Strange Phone Call

From: Alewyn Bruster (rnovak@ibm.net)
Story type: Ghost 
Location: Baltimore, MD 
Source: Form Submission

This incident occurred around the end of 1990 and is completely unembellished. What you read is exactly what happened. The story is still vivid in my mind to this day, six years later. I have changed the fellow employee's name.

A few years ago, I was working in a retail store and needed to get in touch with a fellow employee (we'll call her "Mary") to get some information regarding the evening's work schedules. I picked up the little phone book we had in the front desk drawer and looked up her number. Well, the number had been written in felt-tip and someone had gotten the page wet. As a result, the last 3 digits of the number were obliterated.

I grabbed the white pages and looked up her husband's name. The number given matched what I had of the number listed in our phone book. I picked up the customer service phone and dialed. The phone seemed to ring forever and then an elderly woman's voice came on the line. I asked for Mary and was told that there was no one at that number by that name. I apologized and identified myself and where I was calling from.

I also asked to confirm the number I was dialing in case I had hit a wrong number. She repeated the number I had dialed and had listed. I asked if this was the residence of Mary's husband and explained I was trying to get hold of his wife, but I didn't know if I was dialing the right number. She explained that there was someone living there by Mary's husband's name, but her daughter-in-law was named Elizabeth, not Mary. I thanked her and hung up.

Being that I had no further listings available under the correct name, I gave up on making the phone call and went back to my work. I waited until the next time I saw Mary to bring it up.

When I next saw Mary, I showed her the number that I called and asked "Is this your home number?" She looked at it and answered in the affirmative. I explained the strange conversation I had with the woman who answered the line. When I related the final part of the conversation, she got a stunned look on her face. When I asked what the problem was, she took me over away from the rest of the people who were around.

She explained that they had been dealing with difficulties in their phone lines. People would call them and the phone wouldn't ring. The new answering machine that they had purchased wasn't taking messages that people had said they had left. Other people had reported getting an elderly woman on the line, but no-one had bothered to pursue any more information other than that they had the wrong number. They had complained to the Phone Company 4 or 5 times. Finally, after much testing and finding nothing wrong, the phone company replaced all the phone wiring leading to their house from the NID (Network Interface Device). They also wired them into a different position on the NID to eliminate the possibility of crosstalk or cross-connected lines. Still, the problems persisted. She stated that when she heard my full explanation, she almost panicked. She told me that her husband's mother had died in her sleep in their house a few years ago. At the time, her husband had been married to his previous wife whose name was, you guessed it, Elizabeth. When I had called, she and her husband had been at a relative's house and there was no-one home! I should have gotten an answering machine!

Now we were BOTH weirded out by this turn of events. She continued to have problems with her phone and answering machine. She also reported lights turning themselves on all over the house in places where no one was around. She would wake up in the morning to find items in the kitchen and living areas re-arranged. At no point were the occurrences frightening or malevolent.

I left that job and moved on to another. Months later, I get a phone call late in the evening. It was Mary.

"Rob - you HAVE to hear this," she said. Her voice was a mixture of hysteria and excitement. She turned on her answering machine and put the mouthpiece of the receiver near the speaker. On the tape, I heard the same voice that answered my call months earlier. It was again explaining to the caller that Mary was not there and that her son was married to an Elizabeth. When Mary got back on the phone, she told me that when she played the tape for her husband, he couldn't believe it.

He kept asking her how she managed to get a tape of his mother and was getting angry because he though she was playing a rather tasteless joke.

I don't know whether she still has the tape. From what I understand, the incidents of lost phone calls and other phenomena had diminished and were becoming quite infrequent. I haven't spoken to her in some time, but I thought I would share this experience with you. I have had a few more "unexplainable" things happen to me in my lifetime, but none this involved.

rnovak@ibm.net SKA Alewyn Bruster

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