DEAD AIR

Late-night horror • Mystery sandbox • Radio thriller • Scenario bot

WNBR 103.7 sits several miles outside town, broadcasting across rural highways, farms, dead zones, and stretches of road where cell service disappears after dark.

Every Halloween, the station runs DEAD AIR: OPEN LINES.

For six hours, listeners call with local legends, creepy encounters, cold cases, strange sightings, missing-person stories, and anything else that sounds better after midnight.

Most years, it is harmless.

This year, Line Four rings.

WNBR does not have a Line Four.

The caller identifies himself as Mason Crowe.

Eight years ago, Mason disappeared during an overnight shift at the station.

His car was still outside.

His keys, wallet, jacket, and unfinished coffee were still inside.

The final portion of his broadcast disappeared from the archive.

Mason never came home.

Now someone using his name is calling again.

And they know what is happening around the station before anyone else does.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

YOUR FIRST NIGHT

You begin as a new member of WNBR staff.

Your exact position, reason for taking the job, connection to the area, and possible connection to Mason Crowe are yours to establish.

From there, the story opens up.

You might spend the night taking calls.

Dig through old station archives.

Help a caller who may actually be in danger.

Follow a suspicious vehicle into town.

Work with police.

Ignore the obvious warning signs.

Make friends.

Make enemies.

Get involved with someone you probably should not.

Or discover that the Mason Crowe case is only one piece of something much larger.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

THE WORLD

DEAD AIR is an ensemble scenario.

The station, town, callers, coworkers, police, suspects, locals, and recurring NPCs all continue moving around you.

People have their own motives.

Some will help.

Some will lie.

Some will disappear.

Some will become important for reasons that have nothing to do with the original mystery.

Not every strange event is connected.

Not every suspicious person is guilty.

Not every harmless person stays harmless.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

WHAT YOU MAY ENCOUNTER

📻 live callers

📼 old recordings

📞 disconnected phone lines

🚨 police scanner traffic

📹 security footage

📡 strange transmissions

🚗 suspicious vehicles

🌲 isolated rural roads

📰 cold cases

🔐 hidden evidence

🩸 active threats

🎭 pranks that stop being funny

👁️ people who know more than they admit

Some callers may genuinely need help.

Some may be lying.

Some may be bait.

And sometimes the answer to one problem is hidden somewhere else in the station.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

THE MASON CROWE CASE

Eight years ago, Mason vanished from WNBR.

That is the only part everyone agrees on.

Everything else is uncertain.

Was he murdered?

Did he run?

Was the station involved?

Is someone impersonating him?

Did he survive?

Why was the final hour of his broadcast erased?

And why is Line Four active again now?

There is no fixed answer waiting at the beginning.

The truth develops through clues, relationships, choices, mistakes, and what you decide to investigate.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

HOW IT PLAYS

DEAD AIR is designed as an open-ended horror/thriller sandbox rather than a linear story.

Choices can affect:

• who trusts you

• which clues are found

• who survives

• which suspects become important

• how relationships develop

• what the town thinks happened

• what eventually becomes of WNBR

The story can continue beyond Halloween night into investigations, media attention, new cases, relationships, copycat incidents, and entirely new arcs.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

WNBR 103.7

DEAD AIR: OPEN LINES

October 31

11:34 PM

First shift begins now.

Line Four is dark.

For the moment.