The Whisper Field: Interview/Encounter
Interview Transcript: “The Whisper Field and the 1965-1967 Tesla Coil Experiments”
Interview Conducted Oct 15th, 2024
[Interviewer]: Thank you for agreeing to speak with me. I know this must be difficult, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your time. Let’s start from the beginning. What was it like when you first arrived where the British Geological Society were conducting the study?
[Interviewee's proper name is omitted at their request. Referred to as "Arthur"]
"Arthur": (Pauses) It’s strange to think about it now. Looking back, it almost feels like it was someone else’s life. When I arrived in the town, it was just… ordinary. The kind of mining town you could forget existed as soon as you left it. Small, with a sense of purpose that revolved around coal, dirt, and heavy work. I was just a university assistant back then, sent to observe. They didn’t tell me what I was really getting into.
[Interviewer]: Did you know anything about the whisper field before the study?
"Arthur": (Shakes head) No. None of us did, except maybe Dr. Freemantle. He was the lead on the project. He kept going on about how we were going to “harness the earth’s energy.” Back then, the idea of plate tectonics was just being proven as legitimate. We didn't know much about how all that worked. So using Tesla coils around fault systems sounded plausible. They are used to detect leaks, same as ground-penetrating radar techniques. So, it just sounded standard. But... it was more than that. Freemantle was obsessed with tapping into something beneath the earth, something he wouldn’t fully explain. He had theories, but they felt like... wild ramblings at times.
[Interviewer]: When did you first start noticing things changing in town?
"Arthur": About a month in. At first, it was just... unease. People weren’t sleeping much. They reported murmurs in the middle of the night—like voices carried on the wind. I experienced it too. I remember one evening, I was lying in my bunk, and I heard my mother calling to me from outside, which was impossible. She lived three hours away. The next morning, I found out several miners had heard their wives or children’s voices, too. Everyone dismissed it as homesickness or anxiety, but it didn’t stop.
[Interviewer]: And the sleepwalking?
"Arthur": (Takes a deep breath) That came later. It started small—people wandering the streets in the early hours, still in their nightclothes. At first, no one thought much of it. Sleepwalking isn’t unheard of. But it got worse. Men started leaving the boarding houses in the dead of night and heading toward the hills where the Tesla coils were set up. They weren’t aware of what they were doing, just drawn to those coils like moths to a flame. We found one of the miners... John, I think it was... standing in the middle of the field, right next to the coil, hands outstretched, muttering under his breath. But the worst part was his eyes. They were wide open, but they were empty. He was... somewhere else.
[Interviewer]: Did anyone attempt to stop the experiment at this point?
"Arthur": We tried. We really did. But Freemantle... he wouldn’t hear of it. He said the experiment was nearing a breakthrough. He believed the whispering was a form of communication—an energy the earth had stored for millennia, and he was going to be the one to unlock it. I remember asking him if the risk was worth it, and he just stared at me, like I’d spoken blasphemy. He was a man possessed by his own ambition.
[Interviewer]: What about the violence? When did that begin?
"Arthur": (tense) After the second month, everything started to fall apart. The whispers... they changed. They stopped sounding like family or friends. Instead, they became something darker, more malevolent. People started turning on each other. Arguments flared up over nothing—petty disputes became fistfights. But the worst of it... the worst was in the mine itself. The men went down there every day, but something changed down there. They’d come up with wild looks in their eyes, whispering about voices that told them to do things.
The first incident... it was a miner named Pete. He’d been a quiet guy, never one for trouble. But one day, he just... snapped. Took a pickaxe and went after one of the engineers. He kept saying he had to “silence the noise” and “stop the scratching.” By the time they pulled him off, it was too late.
[Interviewer]: Were there more incidents like that?
"Arthur": (Nods) Oh, yes. The violence became more frequent. People turned on each other, and it wasn’t just in the mine anymore. Amongst the families that lived in the town, we found three married men dead in their homes, their children and wives untouched but left to witness... the carnage. They all said the same thing: it was the whispers. They couldn’t take the whispers anymore. They’d wake up to voices in their ears, telling them what to do.
[Interviewer]: You said you experienced this personally. Did you experience this development as well?
