The Scent of Static

The old broadcast tower on Cherry Hill had been silent for decades, its skeletal frame jutting against the sky like a broken promise. I managed the overnight radio archive there, digitizing reels of forgotten shows. The work was tedious, but the isolation suited me.

One night, a few friends came up to keep me company and, more importantly, to help me investigate the strange occurrences I’d mentioned. My friend Leo brought his camcorder, all charged up with a spare battery in his pocket. We were going to capture evidence of the ghost that supposedly haunted the lower levels—a former transmitter engineer named Carson, who’d died in a freak accident in the 60s. He was rumored to be possessive, especially about the old studio where his wife used to sing.

We started on the 18th floor, taking the service stairs to the roof. As we climbed, a wave of perfume hit us—not floral, but something industrial and sweet, like a dust mask with a hint of jasmine. There were only two women in our group: my colleague Priya and me. Neither of us wore perfume. The men, Leo and my cousin Sam and his friend Derek, didn’t use cologne. The scent seemed to cling to us, intensifying as we reached the rooftop door.

Leo cracked a joke, something about Carson’s wife and how she must have been a looker. The camcorder’s display flickered, and the battery died instantly, despite being fully charged. He swapped in the spare, but it too refused to hold a charge. We never got a single frame that night. But we got other things.

As we descended, Priya gasped. Her hair, tied back in a ponytail, was being lifted and twirled—but there was no breeze. She felt a tug at the waistband of her jeans, and her car keys slid out of her pocket on their own, clattering to the floor. I felt a cold hand brush my hip, and my own pocketed items—a pack of gum, a spare battery—shifted as if being examined.

We rushed to the ground floor, but the elevator took us to the sub-basement instead, a place we’d never been. The doors opened onto a corridor lined with old recording equipment, covered in dust. At the end was a door labeled ‘Studio B—Keep Out.’ A faint humming came from within.

Leo, brave or foolish, pushed the door open. Inside, the room was frozen in time: microphones, reel-to-reel tapes, and a metal chair facing a window that overlooked the city. On the chair sat a single photograph of a woman with dark hair and a scarlet dress, the name ‘Evelyn’ scrawled on the bottom. As we watched, the photograph began to slide off the chair, as if pushed by invisible fingers.

Derek, trying to joke, said, ‘Maybe Carson’s still sweet on Evelyn.’ The humming grew louder, and the lights flickered. The photograph lifted into the air, rotated to face us, and then dropped to the floor, the glass shattering. The sound echoed down the corridor.

We fled, stumbling up the stairs, but the smell of that perfume followed us. When we emerged into the lobby, the security guard looked at us, pale. He said he’d heard footsteps on the roof all night, and the elevator had been cycling between floors on its own. He also told us that after Carson died, his wife Evelyn had thrown herself off that same roof. And since then, no one could keep a working camera in the building—the static would eat the batteries.

The next day, I found a Polaroid in my jacket pocket. It showed a group of people huddled in a corridor, all looking back at the camera with wide eyes. In the background, behind them, was a blurred shape with empty sockets, wearing a red dress. On the back, in handwriting that wasn’t mine, was written: ‘You like my perfume?’

I haven’t been back to the tower since. But sometimes, in my quiet apartment, I catch a whiff of jasmine and static, and I know Carson or Evelyn is still watching—and they remember us, especially Priya. And they will never let us forget.