Cooper, C.E. (2010). Phone calls from the dead. Anomaly: Journal of Research into the Paranormal, 44, 3-21.

281

Research Interests:

Phone Calls from the Dead edit

Download (.pdf)

Edit Delete Move section

281

Journal of Research Into the Paranormal [Vol.44, November 2010]

PHONE CALLS FROM THE DEAD

By Callum E. Cooper

Sheffield Hallam University

contact@calcooper.com orthe-scientist@hotmail.co.uk

A review and revisit to the phenomenon of ‘phone calls from the dead’ originally researched by Rogo and Bayless (1979), is given in this paper. The topic has beenleft dormant with regard to new research or theories for the past thirty years sincethe work was originally published. A brief outline of Rogo and Bayless’s work andthree fascinating new examples of phone calls from the dead with which theauthor has recently been presented while collecting cases of the calls are outlined.The phenomenon is not easily explained and there are a number of possibilities tocritically consider in each individual case in terms of fraud, psychology,parapsychology, physics and paraphysics. A few possible explanations are putforward in an attempt to understand the phenomenon further and to demonstratehow complex each case can be in terms of technology and possible paranormalphenomena.

ISTORICAL

OTE

Communication with the dead via electrical devices has been given moreconsideration by great thinkers and inventors than some people might believe.The most famous of these is the inventor Thomas Edison who was very intrigued by the idea of the mind’s survival of death throughout his life due to his parents’involvement in spiritualism and who supposedly began to pursue experiments totest the theory. Edison believed it could be possible to develop a telephone of sorts that could enable the living to contact the dead. He made it public that hehad already begun work on this project in 1920 during an interview with

Scientific American

(Lescarboura, 1920). He claimed that the apparatus would be extremely delicate. It would not guarantee communication with humanpersonality after death, but if it does survive after the body dies then it would atleast give anyone who has survived on another plane of existence a better chanceof communicating with the living. Edison’s idea began because of the work of British scientist Sir William Crooke who had developed equipment that couldsupposedly photograph spirits (this being an early example of ITC also known asInstrumental Transcommunication, which is supposedly a way of contacting thedead through any instrumental means) (Butler and Butler, 2008)). The imagesof supposed spirits photographed by Sir William had apparently inspired andencouraged Edison to believe that if ghosts could be photographed,demonstrating and apparently supporting their visual presence, then Edison’s

Journal of Research Into the Paranormal [Vol.44, November 2010]

own device could prove successful. Unfortunately Edison died before he couldcomplete his machine (passing away in 1931). It is said that an attempt wasmade to find the blue prints for the machine after his death but none could befound. A few years later it was reported that the incomplete machine and the blue prints were found, but it is still debated as to whether this was a publicity stunt and was actually fraudulent (Taylor, 1998). The Thomas Edison museumin Texas still receives a lot of enquiries from the public on the matter of Edison’stelephone that could contact the dead. However they have had to turn away many people who ask for further information on the matter. The only trueevidence of such an invention is Edison’s own words in the interview with

Scientific American

. Even then, it appears that we shall never know if he hadany ‘true intentions’ of attempting to create such a machine.

NTRODUCTION

Claims of phone calls from the dead are rare; however they have beenthoroughly documented with detailed transcripts of the phone conversations(Rogo and Bayless, 1979). These phone calls involve a person answering atelephone call from someone who is purportedly dead at the time the phone call was made. However, the person receiving the call is not always aware that thecaller is in fact dead at the time they spoke to them (usually this is discoveredlater); these types of calls seem to last the longest. The caller is normally a closefriend or family member and typically these calls are received just a few minutesor hours after the death of the caller. The conversations can involve a generaltalk about day to day things but more commonly comprise a farewell or warningof some form of danger of which the recipient should be made aware. This topichas been well documented by Rogo and Bayless (1979) and theories have beenprovided in order to shed light on how or why this type of phenomenon couldoccur. Electronic Voice Phenomenon, commonly known as EVP (MacRae,2004) has been theorised as a process in which voices that are unheard by thehuman ear can actually be heard over or on electrical sound equipment.Paranormal voices have been reported on various devices such as: dictaphones,camcorders, mp3 recorders and even landline telephones or mobile phones.However, in cases of a phone call from the dead it would seem just as plausible,rather than being due to EVP, to result from a combination of psychokinesis(also referred to as ‘PK’) (Radin, 1997)) and auditory hallucinations and/orphantom voices (Rogo, 1976; Bayless, 1976; Hamilton, 1983) as documented inhaunting cases, thus creating the effect of a phone call from the dead (simply atheoretical possibility). This combination will be further discussed later in thispaper. However, in these cases PK may be exerted by the living recipient or thedead caller to make the phone ring. If PK in some cases comes from the caller,then this shows an example of what I’d label a ‘