"Arthur": (Long pause) Yes. I did. And I still do, sometimes. I remember the night it almost got me. I’d been hearing them for weeks by then, always just on the edge of hearing. They started by sounding like my father. Then they became... me. My own voice, telling me things no one oughta hear. Dark things. Evil things. I was in bed, clutching my head, trying to drown out the sound, but it only got louder. The next thing I knew, I was standing in the middle of the hills, barefoot, the Tesla coils buzzing in the distance. I was holding a knife, and I didn’t know how it got there.
[Interviewer]: How did the experiment finally end?
"Arthur": (Voice tight) Well, I was only privy to this particular segment of the experiment. They moved it around later on, but I know how this ended. It ended when the town burned. One night, it just... erupted into chaos. People were screaming, running through the streets, setting fires. It was like something snapped all at once. The whispers had gotten too loud. I remember standing on the hill, watching the flames rise, listening to the cries for help... and the laughter. Not the people’s laughter. The voices. They...were laughing.
Freemantle disappeared that night. Some say he went into the mines to follow the whispers. Others think he fled when he realized what he’d done. I don’t know, and I don’t care. All I know is that after that, the British Geological Society ended their work there. The few of us left were ordered never to speak of it. But... you don’t forget something like that.
[Interviewer]: (Leaning forward) Do you think the whispers are still there? In the ground?
"Arthur": (Staring) They never left. They’re everywhere, in places you wouldn’t expect. They follow the fault lines, the cracks in the earth. You can’t escape them. Once you’ve heard them, they’ll always find you.
[Interviewer]: (Pauses) And do you... still hear them?
"Arthur": (Smiles faintly) You’ve heard them too, haven’t you? I can see it in your eyes. They’ve already started, haven’t they?
[Interviewer]: I... I don’t know what you’re—
"Arthur": (Interrupts) It’s too late. I'm afraid you're part of it now. The whispers... they don’t just stop. They’re part of something bigger, something older than any of us. Once you’ve heard them, they’ll follow you. And one day, when you’re alone, they’ll tell you to do something. And you will. Because they’ll sound just like you.
[Interviewer]: Thank you for your time, but I think that'll be all.
"Arthur": (Leaning forward, head cocked) Do you hear it now?
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[Previously redacted introductory materials]
[I wrote some extra stuff for certain postings but here it is included in this]
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I've long been a fan of the unexplained. I enjoy listening to podcasts of the spookiest sort, especially this time of year and when I'm trying to get to sleep. I'm one of those people.
However, I have a few things that I tend to avoid plumbing the depths of because they really unsettle me. The Hat Man is one of them. He just freaks me out, and I give him all the due respect that I can. I've experienced light flickers when there's been no electrical problems and strange animals have shown up and watched me.
Unfortunately, I started researching what is referred to as the "whisper field" in some circles. There's precious little most people know about it, even though it has been touched upon academically and by governments. A web search on the topic just turns up a random, unsettling Soundwave posting.
Fortunately, as a poor postgraduate, my skill set includes finding ways to access all the old and forgotten academic sources that not even Jstor is willing to archive. The deep spaces of the UCLA Library smell exactly like you would expect, with some aromas that are best not spoken of.
I've collected a little on the whisper field, even though if you go to official sources to dig up references, you'll probably get turned away. It took me a lot of work to find information about this. And I wish I hadn't started searching.
---
My sources are available to anyone who wants them, but I would like to mention an account I obtained from the eldest sister of a young man named Gabe Fuentes. What happened to Gabe wasn't formally reported by the authorities and was otherwise kept quiet at the request of his family and other groups involved. She was able to provide me with the transcription of the notebook found with Gabe's handwriting. The text is included below.
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...Oh yes, the Mariana Trench. An old professor of mine who is into deep sea research told me about an incident earlier this year involving an exploration of the trench.
With all the other incidents in recent years, this one didn't get much traction. I'm torn between whether to dig deeper into this or just let it go.
But I've told others, and I'm sorry for that. As soon as I started talking to my friends about what I was researching, they started to hear strange things when out in nature. One of them will never talk to me again because he used to love going on hikes, and now he can't do it, especially at night.
Of course, I've heard the whispers too. I live near one of the biggest fault systems in the world. I can ignore them most days, and they just feel like a persistent, low-grade headache clawing against my skull. Sometimes they sound like my mother with all the judgment and disappointment laid on thick. Other times, they just sound like me and all the voices I usually try to shut out.
