The Quiet Zone Read online

  “When I drive here from D.C., as the traffic goes away and the landscape becomes greener and quieter and nicer, I relax,” Beaudet said. “I start feeling better. I ascribe this to visual, auditory, olfactory—all the senses that I’m aware of. It’s just nicer out here. It’s gentler . . . Being out of an overstimulating environment helps us relax, keeps us healthier, all of that.”

  But that didn’t mean she believed WiFi or cell service was harmful to humans, much less that a person could physically sense those radio waves.

  “I honestly don’t believe in [electromagnetic sensitivity], and that’s because the people who have it have such a vast array of symptoms,” Beaudet said. “We’re talking about anything from headaches to cancer. So many different symptoms are blamed on this phenomenon. You can always find a study here or there in support of whatever you want, but more studies show no compelling connection.”

  EVEN DIANE SCHOU was skeptical of some electrosensitives. One long-term visitor to her home refused to help clean because he worried he’d lose his disability paycheck if someone saw him doing manual labor. Another requested a specific wine paired with every meal. “Some people want to come and I get the feeling that they’re not really harmed strongly by electromagnetic radiation,” Schou said. “They’re looking for somebody to take care of them.”

  A number of electrosensitives exhibited signs of paranoia, depression, hypochondria, and outright kookiness, saying they were being followed by drones or monitored by the CIA. One told me he could electrify lightbulbs with his bare hands. Another claimed he’d visited Roswell, though I’m unsure what UFOs had to do with EHS. A woman believed she could hear music from rainbows. I met a Green Bank farmer who had become convinced that EHS was real, or at least as real as chemtrails—mind-control particles in the form of jet engine vapor that the government supposedly sprays over America to keep citizens docile. The farmer also believed Barack Obama was born outside the United States, that Hillary Clinton murdered a staffer, that John F. Kennedy was assassinated by his government, that “for years” there had been a cure for cancer, and that vaccines cause autism—all of it apparently masterminded by an evil cabal in Washington, D.C.

  I had thought the Quiet Zone might be spared from such conspiracies because it was mostly offline and distanced from the inanities flying around the web. Instead, I was finding the same delusions as elsewhere. Isolated in Green Bank, people could retreat into their own minds. They heard whatever voices they wanted to hear. Wild ideas festered.

  “There’s people that come here with mental illnesses who are looking for answers,” said Green Bank resident Sue Howard. “It’s a magnet for weirdos.”

  Howard had a unique perspective on the matter, as she herself was an electrosensitive. In her mid-fifties, lanky with blond hair, she had moved to Green Bank in mid-2016 from Westchester, New York. She lived in a mobile home that Schou rented out for $400 a month. Her porch had a view toward the Green Bank Telescope popping above the trees a few miles away.

  Of all the sensitives I was meeting, Howard seemed the most relatable, perhaps because we both came from the New York area. She had felt sensitive to electromagnetic radiation since around 2009, when touching a computer mouse caused a tingling in her hand. Texting on a cellphone soon caused pain and numbness up her arm. Being near high-power cell antennas gave her “a sharp stabbing pain” in her head where she used to wear a metal hair clip. In 2011, she was diagnosed by an infectious disease specialist with “severe progressive sensitivity to electrical fields.” Like other electrosensitives I met, she suffered from multiple chronic illnesses, including chemical sensitivity. When she read about Green Bank in a 2015 article that mentioned Schou, Howard immediately began plotting a way to get there.

  She first visited Green Bank the fall of 2015 with her husband, camping at the fourteen-acre property owned by WAVR, Schou’s nonprofit. Driving down a dirt road to the campsite, the Howards’ headlights had shone upon two rotting cow skulls hanging from spikes on a neighbor’s tree. It was like a demonic warning against venturing deeper into the forest. But there was no turning back. They had journeyed five hundred miles to an area where they knew nobody except Schou, who was already proving eccentric. She’d asked the Howards to bring Pillsbury gluten-free pie dough—a rare commodity in Pocahontas—but they had found only gluten-free pizza dough. “It’s not pie dough,” Schou had said, oozing disappointment.