crisis poltergeist’

. In psychicalresearch the term crisis is normally used to refer to ‘crisis apparitions’ (Tyrrell,1953, pp.33-34), which are said to be a telepathic image of someone who is

Journal of Research Into the Paranormal [Vol.44, November 2010]

undergoing a crisis, such as dying, or has just died. These cases of crisisapparitions are very rare today. They demonstrate possible brief survival of personality after death in order to get a last message to a friend or loved one,and a last message of goodbye often features in phone calls from the dead. Inmost cases of crisis apparitions it seems this message is of the death of theperson visualised as an apparition. What could effectively be a crisis poltergeistseems to be perfectly demonstrated in some cases of phone calls from the dead.The poltergeist gives a message of a last goodbye with a combination of auditory hallucinations and a physical effect on the environment (i.e. ringing thetelephone) with no apparitions presented, yet still showing possible support forsurvival. Apart from the work of Rogo and Bayless (1979), very little academic researchon phone calls from the dead can be found either in journals or parapsychology text books. The occurrence of EVP itself was not reported until 1959 whenSwedish film maker Friedrich Jurgenson (Bender, 1972, p.65) claimed he hadsuccessfully recorded voices of the dead (Rogo and Bayless, 1979). The fact thatEVP was not noticed in parapsychology until this time could have a number of explanations; the subject matter itself can be approached from many anglessuch as psychology, physics or as a genuine paranormal phenomenon.However, the events themselves do fall into the parapsychological category of ‘survival of human personality’ after death, which was classically discussed by Myers (1903). Therefore we should consider phone calls from the dead as anaspect of parapsychology even though the phenomenon itself is exceedingly rarecompared to everything else that is covered in the field.The work by Rogo and Bayless (1979) on phone calls from the dead found thatthese fell into different categories according to conversation length and detail within it. The four main call types in Rogo and Bayless’s (1979) researchimplied the involvement of a supposedly dead caller and the fifth (unusual) typeinvolved the living. These are described as follows:1)

Type 1

‘Simple Calls’

– These are the most common reported phone callsfrom the dead. The dead caller says only a few words and is unresponsive to any questions asked. At this point the caller may say nothing at all and the line willgo dead without any sound of the caller hanging up the phone or being cut off.2)

Type 2

‘Prolonged Calls’

– These calls are rarer than type 1. They last forsome time and involve a conversation like any other telephone call. Therecipient does not realise, until after the call, that the caller was in fact dead atthe time. Due to the recipient of the call not knowing the caller is dead, thissomehow seems to allow the conversation to last longer. Type 1 cases of simple

Journal of Research Into the Paranormal [Vol.44, November 2010]

calls show that the shock of knowing the caller is dead somehow leaves theconversation short or the dead caller unresponsive.3)

Type 3

‘Answer Calls’

– These are cases where a living person makes acall to someone they do not realise is dead and yet they get an answer. Thesecalls are usually prolonged.4)

Type 4

‘Apparent Calls’

– Most cases of phone calls from the dead involvea dead person calling a living person. The receiver of the call may or may notknow that the caller is dead. Thus it may create a prolonged phone call orsimple call. This is simply a possible mixture of type 1 and 2 calls.5)

Type 5 ‘

Intention Calls’

