In the grand, phantom parade of the bizarre and the unexplained, the Ghostbusters franchise’s endless resurgence seems less like a nostalgic jaunt and more like a prophetic call from the ether—a question whispered in the shadows of our digital age: “Who you gonna call when the caller ID reads ‘Unknown from the Afterlife?’” The notion of getting a buzz from the beyond isn’t exactly fresh off the ectoplasmic press; it’s been ringing off the hook since Alexander Graham Bell thought, “Let’s make distance less of a relationship killer,” little knowing he was setting the stage for spectral speed dialers.
Flash forward through time, past the chills of The Twilight Zone’s 1961 episode “Long Distance Call,” where grandma wasn’t quite ready to say goodbye, to today’s technologically tethered terror tales like The Black Phone, where even the spirits seem to be on the friends and family plan. It’s a wild, weird world out there, and some folks have stories so outlandish, you’d swear their tin foil hats were on a little too tight.
Let’s let our fingers do the walking through the phonebook of the paranormal, shall we?
First up, we have the “Zodiac Killer’s Sick Day Spectacular.” It’s September 6, 1970, and nurse Donna Lass is either playing hooky from the great beyond, or she’s in dire straits because “someone” decides to give her boss and landlord a ring to say she’s taken an extended leave…to the afterlife. The Zodiac Killer, ever the attention seeker, might have been auditioning for the role of the Grim Reaper’s secretary, but for over fifty years, the case remained colder than a call center’s heart.
In a twist that seems ripped from the pages of a James Patterson novel, Lass’ family was thrown into a whirlwind of wondering when she vanishes, leaving behind her car, clothes, and untouched bank account. Following the freaky phone call, a postcard to the San Francisco Chronicle, decked out in full Zodiac Killer flair—crosshairs, cryptic Tahoe asides, and the spooky “peek through the pines” line—arrives, addressed to reporter Paul Avery. Was it the real Zodiac, or just a wannabe? Zip through a few decades of mystery, and then—in 1986, a lone skull turns up in Placer County, playing its best Can You Keep a Secret? game until forensic tech could catch up. Fast forward again to our current era of DNA, and we’ve finally got a match to the Lass family. The investigation continues, keeping everyone white-knuckled, but not, apparently, glued to their phones—that sole call in 1970 remains as the most mysterious clue of all.
Next, we’ve got “The Doppelganger of the Ditch,” starring Brandon Swanson in a real-life thriller. It’s past midnight, May 14, 2008, and Brandon’s car decides it’s had enough of the open road, opting instead for a scenic view from a ditch. Brandon, ever the optimist, rings up his folks, chatting away as he treks towards what he believes is salvation’s glow. He says he’s okay and will keep walking along the shoulder in the direction of the lit-up town so they can easily see him when they come to pick him up. As Brian and Annette Swanson drive, they keep Brandon on the line because they can’t find him. The teen says he sees city lights, but no street signs. “I talked to him for forty-seven minutes, and all of a sudden, he said, ‘Oh, shit!’ and the phone went dead,” Brian Swanson recalled in an interview with Pioneer Press. “There was nothing after that.”
That is the last anyone ever hears from Brandon Swanson. A huge search is mounted, but all that’s found is his car, which was undamaged but teetering partway into the ditch. Authorities assume he fell into a nearby river, but even after his unexpected exit, all calls to his cellphone still rang and rang. So if he did take a dive, he didn’t take his phone with him, because it likely would have sent all calls directly to voicemail without ringing. Land searches, with dogs, continued in the area for several years but nothing ever turned up.
Cue “Texts from the Crypt,” featuring the Frank and Sadie Jones family and their unseen, uninvited houseguest, whom they dubbed “The Thing.” It’s 1996, and the Joneses and their terrified young sons are knee-deep in poltergeist pranks in picturesque Blackpool. This unseen entity terrorized the family by pulling on bed covers and banging on walls until finally, it was officially exorcized by Fleetwood Spiritualist Church.
It seems to work for a few years, but when the coast is finally clear, the family’s bad luck returns two-fold. First the unexpected death of son Steven, then Sadie succumbs to a heart attack just a few months later. After she’s buried with her most prized possession—her phone—the horror returns thanks to the universe’s worst cell plan. To this day, Frank claims the late Sadie sends him texts from the grave. “There have been messages with words Sadie would say, but there’s no number,” he told The Blackpool Gazette in an interview.
Everyone’s either made or received a prank call. From “Do you have Prince Albert in the can?” to asking “Is Mike Hunt there?”—such random rings are usually harmless and fleeting. But when former Lebanese political hostage Bashir Kouchacji left his native country in the early 1980s to open a Moroccan restaurant in Washington, D.C., strange and unrelenting anonymous phone calls started coming in. And kept coming in…for almost a full decade. The calls range from demands for money, to death threats, and screamed obscenities. The FBI put a trace on the restaurant phone to confirm that L’Enfant was the real deal, but they can’t catch him because the calls are coming from different payphones from all over the city. At such a volume it’s impossible for only one person to be the dirty dialer—the men in suits counting at least 7,000 calls in a row. Bashir’s life is now a never-ending prank call, courtesy of L’enfant, a (presumably) grown man with a penchant for voice modulation and a personal vendetta against caller ID. L’enfant is the Houdini of harassment, leading us to wonder if it was all just a spectral stunt.
The case is eventually closed but it’s not over for the deeply distressed restaurateur. He barely sleeps and when he does, he has terrible nightmares. He develops psychosomatic disorders and in 1987, he checks himself into the psychiatric ward of Sibley Memorial Hospital. The dissolution of his marriage follows, along with a series of relentless legal challenges from employees regarding the harassing phone calls. Bashir is in and out of the psychiatric unit, incapacitated both physically and mentally from the stress. From what we gather, he’s still under a doctor’s care, although the phone calls have long since ceased.
