Channel One

I never liked television. There was just something about it that bothered me about TV. How it was just a one way street for communication, how it often talked but never listened. But I grew up in a house of television. My dad loved television and his job allowed him to afford whatever expense for his addiction and even though I never really watched TV, at least compared to my dad, it was pretty formative of my childhood.

For example, remember those huge satellite dishes you would need? Maybe not, that was a time long before television was completely digital. I admit that I probably wouldn't have known the difference myself if it wasn't for that large antenna behind our house. It was the size of a car and the space it required took a good quarter of our backyard, making playing games like catch or tag very difficult as a child. Not that I was a kid who always wanted to play outside, I was more content with my Nintendo, But I always felt slighted. When I would go over to my friend's house, they would have a huge yard to play in, and they didn't get yelled at if they were playing to close to dad's tv satellite.

That dish powered every TV in the house. My room was no exception. The television was an older television cabinet, one of those TVs built inside a desk that had the fake drawers and a spot where I think an ice maker went, beside the stereo. It was originally our living room set, but since dad had upgraded to a 42 inch CRT, I inherited it. I now guess he was tired of kicking me out of the living room when I was playing video games. I assume the TV was made in that twilight when cable was just becoming a
thing for wealthy homes, but still in that retro designs of a
"all-in-one" set, but I remember how proud dad was of it and how even though we had more modern sets in the house. Which is probably why he was so stubborn to give it up.

I suppose it was his heirloom to give to me. Most dad's will give their child a family knife or a watch, so I guess it was fitting that my dad gave me a TV of all things. I was thankful but probably not for the reasons he expected. I rarely watched TV myself. A video game usually gave me a sense of control that I enjoyed as a child. Outside of a few shows, there wasn't a lot that could capture my attention. Usually the TV in my room would be on Channel 4 for my Nintendo. On rare occasions I would turn onto Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon when I was particularly bored with the handful of games I had, but that was about it.

I recall there were around 120 channels on the dial of my TV.  Because of the placement of the channels, it was easier to go backward to get to the channels that I would want to watch rather than going forward. However, this way there was a lot of what I called "ghost channels". They were mostly shows that didn't come in quite right. I'm not exactly sure why there were there. Maybe the signal wasn't quite strong enough, or maybe it had something to do with how it was connected to the antenna. Most of them were just static where you could just barely hear people talking, but I could never quite make out what it was saying. Almost every channel from 80 to 120 was one of these ghost channels. I started getting actual programming around channel 80 or so, but Nickelodeon was 78 and Cartoon Network was not so far behind. Looking back, turning the channel this way saved at most a couple of minutes of my life, but it made me feel pretty efficient as a child, even if I had to hear annoying static.

But one of the stranger channels was one I called "Channel One". The dial on the television didn't have '1' labeled. It went from 2 right around to 120. However, there was definitely an audible click in between them. I've been told on some TVs this was the "U" channel, but I guess it functioned the same. The channel was always just complete static though. The other ghost channels would have an actual channel trying to push through. Channel one wasn't a ghost channel, it was a dead channel. No sounds of talking, no picture forming, nothing like the others. Just complete static. None of the other televisions in our house even had a channel one.

For some strange reason, I always felt bad for the channel, it seemed like it was forgotten. I'm not sure why I had a strange empathy for a television channel of all things, but I always slowed down as I got closer to it, just to acknowledge it was there.

I guess to call it a "dead channel" was wrong of me though. Sometimes there would be... something... on channel one. I remember the very first time it happened. It was summer and I was enjoying my summer vacation from elementary school, and my parents allowed me to stay up as late as I want as long as I was good. I was watching Nickelodeon until Nick-at-Nite came on. As I child, I never cared for anything without bright, sickening colors bouncing around. I would immediately become bored and wasn't ready for sleep, so I had started turning the dial to play a few video games before bed. I was going past the channels when I noticed an old black-and-white program flicker right before I reached channel 4. As I said, there would be times where the other ghost channels would have something on them, but never have I seen something in monochrome and most definitely never on channel one. I could have sworn that's where I seen it. I slowly turned the dial back bit by bit until I got to that empty space. Sure enough, something was there.

