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The Night Wire



Estimated reading time — 9 minutes

“New York, September 30 CP FLASH

“Ambassador Holliwell died here today. The end came
suddenly as the ambassador was alone in his study….”

There is something ungodly about these night wire jobs. You sit up here on the top floor of a skyscraper and listen in to the whispers of a civilization. New York, London, Calcutta, Bombay, Singapore — they’re your next-door neighbors after the streetlights go dim and the world has gone to sleep.

Alone in the quiet hours between two and four, the receiving operators doze over their sounders and the news comes in. Fires and disasters and suicides. Murders, crowds, catastrophes. Sometimes an earthquake with a casualty list as long as your arm. The night wire man takes it down almost in his sleep, picking it off on his typewriter with one finger.

Once in a long time you prick up your ears and listen. You’ve heard of some one you knew in Singapore, Halifax or Paris, long ago. Maybe they’ve been promoted, but more probably they’ve been murdered or drowned. Perhaps they just decided to quit and took some bizarre way out. Made it interesting enough to get in the news.

But that doesn’t happen often. Most of the time you sit and doze and tap, tap on your typewriter and wish you were home in bed.

Sometimes, though, queer things happen. One did the other night, and I haven’t got over it yet. I wish I could.

You see, I handle the night manager’s desk in a western seaport town; what the name is, doesn’t matter.

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There is, or rather was, only one night operator on my staff, a fellow named John Morgan, about forty years of age, I should say, and a sober, hard-working sort.

He was one of the best operators I ever knew, what is known as a “double” man. That means he could handle two instruments at once and type the stories on different typewriters at the same time. He was one of the three men I ever knew who could do it consistently, hour after hour, and never make a mistake.

Generally, we used only one wire at night, but sometimes, when it was late and the news was coming fast, the Chicago and Denver stations would open a second wire, and then Morgan would do his stuff. He was a wizard, a mechanical automatic wizard which functioned marvelously but was without imagination.

On the night of the sixteenth he complained of feeling tired. It was the first and last time I had ever heard him say a word about himself, and I had known him for three years.

It was just three o’clock and we were running only one wire. I was nodding over the reports at my desk and not paying much attention to him, when he spoke.

“Jim,” he said, “does it feel close in here to you?”
“Why, no, John,” I answered, “but I’ll open a window if you like.”
“Never mind,” he said. “I reckon I’m just a little tired.”

That was all that was said, and I went on working. Every ten minutes or so I would walk over and take a pile of copy that had stacked up neatly beside the typewriter as the messages were printed out in triplicate.

It must have been twenty minutes after he spoke that I noticed he had opened up the other wire and was using both typewriters. I thought it was a little unusual, as there was nothing very “hot” coming in. On my next trip I picked up the copy from both machines and took it back to my desk to sort out the duplicates.

The first wire was running out the usual sort of stuff and I just looked over it hurridly. Then I turned to the second pile of copy. I remembered it particularly because the story was from a town I had never heard of: “Xebico.” Here is the dispatch. I saved a duplicate of it from our files:

“Xebico, Sept 16 CP BULLETIN

“The heaviest mist in the history of the city settled over
the town at 4 o’clock yesterday afternoon. All traffic has
stopped and the mist hangs like a pall over everything. Lights
of ordinary intensity fail to pierce the fog, which is
constantly growing heavier.

“Scientists here are unable to agree as to the cause, and
the local weather bureau states that the like has never occurred
before in the history of the city.

“At 7 P.M. last night the municipal authorities… (more)”

That was all there was. Nothing out of the ordinary at a bureau headquarters, but, as I say, I noticed the story because of the name of the town.

It must have been fifteen minutes later that I went over for another batch of copy. Morgan was slumped down in his chair and had switched his green electric light shade so that the gleam missed his eyes and hit only the top of the two typewriters.

Only the usual stuff was in the righthand pile, but the lefthand batch carried another story from Xebico. All press dispatches come in “takes,” meaning that parts of many different stories are strung along together, perhaps with but a few paragraphs of each coming through at a time. This second story was marked “add fog.” Here is the copy:

“At 7 P.M. the fog had increased noticeably. All lights
were now invisible and the town was shrouded in pitch darkness.

“As a peculiarity of the phenomenon, the fog is accompanied
by a sickly odor, comparable to nothing yet experienced
here.”

Below that in customary press fashion was the hour, 3:27, and the initials of the operator, JM.
There was only one other story in the pile from the second wire. Here it is:

“2nd add Xebico Fog.

