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Posted: 11-07-2013 23:06 Post subject:

general phone weirdness thread here

Posted: 11-07-2013 23:21 Post subject:

Posted: 11-07-2013 23:28 Post subject:

Posted: 12-07-2013 12:10 Post subject:

as someone posted upthread i think the correspondence may have been in the letters pages

Posted: 12-07-2013 20:43 Post subject:

Posted: 14-07-2013 08:24 Post subject:

Posted: 18-07-2013 23:19 Post subject:

Hi! Pretty sure the stories you refer to are in It Happened To Me, Volume 1. I read it not long ago and it sits on my Kindle still. I will double check, but it's now time for me to rest my aching eyes. Night all!

Posted: 02-08-2013 14:58 Post subject: The Little Voice

I'm the author of the experience that was reprinted as 'The Little Voice' in It Happened to Me Vol. 1 (with a nice illustration by Etienne). It's in my porfolio of (mostly) fortean articles here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremyglover/3615230960/in/set-72157624300775739

The main point, I guess, is that while the caller sounded like a genuine child (although I'm not even 100% about that), the call had the feel of a hoax OR something more fortean, even supernatural - odd and unreal, anyway. The girl had her lonely and frightened 'script' and my efforts to develop the conversation failed. It was altogether quite an unnerving event. It was probably most likely on the lines something I and a friend - and I expect quite a lot of kids - used to dabble in, prank calls. In days when the possibilities for amusement were much more limited, phoning up a stranger 'in character' could be hilarious fun, but we always tended towards absurd scenarios a la Bart Simpson, nothing like the 'I need help' scenarios that adults find so unnerving, and resultingly have found their way into this thread.

Of course, kids can do strange things that in an adult context seem utterly inappropriate. Once on my way out from Primrose Hill, London, to a gig I noticed a stone wrapped in paper on the street right by the bridge to Chalk Farm. The paper was a note that said "Help, I've been kidnapped". I showed it to the police at Kentish Town Station, who grumbled about it happening just before they were due to knock off, but still took it very seriously. I was taken back to the street, and 'undercover' with a plain clothes detective, retraced the route past the house to subtly point out where I found it. The police knocked at the house and found some kids who were apparently playing a game, so nothing happened.

On a related subject, I've also had the experience of a public phonebox ringing as I was walking past it. Twice, or even three times, this has happened to me, the first time at the phonebox at the corner of the Barnoon cemetery in St. Ives, Cornwall, around dusk. A simple wrong number. The second time was just a few months later in Durham at the dead of night, which was an even stranger coincidence as I'd ended up there completely by random chance, having hitchhiked that day from Cornwall with friends. It was as far as we could get in one day and our endpoint was marked by this odd synchronicity, after which we went back home.

Posted: 02-08-2013 16:20 Post subject:

Thanks for the follow up, Carfax. I wonder if prank calls are less prevalent now that mobile phones are in widespread use, when if you're considering phoning people up for mischief you realise it's your own money you're wasting? Or are the calls easier to be traced?

Posted: 02-08-2013 17:00 Post subject:

Posted: 03-08-2013 17:51 Post subject:

There's a feeling of power over the victim, I suppose, and no matter how small that is it is significant to some minds.

Posted: 03-08-2013 20:22 Post subject:

Some people get enjoyment from causing mischief.

Posted: 06-08-2013 00:57 Post subject:

I have no evidence, but I suspect prank calls are less common now, for 2 reasons I can think of: first, caller ID sorta spoils it all, and second, most kids now have a lot more things to do before they get bored enough to think, "I know, phone up a stranger!" But who knows. I don't think it was ever all that prevalent.

Posted: 06-08-2013 08:14 Post subject:

On a similar note, does anyone else recall a letter to FT several years ago in which it was claimed that if a certain number was dialled the (presumably recorded) message heard at the other end was something along the lines of "Suzie's Dead"?

I think the writer of this letter claimed that they called this number several times in the 1970s and it was common knowledge amongst kids that the reply would always be the same (hence the implication that it was a recorded message).

This does seem to suggest a 1970s 'playground contemporary legend' of some sort; alternatively, there may have been a pre-recorded message (much like the speaking clock) of a utilitarian nature that was misinterpreted as a more sinister message if heard by a child or young adult.