– These are calls in which we intend to callsomeone with a specific conversation in mind. However, for some reason wechoose to postpone the call until a later time. You then receive a call from theperson you intended to call. They refer to you calling earlier and discussing withthem the topic you were going to discuss, or they call you answering yourmessage to call them about that topic. Essentially they received the messagefrom someone with your voice, who carried out your intended conversation which you never made, although you had the intention to do so. These are very much like apparitions of living people, but in this case involving phoneconversations. This type of call was even experienced by D. Scott Rogo:

‘‘It was 4 o’clock on a bright Thursday afternoon, and I was lying on my livingroom couch thinking about making a phone-call to a psychologist I knew at theU.C.L.A. Neuropsychiatric Institute. Although I intended to make the call, I never did. About six that evening, though, I got the shock of my life when a call came in from the Institute and from the office of the very psychologist I had thought about calling. The call was from her research assistant saying that hewas ‘answering my message’. When I asked what in blazes he was talkingabout, he told me at 4pm a call had come in to them from me. The caller had left my name, and had asked the call be returned!’’

D. Scott Rogo’s example (1986, pp.116-117)

ECENT CASES OF

HONE

ALLS FROM THE

EAD

Case 1)

This following case is not a perfect example of a phone call from the dead;however I will outline it in this paper as it is the first case to inspire me to begincollecting more cases to add to the work of Rogo and Bayless. Many rational

Journal of Research Into the Paranormal [Vol.44, November 2010]

explanations can be offered, though the case is an interesting one, which madenews headlines in the US. Very few cases of phone calls from the dead are generally documented.Incredibly, I found that many newspapers and other media reported on a case of a dead victim of a train crash repeatedly ringing his family for hours after he hadactually died (Altman, 2008). The event occurred on September 12

2008, andinvolved a Metrolink and Union Pacific freight train collision in the Chatsworthdistrict of Los Angeles, California that killed many people; among them was 49 year old Charles Peck. At the time of the crash Peck’s son received a call fromhis father, but his father did not speak and he simply asked his father if he wasOK and asked where he was, but no reply was heard. Peck’s family began toreceive more mobile phone calls from his phone during the time that rescuers were recovering as many survivors as they could from the train crash. WhenPeck’s family answered his calls all they could hear every time was static. Whenthe family tried to call Peck back their calls went straight to voicemail as thoughthe battery was empty or Peck’s phone was turned off. Five hours after the trainhad crashed and Peck had died in the collision (still without the family beingaware of this) Peck’s wife received another call from his phone. Aware of thetrain crash but believing because of the number of phone calls they had receivedfrom his phone that he was still alive the family yelled down the phone words of encouragement that rescuers were going to get him out and that it wouldn’t bemuch longer until he would be out of the wreck and safe. Further calls weremade to Peck’s family from his phone, which prompted rescue teams to work faster to find this potential survivor of the train wreck. On tracing these callsthe rescue team found that they were coming from the first carriage. The callsstopped at 3:28 am; half an hour later teams found Peck’s body; he had died onfirst impact and been dead for hours. A total of 35 calls were made from Peck’sphone to his family from the time of the train crash to the time his body wasrecovered. Peck’s mobile phone itself was never recovered from the train wreck.Unlike a typical phone call from the dead no conversation took place and thedead caller’s voice was never heard, only the sound of static. However, static iscommonly heard in cases of EVP (MacRae, 2004).I include this case in this paper simply because it is the first in recent times which triggered my interest as to whether phone calls from the dead are still being experienced, and this case was made very public. However, many questions can be raised from the case of Charles Peck’s phone calls supposedly being made from another world beyond death. On the one hand maybe this is agenuine case of a loved one who had died and was trying desperately to get afinal message of goodbye to their family. However, on the other hand, there aremany very obvious and rational explanations we can put forward to shed lighton this event. We must consider the interesting fact that Peck’s mobile phone

Journal of Research Into the Paranormal [Vol.44, November 2010]

itself was never recovered; due to the scale of the crash, the phone could have been destroyed or thrown by the impact and simply lost. Due to this the phonemay have been so damaged or crushed against wreckage that it repeatedly callednumbers in the stored memory until the battery died.One thing is certain; the calls received were definitely from Peck’s phone as therecipients’ had his name displayed on their phone each time he called them.