  The Howards pitched a tent in the dark. It poured overnight, turning the ground into a muddy soup. Still, Sue awoke to an incredible feeling. For the first time in years, she felt free from pain. On an impulse, the Howards purchased a thirty-eight-acre parcel of undeveloped land where they planned to eventually settle. For the time being, they couldn’t stay. Sue’s husband, John, was tied to a job in New York, where they owned a home with his aunt.

  Back in Westchester, Howard felt increasingly sick, and at her wit’s end. She’d already hired a “building biologist” who had inspected their home and recommended they change their electrical wiring and paint their house with something called YSHIELD that claimed to block electric fields. Howard had also relegated the family computer to the basement, banished her son’s Xbox, and removed the smart meter and WiFi from their home. They’d changed their lightbulbs to incandescent, but Howard preferred the lights simply off. Around 2015, she’d plastered a one-hundred-square-foot room of her home with special silver wallpaper to block out electromagnetic radiation. Her family called it “the silver room.” The Quiet Zone sounded like a community-size “silver room.”

  By May of 2016, Howard decided she could no longer tolerate New York. She moved alone to Appalachia, leaving her husband behind in Westchester. (Their children, both in their twenties, had already moved out.) Living in Green Bank, her vision improved, her tinnitus went away, and a heart arrhythmia disappeared, though she said it returned when she visited nearby cities. She no longer had to wear an EMF-shielding scarf or a face mask for chemical sensitivity, but she still took other precautions. She operated her home’s washer, dryer, and refrigerator only when she went out, and she often kept the electrical breakers off altogether.

  Her husband tried to visit every couple weeks, bringing organic groceries and VHS movies because she couldn’t tolerate the radiation from DVD players. Her son and daughter also visited, though they were less enthralled by the quiet. One weekend, her son drove twice to Snowshoe Mountain Resort, an hour away round trip, for a fix of cell service and WiFi. Howard, for her part, checked her email regularly at the Green Bank library. “The librarian is wonderful and she’s willing to turn off the lights for me,” she said.

  Howard picked blueberries, jumped into a swimming hole, tasted bear meat, and gained a new sense of self-confidence from all the media reports about the growing electrosensitive community around Green Bank. She was interviewed by Danish filmmakers, by a Russian reporter from RT Documentary (part of the Russian TV network), and by a Netflix crew for a documentary series called Afflicted about mysterious illnesses. She had felt invisible in New York, only to find stardom in Appalachia.

  “I walked into Hollywood here,” Howard said. “Who knew?”

  But the Quiet Zone wasn’t perfect. The rural electric lines were staticky. Neighbors had WiFi. People carried smartphones. And she’d walked into a thicket of tensions caused by the behavior of some electrosensitives, which forced her to tread lightly.

  Then there was me. When I turned on my iPod to record our conversation, Howard eyed the device warily and asked that I keep it at a distance. Minutes later, she jumped.

  “Look!” she said. “I just got a pop from that. See what happened to my vein right now? It just went pow.”

  My iPod, she said, had caused her vein to pulsate and “pop.” I said I couldn’t see any change. Her veins looked just like mine.

  “It wasn’t like that a minute ago,” she insisted.

  Howard took out a radio frequency power meter and looked with concern at the voltage reading. “This is too high
for here,” she said. “I knew something was off.”

  ACCORDING TO a “cultural resources evaluation” prepared in May 2016 as part of the National Science Foundation’s review of whether to continue funding the Green Bank Observatory, a vulnerable group that would be affected by the facility’s potential closure was “individuals seeking to avoid health effects that they perceive from electromagnetic radiation who have chosen to live in the NRQZ as a ‘safe haven’ from that radiation.” Sue Howard, among others, told me she was “working closely” with the observatory to help protect the Quiet Zone. Sensitives regularly contacted business manager Michael Holstine to report when they felt pain, asking him to look into it for their health and for the good of radio astronomy.