I don't remember any of the exact details at the time. I was fairly young and a bit confused, and my grasp on all the 'grown-up' language was pretty limited. I remember an older man, black suit and tie, reading a sheet of paper and speaking into a microphone with a fairly bland background. His voice seemed distinguished and educated. He was a newscaster, but in complete black-and-white surrounded by a veil of static. But the things he said that didn't make any sense to me. It was about how the Japanese were attacking us and that we needed to seek shelter immediately until further notice. That they were killing themselves to kill us. I didn't know what it mean, only that it had that same tone that my parents had when they explained to me that my dog wasn't taking a nap on the side of the road... I know now that it had something to do with Pearl Harbor... or I think anyway. It never was mentioned specifically.

Anyway, about 2 minutes into it, the signal faded back into the empty static. Thinking about it now, I would have been really creeped out that this happened, but my child-like wonder left me intrigued. It seemed fairly normal to me since old shows ran all the time, and I figured why not the news as well? I figured channel one was just an old news station that rarely ever came in.

Because of this rare occurrence, I became fascinated with channel one and wanted to see what else would pop up. I sat there watching the static for an hour but nothing happened. Disappointed, and almost lulled into sleep with the white noise, I went to bed defeated. However, that moment made me obsessed with seeing something else on this secret channel. I felt like I seen something that I wasn't supposed to see. Or something that no one else had ever seen before. It was as if Channel one acknowledged my existence in return.

When I was bored and didn't feel like playing video games, I would turn the TV on channel one just to see if anything else would force its way through the dead static. I'm sure there were plenty of awkward conversations between my parents with them thinking I might have stumbled on the scrambled porn channel as such a young age. It drove my parents crazy to have me listening to that harsh white noise most of the time. It eventually drove them to the point where they would demand that I either change the channel or turn it off, threatening to take the TV away if I didn't. Not that they would, the set was so heavy that not even my mom would bother to move it when she vacuumed my room. But they never believed me when I told them what I saw, claiming that "Channel One" didn't exist.

But despite these threats or possibly because of them, I intently watched; Most of the time with the sound turned down just enough that I could hear it. Their reprimands inspired me. Telling me not to watch it, even denying its existence only made the curiosity worse. I wanted to prove myself and them that Channel One did exist.

I watched it for weeks over that summer. Most times it would be nothing but eventually my efforts paid off. I distinctly recall five more incidents of something coming up on channel one. These events were a week or two apart, at completely random times of the day. Each of these only lasted for a minute or two before they faded away, just like the newscast before.

The first one that I saw was a cartoon of all things, which as a child was really rewarding for all my efforts. Through the faint static, there was an image of a sun that was breathing fire on the land, causing plants to wither and die. There was no voice acting from what I remember, only a narrator that talked over the show. I could barely hear him through the static. Then it ended, falling back into the static.

The second incident was this scene with a bunch of people in this really big hall. It was strange because it was like I was looking back in time. There were people in strange outfits and dresses I never seen before. There was this lady with a crown and a rod, like she was a princess. I was really interested until I looked closer though. It look like they didn't have eyes, like they were just hallow, dark sockets. It never registered to me how creepy of a visual that would be now, and I wanted to keep watching before it faded away. Then everyone started yelling together before it faded.

The third one was the newscaster again, talking about a rather a rather disturbing scene. It was vague, probably intentionally, but I do recall him mentioning something about the "Black Daisy" murder or something to that effect. About how a woman's body was found in two different places. That police were looking for the killer, and if I knew anything, I should contact my local police department. He started talking about something else but the static filled the screen. It confused me how they could find the body in two different places, until a sickening revelation at 13 when I figured out that they probably meant they found two parts of her body in different places.

