Numbers station

Numbers stations were typically shortwave radio stations which broadcast seemingly random strings of numbers, which were actually covert messages. The term was also used to refer to the actual transmissions or broadcast messages. (PROSE: Numbers Stations)

Numbers stations were often given distinctive nicknames, such as "The Lincolnshire Poacher", a station which broadcast the first two bars of the eponymous folk song before every number string. Another station gained its name from playing its numbers over a burst of Mozart's Symphony No. 6. That station became notorious because of a claim that its messages were transmitted in an atypical way that allowed them to be picked up by devices other than conventional radios. (PROSE: Numbers Stations)

The earliest numbers stations dated back to World War I and used Morse code, which was ideal as it was truly a cipher. They reached their zenith during the Cold War, but continued to be used to a lesser extent afterwards. (PROSE: Numbers Stations) Ms A Bashara was said to be involved with numbers stations. (PROSE: The Very Real Mystery of Wester Drumlins)

Rani Chandra mentioned numbers stations in passing in an article on Wester Drumlins she wrote for the Into The Unknown blog (PROSE: The Very Real Mystery of Wester Drumlins), which caused some curious readers to reach out to its proprietor, Professor Maxwell Grey. As there was no mystery as to the nature of the stations, Grey did not consider them normally worthy of inclusion on the site, but decided to make an exception due to the mystery about their operators (PROSE: Numbers stations... do they add up?) and wrote an article about them. (PROSE: Numbers Stations)