Received a strange telephone call - Request opinions

a reply to: LuFri

Surprised your a member of a site like this but you didn't realise or know about spoofing caller id and/or telemarketrs doing that...

Posting it in paranormal section makes sense for a member of this site though

Telemarketers spoof numbers all the time, but if they spoof the targeted address' number what are they gonna do? Report their own number to the FTC?

Before you jump to ghosts, call spoofers , telemarketers or something more exotic Occam wants to say hi and let you know that phone calls are ridiculously complex and things cross in the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network = think phones outside your location) all the time.

People know 1 thing, they pick up the phone and their is dialtone. What they don't realize is what happens when they dial a number , all the switching and translations that take place.

I worked on multiple caller ID issues this week and not a single one of them had a nefarious origin yet all had symptoms similar to yours. Different telcos can list different caller ID for the same number. Lines cross. Weird things happen at the CO (Central office where switching takes place outside your house). For example at one of our remote sites the LEC (local exchange carrier = company that delivers the lines to your house from the CO) had issues which the outbound caller ID which was making customers think where I work was nothing but telemarketing.

I have been a voice engineer for the full 22 years of my career, dealing with just about every element of phones that you can think of. PBX, SIP, VOIP, outbound dialing (predictive or otherwise for you telemarketing haters) call recording. Prior to that I may have made a lot of money building red and blue boxes as a teen or getting yelled at for flash dialing when physical locks were on phones. The point is if it has had something to do with 48Khz then I have had my hands on it and I can tell you that over the course of that career their has not nor have any of my peers ever had anything but a normal explanation for crossed lines or weird calls.

a reply to: LuFri

Its a phone app that lets you put in any number showing on the caller I. D.. ..I know you can search for it on Android and IOS and others.

Someone is messing with you.. .in fact.. .happened to my wife the other day. ..so we found those apps online and on Google Play Store

Please hang up and wait for the other person to answer? How are you supposed to do that? I doubt this. That doesn't even remotely sound like a recording you would get. Oh yeah when I call my number from my house...i get a busy signal no recording.


reply to: LuFri
Q

There was an episode of Law &Order SVU that had something like that in it. a reply to: mysterioustranger

Caller ID works by having one telephone line or device sending along signals representing the number. You could program your fax machine to send out your telephone number and name. That would show up on Caller ID. There are ways of spoofing those details. Sometimes it just takes a digital auto-dialer. This sounds like telemarketers.

I once had a phone-line battle with regular "silent phone calls" around 8.15pm. Tried every option from changing numbers, getting Caller ID to Anonymous Phone Call Rejection. The final solution was to get a telephone with a builtin answering machine, and which supported white-lists of telephone numbers along with fax/voice detection. Anything voicy or on a known number went straight through, while everything else was sent to voicemail.

a reply to: HanaDambi

Surprised your a member of a site like this but you didn't realise or know about spoofing caller id and/or telemarketrs doing that...

Posting it in paranormal section makes sense for a member of this site though

So are you saying that people who are members of this site should automatically know all the ins and outs of telemarketing and their capabilities or what? And...aren't you also a member of this site? Nothing wrong with posting something that is outside of what the OP knows to be normal in the paranormal section...that's what it's there for.

To the OP: I haven't had a home phone for at least 12 years, but that would have freaked me out too...not because of the call originating from inside your own house, but the fact that it displayed your nickname instead of your legal name. I had something similar happen to me via email the other day. My message queue showed an email sent to me, from my own email address. Gave me kind of a nasty little jolt for a second, but I just deleted it without opening it because I figured it was deliberately sent to me that way to trick me into opening it and probably contained some form of malware or something.

I actually know several people who have had paranormal activity on their phone lines directly after the death of a family member, but if you've had nothing else going on that might indicate anything like that it's probably safe to assume that it is simply human manipulation rather than something from the spirit realm. I am kind of curious though as to why your spouse thought it could be an omen. Have you had other activity in or around your home?

originally posted by: LuFri
I received a strange telephone call at home yesterday. The caller ID showed our home number and me as the caller. I went ahead and picked it up but there was only silence which was probably a good thing because if I had been on the other end I'm not sure what I would have done.