“Accounts as to the origin of the mist differ greatly.
Among the most unusual is that of the sexton of the local
church, who groped his way to headquarters in a hysterical
condition and declared that the fog originated in the village
churchyard.

“‘It was first visible as a soft gray blanket clinging to
the earth above the graves,’ he stated. ‘Then it began to rise,
higher and higher. A subterranean breeze seemed to blow it in
billows, which split up and then joined together again.

“‘Fog phantoms, writhing in anguish, twisted the mist into
queer forms and figures. And then, in the very thick midst of
the mass, something moved.

“‘I turned and ran from the accursed spot. Behind me I
heard screams coming from the houses bordering on the
graveyard.’

“Although the sexton’s story is generally discredited, a
party has left to investigate. Immediately after telling his
story, the sexton collapsed and is now in a local hospital,
unconscious.”

Queer story, wasn’t it. Not that we aren’t used to it, for a lot of unusual stories come in over the wire. But for some reason or other, perhaps because it was so quiet that night, the report of the fog made a great impression on me.

It was almost with dread that I went over to the waiting piles of copy. Morgan did not move, and the only sound in the room was the tap-tap of the sounders. It was ominous, nerve- racking.
There was another story from Xebico in the pile of copy. I seized on it anxiously.

“New Lead Xebico Fog CP

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“The rescue party which went out at 11 P.M. to investigate
a weird story of the origin of a fog which, since late
yesterday, has shrouded the city in darkness has failed to
return. Another and larger party has been dispatched.

“Meanwhile, the fog has, if possible, grown heavier. It
seeps through the cracks in the doors and fills the atmosphere
with a depressing odor of decay. It is oppressive, terrifying,
bearing with it a subtle impression of things long dead.

“Residents of the city have left their homes and gathered
in the local church, where the priests are holding services of
prayer. The scene is beyond description. Grown folk and
children are alike terrified and many are almost beside
themselves with fear.

“Amid the whisps of vapor which partly veil the church
auditorium, an old priest is praying for the welfare of his
flock. They alternately wail and cross themselves.

“From the outskirts of the city may be heard cries of
unknown voices. They echo through the fog in queer uncadenced
minor keys. The sounds resemble nothing so much as wind
whistling through a gigantic tunnel. But the night is calm and
there is no wind. The second rescue party… (more)”

I am a calm man and never in a dozen years spent with the wires, have I been known to become excited, but despite myself I rose from my chair and walked to the window. Could I be mistaken, or far down in the canyons of the city beneath me did I see a faint trace of fog? Pshaw! It was all imagination.

In the pressroom the click of the sounders seemed to have raised the tempo of their tune. Morgan alone had not stirred from his chair. His head sunk between his shoulders, he tapped the dispatches out on the typewriters with one finger of each hand.

He looked asleep, but no; endlessly, efficiently, the two machines rattled off line after line, as relentlessly and effortlessly as death itself. There was something about the monotonous movement of the typewriter keys that fascinated me. I walked over and stood behind his chair, reading over his shoulder the type as it came into being, word by word.

Ah, here was another:

“Flash Xebico CP

“There will be no more bulletins from this office. The
impossible has happened. No messages have come into this room
for twenty minutes. We are cut off from the outside and even
the streets below us.

“I will stay with the wire until the end.

“It is the end, indeed. Since 4 P.M. yesterday the fog has
hung over the city. Following reports from the sexton of the
local church, two rescue parties were sent out to investigate
conditions on the outskirts of the city. Neither party has ever
returned nor was any word received from them. It is quite
certain now that they will never return.

“From my instrument I can gaze down on the city beneath me.
From the position of this room on the thirteenth floor, nearly
the entire city can be seen. Now I can see only a thick blanket
of blackness where customarily are lights and life.

“I fear greatly that the wailing cries heard constantly
from the outskirts of the city are the death cries of the
inhabitants. They are constantly increasing in volume and are
approaching the center of the city.

“The fog yet hangs over everything. If possible, it is
even heavier than before, but the conditions have changed.
Instead of an opaque, impenetrable wall of odorous vapor, there
now swirls and writhes a shapeless mass in contortions of almost
human agony. Now and again the mass parts and I catch a brief
glimpse of the streets below.

“People are running to and fro, screaming in despair. A
vast bedlam of sound flies up to my window, and above all is the
immense whistling of unseen and unfelt winds.

