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Strange Gargling Phone Call From An Unplugged Phone

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Anonymous

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I haven't been able to explain this event rationally to myself for years but upon reading your article on EVP I wondered if this could be some sort of communication from the 'other' side?

This event happened to me around 15 years ago whilst I was on my summer break from school. I had been out all day with a friend of mine and on returning to his house we saw a British Telecom van parked a few house up working on one of the telegraph poles. Joking around I said that they had probably put his phone back on (his mother had refused to pay the bill on numerous occasions). After a while of sitting in his living room listening to the new records we had purchased, the phone rang???

Needless to say we both jumped out of our skins. My friend answered the phone and with no one being on the other end he hung up. Around 15 mins later the phone rang again (it made us jump again too). This time though I answered it, all I could hear on the other end was what can only be described as someone gargaling with hair gel. I passed the phone to my friend who listened to this and he went white as a sheet. He recognised the sound as that of his late Father who had died from throat cancer.

The phone was hung up very quickly at that point.

Whilst we were sitting there trying to figure out what was happening, the phone rang again. For some strange reason, which is not known to either of us, we decided to look behind the sofa ( this was where the jack plug socket for the phone was). At this point the phone rang again, whilst my friend and I were looking at a phone lead that wasn't even plugged in!

Needless to say the pair of us ran from his house screaming like 2 little kids. I know what I saw and heard that day and now as the afore mentioned friend works for BT he cannot explain it.

Has anyone got any explanation for it?
 
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I'm not sure if this explains it, but "phone calls from the dead" is a well-documented phenomenon. Many people have received calls from the recently departed, usually in consolation or to confirm continued existence. In some cases the receiver wasn't aware that the caller was dead!

In any case, I don't blame you for running out of the house. For my own part, I would have been touching cotton.
 
Good point.

It might have been a hell of a long-distance call!
 
"Touching cotton" :?:
I have never heard of that before. Can you tell me about it?
 
Whoa.

That'd disturb the hell out of me.

...And PShaw beat me to the cotton thing.
 
"Touching cotton" is talking about poo coming out (Usually because of fear.) when you're not on the toilet and therefore touching the cotton of your underpants. It's a variation of "crapping yourself".

There, that was decorous, wasn't it? ;)
 
Seriously now , this is getting wierd. As I reported a few days ago, when I was reading a thread on EVP, my computer spoke to me and I almost had a heart attack.

Now reading this one, I had just read about the reciever of the call not knowing the person they were talking to was dead, when the phone next to me on the table rang. Trembling with fear, I answered the call. It was my GF, so I asked if she was dead. She isn't and I'm late!! ;)
 
Thanks, Cider. I think the phrase is one of the more charming UK euphamisms.
 
So, Ringo, I take it you're on dial-up?
 
HI Gemaki, No we've got a seperate dsl line and a phone line. My computer spoke to me because I had been messing with .wav files earlier. The thing is when I'm reading posts I get consumed with interest that the outside world just fades away, so I jump out of my skin at any loud noise. Especially if they're connected to what I'm reading about. Nothing fortean happened, just plain old nerves. ;)
 
Damn. Would have been a great story if you were on dial-up!

I once answered a call for help from a fellow list-member, she was picking up her neighbors CB radio broadcasts, she thought her computer was possessed! She said the kids were making all these horrible gurgling demon noises, I guess she touched cotton!! :p
 
Somebody should design an emoticon for that!! :wince: close but not right!
 
Rancid, my mother got a phone call from her mother several years ago on Easter Sunday. Doesn't sound out of the ordinary...however, her mother had died several years before that.

She could hear her mother saying "hello? hello?".....until the line got crackly and static-like and then her voice faded away.

Scared the heck out of my mom. :shock:
 
it's quite sad to think of a loved one trying to communicate with you so hard and yet failing at the last hurdle.... :cry:
 
No it bloody isn't!! What the hell do they think they're playing at? there you are minding your own business and they come bumbling along and scare the crap out of you!

It's such bad manners and so intrusive. :shock:
 
Some years ago I rashly made an agreement with someone that whoever died first would visit the other afterwards.
Well........... :shock:

So if anyone'd like a phone call from me after my death, pm me your number. Or maybe I won't need it. ;) And I promise to do my telephonic post-mortem best to scare you rigid.

You might have a long wait, though. I hope. :D
 
That's pretty disturbing. Your friend's late father rings up, just to remind him of how he sounded before he died? I can imagine your friend hoping he doesn't decide to move back home. That would be damn creepy.

Well, that's what happens when you don't pay your phone bills.
 
I'm with staticgirl on this one, folks. What kind of energy or psychic capital has to be expended to place that kind of long-distance call?!

I'm in middle age and fortunate enough that my parents are still happily knocking around on the planet's surface. Though they are about 500 miles (is that perhaps 800 kilometers?) away and thus we communicate mostly by phone. Thanks to this thread, I'll try to remember to be prepared to say something loving and encouraging if, later on in life, I should get such a special call.

My devotion to reasonableness notwithstanding, in the moment I'll still probably jump out of my skin before I remember that I posted this... :shock:
 
well, except for the part about the unplugged phone ringing, i would be suspicious that the phone guy was either messing with you, or made some sort of mistake and called you.
i work as a phone tech myself, and it is very easy to just switch a wire or two around at the "crossbox" (it's a box where you take the incoming from the central office, and send it to the houses in a particular neighborhood), and power up the dial tone to your house with someone else's number -seeing as yours was turned off for non-payment.
i work with a guy who used to take great delight in making prank interruptions and confusing people. in fact i was with him one time when he had two women in a phone conversation thinking they were going nuts. i should be more mature, but i have to admit i nearly pissed myself laughing so hard. he was making beeping noises in their conversation, then when one of them tried to call repair and it says "hit 1 for english, 2 for spanish" he hit 2.. of course she didnt speak spanish, and called back. then he hit random numbers mid dial so she was dialing the wrong number... etc etc.
sigh lol
 
i should be more mature, but i have to admit i nearly pissed myself laughing so hard.
Click to expand...

Aw, maturity's no fun. Better to stick with being childish! :D
 
You have a great job there. Almost a calling. :lol:
 
staticgirl said:
it's quite sad to think of a loved one trying to communicate with you so hard and yet failing at the last hurdle.... :cry:
Click to expand...

This, to me, is one of the greatest tragedies I see in certain kinds of Forteana (and yet also a kind of a defining and sympathetic characteristic). The appearance of trying to connect and fit in while utterly failing in an obvious and sad way. The Human Suit thread is another example of this. In all cases, assuming the intent behind these events were directed in much the same way you or I would use our phones today, it's fascinating for me to systematically imagine all the possible motivations on the part of the source of the evp (or of the human suit). As well as their own ultimate feelings about the encounter, in hindsight.
 
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