Strange Sounds from 96.7FM

[Music] [Music] from the span of October 2017 to June 2018 a bizarre phenomenon was taking place around the city of Portland Oregon on the radiofrequency 96.7 at that time listeners from around the city began picking up a plethora of distorted sounds that resembled something out of an eerie broadcast hack the audio was described as containing strange Aimee and buzzing intermixed with speech recordings from both MLK and JFK respectively today the station operates ordinarily broadcasting a mixture of rap and hip-hop under the designation 96.7 the numbers all seems fine now but back then this odd occurrence baffled many leaving them perplexed and intrigued as to who actually was doing this and what it really was that they were listening to tonight's were diving into the mystery of the strange sounds from 96.7 FM you load trip January 6th of 2018 would be the day that two users Jimmy salts and batchi and 3:20 would spearhead an online investigation an initial itll subreddit for a suburb outside the city called Beaverton OR again out of the five posts ever going to get into these as far as I've seen were the very first in a stellar coincidence their threads would be a mere two minutes apart on the same nights at both 811 and 813 p.m. they'd inquire on if anyone's heard the strange audio that was at that time playing on 96.7 FM while both are notable bad G and give a bit more context in theirs so let's give that one a read tuning a 96.7 if you're near Progress Ridge some weird shits going on sitting in the car with friends tuned to 96.7 and am hearing weird repeating sounds and sometimes random people talking or saying random things the sounds get more bassy and less bassy with some strange frequencies interrupting other ones someone please explain this in a response by user named the little norsk they claim that they too have heard the same for a period of five months now I've been haunted by the sounds of this radio station and I can only imagine that others have picked up on it too and it turns out I was right I've uploaded specific YouTube videos that I've recorded on my phone to show everyone what I hear whoever that is in charge of this radio station should really speak up because I really am spooked by the number of station Eska themes to this wack frequency for a while I thought it was some kind of MKULTRA [ __ ] going on edits this stations now completely silent below this they linked a video that will come back to Shirley January 10th of 2018 a deleted user will jump into the thinking sideways subreddits wondering the same thing did I record some kind of number station recorded this off FM radio January 6th of 2017 at about 6:30 p.m. the radio stations not officially listed it went on in this weird pattern for several minutes before just playing some white noise type tone for hours and hours on end with no station call the station's a defunct rock station that I've never heard of the next day they played back pinch MLK speeches and something that maybe could be called ambient music slow-motion tones and whirring sounds nothing it's played is recognizable by Shazam any inputs welcome April 6th of 2018 redditor WTF hacker asks the Portland subreddits who is broadcasting from 96.7 FM and on June 23rd 2018 and I'm Bultman asked the same was driving home from PDX today and was going through FM radio stations when I found 96.7 FM the station plays chopped up music and weird noises after a little research I found that they played MLK and JFK speeches before and that they've been doing this for as long as 2006 can you guys help me solve the mystery behind who runs it and why they broadcast what they do at this points you'll notice that the time span for this strange phenomenon encompasses an extremely large window of time a window of time that would effectively rule out any sort of broadcast hack or isolated incidents clearly whatever was that was happening was widespread and didn't seem to bear any plans to stop there are three videos that I want to show you one from the little norsk one from that deleted accounts and a third that was picked up from YouTube let's have a listen jay z ry l p portland you so day two of this radio station on 96.7 FM it's doing this again lavalla curtain and I bet as soon as we leave what we're gonna go it's like yesterday it's not it's not gonna be doing this anymore and that's not even the same time of day either yeah cuz we went deals like what four or five it's 5:30 and now it's you can't see it because it's bad here it's 12:45 the launch vehicle begins to throw out there now hitting the 4-minute not four minutes four minutes and Counting [Music] automatic its Apollo is starting at seven they ask the engines of the generate that trust combined horsepower late reach a fighter plane I'm having more fun listen to this they did be unlike anything else [Music] [Music] now this sounds like something broadcasted straight out of a horror movie but we have to remember that this wasn't fictional this was real life being observed on a legitimate radio station over the span of months any sort of edgy teenager or [ __ ] poster broadcasting out of their home for a bit of a prank seems ill-considered as it's safe to assume that after such a long period of time they'd be caught furthermore you might be drawing parallels between this and the widely known wkc our broadcast hijacking that occurred back in the 90s if we can recall the overarching consensus for why that happened was simply chalked up to a prank by the station emcee over at Columbia University while that's possible with 96.7 let's take a look at what we have to work with so far and see where we can head within a quick note on radio station call signs and their legalities every station you listen to on the radio is designated something called a callsign these are typically four letters in length and can be anything k zr y k RB e a b c d anything these are licensed out by the United States Federal Communications Commission and typically the application process for these is competitive and drawn outs to be granted a license you need to have a specific purpose and adhere to it for as long as you're on the air to keep your license valid furthermore there are two types of radio stations high powered and low powered the former are typically the ones you listen to when you dial into your favorite station they're usually backed by a large corporation that has the money to spend on broadcast antennas and the power