If,

the call was a genuine attempt of communication from the dead, we shouldconsider the times when we answer a landline telephone (that does not display the caller’s name) but only scrambled voices or simply nothing is heard. Then we hang up as there was no one there. Or was there? What percentage of thesecalls could potentially be an attempted phone call from the dead? The recipientmay simply forget that they received a call with what seemed to be no caller onthe line and the next day they discover that someone close to them died thenight before at the time the call came through. Could the two events of amysterious phone call attempt and the death of someone close to us occurringpractically at the same time be linked? I am not suggesting that blank calls areparanormal in any way, but in relation to research on phone calls from the deadand the death of someone close, the coincidence of events is at least worthconsideration. At the very least they create a fascinating philosophical debatefor anyone familiar with survival research and research on phone calls from thedead. However, once again many rational explanations could be put forward inthese cases, especially with regards to calls that are completely silent (automaticcall companies for example).

Case 2)

This second case is possibly one of the most fascinating and long lasting cases of a phone call from the dead, if indeed the account is not just a prank that wasplayed over a period of three years (that in itself would be impressive, but cruel).The idea of this being a prank seemed less likely the more the evidence with which I was presented recently amounted. In this case all the informationavailable was provided from diary extracts and a ten page eyewitness account of living with this frequent unusual phenomena.Dr. Jones (pseudonym) remembers a bizarre succession of phone calls hismother received from a very close friend on a regular basis. The friend was inhospital and became increasingly ill until sadly he passed away. Dr. Jones’smother was distraught when she found out and the death was confirmed.However, in the winter of 1958 something remarkable occurred:

‘‘I don’t remember the exact time, although it was certainly in the middleto late evening, when the phone rang and my Mother went off to answer

Journal of Research Into the Paranormal [Vol.44, November 2010]

it. She was gone about ten minutes, and when she came back she had clearly been crying and there was an odd look on her face.“Who was it,” I asked. For a moment she said nothing. And then she said “it was him!” For a moment I didn’t understand, and then she told me that it had been‘Richard’ (pseudonym) on the phone. Apparently he had come back totell her how much he loved her. Needless to say I was shocked and amazed, and even at the age of 11 I knew this was not something that normally happened. It seemed suchan amazing thing, and yet life went on as normal. I talked with mybrother about it, but not my father. There seemed to be nothing to bedone, except to simply accept that such a thing had happened.’’

This was the first of many repeated calls from 'Richard', the deceased caller. Dr.Jones’s mother received more and more calls on a regular basis just as she had when 'Richard' was alive and simply took it as the norm.

‘‘Several months after that first call ‘Richard’ rang again and thenagain, and very slowly the number of calls began to increase ... until thesituation after his death became a mirror image of the situation beforehis death. The phone would ring three or four times a week, again about 4pm. Mother would answer the phone, take it into the bathroom and talk for some 20 minutes. This continued through 1959, 1960 and 1961,until I had come to accept ‘Richard’ calling exactly as I had come toaccept it when he was alive.

As incredible as it seems the fact my Motherwas having almost daily telephone conversations with a dead manbecame ‘normal’ to me and after two or three years of this it ceased toappear strange or unusual

I grew up blindly accepting the apparent reality of these events as part of my life."

These are extracts from a very long account of the whole matter. The callsthemselves slowly began to decrease after 1961 and finally ceased. Admittedly atfirst many would question the accounts of an 11 year old boy. However, theseaccounts are remarkably backed up by five year’s worth of daily diary accounts(from Dr. Jones’s now late mother) of nearly every phone call conversation withthe dead caller during the 3 year period. Though the contents of theconversations have been recorded they don’t shed light on the matter of survival; they simply raise further questions for anyone sceptical of the matter.I was also kindly sent photocopies of some of the diary accounts and they arehighly emotional, yet romantic. This case is of special significance because of the length and detail of content recorded not only in a diary by the recipient, but

