know, I got a call Saturday morning from the alert system, ‘station three, intruder, fire, flood,’” I said.

“I was home Saturday morning, it didn’t call me. Besides, the burglar alarm isn’t wired up.”

“It didn't call you?  You're first on the list.  It called me.”

“No, that’s not logical.” Logically is how a lot of radio engineers think. If it ain’t broke they can’t fix it, if it ain’t wired up there’s no way it can work. “I’m first on the list, you’re second. It would have called me before you and I didn’t get a call. Plus station three isn’t hooked up.”

“Well I got the call.”

Bill shrugged his shoulders and walked away.

Then it dawned on me. Station three was Chris’ station. The accident happened around 4 a.m. The call came a half-hour later.

Before Chris journeyed on to wherever we journey to when it’s all over, did he drop by work to take one last look around? Did he want me to know he’d dropped by?

I think so.

It makes a good story, anyway.

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