Static County

Halloween night. The whole county picks up the phone.

Every line on the board is ringing: Dolores and the whole diner, Ray on channel nineteen, nurses, farmers, kids, people who haven't called a radio station in their lives. At two seventeen the automation kills the transmitter, the backup needs seven seconds to warm up, and June has to hold the silence with everyone in Calder County behind her. Thirty-nine years after he walked into the signal, Lyle Beaumont gets to finish his sign-off. Season finale.

Featuring June Castillo, Ezra Pike, Margo Lusk, Sheriff Dale Pruitt, Dolores Vick, Ray Tolliver, Lyle Beaumont, the KCDR announcer.

Static County is a ten-part Southern-gothic radio noir from Narratique. One night per episode, October 22 to Halloween. Listen in order.

Voices in this series are AI-generated. Written, scored and sound-designed by Narratique Studios.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

One night left. The machine that kills the signal is already in the building.

It's Halloween eve. The buyer's automation box sits padlocked in the corner of the studio, set to cut the transmitter at two seventeen tomorrow night, the same minute as 1987. The only plan is to never go quiet: an all-night broadcast with the whole county on the phones. June asks her listeners for one favor. The static answers by faking callers in voices it has stolen, and when June asks the question only Lyle can answer, the line laughs back.

Featuring June Castillo, Ezra Pike, Margo Lusk, Sheriff Dale Pruitt, Dolores Vick, Ray Tolliver, the voice on line four.

Static County is a ten-part Southern-gothic radio noir from Narratique. One night per episode, October 22 to Halloween. Listen in order.

Voices in this series are AI-generated. Written, scored and sound-designed by Narratique Studios.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

October 31, 1987. DO NOT AIR. Tonight they play it.

Sheriff Pruitt finally brings the reel he has hidden for thirty-nine years. On it is Lyle Beaumont's last broadcast: a calm man telling his listeners that somebody has to hold the line, his final call from a scared young mother named Rosa, and a young deputy shouting to cut the power. June understands at last why her mother never turned her kitchen radio off. And at the very end of the tape, something has been waiting all this time to say hello.

Featuring June Castillo, Ezra Pike, Sheriff Dale Pruitt, Margo Lusk, Lyle Beaumont, the KCDR announcer.

Static County is a ten-part Southern-gothic radio noir from Narratique. One night per episode, October 22 to Halloween. Listen in order.

Voices in this series are AI-generated. Written, scored and sound-designed by Narratique Studios.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In a storm, the signal skips across states, and across years.

A thunderstorm rolls over Calder County and KCDR's signal bounces hundreds of miles. Calls come in from places, and decades, they shouldn't: a Tulsa man asking about a football team that no longer exists, 1986 diesel prices on Ray's CB. One call on line four is from a kitchen June knows by heart, with a baby crying in the background. Then lightning hits the tower, the county goes dark, and June learns what it means to hold the line alone.

Featuring June Castillo, Ezra Pike, Margo Lusk, Sheriff Dale Pruitt, Dolores Vick, Ray Tolliver, the voice on line four.

Static County is a ten-part Southern-gothic radio noir from Narratique. One night per episode, October 22 to Halloween. Listen in order.

Voices in this series are AI-generated. Written, scored and sound-designed by Narratique Studios.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

At night, AM radio travels farther than it should. So does whatever rides on it.

Ezra breaks out a whiteboard to explain carrier waves and skywave. The caller explains what the tower on Ferris Hill is really holding in, and how long he's been holding the rest of it by himself. Dolores keeps a vigil at Dot's with the radio turned all the way up while trouble finds the lonely places in the county: a farmhouse fire, a car in the creek. Then, mid-warning, the caller's voice slips, and something else speaks with it.

Featuring June Castillo, Ezra Pike, Margo Lusk, Dolores Vick, Ray Tolliver, the voice on line four.

Static County is a ten-part Southern-gothic radio noir from Narratique. One night per episode, October 22 to Halloween. Listen in order.

Voices in this series are AI-generated. Written, scored and sound-designed by Narratique Studios.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

He was first on the scene in 1987. The phone was ringing. He didn't pick it up.

