My Brother's Voice (Aka a creepy FAM Radio behind the scenes story by Toadking07)

So I wanted to share a story, something that happened to me while I was working on Foundation After Midnight Radio one time that spooked me. It's a little thing that's strange, so I wanted to do it justice, so here goes.


A while back, I was staying up late one Saturday night to work on editing Ep 03, trying to finish off the final sound work. It was dark outside, but inside my room I was wrapped up in my computer screen and headphones, listening through everything we had recorded, making last minute changes. It was nearly the end of the episode, with my brother reading a dark poem we thought would make a good ending before the fade out of existence.

The work was nearly complete and I would be able to rest well knowing we were done with another episode. We'd been building up to this world reset and things were getting dramatic, at least more than usual. I had even found some good background music to add a haunting affect to the poem. I was giving it the final listen through when I heard something odd. The music, while faint in the background, clearly cut at two separate points, interrupted by something inaudible.

I jumped to the offending section and replayed. There it was, something higher pitched, breaking the eerie music. I looked over the audio layers, nothing was out of place, just the recording of my brother and the music played at this part. When the music was isolated, I confirmed it was where the problem was, though there was no accidental overlap, no edit, nothing looked wrong. The file was called "music_machine.wav" and had been downloaded off of a free sound effects site. I figured I just had never listened all the way until the end of the track, that this was a watermark or something left by the original artist.

Not worrying about it I moved the background music, cutting out the interrupted section. and listened again because it was late and I wanted to get this done. Yet when I got to the end of the poem, there it was again. The break in the music. But this time the inaudible bit sounded different, longer. I figured I had made a mistake and cut the bad part once more. Again, the weird break was still there, a little different maybe but nonetheless there. Confused I opened up the "music_machine.wav" file in a media player and jumped to the end. I would see this pest and learn at exactly what second it hid!

Yet playing through the audio file on its own, nothing showed up. There was no break, no interruption, nothing but the music until it stopped. Now more perplexed than ever, I isolated the music in my original editing file and rendered only the section that was experiencing this phenomenon. Once it was rendered I quickly confirmed that the interruption had been caught! What's more is that with this play through I caught the fainted hint that it was someone speaking. Very sped up, but very likely something I could slow down to figure out.

The thought it was most likely a hidden message by the original artist, had me excited to see what I had uncovered. With the clip was easy to slow down, and the audio increased as well, I prepared to listen to what was hidden. But here I was caught off guard. It was not some secret message that played, not a stranger's voice that spoke, it was his voice. My own brother's voice played, speaking the first few lines of the poem. Somehow, an echo played back, faster, in small bits, at the end of the music, in a file that was to play behind the poem reading's recording.

I was shocked. I was stunned. I was scared. My thoughts were not the most rational as it was late and I had been spending a lot of time reading SCP articles. Something unnatural was at the top of my explanations since my practical know how had failed me. Had I found an audio clip with some anomalous properties? Had my brother's soul, or at least voice, been taken, trapped within a file only 14.5 MB big?

I texted him, trying not to alarm him but asking him what was up. He would respond, everything would be fine, but I no matter what I tried I could not remove the audio echo from the work. At one point I had thought I had had it, but eventually I had to accept it would be there. In the final edit that I uploaded online, you can still hear the high pitched repetition of my brother starting the poem he had just finished.

And that is my creepy story from working on Foundation After Midnight Radio.

MAᖷ oibɒЯ Ep-05 Played ƨbɿɒwʞɔɒᙠ

That's right, you read that title right! Or at least you tried. Episode 05 has been posted backwards for those who were curious about if there really was a whole new episode hidden in there! Take a listen and decide for yourself!

Ok, but it was a fun joke to make, maybe I took it too far, oh well!