Haunted Phone Anomaly (Today)

[Mikefule]

OK, so this felt pretty Fortean at the time, and it's still an anomaly because I can find no explanation. Maybe some of you technical types out there can shed light on it and debunk the idea that my phone is haunted.

Background
I have a 2017 Samsung Galaxy A5. I have very few non standard apps on it. I have made no changes to the settings for a long time. I normally use it for phone calls, alarm clock, Email, SMS, WhatsApp, Messenger, Spotify, Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, camera, maps/navigation, and browsing of mainly familiar websites. I consider myself to be pretty competent with computers and the like.

My ring tone is the recording of Johnny B Goode, Chuck Berry. I have not listened to Chuck on Spotify recently, or searched for anything related to him.

Incident
Suddenly this evening, the phone started playing Johnny B Goode. I assumed it was a phone call and probably urgent as it is rare for anyone except my wife to ring me, and she is in the house with me. With an elderly and infirm mother, and older and infirm step father, any unexpected call is a worry until I know it's not to inform me that one of them is in hospital or dead.

However, when I picked the phone up, the display showed only the clock and date, and not the options to answer or reject the call. I tried to open the phone with my fingerprint and, as it sometimes does, it asked for my PIN. I typed that in and the phone opened. The "ring tone" was still playing, but there was nothing on the display to show that it was doing so.

I opened the phone app and there was no option to answer or reject the call. Eventually the phone stopped "ringing". It had rung for a long time but not for the full length of the song.

After the incident
I dug a bit deeper: nothing showing in my recent call history, nothing on my alerts screen, nothing in the SMS app (so no voicemail). Absolutely nothing to show that it had rung.

Spotify was closed. I'm pretty disciplined about not leaving apps open. I opened it and, as I expected, it showed that the last artist I had been listening to was Patsy Cline and that I had stopped the track about 3/4 of the way through which is exactly what I did earlier today.

I checked the alarm. (I never use that tune for the alarm anyway.) No alarms were set. All was as expected.

So my trifling "IHTM" anomaly of the day is why should my phone suddenly play a tune that happens to be my ringtone, but without any other indication that someone was trying to call me (at the time) or that someone had tried to call me (after the event)?

Probably this is more of a technical anomaly than genuinely Fortean, but I found it quite disturbing at the time and am still a bit shaken.

 

[MorningAngel]

My phone had once set an alarm for the middle of the night on its own. It didn’t show up in my list of alarms. But when I asked Siri to show me alarms it was in there. Phones have a mind of their own.

 

[AnonyJ]

OK, so this felt pretty Fortean at the time, and it's still an anomaly because I can find no explanation. Maybe some of you technical types out there can shed light on it and debunk the idea that my phone is haunted.

Background
I have a 2017 Samsung Galaxy A5. I have very few non standard apps on it. I have made no changes to the settings for a long time. I normally use it for phone calls, alarm clock, Email, SMS, WhatsApp, Messenger, Spotify, Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, camera, maps/navigation, and browsing of mainly familiar websites. I consider myself to be pretty competent with computers and the like.

My ring tone is the recording of Johnny B Goode, Chuck Berry. I have not listened to Chuck on Spotify recently, or searched for anything related to him.

Incident
Suddenly this evening, the phone started playing Johnny B Goode. I assumed it was a phone call and probably urgent as it is rare for anyone except my wife to ring me, and she is in the house with me. With an elderly and infirm mother, and older and infirm step father, any unexpected call is a worry until I know it's not to inform me that one of them is in hospital or dead.

However, when I picked the phone up, the display showed only the clock and date, and not the options to answer or reject the call. I tried to open the phone with my fingerprint and, as it sometimes does, it asked for my PIN. I typed that in and the phone opened. The "ring tone" was still playing, but there was nothing on the display to show that it was doing so.

I opened the phone app and there was no option to answer or reject the call. Eventually the phone stopped "ringing". It had rung for a long time but not for the full length of the song.

After the incident
I dug a bit deeper: nothing showing in my recent call history, nothing on my alerts screen, nothing in the SMS app (so no voicemail). Absolutely nothing to show that it had rung.

Spotify was closed. I'm pretty disciplined about not leaving apps open. I opened it and, as I expected, it showed that the last artist I had been listening to was Patsy Cline and that I had stopped the track about 3/4 of the way through which is exactly what I did earlier today.

I checked the alarm. (I never use that tune for the alarm anyway.) No alarms were set. All was as expected.

So my trifling "IHTM" anomaly of the day is why should my phone suddenly play a tune that happens to be my ringtone, but without any other indication that someone was trying to call me (at the time) or that someone had tried to call me (after the event)?

Probably this is more of a technical anomaly than genuinely Fortean, but I found it quite disturbing at the time and am still a bit shaken.

