In Byron Bay

In a small, bucolic coastal town named Byron Bay in Australia, an incident occured on February of 2009 involving a hijacked broadcast during local televised programming. It is estimated that the hijacking occurred between 9PM and midnight, as citizen accounts of the exact time vary. In the hijacking, the hacker had used a clip from what appeared to be a homemade children's show involving stop motion clay figures. It was noted to be poorly animated and of having very low production value.
The hijacking was very brief, only lasting for around 2 minutes, with local televised programming resuming immediately after. The animation was a musical scene, featuring nine clay figures with their hands all interlinked and dancing in unison. The clay figures appeared to be on a cardboard backdrop of a picturesque town drawn with crayons, looking very much like that of what a young child would create. The camera was slightly out of focus, further revealing the amateurish nature of the production.
In the center of all of the clay figures appeared to be a much taller, featureless mass of gray clay with shoddily sculpted limbs and what appeared to be a gaping hole in their temple. The voice was that of a male which had been distorted by a voice changer, the voice sounding gravelly and being noted to not have possessed the cadence of someone familiar with the English language, implying that the man was of a foreign background. However, no clear accent is noted to have been identified.
The other eight clay figures were much more detailed in comparison to the gray figure, but still not adequate in any conventional standard. They were shown to have much more detail than the gray figure including skin, hair and facial features. These figures were much smaller in stature than the ‘ringleader’ and had voices of children that sounded very young.
Each figure on screen had varying sets of clothes and hairstyles and even appeared to be varying in gender. Despite the differences in their design however, all clay children shared an empty vacancy in their expression; eyes disproportionate to their other facial features with small pupils glaring at the camera. The song featured in this brief hijacking has been identified as “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” but with slightly altered lyrics. For example, the phrase “leaning, leaning …” was replaced with “leaning on my friend, leaning on my friend …”. Through this song choice, uncanny clay figure design and poor production quality, it amounted to a hijacking that was apparently deeply unsettling to many viewers watching at the time.
Despite its oddly eerie nature, the hijacking would have remained rather unremarkable if it were not for the segments where each child would sing the lyrics individually. The camera would cut to a close up of a clay child, their mouth animated in a way that was slightly out of sync with their voice but would still retain the illusion that they were singing. When this occurred, the voices of each individual child became easily identifiable. These individual voices of children ranged from nine to twelve years old, each child singing happily not unlike how a regular child would playfully sing. It’s notable that many citizens that were tuned in at the time interpreted the voices differently, many distinctly recall the voices sounding very distant and offbeat while others remember an odd feeling that the children heard were withholding something. After the song had concluded, the music cut off and the audio was replaced with a low static that was barely audible. For about four or five seconds, the clay figures stood in silence as the broadcast faded to black.
Shortly after this, many calls were placed to the local precinct in the town. After the program had ended, many citizens complained about the disturbance in their regular local programming. However, this would be the least of the precinct’s worries as a disturbing revelation began to unfold before the town; many had claimed that they had heard their missing child on the broadcast. This of course, was in relation to a string of disappearances involving children in Byron Bay that occurred many years ago. These disappearances would happen in random spurts throughout the years and would often involve multiple children disappearing at once. Upon questioning, it was revealed that the children that had disappeared ranged from the most recent disappearances from 2008 to as late back as 1989. Due to the obvious logical fallacy of the children from 2008 and 1989 being of similar age in the hijacking, skepticism was met with these claims.
Despite this, a case was opened regarding the hijacking. Their efforts to trace the signal persisted tirelessly, but remained inconclusive. Through the entirety of the ensuing investigation, the parents of the missing children were adamant that they had heard their child singing on the television that night, despite the inconsistencies regarding the year each child was abducted. As no breakthroughs were found in the case, the signal remained untraceable. By the end of the year, the case had become cold. The voice of the male in the hijacking was never able to be identified, and the whereabouts of the missing children claimed to have been in the broadcast remain unknown.
Category:Disappearances
Category:Television