Spooky Phone Calls

Hi.

I’m a little spooked.

The apartment complex where I live doesn’t have cable. I don’t know why they don’t but I’m sure it’s a long story. So I have a landline for my internet and Directv for my mind numbing entertainment. Somehow I still get high speed internet DSL or something isn’t it?

Anyway I was at my computer yesterday after work. My girlfriend was busy chopping something in the kitchen she came over to cook me dinner. (What can I say I’m a lucky man.) The phone rang and since she was already up I asked her to answer it for me.

She answered the phone ‘hello’ standing there for a moment with her back to me saying nothing. Finally again she said ‘hello’ and that was all. I was ready to tell her to hang it up. She asked if anyone was there waited another moment and hung up the phone before I had a chance to say anything.

I asked her who it was and of course she said nobody said anything that she couldn’t hear anyone. Then she added that after she said hello the first time she heard a click but nothing else changed. She joked that maybe it was my other woman and she just hung up after she heard my girlfriend’s voice. I just laughed and nothing more was said about it.

Today I called work and told them I was sick and was going to stay home. I haven’t been feeling well but I think it’s more an allergy thing than a cold. Still I’m off tomorrow and I can use the rest it’s been a busy couple of weeks at work and it’s starting to slow down.

At about 1:00 pm I received a rare phone call I answered said hello but didn’t get a response. After a few seconds I said hello again I heard a faint click then only silence. I began to hang up the receiver then changed my mind and tried the call back feature. No luck the number was blocked.

It was about 4:30 pm this afternoon when I received the most recent call.

I was alone and just returned from a late lunch / early dinner from the little diner down the road. The phone rang I answered it nobody responded to my greeting. Waiting patiently all I heard was a faint hiss nothing unusual. After about 5 seconds I heard a phone ring just one time then a click like the line was connected I figured I had been transferred. I waited a few seconds then said hello but again nothing but silence I hung up the phone.

So I started wondering what was going on I think it’s probably a marketing company either testing a new robo – calling machine or gathering data.
I think whoever it is wants to know the phone number works and maybe is trying to figure out when I'm home.

The last call I got was a little strange and I feel like I’m being watched. I’m not usually the type who is easily shaken but this deal just doesn’t seem normal. So set my mind at ease and tell me I’m just paranoid.

Depending on how old the infrastructure is in your area it could be just someone repairing a switch box somewhere? Although the one ring you heard in the second call says someone was there with a handset otherwise you wouldn't have heard anything?

If it continues past a couple of days then you have someone messing around. I would monitor the situation, write down the times of the calls and then get onto your line provider. They may be able to tell you who it is and most likely block the calls from their end.

I think your only getting these calls because you watched "The Ring"

I'll tell you after I watched that movie, my phone rang the same exact time that it did on the movie and no one was at the other end of line...:: Now that was freaky........


[twilight zone theme....]


I would check in with your girlfriend to make sure nothing freakish happened. You know, like in the movie.

Just call the damn operator...... Blues clues has no time for this nonsense

reply to post by cavalryscout


It happens a lot in the UK as well, it seems the government has an automated dialler that is voiceprinting whoever picks up the phone, whenever you do a 1471 to find out who called it is always "Caller withheld their number".
This has happened many times to me, in some cases the landline will ring i answer to get the silent phone call and literally 30 seconds later i get the same call on my mobile.

I have now got to the point where if i ever answer a phone anywhere i do not say "Hello" when i pick it up, i wait for the person on the other end to talk first, if they don't in the first five seconds i put it down, if it is important they ring back.

There is an automated system tracking people and voiceprinting them, this is what is ringing you, if it was a crank caller you would get some sort of "Crank", heavy breathing, or other idiotic nonsense, these calls last exactly 5 seconds long enough for you to say hello and the system to match the print against a database of voiceprints to see who is there.

reply to post by The X


Here in the UK it probably originates from RAF Menwith hill. The home of ECHELON signals intelligence. All your phone calls, emails and faxes go through there.

ECHELON is a joint venture with the "five eyes" of Britain, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. If you live in these nations you are electronically monitored I'm afraid

en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...

Happens all the time with these auto dial things. There's quite the uproar against many companies who use them scaring people and pensioners even my own telephone provider is a swine for it. Yes such is the way of ATS many people will have you think this is something sinister, personally I'd just ring your provider and give them a bollocking over it and check your telephone bill in case some unscrupulous company is using that method to siphon money off you.

I've had these calls before. I talked to my sister about it and she said it's a telemarketer mass calling.

A computer dials several numbers at once. The first one to pick up is the lucky winner and gets to receive their spam message. The rest get a dead line.

Could be one-way audio on your line, have you tried calling the phone company?

Who still has a landline any more?

About ten years ago I was at my aunts farmhouse in Canada helping with chores in exchange for temporary boarding. We all came in one evening from a day of riding horses, tending the vegetables and feeding other animals.

As my aunt went to prepare dinner she pressed play on the answering machine, since it was flashing. Three new messages. First two were fairly unimportant but right before it clicked over to the third I was hit with a wave of nausea. What came out of that machine next could only be described as the recording of every single conversation occuring on the planet.... As though everyone's phone conversation had somehow been sent to that machine at once. There was screaming, there was laughing, there was indistinguishable dialogue.

We all looked at each other and raced to turn it off. The thing that still haunts me is I could hear a deep laughter in the background - separate from everything else.

Yes, I have heard the "Siberian sounds of Hell" and no it did not sound anything like that.

reply to post by dayve


Dayve, what happened to your avatar?

A side note on this. I'm in sales, and every week we have to make a certain number of phone calls. There are some people at my work who will just put their phone on mute when someone answers, and wait for the person to hang up since all of our calls are tracked which allows our boss to see how much time we spend on the phone. The longer it takes for a random person to hang up, the better.....I don't do this method, but some do.

Not saying that's what's going on here, but it sure struck a chord.

Originally posted by chevy369
Who still has a landline any more?

Lol true, but almost 99% of elderly people do, OR people that live in a gated community that need the landline to access the front gate.

And, old people...wait, I said that.

reply to post by cavalryscout


Just wanted to say that this happens at my house quite a bit too. I don't believe it's anything malicious or shady. It's just annoying.

Its a robodialer, plain and simple.

It dials a lot of people at once. The first one to answer gets connected to a salesman. Everyone else who answers, gets silence. More modern ones detect a human voice and transfers you to a queue to speak to the salesman, thats what the click is, you being transferred to another queue. Everyone else gets discarded.

Smarter ones can even tell the difference between a person and an answerphone.

Happens to me every few days.

This happens at my house a couple times a week. And if it isn't that then it's either the idiots about prescriptions or the alarm system idiots. I've opted out many times but yet they still call. I guess they like it when I scream obcenities at them from the top of my lungs?