Phone Calls from Beyond the Grave

Can communication technologies be used as a tool to allow the dead to communicate with us who are left behind? Phantom phone calls are a real and documented phenomena but their cause and purpose is yet to be determined.

A man named Charles Peck took the train one September afternoon in Los Angeles. Unfortunately when the train he was in crashed into an oncoming train Peck and 25 other passengers were killed instantly.

For several hours after the crash, Peck’s phone called multiple members of his friends and family. It called his fiancée, his son, his sister, his brother and his stepmother.

When they answered the phone calls they could only hear static on the other end if the line. When they tried to call him back the calls went straight to voicemail as if the phone was turned off.

Once the rescue team arrived they concluded that Peck had died immediately on impact, meaning it was impossible that it was him who made the phone calls. Stranger still his cell phone was never recovered.

Author Dean Koontz experienced a similar spooky phone call. One afternoon Mr Koontz received an unexpected call at his office.

The voice at the other end belonged to a woman and was very faint. It only spoke two words: “Be careful.” Koontz was startled by the call as his number was unlisted and it was a very unusual way to begin a phone call.

He asked “who are you” but the voice did not answer instead repeating three more times “Be careful.” After hanging up the phone Koontz realised the voice sounded like that if his deceased mother.

Several days later Koontz was visiting his father in the mental facility where he was staying. Unbeknownst to Koontz his father had recently purchased a knife and sharpened the blade.

When Kootz entered the room, his dad attempted to stab him with the knife. A bystander managed to call the police and Koontz was able to wrestle the knife away and step into the foyer just as the police arrived. “Drop the knife,” they yelled, but Koontz tried to explain that hit wasn’t him causing the commotion.

When they asked a second time Koontz was reminded of the phone call. He realised that if he didn’t comply they might shoot him. He dropped the knife in order to “Be careful.”

There have also been reports of text messages coming from beyond the grave. In 2008, a British man claimed that his deceased wife was communicating with him via texts from strange phone numbers.

He first received a call from his own number, accompanied by the smell of his wife’s favorite perfume. From then on he received many texts from an unlisted number using unique phrases that his wife used often.

In a similar vein in April 2011 a YouTube user uploaded a recording of a strange voicemail she received. She states that her grandfather died on the 23rd of December 2010.

The voicemail was received several months later in March and the user states that the phone only rang one time before going to voicemail. What she heard when playing back the voicemail was unnerving. The static in the background is broken by a faint raspy voice whispering the word, “Grandpa.”