The fourth one was what seemed like an old weather report. I remember someone besides the newscaster talking about how the cold weather was great for the season. He mentioned the low temperatures and the snow falling. It was a very stark contrast to the humid summer heat I was dealing with. I honestly don't remember much of this because I believe this one came in at 3am, and I only caught it due to the static cutting out and waking me from a dream. By the time I was even coherent it was gone.

The last broadcast I caught though... it was terrifying. And different from anything else I ever seen. Before then, everything I had seen was at least recognizable, but what came across the last time was too frightening for my young mind. It was some older man in a nice outfit and a monocle looking thing in his hand. I distinctly remembered he spoke with a thick accent of some kind, but I could understand him However, the static distorted his features where I could not see any face. But what was worse were the creatures he was talking with. They had distorted skulls, long faces and slits for eyes. I don't remember seeing noses or mouths, but their skin was leathery and dark. I figured they were aliens of some sort, but not having any exposure to sci-fi, they looked more like burn victims. The static was just thick enough that I could not even make any details to relieve the stress in my mind.

As a child, this vision scared me so much that I remember leaping out of the bed turning the TV off as quick as I could. I ran into my parent's bedroom crying, trying to explain what I just saw. They didn't believe anything I said about channel one. They played it off as it was just static and my eyes were playing tricks on me, before berating me about watching channel one again. They didn't need to scold me anymore though. Since then, I had always gone the long way around the dial. I made damn well sure that I stayed away from channel one as much as possible.

Fortunately, I didn't use that TV for much longer as I had gotten new TV for Christmas that year, as well as a Super Nintendo. Undoubtedly they bought this for me to alleviate the "issues" I had with channel one. This TV didn't have the ghost channels, and not even a way to access channel one. However, that old TV was still in my room due to it being fairly useful as desk to put the new TV on top of. Besides, that TV cabinet was roughly 600lbs and my parents had no desire to try to drag that thing out of my room. For a long time, the TV just went unused and channel one was completely out of my mind at this point.

It wasn't until 15 years later that old TV would be used again. I had inherited dad's flat-screen TV from his room after he got yet another upgrade, this time an 720 HD flatscreen, to go with new cable box. What I inherited was nice but it only had composite cables, no plugs for an RF adapter. By this time Analog on televisions was being phased out for digital so there was less and less need for those coaxial cables. I didn't have a cable box in my room, just that old wire coming from the antenna. I still wasn't a fan of television so it didn't really bother me. I couldn't hook up my Nintendo but every other console I had supported it, and that was all I needed.

But one day, I just had this urge to play that Nintendo again. I couldn't really explain it either. By this time I had my own addiction, the internet and was familiar with emulators, but I just wanted to have that controller in my hand. Rather than going through all the trouble of searching for some composite cables and pulling back that heavy TV cabinet, I decided to use that instead. It was simple; the old Nintendo RF adapter as well as the antenna cable was already in the back. My parents, after all these years, had no desire to help me take it out of my room and I was just switching the one on my Super Nintendo to the Nintendo, until I got the composite cables from the Nintendo 64 and used that instead.

Looking back, I'm surprised that old TV worked. It took awhile for the tube to warm up, greeting me with the static sound. It was very nostalgic for me, and I wanted to live in that moment for awhile, and curiosity made me want to see what all channels were still coming in. However, since my dad had moved onto digital cable, the only channels that were coming in were the analog channels anyone could get. The huge antenna in our back yard was still functional, it seemed, so the quality of the signals were fairly good. Though for some reason I was expecting programming to be frozen in time, seeing shows from over a decade and a half ago, so the nostalgia quickly fell off.

