"Phone Calls from the Dead"

[paul-f]

I picked up a book of short stories with this title at the library today.  The front cover was creatively done (see below).  It would be interesting to make a similar transmitter cap for the collection.

To learn more, I did a quick internet search - "Phone Calls from the Dead"

The results are impressive, and somewhat unsettling.

Among them...
  http://www.qsl.net/w5www/phonecalls.html
  http://paranormal.about.com/cs/trueghoststories/a/aa090103.htm
  http://www.angelsghosts.com/ghost_phone_calls_from_the_dead
  http://www.ghostories.com/barrens/phonecalls.htm
  http://www.bigorb.com/orb/forum/view.php?id=132&forum_id=4790

Some of the stories include the call recipients reporting the calls to AT&T customer service.  That must have been interesting.

How many of us have haunted phones in our collections?

[Kenny C]

The phone rang halfway through the first story and it was my granny calling to check in:o she's still alive 87 but still alive

[Sargeguy]

I don't have any haunted ones, although some seem to be cursed.

[Willytx]

It sounds much more interesting than getting calls from telemarketers.

[GG]

What to make of these things?

When I was a little kid my brother and I both saw, in the attic at the end of the hall (the door to the attic was open to help cool down the house), an old woman in a long but informal blue & white dress walking across the room.  The image was hazy and indistinct but we both saw it.  The next day my mom got a phone call that our great aunt had died peacefully during the preceding day.  We assumed that what we had seen was her, making the rounds and visiting on her way off to wherever-it-is that people are said to go when they die. 

But what's going on, in the sense of, what's the mechanism?  Assuming that souls are real (unproven in terms of science, but a useful starting point), the most likely explanation is that the departed waits for the phone to ring and then interferes with the perception of the person who answers. 

There's plenty of evidence for psychokinesis (PK, the effect of the mind on physical systems), having to do with normal volunteers mentally altering the output of random number generators.  The effect seems to be robust but of small magnitude: a very small effect that is persistent enough to become statistically significant over a large sample of random output.  But I'm somewhat skeptical that a mind, even if hypothetically not bounded by the confines of a brain, can affect telephone switching systems to the degree needed to create a phone call.  Strowger switches in particular would be more immune to small influences, than modern digital switches that depend on microprocessors.  Thus a more likely explanation is interference with the perception of the called party. 

Investigating "anecdotal cases" of unusual phenomena (cases occurring outside of a lab or other controlled setting) is notoriously difficult.  It helps somewhat if there are independent witnesses to the events: at that point the likelihood of these things being dreams or dreamlike occurrences is reduced somewhat. 

Interesting puzzle.  I don't know if there's a scientifically viable explanation for this one, but there are ways to conduct the research to at least get a start on characterizing the cases.   And I tend to believe that at some point, we'll have a good explanation of the mind/brain relationship that makes all of this fall into place neatly, and resolves all the "anomalies" as logical outcomes of the theory. 

[Phonesrfun]

Remember the Twilight Zone where suddenly after a wind storm a widow started receiving phone calls from her late husband?  The phone line went down in the cemetary from the wind storm and was draped across the late husband's grave.

[Kenny C]

I most certainly do believe in spirits both good and bad.


One related telephone story is my great aunt was in the hospital when her sisters phone rang. Her sister picked up the phone and there was funeral music playing on the phone. She listened for 5-6 minutes before she hung the telephone up. And immediately called the hospital and her sister had just passed.

Another,

My parents had just moved into a new house and didn't have a phone connected yet. It was right next door from my dads momma and she had a screen door. My mom was in bed and heard her door shut and woke up and told my dad that his mom was coming to tell her that her grandma had just died. Sure enough they were calling long distance to tell her.

I am freaked out by it all.

[Greg G.]

So what kind of phones are they using in the hereafter, AE or WE?

[gpo706]

Best bet be a Fullerphone with ground return.

(geddit?)

Alright, I'll get me coat...

[bingster]

I think they use oxidized silver 202s in heaven.  Cheap chinese imports for the other place.  The ones covered in fluffy pink marabou, most likely.

[paul-f]

I think they use oxidized silver 202s in heaven.  Cheap chinese imports for the other place.  The ones covered in fluffy pink marabou, most likely.

Now this is really getting spooky. 

Your reply reminded me of a 2005 ebay auction that contained an obscure account of the development of the WE 500-series that I've been researching.  I kept a copy of the auction and found it in the recesses of the old hard drive.  It somehow survived at least three computer upgrades.  See the attached pdf file...

[Adam]

Wow!  That pdf is great fun!  Of course, the things that are technically incorrect are too numerous to list.

It had a bid of $8.50 with 8 days to go.  Do you know how much it sold for?

[paul-f]

The final price isn't in my notes.

However, about that time I did get a nice yellow WE 2500D (hardwired) for under $15 and watched as someone else got a white 2851 for $109, a WE 525 with lock and key for $113 and a WE E7 (205) for $1825.

[Greg G.]

Then there's this, an entire telco haunted!

HAUNTED MICHIGAN
MICHIGAN BELL TELEPHONE CO.
Grand Rapids, Michigan

This modern building, in downtown Grand Rapids, is said to be haunted by two very unhappy, and distinctly un-modern ghosts. These two spirit have wreaked havoc in this building for decades in a way that is strangely unique.... even for the spirit world.

The ghosts that haunt the building are said to be those of Warren and Virginia Randall, a once blissful couple who made their home in Grand Rapids shortly after the turn-of-the-century. In 1907, they moved from Detroit and settled into the Judd-White House, a once prestigious mansion that had lost it's luster and had become a slightly dilapidated boarding house. This was only temporary, of course, as Warren had a good job as a brakeman on the G.R. and Indiana Railroad.