Journal of Research Into the Paranormal [Vol.44, November 2010]

also a witness’s account (Dr. Jones) of living with the supposed calls from thedead. The calls fit into the Type 4 category of

Apparent Calls

. They involveknowledge of the caller being dead, but are still prolonged calls. Dr. Jones evenrecalls answering the phone himself once when his mother was out:

‘‘ She told me that he ‘came on the wind’, meaning that she heard thesound of winds down the phone before he spoke. I once answered the phone myself when she was out. I heard a noise like a great wind [orsomeone blowing down the phone line]. I was so scared I just shouted ‘she’s not here’ and hung up [how I regret that now]. I have wondered if the fact that he didn’t know she was out is significant ... but on the otherhand he could have been trying to ‘prove’ himself to me. It onlyhappened once in four years, and that call was on a Saturday; a veryrare occurrence.’’

This account of ‘great winds’ being heard down the phone line relates to thefindings of other cases of calls from the dead:

“Again Peggy’s voice called to me through a rushing as of great winds.The winds rose to a roar and then died into sudden silence.”

(Rogo andBayless, 1979, p.56) What can we conclude from this case? Dr. Jones is a very rational gentlemanand a scientifically minded academic in sociology and psychology. For many years this case has left him puzzled. Was this a long-standing cruel hoax by someone ringing his mother to pretend to be a deceased close friend for three years? Or was this genuinely one of the most important cases of phone callsfrom the dead to date? If so, it would be a remarkable case to add to thecollections of cases suggestive of survival of personality beyond bodily death; yetanother small but significant stepping stone forward for psychology and

parapsychology’s understanding of anomalous human experiences.Nevertheless, discussing this case in great length and detail with Dr. Jones hasled to no definite conclusions. However, we must always keep in mind thepossibility of fraud, though the deeper we dug into the supporting diary evidence the more this case related to the ones reported by Rogo and Bayless(1979) in its characteristics. This full case in now on file in my records of phonecalls from the dead and for Dr. Jones and myself it will remain a great mystery that is now lost in the past with the calls having ended in 1961. However, it isincredible to think that it could be the most substantial case of a phone call fromthe dead on record to date, if indeed it is not a very long-standing and highly thought-out complex, yet cruel prank.

Journal of Research Into the Paranormal [Vol.44, November 2010]

Photocopy of Dr. Jones’s Mother’s diary displaying conversationaccounts with the supposed dead caller.

Case 3)

The following account was recently sent to me (December 2009) by a keen EVPresearcher called Catherine who claimed to have experienced recorded phonecalls from the dead on her mobile phone voicemail. This has happened toCatherine on several occasions. The following account is the one I found mostintriguing. This call was recorded on Catherine’s mobile voicemail on 22October 2006 at 00:42am. When she picked up her voicemail message shecould not believe her ears. There was apparently a message from her latemother and also one from her husband’s late father (joint voices):

"Catherine, I'll always be there. I love you, I'll be there for you, I love you. It's your mum, stay happy.Colin, I will always be there for you always. Speak to me. Steven and Cathy, be happy.’’

Several other interesting accounts were very kindly sent to me by Catherine.But the latter account I’ve outlined, I found most unusual.

‘‘My mum had been dead 24yrs so you can imagine how I must have felt on hearing her voice in 2006’’- Catherine

In this case I think we can safely assume that grief did not really play any role inthis case even though the call was very personal to Catherine. The time betweenthe death of the caller and the call itself was 24 years as stated. It was alsospontaneous and recorded at the time in her mobile phone voicemail. Catherinestill has this mobile phone message and has shown it to many other EVPresearchers since it occurred. There could be many natural explanations for thisparticular event, as is the case with many reports of EVP. However, thisparticular message is very specific and relevant to the receiver of the call and herhusband. The following section may shed light on possible explanations for thiscase with regard to psychology and reports of EVP.