Now we have the curious case of the “Phantom Caller of Liverpool.” W. H. Wallace, a man of numbers and policies, not prone to flights of fancy, receives a summons from the enigmatic R. M. Qualtrough. This mysterious figure, with a name that sounds suspiciously like a character out of a Charles Dickens novel, requests Wallace’s presence for game-playing at an address that, in a twist worthy of a gothic mystery, does not exist. Imagine Wallace, chess pieces dancing before his eyes like as scene from The Queen’s Gambit, wandering the misty streets of Liverpool in search of a phantom game-player.
Upon his return, the plot thickens like the proverbial pea soup when he discovers his wife, poor Julia, has been dispatched from this mortal coil with all the subtlety of a lead pipe in a game of Clue. The press, ever the vultures circling a carcass, sensationalize the ordeal, leaving our protagonist in a whirlwind of accusation and intrigue. Wallace, reportedly a man with all the emotional warmth of a particularly standoffish iceberg, finds himself ensnared in a judicial drama that would make Judge Judy’s robes rumple.
Despite the flimsy circumstantial evidence that could barely convict a cat of curiosity, the jury, in their infinite wisdom, decide Wallace is to swing from the gallows. Thankfully, an appeal overturns this grim fate, citing a lack of evidence. Freed, yet shrouded in societal suspicion, Wallace fades into the chronicles of crime, his life a question mark, his wife’s killer a shadow that never lengthened in the lamplight of justice…and who made that phone call, leading her hubby from the house?
Now, let us turn our attention to the blood-curdling tale of “The Backseat Bleeder of Coral Gables.” Enter Judith Hyams, a lusty lass caught in the swirling eddies of life’s tumultuous stream. Ah, the swinging sixties, a time of peace, love, and oh-so-judgmental glares at unmarried, pregnant women. She’s Coral Gables’ own mystery maiden, whose sudden vanishing act leaves her car, found in Atlanta, doubling as a crime scene with its backseat blood décor. Talk about a dramatic exit! The only connection cops can find is to Dr. George Hadju, a medical maestro with the credibility of a chocolate teapot, offering back-alley specials on procedures that were as legal as a pirated Beatles cassette. But the dear doctor pulls a Casper, vanishing without so much as a “poof.”
Fast forward twenty-five years, because nothing screams “urgent investigation” like a two-and-a-half-decade pause. Out of the blue, Captain Chuck Scherer of the Coral Gables PD gets a call from a Nebraska radio host with the skinny on Hyams’ cold case. Except, plot twist, the host is clueless about the call’s origin, leading armchair sleuths to ponder the phantom phone prankster. Another call rolls in, claiming Judith’s living her best life in Omaha. Scherer, probably wondering if his phone’s been cursed by a bored witch, is stumped. Let’s remember, this was 1990—a time when “going viral” meant you probably needed a doctor, not a PR agent. Then comes call number three, from a supposed FBI informant cozying up with Dr. Hadju in Hungary, dropping phone numbers like they’re hot. Scherer, now likely questioning his life choices, does what any self-respecting cop in an eighties flick would do: he calls Unsolved Mysteries. Because why solve a crime yourself when you can broadcast it?
After the episode airs, an anonymous letter arrives, playing spoiler to the whole saga: Judith met her tragic end during an illegal procedure and found her final resting place in Davy Jones’ locker. So here we are with a tale wrapped in twisty perplexities, shrouded in sixties scandal. Judith’s whereabouts? Unknown. Dr. Hadju? MIA. The prank callers? Probably laughing in a basement somewhere.
Last but not least, “The Thirty-Five Missed Calls from Beyond the Rail Tracks.” Charles E. Peck, a man tragically taken before his time in a catastrophic train collision, decides to give his final performance in a telephonic marathon. His device, acting as a medium, reaches out to his loved ones thirty-five times, offering nothing but eerie silence to those on the receiving end. Because Peck died on impact, he could not have made any of those calls himself. While a random pressing of buttons of speed dial might explain a few butt-dials, why would the calls be only to his nearest and dearest? And why was his phone never found? The only thing we know for sure is that Peck’s last act was a hauntingly persistent busy signal from the beyond.
And so, as we hang up on our spooky sojourn through the switchboard of the supernatural, let’s spare a thought for those intrepid souls who fielded these freaky phone calls. Imagine, if you will, being nestled in your avocado-green kitchen, a rotary phone your only lifeline to the outside world, when suddenly it jangles with the fervor of a thousand haunted spirits. No caller ID to screen the call, no answering machine to bravely take one for the team. Just you and the eerie static, punctuated by a voice that sounds suspiciously like Great Aunt Gertrude who, inconveniently, has been six feet under since the Eisenhower administration.
Fast forward to the 21st century, where the art of the prank call has evolved with the times. Gone are the simple days of asking if the refrigerator is running. Now, with the magic of technology, one can conjure up calls from numbers that mimic your own, or even from the White House if you’re feeling particularly cheeky. Apps and websites offer a buffet of prank call options, complete with pre-recorded scenarios that can have your friends conversing with a bot about their car’s extended warranty in the afterlife. The spirits of pranksters past must be green with envy at our digital trickery, as we carry in our pockets the means to summon voices from the ether with the touch of a button.
So, as you ponder the possibility of receiving your very own chilling voicemail, remember that in the age of smartphones and smart homes, the next time you hear a ring, it could be your dearly departed pet goldfish calling to remind you to clean the tank. Or, more likely, just another telemarketer from the switchboard in the sky, trying to sell you on the latest eternal timeshare. Either way, keep your wits about you, and maybe, just maybe, let it go to voicemail.
