Douglas Scott Rogo's 1979 book on
phone calls from the dead was mentioned. We have threads on 'phone weirdness' including two on the specific subject of apparent after-death telephone contact.
(Rogo was incidentally mysteriously murdered in 1990 at the age of 40.)
Around the time Rogo's book came out, phone weirdness and especially the supernatural aspects were very much in the air. A flap, like spoon-bending. There were magazine and tabloid stories about it.
I was interested, partly because of enjoying general strangeness and partly because I'd heard of the
phreaking.
(Also, for a while in 1979 I lived in a house with a very modern Trimphone which could only take incoming calls.
It was a novelty to me; hadn't had any type of phone before and the Trimphone was always lit up. I'd see it at night and wonder if
the dead might like to ring me on it.
)
The episode's events started in 1992. At this time 'phreaking' was certainly a thing.
We have a thread on it, started by
@Ermintruder. 'Phreaking' was mentioned by others and myself before then although I can't find my own references to it. Gone in the purges perhaps.
Phone Phreaking: The Net Before The Internet
Here's a comment of mine on that thread:
I first heard about phreaking from the Guardian in the late '70s. Tried to discuss it with people, nobody knew what I was on about.
So since the late '70s I have believed that telephones are no more credible than are photographs; both can be manipulated to deceive. Not only can you not believe your own eyes, your ears can be fooled too.
All of this applies tenfold today of course, but we're talking about 1992.
In light of this, my first thought was that the telephone aspects are a prank.
The calls Will picked up could have been
phreaked (dunno what else you'd call it) to present a crossed line instead of a direct connection.
Dunno about the mustachio'd man though.