“The fog has again swept over the city and the whistling is
coming closer and closer.

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“It is now directly beneath me.

“God! An instant ago the mist opened and I caught a
glimpse of the streets below.

“The fog is not simply vapor — it lives! By the side of
each moaning and weeping human is a companion figure, an aura of
strange and vari-colored hues. How the shapes cling! Each to a
living thing!

“The men and women are down. Flat on their faces. The fog
figures caress them lovingly. They are kneeling beside them.
They are — but I dare not tell it.

“The prone and writhing bodies have been stripped of their
clothing. They are being consumed — piecemeal.

“A merciful wall of hot, steaming vapor has swept over the
whole scene. I can see no more.

“Beneath me the wall of vapor is changing colors. It seems
to be lighted by internal fires. No, it isn’t. I have made a
mistake. The colors are from above, reflections from the sky.

“Look up! Look up! The whole sky is in flames. Colors as
yet unseen by man or demon. The flames are moving; they have
started to intermix; the colors are rearranging themselves.
They are so brilliant that my eyes burn, they they are a long
way off.

“Now they have begun to swirl, to circle in and out,
twisting in intricate designs and patterns. The lights are
racing each with each, a kaleidoscope of unearthly brilliance.

“I have made a discovery. There is nothing harmful in the
lights. They radiate force and friendliness, almost cheeriness.
But by their very strength, they hurt.

“As I look, they are swinging closer and closer, a million
miles at each jump. Millions of miles with the speed of light.
Aye, it is light of quintessence of all light. Beneath it the
fog melts into a jeweled mist radiant, rainbow-colored of a
thousand varied spectra.

“I can see the streets. Why, they are filled with people!
The lights are coming closer. They are all around me. I am
enveloped. I…”

The message stopped abruptly. The wire to Xebico was dead. Beneath my eyes in the narrow circle of light from under the green lamp-shade, the black printing no longer spun itself, letter by letter, across the page. The room seemed filled with a solemn quiet, a silence vaguely impressive, powerful. I looked down at Morgan. His hands had dropped nervelessly at his sides, while his body had hunched over peculiarly. I turned the lamp-shade back, throwing light squarely in his face. His eyes were staring, fixed.

Filled with a sudden foreboding, I stepped beside him and called Chicago on the wire. After a second the sounder clicked its answer. Why? But there was something wrong. Chicago was reporting that Wire Two had not been used throughout the evening.

“Morgan!” I shouted. “Morgan! Wake up, it isn’t true. Some one has been hoaxing us. Why…” In my eagerness I grasped him by the shoulder.

His body was quite cold. Morgan had been dead for hours. Could it be that his sensitized brain and automatic fingers had continued to record impressions even after the end?

I shall never know, for I shall never again handle the night shift. Search in a world atlas discloses no town of Xebico. Whatever it was that killed John Morgan will forever remain a mystery.


Credited to H.F. Arnold

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126 thoughts on “The Night Wire”

  1. Wow this was pretty good, I agree that it’s probably what he was experiencing either during his death or afterward. His brain was shutting down and just spewing out a mess of gibberish…sounded like a pretty painful death if that being the case. That’s why I always find it humorous when people will say stuff like “He died peacefully in his sleep.” How do you know that exactly? For all you know, he had the most excruciating, agonizing death ever known to man kind…

  2. I gave it a 6/10. Personally i didnt really like it, it was until the very end that i started enjoying it, it started waaaaaaaaay to slow. The only reason i liked it in the end was that it was original and that it was indeed mysterious, but like i said, i was pretty bored in the beginning

  3. What if the guy was reporting everything he’s seeing from the otherworld? Or what he was seeing was a war between Heaven and Hell?

  4. BUT WHO WAS FOG?!?!(I’m sure someone else has already posted this, but I was too lazy to check the comments to see)

  5. Sorcha, are you fucking stupid? That’s a rhetorical question, because the answer is clearly yes. H.F. Arnold is the actual, original author, and this is all over the goddamn internet already because this story is FUCKING PUBLIC DOMAIN YOU FUCKING DUMBASS. If you took the time to actually google either the title or the author [or if you were actually aware of what you were talking about and not just spewing pointless shit], you’d be aware of both the name of the author and the fact that this piece is public domain. Instead you’re just trying to make yourself seem smart by crying about stealing when you clearly don’t know the first thing about what you’re talking about.

  6. I’m glad I’m not the only one who recognized this as a published story. Maybe it’s just me, but it’s one thing to write down a folk tale or legend you heard in your own words and submit it. It’s another to steal someone else’s actual writing.

