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3 A.M. Weirdness

MOSUGOJI

MOSUGOJI

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Mar 1, 2003
Messages
80
Last night I woke up suddenly around 3 am. I felt a general atmosphere in my room of something not being right and maybe of not being alone. This went on for about 10 minutes when suddenly the silence is broken by my phone ringing. Now that really woke me up. It rang 3 times and stopped. The general feeling of weirdness continued and then about 15 minutes later the phone rings again with 3 rings. At that point I'm pretty much going WTF is going on tonight?!?! The feeling of strangeness in the air gradually subsided after that until I managed to fall asleep again around 4:45 am.
Now the place I live in has had a reputation of being haunted but I've never seen anything myself. Just a few oddities in the past like my closet door opening of it's own accord and the bed being jostled like something was under it or something once,and I once had a bunch of loose change that was on my table all neatly lined up on my bathroom window sill once,ordered in piles of each denomination. Nothing strange has really happened here in about a year and I live alone in the house.
I've heard of the 3 am time period being a peak time for strange occurances so maybe it was just "my turn" for this. Though I have been wondering who or what if anything would have been on the phone had I picked it up. I'm thinking of hooking up my tape recorder to my phone in case it happens again sometime and see what comes out on the tape.
 
Didn't you check the number after the phone rang?
 
I can't believe you didn't answer the phone!
 
escargot1 said:
Didn't you check the number after the phone rang?
Click to expand...

I don't have caller ID so there was no way to check it
 
I can readily believe he didn't answer the phone. Friendly calls don't come at three in the morning, and emergency callers will let the answering machine pick up and say loudly to it: "I know what time it is, but pick up! I'm bleeding here!"
 
Dial *69 - that will tell you who called even if you don't have caller ID. Probably just a drunk, although I've heard "phantom rings" can be caused by the phone company testing the line. Wasn't there bad thunderstorms where you lived that night? That could have caused it too.
 
markbellis said:
Dial *69 - that will tell you who called even if you don't have caller ID. Probably just a drunk, although I've heard "phantom rings" can be caused by the phone company testing the line. Wasn't there bad thunderstorms where you lived that night? That could have caused it too.
Click to expand...

I have a sort of messed up situation regarding my phone service. Right now I pretty much just have no frills basic service with a limited calling area thanks to the antics of an ex gf of mine running my bill up over 900.00 by not paying attention to the numbers she was using for dial up internet service. So as a result I have no long distance,voice mail,caller id or *69 capabilities. But I digress.
We had thunderstorms yesterday early evening but they had been over with some time by like midnight, Usually rings caused by electrical activity like that have an odd sound to them like they are underpowered.
Could have been a drunk,some automated phone system thing or something. I'm usually in the habit of screening my calls anyways due to telemarketers and such so I'm normally apt to just let the phone ring.
The strange wierd sense of forboding ,the oft mentioned 3 am time period and suddenly waking up are the things that make me sort of go Hmmm.. about the entire thing especially after the phone ringing twice around the same time.
Maybe I've joked about the Illuminati openly too much lately or someone like Dick Cheney was up drunk using some strategic system phone dialier for pranking purposes.
If it happens tonight I'll have to be sure to answer the phone,maybe beat them to the punch by having the first thing to come out of my mouth be an evil diabolical laugh or something as soon as I pick up the phone.
 
I know I'm digressing here, but did your gf's computer get infected with of those trojan dialler programs I've heard about, where it disconnects you from your regular dial-up and then silently dials up another number that ends up costing you a fortune?
 
markbellis said:
I know I'm digressing here, but did your gf's computer get infected with of those trojan dialler programs I've heard about, where it disconnects you from your regular dial-up and then silently dials up another number that ends up costing you a fortune?
Click to expand...
What she did was go through the list of alterante phone numbers that the dialup service had for connecting because she didnt't like how the local number was doing for connection speed. She of course did this without bothering to check and see if the numbers were all local to my calling area or toll numbers. There was only one phone number on the bill but it repeated ad nauseum and the time duration for the connection was hours and even days since she was online alot and would go to bed leaving the computer still connected. She had disabled the inactivity disconnect feature since she was always doundloading huge files that take forever on dialup like video game promos and such.
 
Amazing.... sure it couldn't have been her drunk dialling you?
 