to drive them across the city low powered stations on the other hand which are denoted by LP after their call signs are typically able to be licensed out on the same frequency as the high powered ones however their reach is much less usually only a couple miles in length these utilize designated radio towers and are typically popular with independent parties and nonprofit organizations now with radio 101 under our belts we can recall that in that last video we heard a low powered callsign k z ry l p Heartland performing a search on this reveals that this one is not defunct but at one point was active on the broadcast frequency 96.7 if this Facebook post is anything to go by then we can deduce that on August 29th of 2018 it was changed from kzr Y to a KN um LP oddly digging into the latter at least on numerous FCC information websites reveals that the K in um radio call sign is licensed out to of all things a nonprofit organization by the name of the Community Alliance of tenants the address for their organization even more strangely directs you to a Lutheran Church so what in the world do these people have to do with this according to their official website the Community Alliance of tenants or cats is a tenant membership organization low-income tenants predominantly low-wage workers families with children people living with disabilities seniors and people of color are cats primary membership base cats building a strong housing justice movement that's led and directed by those who are most impacted by Oregon's affordable housing crisis low-income renters I'm not sure about you but I'm scratching my head here why in the world would the Community Alliance of tenants a non-profit aimed at assisting renters be wrapped up in broadcasts depicting Jiri ambient noises when they have absolutely nothing to do with this type of genre at all let's give them the benefit of the doubt if we observe the dates here well notice that many of the posts and videos range as far back as 2017 to mid 2018 after June there isn't much of anything that I've found that inquires on any sort of bizarre sounds on the radio seeing as the call sign was changed in August of that year maybe just maybe it was previously licensed by someone else so kzr y LP interestingly the vast majority of records about this call sign point us to KN um however there was one document I found that had its and it was an official FCC application from mid-2017 scrolling through it reveals the callsign designations for a plethora of stations around the nation but midway down on line 22 were able to observe that kzr y LP was in fact licensed down to the Community Alliance of tenants digging even further back into the abyss I was able to conjure up evidence that can apply for this as far back as 2013 meaning they've sat on it for the better part of the decade in a news article from a website called radio world dated at September 22nd of 2014 they claimed the following listeners and into the northeast of Portland Oregon soon should be hearing a new low powered FM station that promotes affordable and safe rental housing the FCC has issued a construction permit to the Community Alliance of tenants the Alliance formed in 1996 as a tenant rights organization can't educates organizes and develops the leadership of low-income tenants to directly challenge unjust housing policies and practices it stated in its application our missions to educate and empower tenants to domain affordable stable and safe rental homes we address the impact Oregon's decreasing supply of decent affordable housing and absence of meaningful tenant protections has on low-income tenants Alliance president michelle Lasley wrote in the application that radio would be a valued and welcomed tool for outreach serving as an extension of our existing programs the station will air at 96.7 FM the Alliance was one of four applicants listed by the FCC as mutually exclusive for this particular low powered FM slot near Portland the Alliance wrote in a subsequent filing that two of the other applications had been dismissed all the forth ople environmental justice Oregon had relocated in a concurrent application all right so as much as I'd like to consider the possibility of this not being cats I'm having an extremely difficult time discounting that theory while a hack is possible and that recording from the little norsk the station outright states their callsign kzr y LP it seems to me that every lead I've gotten on this case has been leading me straight back to the same place the Community Alliance of tenants in a last-ditch effort at getting some information I dug up their radio station email from one of their applications along with those of the actual board of directors hopefully someone that works there can give me some sort of lead or anything on where I can steer this investigation on the night of November 20 seconds I took a shot in the dark and wrote the following good morning apologies for bothering you all this is a bit of an unconventional email I was reaching out to inquire on a situation that occurred from roughly November 2017 to June 2018 the radio station registered to your organization K in um LP formerly kz r yl p was at numerous times broadcasting an assortment of bizarre sounds intermixed with MLK JFK speeches and audio from the Apollo landing an example I found is here and yet another with the callsign k z ry mentioned at six minutes into the video and a third for good measure I've done a bit of digging on this in hopes of ruling out the possibility of it being interference or not from you guys at all however the callsign mentioned in the second example is difficult for me to overlook I'm sure there's some sort of mundane explanation for the reasoning behind it however if you guys would be willing to provide any information as to the reason behind this I feel that we could put this mystery to bed for good I look forward to hearing back thanks and I hope you have a great one and one night later I received the following response hi Ryan yes this was owned by cats or unaware of any interference Thank You Katrina interesting if I'm being honest something about the warden here stood out to me as a bit hasty she seemed to show no interest posed no questions nor displayed any shock as to why someone would be broadcasting eerily distorted noises on their frequency while concurrently using the call sign that they're paying money to license if it were me I'd be at the very least slightly off put by the