The familiar telephone looks the least probably thing you would associate with the supernatural, but through the years, there’ve been lots of reports of ghosts ringing up people, and that’s the topic of this collection of Strange But True tales: phone calls from the dead…
In 1969, a New Jersey rock music performer known as Karl Uphoff received a telephone call from his grandmother; nothing strange about that you might think, but Karl’s Gran had died 2 days earlier. Karl was eighteen at the time of the phantom call, and there had always been a special bond between him and his Gran, who was deaf. She used to phone up Karl’s friends and ask: ‘Is Karl There?’ but because she knew she wouldn’t be able to hear the reply, Karl’s Gran would then say, ‘Tell him to come home at once.’ Karl’s friends were always irritated by the deaf old woman’s constant calling, and used to tell Karl he shouldn’t have given his Gran their phone numbers.
One day Karl’s Gran died and the teenager was naturally upset, but he had no leanings towards spiritualism, and clearly never expected to hear from his Gran ever again. But Karl was wrong. One evening in 1969, Karl was with his friends in the basement of an apartment in Montclair, New Jersey, when the mother of his friend came down and said that Karl was wanted on the phone. When Karl walked upstairs he talked to the old woman and realised he was talking to his Gran, who had recently died. Before he could ask her how she could talk to him when she was dead, the woman hung up. Many more calls followed, but on each occasion, when Karl’s Gran was asked how she was still able to communicate, or what the ‘other side’ was like, the old woman would hang up. In the end, the calls stopped, but Karl felt that his Gran was still watching over him.
An additional chilling phone call from beyond the grave presumably occurred in Wilmslow, Cheshire in 1977, when a young woman known as Mary Meredith received a call at her home from her cousin Shirley in Manchester. Mary shuddered when she heard Shirley’s voice on what sounded like a bad line, because only minutes before, Mary had received a telephone call from her aunt telling her of Shirley’s tragic death in a car crash just an hour ago. Again, before the phantom caller could be questioned, she hung up.
In 1995, a radio station in Liverpool, England featured a medium named James Byrne who came on a phone-in show each week. Mr Byrne was a psychic who claimed he could convey messages from the next world, and was a very popular guest. In fact he was so popular, callers would jam the switchboard at the station whenever he was on air. One woman named Mrs Wilson of Ellesmere Port rang the radio station, desperate to get in touch with James Byrne because her grandfather had died a year ago and she wanted to know if he had any messages for her. Unfortunately, Mrs Wilson couldn’t get through to the medium because the lines were jammed solid, and so she just sat back and listened to Mr Byrne on the radio show. Around 10 o’clock that night, just as the News At Ten news programme was starting, Mrs Wilson’s phone rang. The woman answered the call, and a familiar, but distant-sounding voice said, ‘Look love, I’m all right. It’s great over here; I’m with your Grandmother and all the other nice people who have passed on.’
Mrs Wilson was naturally astounded, for she recognised that the caller was her late grandfather. ‘Granddad – is that you?’ she muttered. Her legs felt weak.
‘Yeah love. Now listen: stop living in the past and reminiscing. Go forward. I’m still around looking over you. I’ve got to go now love. Give my love to the kids. Bye.’ said the old man’s voice and it faded away until Mrs Wilson could just hear the purring tone.
Mrs Wilson wondered if someone was perpetrating a sick joke, so she dialled 1471 on the phone in order to get the caller’s number. But the automated voice on the line quoted Mrs Wilson’s own number. In other words, the call had originated from her own telephone. Mrs Wilson had no extension, and was therefore convinced that her grandfather had somehow called her from beyond the grave to let her know he was okay.
In the late 1980s, a Manchester woman in England named Sadie lost her husband in tragic circumstances. Her husband left her a considerable amount of money in his will, and Sadie and her 7-year-old daughter Abigail subsequently moved to a graceful old cottage just outside Sandbach. The landlord asked for a modest sum as a deposit on the cottage, and Sadie wondered why the rent was so low on such a desirable rustic residence.
She and Abigail gave the dusty cob-webbed place a good spring-cleaning, and later had it decorated. Sadie fell in love with the peaceful rear garden, which had a sad-looking weeping willow in the middle of its neglected lawn. Three months after moving into the Cheshire country house, Abigail excitedly told her mother one December evening that she had just seen ‘a kind old woman’ in a long black dress standing beneath the willow tree, smiling at her. Abigail said the woman waved once and faded away.
Abigail was a quiet, honest child who was not in the habit of imagining things and embroidering fanciful stories, so Sadie was a little unnerved by her daughter’s tale of the ghostly woman. However, there were no further sightings of the phantom, although many strange things did occur at the cottage not long afterwards.
One night, Abigail said she felt dizzy. Sadie put her daughter to bed earlier than normal and surmised that the girl was just over-tired, as she had risen earlier than normal that day and had helped out in the garden, digging the weeds. Sadie decided she would have an early night herself, and retired to her bedroom with a book. An hour had passed when there was a knock at the door of the cottage. Sadie was naturally alarmed and wondered who could be calling at 11 pm. She went downstairs to the hall in her slippers and night-gown and nervously asked who was there.
A well-spoken man replied that he was a doctor and that he had been called out to examine a girl named Abigail.
Sadie unbolted the door and opened it. A tall grey-haired man stood on the doorstep carrying a briefcase. He looked at a card in his hand and said, ‘You are Sadie?’ and he apparently knew Sadie’s surname.
Sadie explained that she had not called him out, but invited the physician indoors anyway. She took him up to Abigail’s bedroom and the doctor gave the child a quick examination. He pointed out the rash on Abigail’s arms and after shining his penlight torch in her eyes, he told Sadie it looked as if Abigail had the symptoms of meningitis. The doctor drove the girl and her shocked mother to hospital where Abigail was positively diagnosed as suffering from the potentially fatal condition. Because the brain disease was caught in its early stages, the antibiotics and other medicines luckily overcame the life-threatening condition.
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when my husband and myself lived in an apartment in san pedro,california in the mid 1990s to 2008,i recieved a phone call on our landline from an unknown man. He made a little hello and asked me how i was doing.I asked who was calling and he wouldn’t say. I then told him that I had to go as it was late [around 10:PM. He said goodbye,then hung up.I realised the whole incident was beyond strange as there was no hum on the phone after he had hung up.What had happened is not easily explained,as I remembered that the phone was not connected to the dang wall!We had been late on paying the bill,and I had gotten mad and unhooked the phone a week earlier. Your brothers’ number calling you is way strange,unless he had unfinished things to say to you. I pray he has peace with God. And be easy with yourself,one never knows when things can happen.Jesus bless you!
My brother was killed in a car accident and for two years on the day after his death I would get a missed call from his phone. His widow stated no calls were shown to have originated from their phone. I no longer receive them.