I went to the other phone and called our number just to see what would happen and there was a recorded message that the call could not be completed, please hang up and wait for the other party to answer. I hung up, the phone rang and my spouse waiting at the phone said that the ID said "Incoming Call" with no number. I don't know if other phone systems are the same and the ability to call yourself may be a throwback to ancient party lines. When we moved here many years ago there was an option to get a party line that was less expensive but we have never had a party line and it may not even be an option anymore.

My spouse is worried that it may be some type of omen. I am trying to toss it off as some kind of weird phone thing but the ID showed my nickname, not the name that the phone is registered under. Has anyone else ever had something happen like this? I've heard of phone calls from recently deceased people but never a call from yourself.

This happened to me about 6 years ago.

I woke up at around 3am, got out of bed to make myself a drink.
When I returned to bed my phone began to ring (Mobile/Cellphone) and the number that came up was just zero's (00000).

I picked up and it was silent except everytime I spoke it echoed.

My inital thought was that it was just a technical glitch or something of that kind until suddenly there was a really loud interference that almost deafened me. Like white noise or the sort of thing you hear if a microphone is turned up to loud.

Then I heard a voice and it was very robotic/demon sounding that kept talking, I couldn't make out what it was saying but I know it was somebody talking, then the phone cut out.
The worst part about all this is the sudden extreme fear I felt the minute the noise began.. I can't explain what it was that scared me so much but something inside me just wanted me to run and run away from that phone until I couldn't run any faster.
I called the number back and obviously it didn't exist.

Was a very strange experience and one that I've heard many talk about on various sites on the internet (including this one)
I'm not saying I believe or don't believe in the paranormal... But I know what happened and it was enough to give me nightmares for years.

Maybe your experience was paranormal, maybe not..

In this day and age as they say, I does not cost you a dime to be careful or if you like Paranoid.
We get some calls that show up as all digits right across the display or others that show as a huge number with any dashes or logic.

We just don't answer those ones.
Regards, Iwinder

This once happened to me a couple years ago on my cellphone. My number popped up on the call screen and I picked it up and said "Hello, who is this", only to hear my voice echo back at me. It almost sounded like I was being recorded due to the tinny nature of my voice and the static sound on the other end.

It was a strange incident for sure, I spent a while on-line searching for signs of a phone being "bugged" for spying or listening reasons. I still use the same phone.

Just checked.. .6 free apps on Google Play Store to any number as the number calling you.. .even yours.. .to you

Not going to link it here, but there is a very free, very easy to use website that allows you to Caller ID fake anyone, anywhere, with any number. Just a tech glitch. Now if you get a phone call from a dead relative, or you actually speak to a future self...that's another story.

a reply to: LuFri

Never received a call from myself, but e-mails I have. I just deleted them without opening and went on about my business.

It's a telemarketing scam to make you curious enough to answer. Most people just sit there and can't get a word in to say, "No, I'm not interested." They keep talking and reel you in because most people aren't rude enough to just hang up on a caller, but...

I AM! (with telemarketers)

a reply to: LuFri

BBB has a warning about this here

a reply to: ColeYounger

Wow...I clicked this article wondering if it would be something like what you just described. I haven't even thought about this in years...My friend and I also recieved stange calls like that (about ten years ago!) His father even went so far as to contact the phone company and complain because this went on for weeks. It was a thin watery voice saying things like "You're not allowed!", "We won't!", "We're coming." We even recorded some of them. The stange thing is the phone company had records of his household getting the calls, but no indication of where they were coming from. If you have any more information about these calls I would appreciate hearing it. I'll contact my friend (he got the bulk of the calls) and get some more details and maybe get a thread going. Thanks in advance for any info.