  7. I wish they had gone into more detail with the Fog. It’s an interesting concept. And then the light? So he was dead…

  8. Well SOMEONE sure loved using the word “queer.” At least he used it correctly, though I’m not sure if it were even used as a derogatory term back when this was written.

  9. Yet another slightly twisted Stephen King story. “The Mist” this time. I’m a bit disappointed bythe lack of originality here.

  10. Good except for a few grammatical errors.
    For one, you said ” they they are a long
    way off.” around halfway through the story.
    And also you said the colors lighted the night, that would be lit.
    Sorry if someone else pointed these out previously.

  11. @MaraquanWocky
    Well, It is very hard to abreviate and use mispelt words when you are using a morse code thing. I don\’t know what it\’s actually called, sorry to anyone who thinks I\’m stupid for forgetting what it is called. It\’s an older story, they didn\’t speak leet back then to speed up their typing. Sorry if I sound sarcastic, I\’m not trying to be.

    And I loved this one. It wasn\’t actually all that creepy, but sent a tingle up my spine as i read it, waiting eagerly for the next page to pass through the typewriter to be read to us. And the mystery of it all only makes it so much better. If you know how something works, It\’s not scary. Like a movie, if you know how they did the effects, not so much oomph anymore.

  12. Nice story. But wouldn’t they be more frantic in their…writing…thing? With misspelled words and abbreviations? Oh well, great story. 30 out of 10. :D

  13. dannwerwarschreibmaschine

    Stretches plausibility a little with the level of descriptive detail…this is a telegram, isn’t it?

    All the same, well-written story, strikes me as very Lovecraftian in voice if not in theme.

  14. One of the better ones I’ve read on here so far. Liked the description of the fog. What I wanna is this: if Morgan was dead, THEN WHO WAS TYPEWRITER?

  15. The era of Morse code communication was rife with creepy paranormal shit like this, dun. Totally check some stuff out if you can find it.

  16. mmm so compared to the recent pastas that hav been posted on here this one was the shit, im gona start reading n searching for old school 1920s/30s horror stories cos wen the writing is good it makes all the difference

  17. You all say the ending is pretty vague. I think it’s pretty obvious, considering the man was dead before he finished typing.

    He was actually typing out what he was experiencing as he passed through to the afterlife. As he was waiting on Heaven to take him, he caught a glimpse of Hell in the streets below.

    He was just old or dying, which is why he kept saying he was tired.

  18. That was really good but it kinda ruined it for me about the shapes and stuff nearing the end, still a great pasta, would eat again 8/10
    BUT WHO WAS SHAPES

  19. wow did you figure that out all by yourself? it’s not like it says Credited to H.F. Arnold right at the bottom or anything. good investigative skills

  20. This isn’t a pasta. Not at all.

    This is a short story that was written in 1926 by H F Arnold and published in “Weird Tales”. What asshole posted this here as a pasta? They should be banned.

  21. Jeesh, everyone always says they hate endings that don’t tell you exactly what happened and wrap everything up nice and neatly. But what you fail to understand is that those endings are the best ones because the sense of mystery is scary in itself.

    This pasta was great. I could tell by the last dispatch that we weren’t reading something written by some kid in his basement, but by a professional writer. Good stuff.

  22. I know its been said already but damn, that was some great pasta.

    Really filled me with a sense of wonder and excitement, unlike the dread or boredom of a regualr pasta. This one really draws you in, I liked the unusual setting.

    “Pshaw” also added to it :>

  23. @ Kat-Chan
    FFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
    I had just forgotten about Uzumaki then you had to get and bring it up ;-;

    AMAZING story tho
    10/10

  24. Holy crap, I was expecting it to be a supernatural zombie plague, which while cliche, would have been personally alot more scary. But it makes sense with the town being named Xebico and all.

  25. I like most of this story, but the news dispatches are way too Lovecraftian for a format that strives for impersonality.

  26. An amazing story, very well written with a great concept and blahblah everything I say in all my other comments on stuff I like.

    I didn’t really like the ending much, though. Not really sure what bothered me about it, but it was offsetting compared to the rest of the story. It was “out of character” so to speak.

    But still, I loved this work.

  27. fantastic, i love the idea that whatever this Xebico place is cold be some sort of hell, controlling morgan in his new and improved dead form
    keep up the good work

  28. When it said Fog, I thought it was just gonna be like “The Fog”. Seeing that there was that online game based on The Mist.

