• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Phone Weirdness

Re: Weird telephone call!!

Nitsuj said:
Yesterday afternoon my telephone rang and when I answered it and said 'Hello!' a couple of times I heard my voice played back to me saying the exact few words that I had just spoken! Then the line went dead! What could have happened? :roll:
Click to expand...

As a child I, and my friends, used to play the random phone call game. Basically, just dial a random number then chat with whoever answered. One time we dialled a number in Russia and got the same result you did. No-one at the other end but a delayed repetition of whatever we said.

I've no idea why it happened. Any telecom engineers on here?
 
CND Officials!!

That's a fascinating theory about CND officials getting the same telephonic problem of having their own voice played back to them! Could it have been something to do with MI5 or MI6?! Or some kind of governmental pro-nuclear conspiracy! I seem to remember that Edge of Darkness was an excellent thriller about the nuclear industry a few years back now! :)
 
When my bro get's asked "is this a business?" he replies "yes! which means it's your lucky day as I specialise in telephone systems for cowboy call centers! Do you make more than 20 unsolicited phone calls in a day? Then the new MONEY MAKER TELEPHONE SHAKER is perrrrrfect for YOU!
 
Relating to telephone wierdness, ten years ago I was a student in Exeter and one week night around eightish we got a phone call and I answered. The was a lot of interference but I could just about hear a conversation between two men with London accents. I couldn't really make out what they were saying but it sounded like a business conversation. I said "hello" a number of times but they were oblivious. A oiuple of my housemates listened as well and I think we put the phone and picked it back up and they were still there. It went on for a few minutes and then we lost interest, whenever we nxt tried to use the phone (which may well have been the next day) it was fine. Crossed lines?
 
I once got a phone call from someone who asked for me by name, was convinced they knew me and that would see me tomorrow (implying that we were mates and saw each other every day). Problem was, I'd never heard of them and I never did get any further calls from them - nor did anyone approach me claiming to be them. If it was some kind of prank, there didn't seem any real point to it.

This was before the days of 1471 and caller-displays.
 
My mother received a call from a woman calling herself 'Carrie' who claimed she had been told by me that if she was ever in Sunderland to call my mum and she would put her up for the night.

My mother told her I was living in London. 'Carrie' said she was from London and worked with me.

Needless to say I don't know anyone called Carrie and would never tell anyone to call my mum.

Thankfully, my mum told her to sling her hook but the really weird thing is that 'Carrie' used my real name - which isn't 'Danny.'

Danny is just a nick-name I have used ever since I moved to London 20 years ago and no-one in London knows, or uses, my real name. :shock:
 
My mum (who's 70) got a text message a few months ago. It said "hi sexy, want to talk dirty"! I told her that someone had texted the wrong number. :shock:

I originally typed massage, was that a Freudian slip?
 
danny_cogdon said:
My mother received a call from a woman calling herself 'Carrie' who claimed she had been told by me that if she was ever in Sunderland to call my mum and she would put her up for the night.

My mother told her I was living in London. 'Carrie' said she was from London and worked with me.

Needless to say I don't know anyone called Carrie and would never tell anyone to call my mum.

Thankfully, my mum told her to sling her hook but the really weird thing is that 'Carrie' used my real name - which isn't 'Danny.'

Danny is just a nick-name I have used ever since I moved to London 20 years ago and no-one in London knows, or uses, my real name. :shock:
Click to expand...
That sounds very similar to what happened to me (see above). Very strange indeed - I've really no idea what is going on with incidents like these.
 
forteanflight said:
That sounds very similar to what happened to me (see above). Very strange indeed - I've really no idea what is going on with incidents like these.
Click to expand...

Agreed, very strange! I have never given my mother's number to anyone down here. I even have my next of kin listed as my sister with HR at work.

I forgot to mention that 'Carrie' told my mum that she worked for the same company that I do without being prompted.

To this day I still have no idea who it was that made that call. :shock:
 
danny_cogdon said:
forteanflight said:
That sounds very similar to what happened to me (see above). Very strange indeed - I've really no idea what is going on with incidents like these.
Click to expand...

Agreed, very strange! I have never given my mother's number to anyone down here. I even have my next of kin listed as my sister with HR at work.

I forgot to mention that 'Carrie' told my mum that she worked for the same company that I do without being prompted.