fact that my organization would be associated with such a bizarre phenomenon to each their own I guess and so the hunt continued while a bit lost on where to go I did end up stumbling upon a notable article from the New York Times on January 6th of 2018 they published a story about low-power FM radio stations across the United States although I wasn't expecting to find anything notable they did state something that effectively stood out to me it reads the following Washington has the second highest concentration of low powered FM stations among the nation's 15 most populous states with 68 stations for 7.4 million people according to the FCC second only to Florida New York by contrast has 54 stations but nearly three times Washington's population organ while not among the 15 most populous states with 4.1 million people is even more saturated than Washington and Florida it has 80 low powered stations most in rural areas you one weird just turn the dial one station in Seattle invites listeners to phone their dreams and fantasies into a recorded line russian-speaking residents in Portland Oregon have their own tiny station and if you want to be charmed by five-year-old boy chatting with his father at bedtime about dinosaurs music and is sometimes bothersome sisters you can find that at Tristan's bedtime radio our broadcast on Sunday nights on kfb G and Northwest Seattle or Tristan lives it also streams on the web so this article drives home two things one that organ contains the highest density of low powered FM radio stations in the United States and two that these are no stranger to being weird broadcasting anything from Russian news to bedtime stories by a five-year-old while this isn't anything conclusive towards Kat themselves it's led me to two theories something I'd like to float here is the possibility of an unlicensed broadcast this is a phenomenon that's been fairly common over the years and carries with it strict fines that range anywhere from $10,000 to $75,000 per day that the broadcast is occurring we've been focusing on cat this entire time however we haven't yet considered the potential of this being some random unlicensed third party that's hijacked their frequency if we're assuming that the email i received from katrina is legitimate then cat could very well have been oblivious to all of this now to be frank this is a bit of a reach someone broadcasting strange noises on your station over a miles long radius is something that's close to impossible to overlook especially considering the substantial span of time in which it took place there would have to be someone anyone in that organization that would have caught wind of this if they weren't involved which in my opinion makes his conjecture hard to believe so let's pivot here and hone in on cats on reddit's a user named I want to believe consider the potential of this being executed by the organization in a replying to one of the 96.7 threads they claimed the following I also did quite a bit of research I drove up to the broadcast location for K X mg and it's not then brought gas tank I've been doing some Drive testing to confirm and it makes sense that parts of the progress reg and the marae Hill area would be getting better signal from rocky buttes than other parts of Beaverton closer to the West Hills due to shadowing not to mention the kzr ylp call sign that they're broadcasting this type of stunting is fairly common on low powered stations from what I read x-ray even did some of this stuff when they were turning up to get attention now we're making sense if we can recall the New York Times article stated that independent parties are able to broadcast on low-power stations and that they're no stranger to being outlandish we were given examples of the plethora of different content that we can tune into and it's a safe bet that cat could have also done this but why at the end of that reddit comments I want to believe claimed that another station executed a weird stunt for attention cat in this case could easily be doing the same in hopes of drumming up an audience for their otherwise ordinary day-to-day show if you're some random person scanning through the radio then it's safe to assume that you'll more than likely stumble upon this bizarre transmission that would ordinarily be discussing something related to tenant rights in Oregon those sounds could have been taking place during their off hours giving them at the very least something to pen out the time to keep them on the air while concurrently luring curious minds to tune back into it later still not convinced check this out and an article from their official websites dated at May 14th of 2019 they announced a peculiar partnership interesting so if according to that reddit comments x-rays previously done this and Kant launched a partnership with x-ray who's to say that this phenomenon isn't their brainchild to be frank this all seems like a ruse to direct people to their organization a strange and unorthodox ruse but something that seems like it might have worked after all if I'm being honest I think it's Katz I really think it's Katz the call-sign the decades-long license and the fact that pretty much every lead took me straight back to them is impossible to overlook Occam's razor states that the simplest answer is typically the correct one and in this case it seems like that just might ring true throughout 2018 people around Portland tuned into 96.7 and were met with a mixture of odd sounds the mystery that they subsequently went down has admittedly been a fun one and while we may never definitively know the who or the why behind this the conclusions that we arrived at alleys for May are satisfactory enough to put this mystery to bed while the community alliance of tenants denies any sort of involvement considering their collaboration with x-ray every lead pointing back to them and the call sign being read aloud in that recording it's safe to say and I don't mean to beg on Katrina because she actually took the effort to respond to me that the email response that I received was either her truly having no knowledge of this or simply giving me a lie either way the phenomenon since halted today if you're in the area and tuned in you'll most likely be met with a new rap station that launched in late 2018 I don't know about you but personally I prefer to listen to that it's less spooky that way thanks so much for watching I'll see you in the next one I love you all [Music] and goodnight you

