Freaky Phone Calls

More of this Feature • Page 2: Phone calls from the dead and more    Join the Discussion "My grandmother died one year ago and on the night of the one year she died, I was sitting at the computer and it was rather late, kids in bed and the house was quiet. I thought I could hear muffled ringing of a telephone. I went to inspect and discovered one of the kids' play cell phones was ringing. The phone will not work if the handset is open, but it was still ringing. My boyfriend came over to the phone, picked it up and called me silly, teasing that it was probably my grand- mother saying hi. He said that I was acting silly and that I didn't hear anything, he put the phone down and walked a couple of feet away and the phone started to ring again..." Read more of this interesting story     Related Resources • Disappearing Object Phenomenon • Sliders and the Streetlight Phenomenon • Movie Review: "The Mothman Prophecies"    Elsewhere on the Web • Phone Calls from the Dead

Telephones, cordless phones, cell phones... These communication tools have become indispensable parts of our daily lives. With them we can connect with just about anyone anywhere from virtually anywhere. Voices, conversations and the business of every day moving at the speed of light along wires, through fiber optics, across the sky, under the ocean and sometimes into space and back. Is it possible, however, that these electronic gadgets that we've come to take for granted sometimes make connections beyond what can be logically explained?

Consider these true stories from people who have had unexplained, puzzling and sometimes downright unnerving experiences with their phones.

The Impossibly Cloned Call
Many years ago, when married to my first husband, I received a telephone call at about 4:20 a.m. It was my elder brother telling me he had just gotten married. The call woke up my husband and I spoke with my brother for about five minutes. I hung up and went back to sleep. About a week or so later, I was visiting at my mother's home and this same brother was there with his wife. I thanked him for calling me... and I got this odd stare and his mouth fell open. He told me he had called our mother, but he had never called me at all. I turned to my mother and she related the entire conversation she had had with him, and then I related the entire conversation I had had with him - and these conversations were literally identical and at the exact same time. - Barbara

The Phones That Called Each Other
This strange incident happened in our home at Christmas. My husband had his cell phone on our dining room table and it was turned off for the evening. My purse was in our library, where my husband was playing a computer game with our daughter. In my purse I had my cell phone turned on. As my husband and daughter were playing, my cell phone rang. My husband picked it up and it said the incoming call was coming in from his cell phone! He thought our son was playing a prank on him and ran into the room we were in and told our son to stop messing around with his cell phone. We laughed at him and asked him what he was talking about. He said, "Your phone just rang and it said the call was coming in from my phone!" This is where things get weird! My son and I were both in the same room together talking and neither one of us had left the room. We weren't even in the same room as my husband's cell phone at all. My husband checked his phone and sure enough it was off just as he had left it. We can't figure out how a call came into my phone from his phone when his phone was off and there was certainly no one in the room with his phone! Strange indeed. We were all pretty mystified over the whole incident for sure! - Janine T.

The Phone Call That Never Was
My mum usually picks me up from work and she doesn't work far from me. One Tuesday night, we were driving home when I asked her how my dad's computer classes were going. My dad usually attended the computer classes every Tuesday night. She said she didn't know as she hadn't spoken to him about it. She asked me why. I replied, "Well, when I was speaking to him he said he was having some trouble. They had been given three assignments to complete, but he couldn't finish assignment number two as the computer wouldn't 'save as.' I think he eventually managed to do them all though."

"Oh, right." she said. That night, with the conversation with my mum forgotten, I was sitting watching TV, when my dad knocked on my door. He said, "I was speaking to mum earlier about the conversation you had about my computer class. How did you know we had three assignments and I had trouble with the second one?"

Confused, I said, "You told me that on the phone."

"No, I didn't. There is no way you could have known that because I have just come from my computer class. You had the conversation with mum before I went, and what you told mum happened tonight. I couldn't have known we had three assignments as I missed last week's class."

We both just sat there looking at each other trying to figure out how I knew what was going to happen before it did. I was sure we had spoken on the phone about it, but how could we if it hadn't happened? The strange thing is, I can remember my dad telling me what happened on the phone, but I can't recall how, where and when. - Cian B.

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