A bit of Googling of likely causes seems to return several possible issues on Android phones doing this -

• Possibly charger related (I.E. Either from using a non-Samsung wall charger and/or using a non-Samsung USB cable) if the phone was plugged in & charging when the ringtone went off
• Alarm malfunction - all alarms may need to be deleted and any automatically populated alarms that appear need to be deleted again.
• As phones are now mini PCs it may be some glitch in the system, somewhere - a full reboot (turning off "Fast boot" if enabled in Settings\Power)
• Possible interactions with a linked smartwatch - e.g. a watch or even a digital assistant that has received a 'find my phone' command
• Possible notifications issue with a newly-installed app.

It does seem to be a somewhat uncommon 'thing' affecting many Samsung models, and android phones in general. It's almost certainly a technical issue with some bit of code or app conflicts

 

[kesavaross]

My Samsung phone has occasionally rung and when I answered it there was no one at the other end.

I see mobile phones as spyware. Aways listening and always recording stuff for their master. Maybe I'm paranoid. I trust no one in authority to have my best interests at heart.

 

[kesavaross]

My phone had once set an alarm for the middle of the night on its own. It didn’t show up in my list of alarms. But when I asked Siri to show me alarms it was in there. Phones have a mind of their own.

I once took a good friend some food who was dog sitting for customers of hers and who she cleans their house for.

She had Siri playing pop music from the 50's and 60's. While we were talking the music suddenly stopped and Siri played bad about 20 seconds of our conversation from about 10 minutes before.

Needless to say Siri got unplugged.

 

[Zeke Newbold]

I've noticed that my phone (also a Samsung, but a different model) will sometimes spontaneously light up in the night - as though someone has pressed the activate buitton or touched the screen - even though I'm nowhere near it.

 

[Floyd]

I've noticed that my phone (also a Samsung, but a different model) will sometimes spontaneously light up in the night - as though someone has pressed the activate buitton or touched the screen - even though I'm nowhere near it.

It might be what's called 'Ambient Display'. You may be able to disable this in your settings if it is annoying you.

 

[MorningAngel]

I've noticed that my phone (also a Samsung, but a different model) will sometimes spontaneously light up in the night - as though someone has pressed the activate buitton or touched the screen - even though I'm nowhere near it.

Mine tries to unlock sometimes when it’s just sitting there but it can’t as I’m not looking (locked with Face ID) at it so it just shakes in annoyance.

 

[Iris]

I know it's just some other thing I don't understand on this phone but when I was texting my daughter today it started printing what was said on the tv and what I said to my other daughter.

 

[MorningAngel]

I know it's just some other thing I don't understand on this phone but when I was texting my daughter today it started printing what was said on the tv and what I said to my other daughter.

Sounds like dictation got turned on.

 

[Iris]

Sounds like dictation got turned on.

Thank you but as I said I'm a bit lacking with all these programs.

 

[Austin Popper]

I've had my share of misadventures with the so-called smart phones. They may be amazing, they may even be smart, but they are not altogether sane.

My wackiest episode started one day when my phone began beeping at me. It was alarmed that there was only 15% battery capacity left, which for me meant that I needed to charge it some time in the next 12 hours. It asked if I wanted it to enter "power saver mode", and I said well if you'll shut up then fine, and pressed the little rectangle it was offering. The screen went to a black and orange mess, then all hell broke loose. It started talking. Soon enough, I figured out that it was reading my text messages, one after another. I poked around, trying to shut that off, but only managed to make it keep reading my messages, but at twice the normal speed. I fiddled some more, and got it even more messed up, with giant text and other insane things, still reading to me in an irritating, sped up voice. So I turned it off.

When I started it up again, it pretty much took off right where it was when I shut it down. Everything I tried to do only made it worse. Fortunately, I was in a town where my carrier had a store, so I shut it down again and went to the store. I was lucky to find one of the employees free. I told him what was going on. He said he'd seen it before, and offered to try to straighten it out. He messed with it for quite a while, while I looked at the phones they had for sale there, thinking I'd need a new one before it was over. Finally he said he had it fixed. He said he had fixed a few, always Motorolas. He thought it had something to do with a software update that was not ready for prime time.

The next dumbest thing I can recall was years earlier, when I went to Boost Mobile to get away from contracts. They had an $80 "smart" phone, which should have been a giant red flag for me, but I took the dive to see what the silly things were all about. It worked poorly (no surprise) but had something called "push notifications" set as a default. I had no idea what that meant until I went to my address book to find someone I wanted to call. It was crammed full of all sorts of contact information from people I didn't know. Turns out the stupid thing copied the addresses of everyone in my email inbox to my contacts. What the hell? There were people I had dealt with on eBay, one time, years prior in there. I still can't fathom why any sane person would want push notifications infecting their device. Took me quite a long session to clean that mess up. I soon went back to a flip phone, and would be happily using one still if it weren't for all the photos, text messages, and everything else that's sent to me. Texting on a flip phone is an extremely tedious and annoying thing to do.

 

[escargot]

One of my iPhones would randomly paste extracts of old text messages into new ones I was sending. Infuriating.

