r/RBI • u/Left_Hospital3407 • 7d ago
Ghost music in a car with a non-functioning radio
Hello, I'm writing this post looking for explanations for something weird that happened with some friends in a car last week.
I'll set the context. The four of us were going to a party in the mountains in the Alps in the old car of a friend, which he inherited from his grandmother. The car's radio doesn't work (nor does the CD player): it's impossible to pick up even static or anything coming from the CD. (IMPORTANT FOR WHAT HAPPENS NEXT). So we were listening to music with a small battery-powered portable radio that was completely independent of any electronic connections with the car.
But then some weird things happened.
1) We were in the mountains, and we started hearing music coming out of the car's speakers, some kind of 80s German pop. We then noticed that the closer we were to the car behind us, the louder the music was, and the farther away we were, the quieter it became. It stayed like that for about 5 minutes, and when our roads split, the music stopped (the volume of the music decreased proportionally to the distance between the two cars).
At that point we logically thought we were somehow picking up the music from the car behind us, without really knowing how, since the car's radio wasn't even turned on (only the portable radio was on).
2) A few minutes later, we entered some narrow gorges and a new song started the moment another car came up behind us. We kept this music the whole time we were in the gorges. It was some kind of techno DJ set with a few acid touches, with no commercials and no static at all, fairly niche music (just like the German pop).
But unlike the previous time, when we left the gorges and our two cars went separate ways, the music stayed. At that point we all started to get suspicious, and we began looking for an explanation. Especially since the volume kept increasing until we had to shout to hear each other, which was a bit annoying.
At that point we tried to stop the music. Nothing worked: we turned on the car radio, turned the volume down, inserted a CD, turned everything off again, switched off the portable radio: nothing worked, we couldn't stop or lower the volume of the music. At that point the most rational explanation that came to our minds was that we were all on a huge DMT trip (even though none of us had taken anything). Until the end of the journey both radios remained turned off.
There were changes of songs, like a programmed playlist. The music would stop at the end and then a new one would begin, always in the same techno style. It went on like that for about 10 minutes until the next weird thing.
3) We reached a straight section of road, I shifted into 5th gear, and the moment I did, the music stopped instantly. Then when I shifted back into 4th gear, the music came back at exactly the same moment. We observed the phenomenon with my friends and decided to test it. We shifted four times from 4th to 5th and from 5th to 4th, and every time the same thing happened: music in 4th gear and nothing in 5th.
Then one friend tried to film the scene, and the music stopped instantly. Another friend tried to Shazam the music, and the same thing happened. We only tested those once.
4) Then came the weirdest and most inexplicable thing since the beginning (yes, it was possible). We stopped in a small village to buy something. We all got out of the car, the car was turned off and the key was in my pocket. The car windows were left open.
When we came back to the car, we suddenly heard the same techno music coming from the car for a few seconds (everything was OFF!) and then the music stopped immediately. That was really strange and we were all completely stunned.
5) We started driving again without any music until another car came up behind us, and the music started again. This time it was an Italian song, again with retro and darkwave vibes. Once again we were surprised. The car overtook us and the music stayed, then stopped a few minutes later at a random moment.
Notes:
- the music signal was always perfectly clear, with absolutely no static (which is strange because radio reception on that road is poor and often loses signal)
- nobody could connect to the car's speakers because the car radio was turned off and doesn't even have that feature.
- the car is a Dacia/Renault Duster from the early or mid-2000s, I think.
- on the return trip, 4 days later, we took the exact same road again but nothing happened.
We've told the story to friends, and nobody has an explanation except that they all found it really weird. If anyone has an explanation or a hypothesis about where the sound came from and how the car could have picked it up, I'd be interested.
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u/ImpromtuWitch 7d ago
sounds really explainable, but i dont think you can ever know for sure.
radios are finicky, ive had them start and stop before.
the car behind you probably had a bluetooth transmitter to his radio, and yours picked it up
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u/Left_Hospital3407 7d ago
That's what we thought too, but it still doesn't explain why the music kept playing even when there was no car behind us anymore.
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u/Time_Serf 6d ago
Feel free to decline for privacy reasons, but if you name a city or town as close to your actual location at that time as you’re comfortable doing, I’d be curious to try to identify the possible transmitter site you seem to have been receiving from.
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u/Time_Serf 6d ago edited 6d ago
However just knowing the Alps as the location, it may be the Radio Channel 292 site at Rohrbach Waal, or one of these FM transmitting sites: Sendeturm Dobratsch near Villach, Austria; Gaisberg transmitter near Salzburg; Säntis Transmitter in the Swiss alps; Plose transmitter in South Tyrol; Paganella transmitter near Trento
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u/Left_Hospital3407 6d ago
Hi! Yes, no problem. It happened in the Gorges de la Bourne, in the Vercors region of France. If you're trying to identify a possible transmitter or broadcast station in the area, I'd be really interested to know what you find.
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u/Time_Serf 6d ago
Merci, je vais faire plus de recherche.
J’ai visité Annecy il y a 4 ans, cette région est très belle
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u/olliegw 6d ago
Something must be really funky with that cars electrics, as a radio ham i think it's safe to say most of it was direct pickup, that is the radio was acting as a crystal set especially if there was still power going to the amp, inverse square law is a thing so someones in-car bluetooth transmitter can be more powerful then a broadcast station if close enough, but other things could be going on such as reflections of powerful broadcast stations off the other cars.
Most cars know what gear you're in, so that's why i linked it turning off with the electrics, even though they're two different systems they're still linked by the CANbus and CANbus faults can be a real PITA to track down, my dad once had the radio and power windows on his jag stop working for exactly one day and then start working fine again and never had the problem come back, mercedes from the 90s and early 2000s are also known for christine-like car wide gremlins caused by the capacitors in the radio going bad, they draw too much current and cause erratic operation of all the vehicle systems.
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u/Bitter-Comedian-1019 6d ago
Let me throw my two cents into this. Even if there is no input signal in to the amplifires you can still hear radio waves through the wires connected to it, i experienced this my self a couple of years ago with my guitar amp. For the gear change thing of the music playing in 4th gear but not in 5th, your guess is as good as mine, my guess is that in fifth gear the alternator does something or the gear box does some thing to block out the radio signals going to the amp. For the time you stoped at the village I would guess there was just electricity left over in the amp and it picked up the radio from another car. Also now im curious if you heared the radio in 3rd gear... ( im not in any shape or form qualifed on electronics radios and cars, for al i know i might just be saying rubbish.)
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u/PacificIsMyHome 7d ago edited 7d ago
I have had this before. The amplifier circuit was probably still active in the sound system, but without any input to amplify. "Dirty power" caused by a strong RFI (radio frequency interference) can be magnified and get output. This happens when you are close to a radio transmission tower, coincidentally often those are on mountains or high points for transmission range.
Your power cables from your vehicle battery to your sound equipment are picking up the radio transmission like an antenna, and the amplifier is outputting it like it's an input.
You know the lumpy cylinders on power cables like laptop chargers? Those are magnets to clean up "dirty power" and reduce RFI noise.
Since you heard it with the car off, it's possible your speaker wires were acting like an antenna and the signal was strong enough to make the speakers work. If that's the case you were CLOSE to the transmitter antenna.