To this day I still have no idea who it was that made that call. :shock:
Click to expand...
I wonder if maybe it's possible for telephone calls made in a parallel universe (in your case, one where you did indeed work with a 'Carrie') to sometimes cross through into our own if the circumstances are right?
 
blast from the past

danny, i'd say it was someone from the old neighborhood (20 years back) who knew or knew of you and wanted to get into your mother's house for nefarious reasons. you are lucky she told the caller to shove off.
 
Back in 1982 when I would have been 11 or 12 years old, there was a song called 867-5309/Jenny that was a big hit on the radio. The rumor at school was that if you called this number "Jenny" would answer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/867-5309/Jenny

So, of course we called it! But what happened was strange, it would never ring, usually you would hear a hiss or some kind of series of clicks or pops. What was even stranger was that every once in a while you would get patched into other people's conversations. You could hear them and they could hear you.

Calling that phone number became my favorite pastime for a few months. Usually it would take several tries but eventually I would get patched into someone else's conversation. However, as the weeks went by it became more and more difficult. I would have to call dozens of times to hear anything. Before long all you would get was the clicking and popping noises and nothing else. I got bored with it after that and stopped calling.

Much later, I tried it again but whatever was going on had been fixed and if you called the number you got a recording that the call could not be completed as dialed.

My theory as to what was going on was that at the time we lived in a small town, and I think the local telephone office was using an old mechanical switching system. When the song came out all the local schoolkids were calling that number, somehow overwhelming the system and causing the calls to get patched into other calls.

Of course these days everything is digital and this couldn't happen, not even in small towns.
 
I suppose digital technology has its own mysteries, but I do like to hear about the old fashioned stuff, so thanks for that. Could it have been that certain unused phone numbers could offer access to these anomalies under the old system? After all, you and your friends would not have been the only people in the world calling that one.
 
gncxx said:
I suppose digital technology has its own mysteries, but I do like to hear about the old fashioned stuff, so thanks for that. Could it have been that certain unused phone numbers could offer access to these anomalies under the old system? After all, you and your friends would not have been the only people in the world calling that one.
Click to expand...

I seem to remember finding some number that would patch me through to odd "error" recordings. These were not the standard (for USA) three tones followed by the female voice telling you your call could not be completed, but were lower quality recordings without the tones. Also, the voices were of different people. Around that time my mother noticed long-distance calls to tiny hamlets way up in the mountains showing up on the bill. She didn't get too upset about it because they only cost 1 or 2 cents. I started "collecting" the recordings to tape.. no idea whatever happened to that tape though.

There's more information about the phone system in my hometown here:

http://www.co-buildings.com/midatl/540/

with these notes for Fredericksburg:

Building built in 1953. Originally a #5 Crossbar switch (April 1954). Later was a #1AESS. Current office serves as regional tandem to both Verzion/Bell Atlantic and Verizon/GTE offices in Spotsylvania & King George counties.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure that the #5 Crossbar switch was used until the late 1980's. A few years later I was pretty into computer BBS's and the quality of connections in our town was pretty bad - which led to a lot of problems for me!

I suspect that Central Office went digital around 1990 or so.
 
Recently I have been getting '1471' messages saying "telephone number 000 000 000 0000 called today...". Any ideas?
 
Ok, sorry. A quick internet search reveals that apparently it could be some sort of phone number masking for telesales? Not entirely convinced, since normally that comes out as "we do not have the callers number to return the call", but oh well.
 
My father is in hospital and I have his mobile phone, trying to sort it out its battery/charging issues. It won't hold a charge for more than a few seconds.

My mother keeps getting missed calls from Dad's phone on hers and we were puzzled as the thing seemed kaput. However, we've now worked out that the times coincided with when I've tried to charge up and start Dad's phone.

Seems that every time Dad's phone boots up, however briefly, it tries to ring Mum's. I only get a screen for about two seconds, and I certainly don't call anyone on it before it crashes again.

Quite touching, really. :D
 
I hope he gets well soon, Escargot.
 