Channel: Nexpo

Views: 3,074,138

Rating: 4.8975749 out of 5

Keywords: radio mystery, reddit mystery, online oddities, online mysteries, internet mysteries

Id: j7aBITkr3W4

Length: 26min 25sec (1585 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 06 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/clay1204]

That’s where I just came from

[u/traderdrakor]

I definitely did not come from Nexpo

[u/TheLittleNorsk]

yaaayyy

FINALLY this shit is getting traction

[u/amisia-insomnia]

96.6FM the kirlian frequency all night every night I think that this was very much inspired by this show as the original story came out in 2016 and the kirlian frequency first aired in 2015

[u/graniterockhead]

If memory serves, back before 970am started airing alternative back in the early '90's, for several weeks it just played a repeat of the station name "The Beat" over, and over, and over, and over again.

[u/cafedude]

Ooooo... spooky music, conspiratorial tones, and it turns out to be just a publicity stunt. And maybe this YouTube is even part of that publicity stunt.

[u/xxanaxbabyxx]

Haha, I'm watching this right now. It's kinda interesting ngl

[u/SpOokiE_Boiyoh]

I have watched his video just as I also live near here. Spooky but I did hear it. I didn’t know what I was hearing with my family.

[u/PrinceOPancakes]

I can’t watch this video. The audio makes me cry.