 

[escargot]

I see mobile phones as spyware. Aways listening and always recording stuff for their master. Maybe I'm paranoid. I trust no one in authority to have my best interests at heart.

Yup, Techy swears they 'listen' and respond. He reckons he gets ads within minutes about things we've been discussing.

 

[escargot]

We have threads on Phone Weirdness.

 

[Austin Popper]

One of my iPhones would randomly paste extracts of old text messages into new ones I was sending. Infuriating.

Yikes. That could be dangerous!

 

[MorningAngel]

I've had my share of misadventures with the so-called smart phones. They may be amazing, they may even be smart, but they are not altogether sane.

My wackiest episode started one day when my phone began beeping at me. It was alarmed that there was only 15% battery capacity left, which for me meant that I needed to charge it some time in the next 12 hours. It asked if I wanted it to enter "power saver mode", and I said well if you'll shut up then fine, and pressed the little rectangle it was offering. The screen went to a black and orange mess, then all hell broke loose. It started talking. Soon enough, I figured out that it was reading my text messages, one after another. I poked around, trying to shut that off, but only managed to make it keep reading my messages, but at twice the normal speed. I fiddled some more, and got it even more messed up, with giant text and other insane things, still reading to me in an irritating, sped up voice. So I turned it off.

When I started it up again, it pretty much took off right where it was when I shut it down. Everything I tried to do only made it worse. Fortunately, I was in a town where my carrier had a store, so I shut it down again and went to the store. I was lucky to find one of the employees free. I told him what was going on. He said he'd seen it before, and offered to try to straighten it out. He messed with it for quite a while, while I looked at the phones they had for sale there, thinking I'd need a new one before it was over. Finally he said he had it fixed. He said he had fixed a few, always Motorolas. He thought it had something to do with a software update that was not ready for prime time.

The next dumbest thing I can recall was years earlier, when I went to Boost Mobile to get away from contracts. They had an $80 "smart" phone, which should have been a giant red flag for me, but I took the dive to see what the silly things were all about. It worked poorly (no surprise) but had something called "push notifications" set as a default. I had no idea what that meant until I went to my address book to find someone I wanted to call. It was crammed full of all sorts of contact information from people I didn't know. Turns out the stupid thing copied the addresses of everyone in my email inbox to my contacts. What the hell? There were people I had dealt with on eBay, one time, years prior in there. I still can't fathom why any sane person would want push notifications infecting their device. Took me quite a long session to clean that mess up. I soon went back to a flip phone, and would be happily using one still if it weren't for all the photos, text messages, and everything else that's sent to me. Texting on a flip phone is an extremely tedious and annoying thing to do.

Collecting contact info isn’t what push notifications are. I think it thinks it’s just trying to be helpful. Push notifications are telling you about emails or any other app that uses it to send notifications out.

Mum and I do have the weird thing where our contact have been merged somehow and she’s Android and I’m Apple. There was some thing with our internet provider that I think might have been behind it a long time ago. It’s pretty dodgy.

 

[AnonyJ]

Yup, Techy swears they 'listen' and respond. He reckons he gets ads within minutes about things we've been discussing.

They do.

More explanation in this article here: https://theconversation.com/is-your...tions-well-turns-out-it-doesnt-have-to-162172

Check which apps on a phone or tablet have microphone access, and do some experiments

 

[escargot]

They do.

More explanation in this article here: https://theconversation.com/is-your...tions-well-turns-out-it-doesnt-have-to-162172

Check which apps on a phone or tablet have microphone access, and do some experiments

Nah, I tried this for weeks. Talking about tripe, posting about tripe, Google searches for tripe. Not a single recommendation for tripe did I receive.

 

[Mythopoeika]

Nah, I tried this for weeks. Talking about tripe, posting about tripe, Google searches for tripe. Not a single recommendation for tripe did I receive.

This is because tripe suppliers haven't subscribed to this kind of advertising, being old-fashioned an' all.
Try a different word.

 

[escargot]

This is because tripe suppliers haven't subscribed to this kind of advertising, being old-fashioned an' all.
Try a different word.

Tripe.

 

[Robbrent]

My Samsung phone has occasionally rung and when I answered it there was no one at the other end.

I see mobile phones as spyware. Aways listening and always recording stuff for their master. Maybe I'm paranoid. I trust no one in authority to have my best interests at heart.

I see you have have also watched Black Mirror!

 

[IbisNibs]

It asked if I wanted it to enter "power saver mode", and I said well if you'll shut up then fine, and pressed the little rectangle it was offering. The screen went to a black and orange mess, then all hell broke loose. It started talking. Soon enough, I figured out that it was reading my text messages, one after another. I poked around, trying to shut that off, but only managed to make it keep reading my messages, but at twice the normal speed. I fiddled some more, and got it even more messed up, with giant text and other insane things, still reading to me in an irritating, sped up voice. So I turned it off.

Classic!

 

[escargot]

Popped to Tesco today, guess what for.