In 1908, Warren met with a tragic accident and he lost his leg in a railway accident. It was replaced with an artificial, wooden one and this signaled the end of the Randall's previously happy marriage. Warren became strange and paranoid, often accusing his wife of having affairs with more desirable men than he. Their disagreements often became violent and local police became used to going to the Randall's house to break up their latest argument. Later that year, Warren was even arrested while chasing his wife down an alley with a straight razor. Virginia didn't press charges but later that summer, she finally left him.

One summer night in 1910, Warren coaxed Virginia into taking a buggy ride with him. Perhaps he hoped to convince her to come back to him, but no one really knows for sure. We do know that they ended up at the Judd-White House and had one last fight where in Warren took off his wooden leg and beat Virginia with it. He knocked her senseless and then proceeded to seal every opening and crevice in the room with towels. He ripped a gas fixture from the wall and let the lethal fumes fill the room. Finally, he took out the straight razor that he had threatened his wife with once before and slashed his throat with it.

The rooming house had been vacant at the time the couple had been living in it and no one seemed to be aware that they had gone into it that night, or were even missing. Next door to the house, however, was an office building and staff members there started to notice a horrible smell from the building about two weeks later. They eventually called the Board of Health to go and investigate.

Several Board members and an employee of the local gas company broke open the door of the house and were nearly overcome by the odor of gas, mixed with the even more noxious smell of decaying flesh. They traced the smell to the locked bedroom door. One of the men was lifted up to look inside through the transom above the door and was greeted with the sight of the Randall's rotting corpses.

The authorities were immediately summoned and they broke open the door to find two bodies that were so blackened with decay that they were only identified by Warren Randall's wooden leg.

The story of the Randall's murder and suicide became public knowledge and the Judd-White house was never occupied again.... at least not by the living. It was said that the house became haunted and people reported strange lights and sounds from the house. Those who dared to go inside claimed that they heard the sound of Warren's wooden leg thumping in the bedroom where the couple met their deaths. Others claimed to hear the screams and cries of Virginia as she begged her husband for mercy. Many who grew up in the area were told by their parents not to play near the abandoned house..... because it was haunted.

The house remained standing for another 10 years or so, when it was finally torn down and the land purchased by the telephone company. They built their offices here in 1924 and they still remain today.

Many claim that the spirits of the Randalls did not vanish with the removal of the Judd-White house. They say that the ghosts moved into the new building and remain there today, still plaguing the employees of the telephone company.... and the citizens of Grand Rapids. It seems that for many years, residents of the city have been harassed by strange, late night telephone calls.... which have been traced to coming from inside the phone company building itself!

Grand Rapids, Michigan is located in the west central region of the state. The Michigan Bell Telephone company building stands on the site of the Judd-White House and can be found at the corner of Fountain and Division Streets in the city.

Copyright 1998 by Troy Taylor

http://www.prairieghosts.com/mbtc.html

[GG]

In the literature of psi research involving anecdotal cases, there is a clear distinction made between different types of events involving "ghosts," between a) effects that appear to be intelligent communication from the spirits of the departed, and b) effects that appear to be repeated actions that are not inherently communicative. 

An example of the former would be someone waking up to see an image of a relative, having some kind of brief conversation with them or getting some kind of personal message from them; and then the following day receiving a phone call that the relative in question had died at about the same time the previous night.

An example of the latter would be someone seeing an image of a person walking up the stairs in a house each night at about the same time. 

Modern psi research deals with these things anthropologically or sociologically, for example looking at them in light of comparative religion or the beliefs of the people having the experiences.  This because, as with all anecdotal cases, there isn't a way to make any kind of properly scientific determination about events that happen "in the field" compared to "in the lab." 

According to folk beliefs, cases of type (a) involve the spirits of the dead communicating with the living.  That's the obvious conclusion of most people who have these experiences, and as long as you assume the existence of the soul, it's the most parsimonious explanation.  Research on near-death experiences (NDEs) seems to be convergent with the idea that people who have been briefly clinically dead, for example on the operating table, often desire to reassure their living relatives that they are OK; very often this desire to reassure is a factor in these individuals being successfully resuscitated. 

Cases of type (b) are usually associated with violent or traumatic deaths.  Psi researchers speculate (note, speculation is not the same thing as a formal hypothesis; the difference being that the latter can be tested and "falsified" or disproven by countervailing observations) that what's going on here is that information from the events of the deaths in question, has somehow become associated with or impressed upon the location in which the deaths occurred.  Thus, the "ghosts" observed under these conditions are not actually conscious entities in any way, but are more like holographic movies or a persistent smell due to something (chemicals, smoke, whatever) that was absorbed by a material.

None of this helps explain "phone calls from the dead."  My inclination is still to believe that *if* there is a soul or spirit that continues to exist after death and *if* that spirit can communicate with the minds of living persons, then the "phone calls" phenomenon involves affecting the perception of the living person directly, rather than setting in motion a series of complex physical events such as by affecting a central office switch. 

There is potential for some interesting research here, as follows:

Modern CO switches can record every event that occurs on them.  Thus if a phone call is made to a given number, there is a "call detail record" of it: date, time, originating and destination number, duration of call.  Normally the only portions of this information that are made available to subscribers, are the portions dealing with their phone bills.  Other portions can be made available to law enforcement and intelligence agencies under the conditions for "lawful intercepts" such as with a warrant from a judge.

However, what about the possibility of telcos making CDR data available when there is a reported instance of "phone calls from the dead"?   This is more likely with small rural telcos than with the major telcos (AT&T, Verizon, etc.).  However, the fact that the information is available, should be handled carefully so as not to lead to people engaging in any kind of deliberate practical jokes or overt hoaxes.