Entry #7: The Drone/Static Hour

I've mentioned The Drone before, but I've never really talked about it beyond the basics.

Once a month, Burdale hums and vibrates. That's the simplest way I can describe it. It's a low, mechanical sound that seems to come from somewhere in the distance, except nobody can ever agree on which direction it's coming from. If you ask me, it's coming from Specter Ridge. It happens on the 4th of every month, and it always starts at 10:28p. Not around 10:30. Not usually sometime after ten. 10:28p. I've asked enough people and checked enough accounts at this point that I'm comfortable saying that. Whatever night The Drone happens, that's when it starts. The ending isn't nearly as predictable. Sometimes it lasts ten minutes. Sometimes closer to half an hour. Then it just stops. The other problem is that not everyone can hear it. I've been standing next to someone while it's happening and had them look at me like I'm insane. Other people hear it immediately. I've talked to people who say they've lived here their entire lives and have never heard The Drone once. Then there are the cats. I don't know why, but whenever The Drone starts, the cats seem to come out of fucking nowhere. They'll sit outside houses, underneath cars, along fences. They don't seem scared. Usually they're purring. But the weirdest part is somewhere between fifteen minutes and an hour before The Drone begins, radios start acting strange. We've been calling this The Static Hour since middle school, although it doesn't necessarily last an hour. You'll get bursts of static, pieces of old songs, or voices cutting in and out. Children's rhymes dude, it's the creepiest thing. Other people claim they've heard songs playing backward. Sometimes it sounds almost like somebody talking through the distortion, except the words are chopped up and rearranged to the point that you can't make anything out.

I've always treated The Drone and The Static Hour like every other weird thing in Burdale: write down what people say, dig through old stories, see if anything matches.

I'm done doing that. Next month, I'm going out before 10:28 and I'm recording everything. What frequency I'm listening to, where The Drone is loudest, whether the direction changes as I move around town. Who else can hear it, who can't. And yes, I'll keep track of the cats. I've spent enough time digging through 150 year old records trying to figure out what happened in Burdale. it's time I start collecting some records of my own.