  One time, Howard reported to Holstine that she “sensed” something awry in Green Bank. According to Howard, Holstine confirmed to her that a military communications satellite system known as MUOS had been orbiting overhead when her sensitivity was triggered. It sounded like definitive proof that she could sense electromagnetic radiation like a kind of superpower.

  I later checked this story with Holstine. He said Howard had indeed called him to say she felt something, and he had mentioned that communications satellites orbited over Green Bank. But he denied that he’d established any correlation between her sensitivity and a particular satellite overhead. There was simply no way for him to know at what precise moment a satellite might be transmitting toward Green Bank. Nor was there anything he could do about it, as satellites were outside the jurisdiction of the National Radio Quiet Zone.

  “Did you detect anything that she reported?” I asked.

  “No,” Holstine said flatly. But did it matter in the end? “All I know is they feel better when they’re here. They’re the people who are not going to use electronic devices. So, for the observatory’s sake, they’re great neighbors.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Papers and Pencils”

  BANG!

  “I don’t know where that went,” said seven-year-old Coleton Birely, lowering his .22-gauge shotgun. He’d recently gotten his first firearm, a bit late by local standards.

  Bang!

  “I swear that was right on target!” Coleton said, puzzled as to why both his shots completely missed the target sheet in his yard.

  I’d first met Coleton at Trent’s General Store, finding him seated on a checkout counter doing homework. His mom, Debbie had been working the register. They’d moved to the area in 2012 from Spokane, Washington, in part because Debbie had relatives in Durbin. She’d also been looking for a new start. Pocahontas was welcoming, with its slower pace and easygoing social interactions. There was also a sense of fate in moving to Appalachia. Debbie couldn’t recall how she’d first heard the name Coleton, as it was uncommon in Washington, but in West Virginia she’d call for her son and a handful of Coletons would look up. There was even a town called Coalton. It felt like a sign they were meant to be there.

  To Coleton’s house, I’d come equipped with ammunition and safety goggles purchased from Trent’s. Inside on the refrigerator, I’d spotted a coloring activity of a cartoon figure with the caption: “My dad’s pockets are full of _____.” Coleton had inserted “phone.” (Coleton’s “dad” was Debbie’s boyfriend.)

  Coleton again took aim at the target sheet nailed to a tree about twenty feet away. He’d been taking shooting lessons at the Green Bank Observatory’s recreation fields along with swim lessons in its underground pool—both ways that the facility opened itself up to the community.

  “Remember your breathing,” Debbie coached, standing by in gray sweatpants and a black hoodie that framed her bleach-blond hair. “Inhale and shoot on the exhale.”

  “What kind of animals could you shoot with that gun?” I asked.

  “Squirrels, deer,” said Debbie. “If someone were to accidentally get shot with that, it would put you in the hospital and possibly kill you.”

  I stepped back. Coleton was living a full life in many ways. But was it worthwhile for no cell service and halting internet? Sure, he’d learn how to shoot a gun, dress a deer, drive a stick, use a compass. But would he be able to function outside the Quiet Zone? Debbie had concerns, especially around education. Coleton was attending Green Bank Elementary-Middle School, which fell in the shadow of the radio telescopes, meaning it had the only classrooms in the entire country where WiFi and iPads were essentially outlawed.

  Coleton passed me another gun, this one a heavy .38 double action revolver.

  “It’s got a bit of a kick, so watch out for it,” Debbie warned, as I squared up to the target and squinted into the aiming sight. Last time I’d held a gun was in Cambodia, nearly a decade earlier, at a shooting range that gave tourists the chance to fire bazookas and hurl grenades.

  Bang!

  “By Virginia, he hit the target!” Debbie exclaimed. “Did you see the flash?”

  “I think my eyes were closed,” I said.

  THE FIRST TIME I walked into Coleton’s school, a student was in trouble for creating an illegal hotspot using a teacher’s computer, arguably breaking state law in broadcasting an unapproved radio frequency at the center of the Quiet Zone. I got the impression it wasn’t the student’s first offense.