After some clicking through more than 100 dead channels, there was one I needed to check. It was a long time before I had even considered looking at it again, and I still vaguely remembered the creepiness of it, but now I just dismissed it as child-like imagination I was told it was. I turned the dial to channel one. On first glance, it was nothing but static, but there was something different in this static than it was all the other dead channels. It was harsh, almost scrambled. There was a strange, constant sound coming through. It's hard to explain. It sounded like someone was talking underwater. Every couple of seconds, a extremely high pitched sound would come in and slowly fade, like the sound your ears make when they are ringing.

I intently watched for a good minute, trying to make out what was going on. I could see the video ever so faintly through the static. In my mind's eye, it was the news reporter, with the paper and microphone as I had seen about long before. I humored at the luck of stumbling upon something on channel one after all these years. As I said, it was 15 years since I even looked at it and I remember spending an entire summer worth of time for the random 2 minutes of content. To find something now, after all these years, was quite literally a million-in-one odds. The signal grew stronger it became easier to make out and eventually I was treated to a fuzzy picture.

However, as the picture started coming through, a sense of dread washed over me. It looked like the reporter, but something was deformed with his face. It looked disproportionate. His head was large, I'd say roughly one-and-a-half times the size of a normal human, making it very easy to see details despite all the static. It had a shiny, rubber texture to it and was expressionless. His lips were barely moving and the eye sockets seemed dark and empty. It was as if he was wearing a cartoonish mask of himself. I was confused at first, but then the whole face just changed expression, this time looking angry, the mouth seemed to grit non-existent teeth and the brow furrowed with a scowl. The mouth grew wide like a snake unhinging it's jaw then slammed shut, and his face turned completely neutral again.

My first thought is that it was a puppet, like I stumbled upon some sort of terrifying parody. But I knew this wasn't a mask, or a puppet. It was like someone was wearing skin that didn't fit. I don't know how to describe it, maybe like a horrifyingly botched plastic surgery on a burn victim. Just unnatural. His movements were exaggerated, his head bobbing up and down repeatedly as he talked. It wasn't in any sort of rhythm or motion, but completely sporadic, like the movements were completely foreign. His hands were moving the papers in exaggerated motions as he flipped through them. He mimicked like he was reading them, but I could tell they were blank. Not even made of paper, but like a thin rubber sheet.

It seemed like as if someone was imitating a caricature of the reporter. As he spoke, the strange reverse glubbing and harsh static coming through. A screech that sounded like a... roar of a robotic elephant came piercing through the static that caused me to freeze in fear.

It was then I noticed the other proportions. His hands were... dangling. It was like skin was hanging off the bone and had no real muscle structure to it, his pinky not moving at all, just dangling loosely. Two fingers, the index and the thumb, were longer by a good inch. His limbs seemed unusually long, with his forearms disappearing behind the desk and his arms sloping all the way down. Even his body frame was disturbing, resembling long, nearly rail thin proportions, not even one that could support his gigantic head.

He looked at the camera and you could see these strange looking eyes just gazing right at you underneath the mask's dead eyes. I then realized that wasn't entirely in black in white, but I could see these cyan colored-orbs behind the slits, like the whole studio was washed from color rather than broadcasted in monochrome. His head suddenly twitched and shook violently.

Then static overtook the image.

I was enthralled, but frightened. My hand was still on the dial, frozen. I wasn't quite sure if what I was seeing was actually happening. Maybe it was my mind playing tricks on me and I was just seeing things through the static. I remember exhaling violently as I had forgotten to take a breath the entire time that was going on. My mind tried to reason with itself. Maybe I just witnessed something and took it out of context, like I caught the end of a Saturday Night Live skit or some lost episode of Muppets-take-hell.

But just as I started to calm down and considering changing the channel while writing off this entire experience, I heard a voice that had been lost to my memory. It was the reporter. There was no image available, just static, and the voice was faint and barely intelligible from the noise. I had turned the volume up full blast just to make out what he was saying, for some reason feeling like he could explain what I just saw.