I don't know how much longer I can keep going, but I need to know... What it is and why...
Even if it kills me.
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Since last I wrote on the subject of the whisper field... I was able to meet up with my professor. It was a strikingly cold, windy, and overcast day in Southern California, perfect mood for acquiring materials of a sensitive nature. Street cats roaming under oak trees and misting rain up in the hills. Of course, then my professor had on a Hawaiian shirt and pink glasses.
Perhaps it's best I don't reveal his name so I'll just call him Professor S. We sometimes get together for lunch to chat and recently discussed the issues with the OceanGate Titan sub that led to its catastrophic failure. No, that incident wasn't related to the whisper field. Just plain old greed and negligence. But it's a different matter with this diving expedition earlier in 2024. With OceanGate, a transcript entirely written by some random person online seemed far more legitimate than what was ultimately revealed to the public.
Now I can't be completely certain that the following transcript is 100% genuine but Professor S checked it with several people he knows in the deep-sea exploration industry and it passes the smell test.
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Aside from this discovery, I was able to use a YouTube video recovery app to find a three part series which has since recently been deleted soon after posting, still in the Google cache. Unfortunately, I don't have the original video files, just an AI transcription of the materials which I am proofing and correcting.
Excitingly, one of the survivors of the 1965 to 1967 British Geological Society Tesla Experiments has responded to my emails and is willing to conduct a sit down interview since they live in the area.
I haven't been sleeping lately, but that isn't a new thing for me. The new thing is that I hear sounds outside the front door of where I live, usually past 1 AM. It could be the changing temperature or stealthy cats camping out on the patio furniture but every time I've checked there is nothing and no one there. The whispers are constant to the point that I'm starting to consider them just white noise. I play a lot of heavy music to deal with it, but it never quite seems to overcome them.
Would it be so bad to just stick my Phillips head screwdriver deep enough and feel some blessed silence? But what if they're still there, even after?
----
Sitting at my cluttered desk, laptop still open, the screen dimmed—I couldn’t seem to move. The words of "Arthur" were on a loop, playing over and over in my mind like some deranged recording I couldn’t turn off. It was supposed to be just an interview. Just another creepy anecdote to add to the growing pile of stories, to scratch that strange itch I have for this darn thing. But this was something else.
At first, it had felt like any other conversation, albeit darker, heavier. But when he leaned forward, eyes gleaming with a twisted knowing, and asked, “You’ve heard them too, haven’t you?”—that was the moment everything shifted.
I swallowed hard, my throat dry as if I'd been talking for hours, despite the fact I hadn't been talking and I had plenty to drink by my work table.
It’s been cold in Los Angeles. Colder than it should be this time of year. The sky’s been smothered by clouds for days, a thick, gray blanket that doesn’t let the sun through. Southern California isn’t supposed to be like this. I think that’s why I’ve stayed inside so much lately, holed up in my place, sinking deeper into this research—into the whispers.
My hair’s starting to go gray. I noticed it yesterday, caught a few strands in the bathroom mirror, and it almost made me laugh. Maybe I’m aging faster because of all this stress, because I’ve been listening too hard to things I shouldn’t. I don’t know. My eyes feel unfocused behind my glasses, and sometimes I wonder if I’m even seeing things clearly anymore, or if this whole thing is distorting my vision. It’s hard to tell what’s real when your mind keeps shifting between the here and now and the echoes of something darker.
Lately, things have changed. I can’t explain it, but the whispers… they’ve gotten louder. At first, it was just at night, usually between one and three in the morning. It always starts the same—faint sounds at my door, like someone trying to get in. I’ve tried to rationalize it. Cats, the wind, maybe something shifting in the old wood. But every time I look out, there’s nothing. No movement, no rustling of leaves, just an eerie stillness.
I thought about the devils’ chord, that unsettling dissonance, and wondered if the whispers were something like that. I laughed at myself for even considering it—blaming Doctor Who for planting the idea in my head. But I can’t help but feel like there’s more to it, something not quite of this world, like a frequency we’re not supposed to hear. Something supernatural. Or worse, demonic. It’s all tangled up in my mind, feeding off my anxieties, my fears.