Journal of Research Into the Paranormal [Vol.44, November 2010]

OW CAN WE EXPLAIN SUCH CASES

As Rogo and Bayless (1979) pointed out, when asked ‘how is it possible for thedead to phone the living?’ (or indeed text as recent cases may suggest (Cooper,2010)) this is not an easy question to answer. The first issue they raised inattempting to explain the phenomenon was whether these voices were directspeech from the dead or whether the dead were manipulating electrical currentssomehow to produce speech through the telephone. It seems that some of thecalls produced are natural ones for a number of reasons. For example, all thephones in the house of the recipient would ring implying it was an outside linerather than being produced from within the house and also, at the end of thephone conversation, a click was heard as the line was cut off as the dead callerended the call. However, Rogo and Bayless (1979) found that an equal numberof reported calls seemed to be produced paraphysically, with only one phone inthe house ringing and no audible signal of the line being cut off at the end of thephone conversation. This suggested that many of these calls wereelectromagnetically produced as was theorised in the work of a psychicalresearcher called Hunt (1931). Hunt believed that voices of the dead heard onthe telephone were caused by some paranormal electrical effect. Attempting toexplain this further, he hypothesised that when a call is made to someone a wavelength is produced to carry the sounds of voices electrically down the lineto both phones. Thus, in some cases this may create a super-imposer of sound(additional sounds that are simply electronically produced due to naturaltechnological causes and disruptions), which may be heard or interrupt theconversation. However, this applies more so to cases of two living peoplehaving a phone conversation and then hearing a third ghostly voice.Nevertheless this showed early ideas of a psychical researcher trying to shedlight on how the dead could call us or what natural causes may be involved.This original research suggests that if personality briefly survives death and adeceased person wants to contact the living via a telephone, somehow they manipulate the electrical current in the telephone or drive electrons down theline via an electro-motive force to make the telephone ring and turn theelectrical signals into a recognisable voice for the recipient of the call to hearand understand. Or the action of the phone ringing is created due to a form of long-distance PK which would explain examples of phone calls from the dead incases where the call was received on a mobile phone. This is because in thesecases there is no physical telephone line, in contrast to a landline telephone, asall the early examples of phone calls from the dead involved an old landlinephone. This is, however, just a theory and not a definite explanation of theparanormal phone calls. A more logical explanation is the possibility of radio

Journal of Research Into the Paranormal [Vol.44, November 2010]

transmissions spontaneously intercepting certain phone calls, especially withmobile phones. This may occur in the same way a walkie-talkie works by havingthe same channel or wavelength to communicate with each device, thusdisruptions maybe heard from other devices in range with an equal channel or wavelength (the chances of this happening today with mobile phones is unlikely due to each one being digitally encoded, rather than analogue). Though if theconversation is only one way I think that we could safely say that in today’s world one person would realise that the conversation is totally random incontent and the voice being heard cannot be recognised. The recipient wouldrealise that something is wrong with the line and subsequently hang up. Radiointerference with telephone calls does not seem to be a huge concern withregard to the original research of Rogo and Bayless (1979) with many casesinvolving basic telephone technology, unlike today. However, it is something wemust consider with regards to rational explanations of unexpected ghostly voices appearing on the telephone line.Let us now return to the idea of PK and auditory hallucinations as a possibleexplanation for these phone calls (to both landline and mobile telephones). If we take for example a person who has recently lost a close relative, the loss of their loved one may play on their mind for some time; they wish they could seethem again or talk to them again (similarly with the loss of an enemy who they fear is still onto them even after death). As a result of this, very much like inpoltergeist cases (Bender, 1982),the recipient unconsciously exerts PK ability tomake the telephone ring. They then go to answer the phone; in some casesthere may be no one there and they simply hang up straight away or, on pickingup the phone, they do hear the voice of the deceased person due to auditory hallucinations created through grief constantly playing on the mind (this has been found to be responsible for a wide variety of reported anomalousexperiences (Sidgwick et al, 1894)). Though it may seem farfetched to some that both of these processes would happen at the same time, it does show that thephenomenon of phone calls from the dead is not easily explained away. Thispossible explanation only covers a few cases and does not explain those in whichthe recipient of the call was not aware that the caller was dead. But again in thegrief cases (type 1), if the receiver of the call is alone and no one else is in theroom to witness them take the call, an hallucination of the ringing and the voiceof the dead caller could be explained in one and would not need to involve a PK element. Alternatively we could consider the idea of a crisis poltergeist againand suggest that the phone call was a spontaneous anomalous event of a dyingor dead loved one successfully managing to say farewell to the living. We simply have to be critical of the evidence that these events present and consider thatfraud may be the answer in many cases. Also electrical faults may producescrambled voices that the recipient may assume to be messages from a lovedone who has recently died. This will be explained further with EVP cases, in

