The Last Broadcast

It began, as these things often do, with a video. A grainy, amateurish clip of a dimly lit hallway, a door creaking open on its own, and a faint figure at the end of the corridor. My friend Lena and I scoffed at its obvious fabrication, but something about it lingered, a splinter under the skin. That was the seed. We were young, bored, and the world seemed thrillingly vast with secrets. We started watching more, then reading forums, then convincing ourselves we were investigators of the unseen. The park was our first expedition, a sprawling, overgrown expanse at the edge of town, with a crumbling baseball diamond and a rusted announcer’s booth perched atop rickety wooden bleachers. It was there that Lena claimed to see a child, a girl in a floral shirt and glasses, standing in the booth’s window, gone in a blink. I didn’t see her, and I dismissed it as a trick of light and an overactive imagination. But the memory stuck, like a burr on a wool sweater.

Fall came, stripping the leaves and driving us indoors with Wisconsin’s biting wind. The park became a forgotten place, a ghost itself. Then, on a cold, gray afternoon in late October, we decided to go back. The wind was fierce, rattling the chain-link fence and moaning through the bleachers. No one else was there, just us and the fading light. I had brought a small digital recorder, inspired by the videos we’d watched, hoping to capture something anomalous. We climbed to the announcer’s booth, its windows boarded up, the door hanging off one hinge. Inside, dusty equipment lay scattered, and a faded, handwritten schedule was tacked to the wall. It was dated 1972. I set the recorder on a shelf and began asking questions, feeling foolish as my voice echoed in the small space. Lena stood by the window, scanning the empty field.

For a while, nothing happened. The wind howled, the wood creaked. Then Lena said, ‘Did you hear that?’ I heard nothing but the storm. She insisted it was a child’s voice, muffled, maybe from under the floorboards. We knelt, pressing our ears to the cold, splintered wood. I heard it then, faint as a memory: a girl’s voice, humming a tune I didn’t recognize. The hair on my arms stood up. I grabbed the recorder, my hands shaking. ‘Who’s there?’ I called out, my voice breaking. The humming stopped. Then, from the doorway, a small figure stepped into view. A girl, maybe eight, in a flowered dress and round glasses, her hair in braids. She smiled, but her eyes were dark, too dark, like empty wells. She pointed at the recorder and said, ‘They’re coming.’ Then she vanished, leaving only the wind.

We stumbled out of the booth, down the rickety stairs, and ran through the park, not stopping until we reached Lena’s car. We sat there, panting, staring at each other. I played back the recording. Our voices, the wind, and then, clear as a bell, a voice that wasn’t ours: ‘They’re coming,’ it said. Then a sound like static, and beneath it, a low, rhythmic thrumming, like a heartbeat. We had no explanation. We drove home in silence, and I couldn’t sleep that night. The thrumming played over and over in my head, a pulse that seemed to resonate in my bones.

The next week, I couldn’t stop thinking about the girl. I did more research. The park had been built on the site of an old orphanage that burned down in 1972. The girl, I learned, was named Margaret, aged eight, a resident who had died in the fire. Her favorite spot was the announcer’s booth, where she’d watch the games. I found an old black-and-white photo of her in the newspaper archives, and it was her, the same floral dress, the same glasses. The ‘they’ she warned about were, I feared, the other orphans, the ones who hadn’t been found. That thrumming sound, I realized, was the sound of the old boiler in the orphanage’s basement, the one that had exploded and started the fire. I thought I understood, but I was wrong. The warning wasn’t just for us—it was for everyone.

Lena didn’t want to go back, but I couldn’t leave it alone. I went alone, a few days later, against my own fear. I brought a camcorder this time, hoping to document, to understand. I set it up in the booth, facing the field. The wind had died, leaving an unnatural stillness. I waited. Hours passed. The sun dipped below the horizon, casting long shadows. Then I heard the humming again, and the thrumming grew louder, shaking the floor. The camcorder screen flickered. In the viewfinder, I saw the girl, Margaret, standing at the mound of the baseball diamond, her mouth open in a silent scream. And behind her, emerging from the ground, were shapes—skeletal, burned, reaching out. They began to walk toward me, slowly, their eyes like coals. I grabbed the recorder and ran, but the booth’s door slammed shut, and the windows exploded inward.

I managed to crawl out through a gap in the wall, cutting my hands and knees. I didn’t stop until I was home. I checked the footage. The last thing on the camera was a close-up of Margaret’s face, her eyes not dark but filled with tears, and she said, ‘I tried to warn you. Now they know the way out.’ As I watched, behind her, I saw the shapes crawling out of the ground and spreading into the neighborhood. I destroyed the camera and the recorder. I haven’t slept properly since. Every night, I hear that thrumming, closer now, and I know it’s not just the park. They’re coming, and there’s no broadcast to warn the others. Only me, and I know too late.

I still don’t believe in ghosts. I know they exist. And I know that Margaret tried to save us, but we were too blind to listen. Now, the only thing I can do is write this down, in the vain hope that someone will read it and understand. The park is still there, but I never go near it. But the thrumming follows me, a pulse under the city’s skin. If you ever find an old recording with a child’s voice warning you, listen. And don’t stay in the announcer’s booth after dark. Because the broadcast never ended—the dead are still on air, and they are not friendly.