June and Ezra take the old photograph to Sheriff Dale Pruitt, who has worn the badge for thirty-nine years and hasn't played music in his patrol car since 1987. He denies everything, then tells them part of it: the hot microphone, the record still spinning, Lyle's coffee still warm. Out on the highway Ray's CB picks up a broadcast that ended decades ago. And at two seventeen, the voice on line four finds the sheriff where he's hiding, right in his own car radio.

Featuring June Castillo, Ezra Pike, Sheriff Dale Pruitt, Margo Lusk, Dolores Vick, Ray Tolliver, the voice on line four.

Static County is a ten-part Southern-gothic radio noir from Narratique. One night per episode, October 22 to Halloween. Listen in order.

Voices in this series are AI-generated. Written, scored and sound-designed by Narratique Studios.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Nobody cued that record. Nobody's touched that turntable in years.

Songs from 1987 start playing on KCDR by themselves, and the callers love it. In the archive room June finds every tape Lyle Beaumont ever made, a box for every night of October 1987, except one: an empty box marked "10/31/87 — DO NOT AIR." Ezra digs up an old newspaper photo of the empty studio with a young deputy standing in the door. Then Margo delivers the news she's been dreading: she's already signed. KCDR goes dark for good in six nights.

Featuring June Castillo, Ezra Pike, Margo Lusk, Dolores Vick, Ray Tolliver, the voice on line four.

Static County is a ten-part Southern-gothic radio noir from Narratique. One night per episode, October 22 to Halloween. Listen in order.

Voices in this series are AI-generated. Written, scored and sound-designed by Narratique Studios.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On the radio, the worst sound isn't a scream. It's nothing at all.

Margo lays down Lyle's old rule: never let it go quiet. Seven seconds of dead air on thirteen-forty, and it hears you. Dolores calls in shaken: the unplugged kitchen radio at home whispered her late husband's name. June and Ezra do the one thing they were told not to do. They count out seven seconds of silence, and every streetlight in Harlan goes dark at once. Then a voice comes out of every radio in town.

Featuring June Castillo, Ezra Pike, Margo Lusk, Sheriff Dale Pruitt, Dolores Vick, Ray Tolliver, the voice on line four.

Static County is a ten-part Southern-gothic radio noir from Narratique. One night per episode, October 22 to Halloween. Listen in order.

Voices in this series are AI-generated. Written, scored and sound-designed by Narratique Studios.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

She knows that sign-off. Everyone in Calder County over fifty does.

Station owner Margo Lusk hasn't set foot in KCDR since the Christmas party, but one listen to last night's tape turns her gray. "Tell Margo I kept the light on" was Lyle Beaumont's sign-off, and Lyle walked off the air on Halloween 1987 and never came back. The caller rings again at two seventeen. This time he knows June's mother's name, and he warns of a fire at Hollis Feed and Seed. Then the transmitter goes dead, and out on Ferris Hill, someone has cut the line.

Featuring June Castillo, Ezra Pike, Margo Lusk, Dolores Vick, Ray Tolliver, the voice on line four.

Static County is a ten-part Southern-gothic radio noir from Narratique. One night per episode, October 22 to Halloween. Listen in order.

Voices in this series are AI-generated. Written, scored and sound-designed by Narratique Studios.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Line four hasn't worked since 1987. Tonight it rings.

June Castillo came home to Harlan, Texas, to bury her mother and can't stand to sleep in the empty house, so she takes the overnight shift nobody wants at KCDR 1340 AM. Her first Night Line goes better than she expected: pie gossip from Dolores at Dot's Diner, and Ray, a trucker hauling a trailer full of pool noodles through the dark. Then, at two seventeen, a soft-spoken caller on the dead request line warns her that a cattle truck is about to lose its brakes on the Caddo Creek bridge, in eleven minutes, right where Ray is headed.

Featuring June Castillo, Ezra Pike, Dolores Vick, Ray Tolliver, Sheriff Dale Pruitt, the voice on line four, and the KCDR announcer.

Static County is a ten-part Southern-gothic radio noir from Narratique. One night per episode, October 22 to Halloween. Listen in order.

Voices in this series are AI-generated. Written, scored and sound-designed by Narratique Studios.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.