The familiar telephone seems the least likely thing you'd
associate with the supernatural, but over the years, there have
been literally hundreds of reports of ghosts ringing up people, and
that is the subject of this collection of Strange But True tales:
phone calls from the dead...
In 1969, a New Jersey rock musician named Karl Uphoff received a
phone call from his grandmother; nothing unusual about that you
might think, but Karl's Gran had passed away two 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 passed away and the teenager was naturally
upset, but he had no leanings towards spiritualism, and obviously
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 went 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.
Another chilling phone call from beyond the grave allegedly
occurred in Wilmslow, Cheshire in 1977, when a young woman named
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.
But who had contacted the doctor to call him out to Abigail? Sadie
was really puzzled by that mystery. She didn't have an idea at the
time, but something later happened which gave her a good idea who
the eerie helper was.
In 1989, a handsome middle-aged man called at Sadie's cottage. He
said his car had ran out of petrol and he asked the widow if she
could possibly lend him a few pounds so he could go and fill his
can at the filling station down the road. The man offered to leave
an expensive-looking watch as a security and promised he'd return
later to repay Sadie. Sadie kindly gave the sincere-looking man a
five-pound note and he seemed very grateful. He walked off to the
filling station with his can and loaded it with petrol, then
returned to his Ford Fiesta, which was parked up at a lane near to
Sadie's cottage. When the man had emptied the can of petrol into
the Fiesta's fuel tank, he went over to the cottage and gave the
widow the change from the five-pound note she had lent him. The man
said he would set off right away to get the money he owed her, and
although Sadie told him that wouldn't be necessary, the man left.
He returned about six that evening with a bunch of carnations and
the money he owed Sadie. The cottager was flattered, and when she
accepted the roses, the man kissed her hand then turned, ready to
walk away. Sadie suddenly said to him: 'Wait; you forgot your
wristwatch.'
The man said 'Oh yes,' and walked back up the path to her.
Sadie said to the man, 'Come in and have a cup of tea.'
It had been quite some time since Sadie had had some male company,
and she did find the man attractive. Over a cup of tea he told her
that he was from Middlewich and that his name was Tim. In the
course of the long conversation that stretched until 9 pm, Tim said
that the girl he had gone steady with for four years had recently
left him for someone else, and that he was now wary of getting
involved with the opposite sex again. Sadie advised him not to
become a recluse because of his experiences with one girl, and
hinted that she was still looking for someone too. Sadie was almost
forty but looked about thirty-five. Tim said he was twenty-six.
Sadie thought the age gap between them wasn't too big, and she and
Tim ended their chat that evening by swapping telephone
numbers.
Two days afterwards, Sadie telephoned Tim but got a steady
disconnected tone. She wondered if the young man had only given her
a 'dead' number just to appease her. She didn't know what to think,
but she hoped she would see or hear from Tim again. A few days
later, the phone in Sadie's cottage started to ring. Abigail picked
it up as Sadie was racing towards it. The girl said, 'It's for you
Mum.'
Sadie grabbed the receiver and said :' Hello?'
Tim didn't reply. It was the voice of an old woman, and she said
some horrible things about Tim from Middlewich. She said he was a
bigamist and a confidence trickster who knew about the large amount
of money that had been left to Sadie by her late husband.
Sadie was stunned by the claims and a little heartbroken. She asked
the caller to identify herself, and the old woman told Sadie that
her landlord would provide her with that answer. Tim paid another
visit to Sadie one Sunday evening in the following week. This time
he brought more flowers and a bottle of wine to the cottage. Sadie
asked Tim about the strange telephone call she had received and
what the anonymous old woman had said. When Tim heard about the
caller's allegations about him being a bigamist and a conman, the
young man suddenly got up, put on his coat, and left the cottage
without saying a word. Sadie never set eyes upon Tim again, and
several months later she learned from a neighbour that Tim was
regarded as a rather shady character who had spent six months in
prison for fraud. He was also rumoured to have two wives; one in
Crewe and another in Chester. He was also currently living with a
mistress in Middlewich.
When Sadie's landlord visited her one day, she told him about the
mysterious old woman who had telephoned with her strange tip-offs.
The landlord seemed very nervous all of a sudden. Sadie told him
that the uncanny caller had said that the landlord knew her
identity.
In the end, the landlord said that previous occupants in the
Sandbach cottage had reported seeing the ghost of an old woman. The
former tenants had also told him of creepy late-night nuisance
calls from an old woman who gave advice and warnings. The landlord
said he initially thought the stories were just exaggerations and
excuses to leave without paying the rent. Sadie promised her
landlord she would not move out because she regarded the ghost as
helpful and harmless. The landlord then told Sadie that an old
spinster named Enid had died at the cottage five years back. She
had lived in the cottage for some twenty years, and was something
of a recluse. There were rumours that she had been jilted in her
youth and had never bothered with men again. The only thing she
lived for was the back garden. One afternoon she was found dead
beneath the willow tree in the garden she had so lovingly tended.
The coroner ruled that Enid had died from a massive stroke, but
within months, the new tenants at the cottage reported seeing the
spectre of an elderly woman crossing the lawn in the back garden
one moonlit night. The landlord confessed that he also glimpsed
Enid's shade one wintry evening. He saw her glide across the
snow-covered lawn, but when he went to investigate, there were no
footprints in the virgin snow.
The ghost hasn't phoned for a while, but whenever the phone rings,
Sadie often wonders if its Enid calling. Sadie still hasn't found
Mr Right and although Abigail is now married, her mother doesn't
feel lonely, because she knows Enid is always around
somewhere.
Are you expecting any phonecalls tonight?...