Very kind, thank you. :)

I've lost weight since he's been in - not from worry, but from pedalling up there and back each day to avoid the NHS parking madness. ;)
 
This afternoon I was watching a repeat of come dine with me, it was the one with a woman from Texas who was in Edinborough to set up a church, they had just sat down to eat and the host was about to say grace when her phone rang, everyone laughed and suggested it might be the the boss calling, a few seconds later I heard my mobile ring just once, when I checked it said missed call and gave my landline number, I was the only one in the house and certainly didn't call myself. :?
 
I wish I could find the article (FT I think but I may be wrong) but a lot of numbers are /were used by engineers for tests. The one repeating your voice is an 'echo test' used to measure latency between the 'phone and exchange.

The old mechanical exchanges had to have the numbers hard-wired and engineers used to use a lot of unallocated numbers for testing various things. If you dialled them, it was possible it did wacky things to the signal / routing.
 
Seeker_UK said:
I wish I could find the article (FT I think but I may be wrong) but a lot of numbers are /were used by engineers for tests. The one repeating your voice is an 'echo test' used to measure latency between the 'phone and exchange.

The old mechanical exchanges had to have the numbers hard-wired and engineers used to use a lot of unallocated numbers for testing various things. If you dialled them, it was possible it did wacky things to the signal / routing.
Click to expand...

That reminds me, when my phoneline was installed back in September (I'd only just moved in), the work was quite intricate and when the guy finished he ran several line tests, saying the numbers out loud as he dialled them. Being at my desk as he did it, I managed to write lots of them down - must go back through my paperwork pile! :)

His linesman's phone had extra buttons - A B C and D in addition to the numbers - I imagine to access all the hidden features, you would need the lot. Wonder if any show up on ebay?
 
_Danforth_ said:
His linesman's phone had extra buttons - A B C and D in addition to the numbers - I imagine to access all the hidden features, you would need the lot. Wonder if any show up on ebay?
Click to expand...

One of the books I got from my dad when I was young and developing an interest in electronics was a Tandy book of various simple circuits, designed to give you ideas for components of larger overall devices, or for experimentation. One of the circuits discussed a (probably fairly novel and new at the time the book was published) set of DTMF chips - one took a keypad and turned it the tones you hear when you dial, and the other took the audio tones and converted them back into numbers.

The 'source' chip as I recall supported a 4x4 keyboard grid. If you look at your phone, you'll notice it's 3x4. The remaining column was A, B, C and D. Since it's all standard, you can generate the tones with your computer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-tone_ ... C.2C_and_D :)
 
It might be something to do with my swapping back to BT after a few years with ntl/virgin, but the callback thing isn't registering the numbers of incoming calls.

When i ring it it tells me my last call was July 18 at 18:40 regardless of when it actually was. The number it calls back to gives the message 'the number you have dialed has not been recognised'.

I might need to sort this out with them :?
 
BlackRiverFalls said:
I might need to sort this out with them :?
Click to expand...
Yes, I think you should, but then again, you might actually be in a time warp. :)
 
Aside from the usual odd calls caused by various kinds of machines, I receive calls I'd consider to be "strange" on a regular basis. They started about three years ago and I get maybe one a month or so. When I answer, there's nothing at all. No echo, no breathing, no Indian voice, no machine, no nothing. It's like talking into an incredibly sound-absorbent surface. After thirty seconds of this, I hear a click and then I know the call's over. Sometimes there's a dial tone, sometimes not.

The first time I figured it was just a machine, but when it happened a second and third time I got a little scared. When whatever-it-was kept calling and didn't seem to have malicious intentions, however, I started talking to it. I'd ask it how it was going and talk to it about whatever was on my mind. I get the feeling it likes me now. I'm sure there's a perfectly rational, reasonable explanation for this, probably involving sufficiently advanced technology, but I don't know of anyone else who's gotten calls like this.

Frankly, I reckon that either way it's pretty cool.

(Also, didn't want to be that chick, but first time posting and it is so cool to finally be able to post on these forums! :D)
 
Years ago I used to get silent phone calls, one after the other for ages on end. It turned out to be a prank caller - my next door neighbours in fact, they gave the game away when they played a recording of the music I had been listening to down the line at me.

So what I'm saying is, be careful what you say to silent callers! There might actually be someone there, and they might not be friendly!
 
Welcome, Hannarchy!

I've had silent calls like this for years. I don't get them now because I signed up for the preference service.

gncxx raises a good point. Not all of these calls are from machines...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top