KZSM — A Ghost in the Studio?

In the almost six years since our founding, our storefront studio at 216 North Guadalupe has hosted the full range of San Marcans and San Martians — scientists, politicians, writers, musicians — anyone with a song to sing, a point to make, or a story to tell. So perhaps it’s not surprising that some of our program hosts have encountered a visitor from the past.

Program hosts have found an unexpected song beginning to play from the computer or one of the turntables. According to Carole Coburn, host of “Friday Night with Care,” (Fridays 8-10 p.m.), “he plays with the technology and inserts songs into the play lists by way of ‘speaking.’  He went so far as to put in “This is Me” from the Greatest Show on Earth after I got frustrated and asked out loud if the glitches were him!”

The mysterious presence has been dubbed “Willy” because he made himself felt during the song “Little Willy” by Sweet. “Little Willy won’t go home, can’t push Willy around, Willy won’t go.”  His voice has been heard on recordings of broadcasts. In the station’s first year, volunteers found themselves locked in the studio because the electronic door lock had been disconnected even though no one was nearby. Perhaps Willy wanted company!

Station Manager Rob Roark notes that “many times I will find odd changes in settings of our broadcast equipment. It was functioning fine hours before, then a setting would change, only to go back to normal. We just attribute the random flukes to Willy.” He is assigned responsibility for unexplained anomalies, but some volunteers report closer encounters.

After sensing a presence in the studio when she began broadcasting six years ago, Coburn invited the first of three mediums to appear as a guest on her show. They “translated and confirmed his story.  He grew up in Wimberley on the family farm.  He used to play drums in a jazz band, and our studio is his happy place.  He died as a result of a pedestrian vs motor vehicle at the intersection of Guadalupe and Hutchinson Street in the late 1940s.” When he was asked why he was here at the station he said, “Because I love the music.”

In a building with over a hundred years of history, in a space full of sounds and memories, a presence from the past fits right in.