His words were broken, with at least a second's worth of pause between them, and the tone from one word did not match the next, as if someone was using a soundboard or was just speaking with no cadence. Even a decade later after hearing it, I remember it clearly as yesterday.

"Good Morning Am... Danger of... Killing twen... Everyone... Earth... Time... ingTwenty...Twenty-Ninety... Everyone... Evacuate the... ingTwenty...Twenty-Ninety... All... found Dead... Good Night Amer..."

There was a loud, screeching roar followed by complete sound garbage. Painful, ear-piercing gibberish that deafened me. Probably because I had the TV on full blast to hear the faint speech. It was then the signal just cut out completely. I remember that usually there was a small fade to static when this happened before with these channels. This was an immediate feed cut.

A feeling a nausea and worry overcame me, and I felt my tongue pull back into my throat. I had trouble comprehending what I just saw, my mind racing miles per second. I had gripped the dial so hard that I had shattered the plastic casing underneath my fingers and I didn't realize that I was bleeding as a shard of plastic was embedded a good quarter inch into my thumb.

I didn't know what to do. There was this instinctual fear about watching channel one, even as an adult. I didn't want to tell anybody what I just saw. My parents never believed me, and my first thought was them thinking I had some long term insanity issue. Part of me didn't even believe it myself, but this blood running down my hand was my only proof that I saw something I can't explain.

I had let Channel One stay on for over an hour with the loud static just to see if I could hear anything else... but nothing came up. I left it on for days, weeks, months, that old TV was on nearly 24/7. I tried to record channel one when I could, eating up hundreds of blank DVDs filled with nothing but static. For almost a year of my life, I had spent hours with both televisions on. One watching what I missed and one watching what might yet to be. I dreamed in static. I had nightmares of these horrible, disfigured proportion doppelgangers of the newscaster. My entire life was consumed by this television. I was hoping, begging, desperate to hear or see anything.

But despite my efforts, that was the last time I heard anything from channel one.

Eventually, during my obsession, that old TV burned out. I thought about fixing it but it wouldn't have mattered. My dad had the antenna removed anyway shortly after the TV died. Some men offered him about $1,000 in scrap and took care of the removal. They were even nice enough to move anything else we didn't want and paid good money for it as well. I remember they wanted my old TV set. Something about the wiring being valuable. I told them no, at first at least. I made the excuse that it made a good desk. But the men were very adament about taking it, offering me $150 for it. I conceded and they moved it out of my room almost immediately. They unhooked and handed me my Nintendo and even giving me a composite cable for it from his truck. He must have been a bigger gamer than I was, because I didn't even think about that at the time. The gesture made my feeling of hopelessness easier to swallow.

Even though it's been years since then, it's still a thought that haunts me anytime I see a television. I wish I had answers. I have no idea about what any of this means. I don't know why I was seeing these shows on that strange channel. I don't know where they were coming from or who was broadcasting them. I don't know how many people might have seen the same thing, or if I was just the only person in the world unfortunate enough to see that particular "broadcast". At this point, though the memory is so clear and vivid, I'm not even sure if it actually happened. This surreal experience makes me feel like I'm just crazy.

I'm not sure what I saw, I just know I've seen something. Something that maybe I shouldn't have seen but did. Or maybe it was something that was meant for all of us to see but many just neglected the unlabeled channel. Every now and then I desperately want to see what's on channel one to hear any messages that might have been left out there, like some twisted obsession. Maybe I am crazy. If I still had that TV I would be watching it every chance I had. But now analog TVs are a thing of the past. I couldn't even replicate the same set-up anymore. It might be impossible now.

I just want to know if there were any other messages meant for us, things we might have missed. Thousands of minutes in my life go by and each one containing a possible message, a warning. A narrative that I needed to have a conclusion too.

Ironically, I never liked television, I don't even have a television in my home anymore. There is just something about it that bothers me about TV. How it's just sort of a one way street for communication. How it often talked, but never listened.