About ten years ago we were taking a short holiday in the Cotswolds, the weather was humid and there had been rumbles of thunder all day. We retired to bed too hot to sleep and the children fretful. Sometime between 3 and 4 am the phone by the bed rang. my husband answered it, it was my mother. She said that she was very cross that we had been late calling her earlier and that we should be more considerate about calling her on time. She did not give my husband a chance to reply but put the phone down.

We were a bit angry at this and were embarassed that the hotel owners had been disturbed by having to put the call through to our room. The next morning we apologised to the owner, he did not know what we were talking about. There had not been any calls during the night as far as he knew. He checked with all the other staff and they all confirmed that there had been no call through to the hotel that night.It was not possible to call the room direct, even if my mother had known what room we were in.

I called my mother from the desk to ask her how she had managed to get through to us. My grandmother answered, (she lived with my mum) and told me that my mother had gone to bed early the previous night and had still not come down. She was not prepared to go and wake my mum as she could be more than a little grumpy at the best of times.

On our return we called to see my mother who was still miffed at us for calling her later than we said we should. She would not discuss the matter and we are still in the dark over how she managed to call us that night.

She was very ill at the time with her last illness and she died a few months later. It was her illness that had made her so difficult to live with.
 
My guess would be that someone was filling in for someone else on the switchboard that night without the manager's knowing it.
:_pished: (Maybe Manuel for Polly? Que?)
 
It might be a vending machine with a grudge!

Some posh 'vending machines' (and gambling boxes, et al) are connected to the phone line and ring a number when they are empty / need feeding. And sometimes the number they ring, by mistake, isn't head office. It's called 'power calling' or something. Happened to me only the other week - every night at 9.00pm I'd get a phone call consisting of screeches that would make a ZX Spectrum proud! I got intouch with BT and they gave me a number to ring to 'bar' that number ever ringing me again.

I can't help feeling sorry for the machine, crying to be fed! :(

And I've cut it off! :(

If you'd like to help 'Machines In Need' then ring this number now - and make a donation! 0898 33666896

EDIT - don't ring that number - I made it up! Actually, ring it at 3.00am and see what happens!
 
I rang that number thankyou very much and got a airport change machine in Denver asking me for greenbacks!

Yes that does have something to do with Dangermouse
 
Another Answerphone Conundrum

About 6 months ago, I had 3 messages on my answerphone. I listened to them quite late at night and started to delete them. I was tired and I wasn't pressing all the right buttons. Somehow, the machine jumped forward to message 9 and made a really loud mechanical screeching noise. I deleted that message, then several more came up, just the same. I got up to message 33 before it stopped and I had an empty answerphone once more.

This was, naturally, quite startling. It could have been a malfunction, my bleary eyes causing me to press the wrong button, a vending machine or fax calling me, or something a lot more spooky. Malfunctions and stuff I can accept but I don't really know how 3 messages suddenly turned into 33, most of which were grating electronic shrieks. Fortunately, it wasn't scary enough to keep me awake that night.

Previously, my dad's TV turned itself off for no apparent reason when I was watching it. This was just after my mum had died. It was well known that she didn't like the loud TV very much, so we suspect that she came back in spirit and turned it off. It never normally turns itself off. Could it be that my mum also psychically interfered with my answerphone?!
 
We have loads of weird phone stories hereabouts somewhere! :D
 
Re: Another Answerphone Conundrum

snavej1 said:
Previously, my dad's TV turned itself off for no apparent reason when I was watching it. This was just after my mum had died. It was well known that she didn't like the loud TV very much, so we suspect that she came back in spirit and turned it off. It never normally turns itself off. Could it be that my mum also psychically interfered with my answerphone?!
Click to expand...

You might be interested in this discussion of interference with infrared and sonic TV remotes here: http://randi.org/jr/2007-06/062207.html#i6
 
3 am is called the witching hour (well 3 to 4)

as the clock represents the upsidedown cross iirc

theres loads of stuff about it in google land ....
 
Sometimes if you wake up in the middle of the night and then a little later the phone rings it is possibly because the person has tried it once, waited a minute and tried it again. In the meantime you have woken up.

Many years ago, this happened to me, also around 3-4 a.m. The first night, I half-woke up and thought 'The phone's ringing'. The second night, I was awake so I ran downstairs, picked it up and said 'Hullo'. There was silence for a few seconds followed by someone putting the receiver down. It was then that I realised what the time was. It was very difficult to go back to sleep after that. Many years later, just before I moved away from that town, a friend's husband admitted out of the blue that it was him, working late and 'just wanting to hear my voice'.

Nowadays I would never answer the phone at that time of night.
 
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