  I found the culprit, an eighth grader named David Bond, in a cinder block–walled room strewn with musical instruments. He readily confessed to knowing how to create a hotspot using school computers as well as how to sneak around the administration’s web filters to access social media. Wearing Beats by Dre headphones and a “Macho Man” Randy Savage tank top, he said he owned both an iPod Touch and an iPhone 6S. He added that most of his classmates also had smartphones. His music teacher, Greg Morgan, agreed—and showed me his own smartphone.

  “Some of these kids are very poor, but they still have an iPhone 7 or whatever,” Morgan said. Between 30 and 40 percent of children in the county lived in poverty. Every student received free breakfast and lunch through the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. But that didn’t limit the pervasiveness of smartphones. When I later asked a class of third graders if anyone owned a smartphone, every hand shot up. Even in that room of eight- and nine-year-olds, I appeared to be the only person without a cellphone.

  Aside from creating a hotspot, Bond was also in trouble that day for passing a note to his girlfriend. “It was just something sweet,” he said of it. (And I’d thought handwritten love letters were obsolete.) The young couple also communicated using their iPhones’ AirDrop function and on Snapchat and Facebook, which Bond checked once a day on his home internet, though he didn’t really consider it internet because the speed was so slow—0.28 megabits per second upload and 0.09 megabits download, compared with the national average of 64 megabits upload and 23 megabits download. Video streaming was impossible. The speed had nothing to do with the observatory and was hardly unique to the Quiet Zone, though it was symptomatic of living in a remote, sparsely populated, quiet place. An estimated one-third of all people in rural America have little or no access to the internet. West Virginia ranks close to last in the nation for broadband penetration.

  Internet was much faster at school thanks to a dedicated broadband connection, though everything had to be wired by order of the observatory, which presented its own difficulties. Morgan couldn’t use the WiFi features of his SMART Board, which would have allowed him to control it remotely with an iPad and more easily roam the classroom to interact with students. At school events, Morgan had to find workarounds when guests showed up with wireless mic systems. If the speaker wanted to walk into the assembly to interact with students, Morgan followed behind with the microphone cord as it snaked through the aisles, tangled on chair legs, and draped across students’ laps.

  And without the convenience of turning on a WiFi router, it was more logistically complicated and expensive to expand internet to every classroom and provide web access to every student. For online testing, Green Bank students had to rotate through the school’s two wired computer labs, which c
ould take weeks. (Other schools in Pocahontas County were far enough from the telescopes to have WiFi and utilize mobile computer labs.) It was impossible for administrators in Green Bank to do mobile observations over an iPad or iPhone camera, or to enter teacher and student evaluations directly into a WiFi-connected laptop.

  The educational hurdles extended outside the school. An estimated half of all students and teachers lacked fast enough home internet to do online learning or take advantage of streaming programs, according to Ruth Bland, director of technology for the county’s schools. Whereas people in other areas of the country with slow internet could fall back on cell service for online connections, that wasn’t an option in most of Pocahontas, making it harder for students to remotely access libraries and educational websites such as Desmos and Khan Academy.

  “Folks living on the edge get their internet through cellphones, so if we can’t have cellphones, then we are impacting people’s connectivity,” said Joanna Burt-Kinderman, the county math coach (and sister of Sarah Riley, director of High Rocks). “If you don’t have internet speeds that allow students to use free, open-source, online tools, that’s a big limitation in an age when education funding is getting cut.”

  Bond was less concerned about cell service and internet for education than he was about downloading software updates for his Xbox. To do so, he had to drive an hour north to the city of Elkins, where his best chance for fast internet was tethering to the WiFi at Sheetz, a souped-up gas station and convenience store chain. The county’s slow internet was a reason Bond wanted to move away as soon as he could, though he said he’d miss hunting in the area. He started naming all his guns: “I’ve got a .45 ACP, a 7mm-08, .243, .17 HMR, a 12-gauge, 20-gauge, .30-30, .22, a .410, another .243, muzzleloader, and a .380 pistol.”