Dead Air at Cedarlock Point

Dead Air at Cedarlock Point

Dead Air at Cedarlock Point is a browser-playable paranormal interactive fiction and classic text adventure. You play by typing commands. You are not the hero with a weapon. You are the person everyone calls when the signal drops.

It is 1995. WCQZ 930 AM has been on the air for about twenty five years. The station sits on a wooded edge of town near a tidal river and marsh. The place is practical, underfunded, and steady. Until it is not.

On the town-history call-in show Coast and County, a genealogy caller reads a line from old record fragments. The station does not go strange right away. It waits. Then dead air starts showing up like a warning light that nobody can reset.

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Frank Dwyer in the transmitter building

What it feels like

A small-town AM station fighting to stay alive, and a presence that learns the rules of your equipment faster than you do. You chase outages, trace switched-off components, and log the moments when the broadcast comes back with something layered underneath it.

The meters are dead. The room is not. > look A dim studio. Two microphones. A board that should be alive. The VU needles sit at zero like they are refusing to move. > check transmitter The carrier is there, then it is gone. Something essential is off, but nobody touched it. > listen When the audio returns, it is not clean. Under the program bed, a second layer rides the air like it owns it.

About the story

You play as Frank Dwyer, a thirty-year radio engineer from New York who moved to Maine to leave the big-city grind behind. He has kept WCQZ running clean for seven years. The owners spend money where it counts. The staff is a mix of old and young. The station is normal, in the way small places survive by being normal.

Then the dead air begins. Sometimes it comes with no warning. Sometimes it follows a simple truth. Something required for transmitting is found switched off. Lights pop on and off. Doors and cabinets move. Footsteps cross empty halls. Cold spots form in the same places again and again. Shadows and misty shapes show up where the building corners should be safe.

When the station gets back on, the signal sometimes carries extra layers. Singing that does not belong. Talking that cannot be made into words. Women and children crying. Harsh buzzing and cracking like the air is tearing. The only way through it is to keep working, keep logging, and keep listening until the property gives up what it has been hiding.

Quick facts

For readers, streamers, and anyone searching for classic parser horror.

genre: interactive fiction / text adventure / parser game / horror / paranormal play style: engineering + investigation + exploration + evidence chain platform: web browser (no install) tone: rural Maine, late-night radio, dead air and piggyback voices saving: automatic progress, optional manual save best first commands: look, examine, inventory, read, listen, check, search

If you like slow-burn horror where the mechanics of a place become the trap, Cedarlock is built for you.