The Night of the Banshee
a true story by Dave Word
Some of the most spectacular views on earth are in the Faroe Islands, and the location of Site 43 (NATO COMM) had some of the best views in all the Faroes. The site was on a ridge, just below the top of a high promontory, on the island of Streymoy. It overlooked a fjord on one side, with the North Sea and some of the other islands on the opposite side and, on a bright summer day, the scenery was breathtaking. During a midwinter storm, however, the site lay totally exposed to the full fury of the elements.
Like most of the NARS sites, NATO Comm had two main buildings,.the composite building and a smaller radio building. At NATO, the buildings were about 100 yards apart, connected by an enclosed walkway, which we called "the tunnel." There was no need for an air conditioning system, but each of the buildings was heated in winter and cooled in summer by its own system of ducts, belt-driven blowers and heating elements. The combination of the ventilation blowers, and the many cooling fans and blowers in the tropo equipment, made both buildings extremely noisy.
On the night of the Banshee, in the winter of ‘77-’78, it had been snowing heavily, and the wind was in excess of 50 mph. The Danish technician working with me that night was Neils Mortensen, a tall, thin young fellow in his early 20s. We arrived at work, behind the snow blower, at around 8 PM, and the day shift departed. With some minor chores completed, and a late supper under our belts, we decided to get down to some serious work. We wheeled our test equipment through the tunnel to the radio building, with the intention of doing "FM Quieting Curves," a measure of performance, on each of the four receivers. It was almost midnight, and we were the only people on the site.
We had just finished working on the first receiver and started the second, when there was a horrible scream, briefly drowning out even the noise of the blowers. It was the sound of a woman being brutally murdered. Neils went deathly white and his eyes were huge, as he looked questioningly at me. I’m sure I looked the same. The scream seemed to have come from the tunnel, which ran off the side of the small foyer at the entrance to the building. Reluctantly, we walked towards the tunnel, neither of us wanting the other to see how frightened we were.
I turned on the light, which was on a timer, and crept cautiously to the corner, from where I could see about halfway down the tunnel, where there was a bend. There was nothing to be seen or heard, just the empty tunnel and the steady howl of the gale outside. The sound had seemed so close, almost in the room with us, that it couldn’t have come from as far away as the other building, so we began to look elsewhere.
Maybe it had come from outside, we thought, even though it would have been next to impossible for anyone to approach the building from the outside on that wild night. We went to the outside door but didn’t open it; the entire door was packed with drifted snow, which even a scream couldn’t have possibly penetrated.
Back in the radio building, we discussed the situation, as we tried to steady our nerves. Had someone died in the radio building and the ghost come back to haunt it? We didn’t know, but we’d never heard anything like that. Was it possible that it had been someone trying to scare us? We didn’t know of anyone foolish enough to brave the weather for a practical joke. Had the sound really come from outside? Almost impossible. We finally went back to our task but I operated the test equipment with difficulty, and the figures that Neils wrote on the clipboard with shaking hands were barely legible.
We had nearly finished the second receiver when the scream came again. This time, Neils almost dropped the clipboard. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest and was having trouble drawing a full breath, as we went again to the tunnel and turned on the light. Still nothing.. "L-l-let’s go have some coffee and think about it," I stuttered. Looking slightly ill, Neils nodded his agreement.
We walked cautiously up the tunnel, searching the entire composite building when we got there. We could tell immediately, by the dim tracks outside the main entrance, that no one had come onto the site since shift change. We longed for a shot of whiskey, but had to settle for coffee, as we once again explored the possibilities. Was it a ghost? was someone trying to scare us? or had something horrible actually taken place? All three seemed pretty unlikely, but the ghost theory was beginning to hold water, since it would have taken the base snow blower to get anyone near the site. Personally, I was warming to the ghost idea, or maybe a banshee, the legendary spirit of not-so-distant Ireland who wails a warning of impending death.
As shock faded, we realized that we still had a job to do, so Neils and I decided to pretend that it hadn’t happened, and get back to work. Of course, that didn’t stop us from looking all around the radio building before we resumed our tests. Everything went well, and we were just breaking down the test setup when the third scream came.
The effect wasn’t nearly as great this time, and I was able to think rationally. We’d dismissed all the possibilities of intruders, and were skeptical about the paranormal, so that only left the physical, mechanical things in the radio building. A light suddenly dawned, and I walked over to the circuit breaker panel and switched off the ventilation system. Neils watched me, puzzled. After a few seconds, I turned the breaker back on and, for the fourth time that night, there came a spine-chilling scream.
The wind, blowing into the intake duct, had apparently been strong enough to stop, or even reverse, the big belt-driven squirrelcage blower. When the belt finally took hold again, it did so with the horrible scream that we’d heard. Or at least, that's what we decided. But who knows, maybe that's what the banshee wanted us to think.
Copyright ©1998, David A. Word. All rights reserved.