I need to be more social, I tell myself that constantly. But here I am, every day, combing through research instead of living. I haven’t really gone out in weeks. I haven’t seen anyone but the delivery guy and a few strangers in passing. My old professor called me, the one who shared that deep-sea submarine transcript with me. He wanted to meet up, get coffee, maybe talk about something other than the whispers. I said no. I don’t know why. Maybe I’m too deep into this now.
There was also that guy Jax, the influencer on YouTube. I wish he still uploaded, but he's probably like me now. His backlog is sadly sparse, unless he privated a bunch before I found him. And I'm actually kinda enchanted by his 'bro' casual style. He was so confident, so full of life, sharing his adventures with this magnetic energy that made me wonder what I’m even doing with myself. I watch what videos he has left sometimes just to remind myself what it’s like to feel alive. To be normal. To not be consumed by something that’s always just out of reach, something that scratches at the edges of your sanity. I haven’t lived. Not really. I’ve let this obsession take over.
And now… now I wonder if that’s exactly what the whispers prey on. Your regrets. Your fears. Your insecurities. They seem to grow stronger the more I think about everything I haven’t done, everything I’ve missed. Are they feeding off that? Off me?
It came to a head, a short time ago.
I had been hearing the whispers again, louder than usual, when it started—the scraping sound. It was soft at first, like claws dragging across the outside of this old house. It reminded me of those cave scratches I read about, the ones left by miners who heard the whispers underground before things went wrong. The sound grew louder, more insistent, like something was hunting, trying to get in.
I turned off all the lights. I don’t know why, but I thought maybe if I stayed still, if I didn’t move, it would go away.
I crawled into a ball on the floor, back pressed against the wall, and just listened. My heart was racing, and I could feel sweat tracing my forehead with its claws, but I didn’t dare move.
I didn’t even breathe. My heart felt too loud. The scratching was relentless, and in the darkness, it felt like the walls were closing in, like the whispers were surrounding me, squeezing tighter and tighter.
It’s been hours. Or maybe minutes. I don’t know. The walls are starting to warp, bending and breathing with the pulse of my panicked heart. I swear I can see shadows moving just out of reach, slinking along the edges of the room like something is alive in the drywall.
The whispers are crawling now—not just in my head but under my skin. It’s like there’s something wriggling there, just beneath the surface, and every time I scratch, it burrows deeper, sliding beneath my flesh like it’s tunneling through my bones.
I cling to the floor, pressed against the wall with my knees to my chest. My breath comes in shallow, ragged bursts. I feel it again—those phantom legs, a tickle against the back of my neck, a centipede of thoughts, each leg of ideas darker than the last, a slithering, segmented line of anxiety, tracing a path along my spine. I slap at my neck, trying to kill whatever it is, but my hand comes away empty.
Nothing there. Always nothing there.
The sound outside my door returns. The scraping. At first, it’s faint. But it's nails, digging against wood, but it grows louder, more desperate. Each drag of those unseen claws reverberates through the rafters, sinking into the walls, crawling into my ears until it becomes an unbearable shriek of metal on bone. I’m shaking, and the air feels thick, oppressive, as if it’s pushing down on me, suffocating.
The room flickers in and out of clarity. The shadows lengthen unnaturally, stretching toward me like blackened fingers. I close my eyes, trying to block it all out, but the sound is worse in the dark—scraping and scratching, as if the walls themselves are itching to come alive and peel me apart.
The whispers aren’t words anymore. They’re tones, low and guttural, resonating in a way that makes my teeth vibrate in my skull. Someone else felt this too. Jax probably. But no description does it justice. It’s like something is trying to speak, but it can’t form the sounds properly—like an ancient tongue too heavy for human mouths. It’s distorted, twisted, but familiar, as if it’s mimicking, or mocking me. The way I breathe, the way I think. It knows.
And then the bugs. Not real ones—at least, I don’t think so. But I can feel them, the way they swarm across my skin. They’re cold, like ice water running through cracks in my flesh.
Each tiny leg tapping, each small mandible biting, gnawing at the edges of my consciousness. I feel them behind my eyes, scuttling across the surface of my brain, chewing through my thoughts one by one. I want to scream, to claw them out, but I’m paralyzed by the sound, by the feeling of my mind unraveling like a thread pulled too tight and snapping in the center.