    With all of the praise for you…

    I have to say, this pasta was average, to me. I haven’t read anything that scares me.

    Fear is the hardest emotion to envoke.

    Ending was meh.

  29. really guys? It wasnt even that legit.
    The only semi kool thing, is the fog. It would be pretty legit to have fog like that. Other than that, this wasnt very good.

  30. This is very good, but the same phrases and such are repeated over and over again….. five paragraphs could have been trimmed out, easily, but I enjoyed it immensely, it has such an awesome old-school feel to it. At first I thought it was being written by someone alive today and I’m a dispatcher for a living, so I was about to say AMAZING job, but it’s an old-school guy…. makes sense.

  31. This was long as hell, started off very confusing as well. By the half-way point I was reading as fast as I could. This is a very good story. Top 5 for sure, one of the first truly creepy pastas I’ve read, in a long while at least.

  32. Very Lovecraftian…an account of some unspeakable occurence from someone totally removed from it. I liked it very much. I agree with an above comment, however…the news wire did seem very diary-esque.

  33. wow, really? I think I’m the only person who didn’t care for this story at all. It was NOT Lovecraft, want to kill whoever said that. The fog didn’t create any tension at all for me, I felt like I was waiting for a punchline that never happened.

    Too long, kept thinking they should get to a explanation that never happened. Not creepy, scary, or any other synonym of the words.

  34. @ Scythemantis: Yeah, tell that to all the high school teachers till telling kids to critique Shakespeare at whatnot. ; )

    It’s a bit wordy, I can’t imagine anyone in an, “OH GAWD, FOGGGG” state of mind being so eloquent, but alright, maybe some people are. That’s all I have to say about it, I didn’t really like it, but it’s just my own preferences. Nothing wrong with the writing.

  35. Loved it. I was thinking zombies..then the movie ‘the mist’ but I was happy with what I fed..I want to know more about the ending though…

    Btw, my anticipation for the next wire from xebico was phenomenal, I was right in the narrators shoes.

    YAY for vivid reading!

  36. That was absolutely excellent, some of the recent pastas havent been too great, but i love this one :D
    Just the right amount of suspense, fear, and confusion that combine to make an excellent story
    :]

  37. I’m not going to lie. I did not like this one. It was long and boring, and the twist at the end, though neat, was not worth the read.

  38. (insert usual nitpicking about spelling and grammar mistakes)
    but DAMN was this one good! There hasn’t been a frontpage story in a while, but this was GOOD!

    …or maybe I’m just overjoyed to read a new creepypasta?

  39. It was loooong.

    I don’t know if maybe i’m biased from reading a bit too many foggy pastas but this one was well-written.

    Only it was quite a BIG meal and not quite scary or what i expected it would turn out to be.

  40. Mm. Reminded me of Uzumaki a bit – instead of spirals overtaking a town, it’s a fog. Either way, this was a great pasta.

  41. @ SAGE.
    i was picturing this whole thing to be in black and white with olod monostereo audio,like twilight zone,so the imrpoper grammar seemed to fit for me,but maybe your right.

    I quite enjoyed it.it isnt so much to be scary,but enough to keep the heart racing to find out the fate of xebico.

  42. cool story..usually something like this would leave me saying “Ending was a copout, was expecting more” but in this story somehow you make it seem just fine that it ends this way…good job

    Reminds me a LOT of the original “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark”

  43. It’s creepy, but for that extra immersion you could try putting the alleged “wire” messages into an actual stenographic form.

    “The heaviest mist in the history of the city settled over
    the town at 4 o’clock yesterday afternoon. All traffic has
    stopped and the mist hangs like a pall over everything. Lights of ordinary intensity fail to pierce the fog, which is constantly growing heavier.”

    What they might actually say: “Heavy fog started 0400 yesterday. Traffic stopped. Fog not penetrated by light, and still increases.”

    It’s a news wire, not a diary. :P

  44. Wow.
    The guy must have went insane from typing two separate stories on two separate typewriters.

    I love the description of the fog and the colourful sky.

  45. My favorite in a long while. Good job! I did notice something though.

    “Beneath me the wall of vapor is changing colors. It seems
    to be lighted by internal fires….”

    lighted = lit ?

    I could be wrong.

  46. I have to admit, I’m a big fan of this piece. Very well written and definitely engaging enough to keep me reading without wanting to stop. Kudos.

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