Journal of Research Into the Paranormal [Vol.44, November 2010]

which we hear the sound of static. Upon many people listening to these EVPrecordings, certain words and phrases seem to be picked out as they appear tosound like particular words or phrases we can relate to. However, this may mean nothing at all and involve not voices of the dead, but just static anddistorted sounds we presume are something more. Just because we believe that we are hearing a particular word or phrase in the static does not mean that thereis someone trying to talk to us. It may just sound like a human voice andpsychologically we try to make sense of what in the rational world are justmeaningless sounds. If the suggestion is given to us that EVP recordings willcontain messages from the dead, we are more likely to unconsciously try tomake sense of meaningless static sounds. However, this is just an opinion andone way of looking for rational explanations for phone calls from the dead.The mechanics of an old phone work via a process known as ‘pulse dialling’(Brain, 2000). This would be more relevant to the majority of phone calls fromthe dead reported in the work of Rogo and Bayless (1979) and also

Case 2

, asrotary dial telephones used the method of pulse dialling and were most commonat the time of the research. Basically, for every number that is dialled a directcurrent pulse is sent out to signal the corresponding phone and its uniquenumber being dialled. The audible clicks or beeps heard while dialling are sideeffects of making and breaking the telephone connection for each individualnumber dialled, much like turning a light on and off. More modern landlinephones use a method called ‘dual tone multi frequency’ to dial another phonerather than pulse dialling. However, most new telephones retain the support of the pulse dialling so that they can connect to old-style phones. It seems thatHunt (1931) created the basis for an explanation of how the electrical current inthe telephone line may become manipulated to create what seem to be ghostly voices on the line. This would occur once a correct wavelength between twophones has been established and after pulse dialling has successfully beencompleted. However, two main points can be raised from this. First of all, if personality does survive death and the dead manage to call the living, somehow they manage to intercept this correct pulse dialling pattern to dial the personthey wish to talk to and manipulate the electric current down the line to producea voice or the voice they had when alive. Secondly, the more rationalexplanation may be that the call was a prank and someone impersonated thedead. However, it must be noted that there are many possible explanations wecan consider for each individual case; I am simply suggesting a few possibilitiesof both normal and paranormal directions we can take on the subject dependingon the type of call.

Journal of Research Into the Paranormal [Vol.44, November 2010]

UTURE

ONSIDERATIONS

Thomas Edison's attempt to make a machine that could enable the living tocontact the dead may not have been necessary. It seems that with nearly allforms of modern communication devices, such as the telephone, mobile phonesand text messages (Cooper, 2010), there have been reports of the deadsupposedly using them to try to contact the living. There have even been a few reports of ‘