Something shifts outside the door again. It’s not just the scratching now—there’s a low, rumbling breath, like a large animal exhaling, steam rising from its nostrils. It’s so close, and yet the door remains closed. I stare at the sliver of light beneath the frame, waiting for something to cast a shadow, but the light flickers, dims, and then the sound goes quiet. A heavy, suffocating silence falls over the room, thicker than the air. I feel watched, like something is pressing its weight against the door, something huge, something waiting for me to make the first move.
I close my eyes, curl tighter into myself, and just listen. My heart is pounding so loud I can barely hear anything over it, but there’s a faint creak—the door handle turning slowly, like someone testing the lock. I’m trembling now, my whole body vibrating with fear. I try to focus, to think rationally, but the whispers have worked their way into my head, into my bones. Every thought I try to form shatters like glass before I can grab hold of it.
Then, the knock comes. Slow. Three knocks. Deliberate.
Clunk clunk clunk
My heart. Thump thump thump thump
Clunk clunk clunk
I don’t want to open it. God, I don’t want to open it, but my legs move on their own. My hand grips the door handle, cold and slick with sweat. I open it.
The man stood before the frame, a figure draped in black so deep it drank the light around him. His hat’s brim cast a shadow, but it wasn’t the kind of shadow that forms from light playing off a solid object—it seemed to pulse, like a pool of ink stirred by invisible fingers. My stomach clenched.
His clothes didn’t shift with his movements. Instead, they clung to him, like skin too tight for a body not quite shaped right. Every inch of him was wrong. His hands—pale, bone-white—peered from under long sleeves, but the joints didn’t bend the way hands should. It was like watching a puppet’s strings pulled too hard, the fingers crooking backward when he flexed them. His nails... they were just a bit too long, deepening like old paper, and they scraped against the wood of the doorframe with a sound that felt like it was happening inside my head, behind my eyes.
His face... I couldn’t focus on it for long. My gaze kept slipping, like his features refused to settle, twisting in that shadow. But when I could catch them, his eyes—if I could call them eyes—weren't quite human. Too glossy. Too large. The whites took up too much space, but they were hollow, like someone had dipped the orbs in oil. And the smell... the smell that drifted from him. It wasn’t cologne or sweat. It was like old iron, the kind you find in abandoned places, mixed with the rot of something alive that had been trapped too long. Wet earth and rust.
When he breathed—and I could feel it in my bones more than hear it—it was slow, deliberate. Each exhale sent a chill down my spine, as though the air around me was freezing one layer of skin at a time. I could see his breath, thick and gray like smoke, though the porch was far from cold enough for icy breath.
I felt his gaze linger on me, but it wasn’t like being watched by a person. It felt like something deeper, more primal, as if he wasn’t seeing me—he was unraveling me. Layer by layer. Every flaw, every secret. Every fear.
He smiles—at least, I think it’s a smile. It’s more of a stretch, lips pulling back too far, showing too many teeth.
“I’m a friend,” he says. His voice is low, almost a growl, each word rumbling through the air as though he’s speaking from somewhere deep below, somewhere hot and suffocating. “I’ve come to share something with you.”
He pulls a folder from inside his jacket, the edges worn, the paper yellowed with age. It feels older than anything I’ve ever handled, like it’s been passed down from another time, another place. I swear I see scorch marks on the edges, faint but unmistakable, like it’s been pulled from fire or something worse.
His hat casts a shadow that almost seems to stretch out around him, like three black figures standing just behind him. For a moment, I see something—just a flicker—in the darkness, something with too many heads, too many eyes, something shifting, waiting. But then it’s gone, swallowed by the night.
He leans in closer, that grin still stretched too wide. “There’s more you need to know. The things you’ve heard… they’re just the beginning.”
The top of the folder is etched with a year—1952. My stomach twisted as he handed it to me.
“I think you’ll find this interesting,” he said, a strange smile playing at his lips.
I didn’t say a word. I couldn’t. I just stared at the folder, feeling the weight of it in my hands. The man tipped his hat, turned, and walked away into the night.
I stood there for a long time, clutching the folder, not sure if I should open it. Not sure if I could handle what was inside.
But I know I will. Because the whispers… they never stop.