emails

from the dead’ (Fenton, 1999) again producing messagessupposedly from deceased love ones or even enemies. Nevertheless there arestill some researchers who attempt to capture voices and images of the dead by using EVP and ITC. Butler and Butler (2008) outlined their own attempts atcapturing voices and images of the dead and other similar research. One of themost fascinating forms of ITC methods is the use of white noise throughtelevision static to attempt to capture images of the dead that may appear on thetelevision screen. However, in other ITC experiments both radios andtelephones have been used in an attempt to allow the living to contact the deadand record an audible message electronically. However, some criticisms andrational explanations have been put forward by psychologists to attempt toexplain EVP in rational terms and demonstrate failure to replicate thisparanormal phenomenon. Thus explanations are produced in terms of psychology and how we perceive the distorted sounds in the static as supposed voices of the dead (Barušs, 2001). For example, some people believe that EVP is just a mixture of meaningless sound processed in the mind into what weperceive as speech or is actually interference from shortwave radios. This couldindeed be the case unless the listener is certain that they recognise the voice andanything said in the EVP recording is so specific that it could only relate to thelistener.In one particular case of radio ITC, voices and messages that were heard overthe radio (supposedly from the dead) were documented by Festa (2002). Theseshowed similar characteristics to the phone calls from the dead; sometimes it was possible to ask questions and get an instant response and on otheroccasions it was not (more so with Type 1 calls). Marcello Bacci of Grosseto,Italy, demonstrated these radio transmissions to Festa (2002); the radio wasfirst tuned to an area of white noise between stations. After waiting a few moments a voice would start to come through very clearly, so clearly in somecases that a room full of people listening could make out easily what was beingsaid. One interesting thing about these voices was that once they were found within the radio frequency of white noise, changing the frequency while the voices were talking would not alter or disrupt them even though there was anabsence of signal. They remained very clear and were unaffected by the changeof radio frequency. Festa pointed out ‘‘The rule of standard physics had beenturned upside down, the ‘entities’ continued to talk as if nothing had happened”(Butler and Butler, 2008, p.149). Experts also checked the radios and found no

Journal of Research Into the Paranormal [Vol.44, November 2010]

significant variation in the electromagnetic field from the point when the voicesstarted. We can only assume that the listeners agreed on what was being said by the voices on the radio as it is stated that the voices were very clear, unlike EVP.In many EVP cases people are told by others present what is being said in thedistorted sounds they hear and tend to accept it without question. Another case of ICT involving telephones also demonstrated supposed contact with the dead. In 2001 Sonia Rinaldi of Brazil (findings outlined by Butler andButler, 2008) began working with parents of deceased children and arrangedfor each of them a day they could visit her home to make a phone call to thedead to ask them any questions they wished. When asked, Sonia claimed shehad no idea how this process worked. All Sonia did in each phone call session was arrange for the parents to visit her house to use her phone and the relevantdeceased spirit caller would be on the telephone at the time the living relativeused the phone to talk to them. Each phone call was recorded through Sonia’scomputer at the time of the event. As of July 2002 Sonia had arranged over onehundred and sixty documented phone calls to the dead. The Noetics InstituteIncorporated (NII) in America apparently now supports Sonia’s research intothese mysterious calls. Interestingly, it is pointed out that the only people whocould make contact with the dead via Sonia’s phone had to be Brazilian born;also these calls had to be made in Brazil and from Sonia’s house. Why this was,is still apparently unknown to Sonia. She has admittedly tried to achievecontact with the dead in other places but it did not seem to work. Afterreviewing the procedure of arranging a paranormal phone call at Sonia’s home,it does at first seem that it could be fraudulent and easy to fake to an extent.For example, the first thing we notice in these cases is that the calls were only made from Sonia’s house. Therefore it raises scepticism and suspicion as to whether Sonia set up some form of device through her telephone and computerto produce fraudulent pre-recorded messages from the supposed dead.However, the parents of the deceased child, after having had a paranormalphone call session were given a copy of the conversation on tape to take away and come to their own conclusions about the phone call. Typically, they wrote areport back to Sonia saying that the voice was distinctly that of their deceasedchild and was very true to life. Also, details and information given out by thedeceased caller were (like other cases I have outlined) very specific andpersonal, so much so that only the parent of the dead caller would haveunderstood the details mentioned within the phone conversation. However, itseems that only the parents of the deceased children were invited to pass judgement on the recorded voices heard and no attempt was made to seek theprofessional opinion of an electrical expert, physicist or parapsychologist. Inthe end, the authenticity of the recorded voices was down to the judgement of the parents, who due to such a tragic loss may take the voices to be that of theirchild’s as a way of easing their pain and grief, believing that somehow their child

Journal of Research Into the Paranormal [Vol.44, November 2010]

is still living but on another level of existence (we can see example of this in coldreadings).From researching the topic of phone calls from the dead, it seems that whatevercommunication devices we currently possess or will later invent, at some pointsomeone will report an attempted or supposedly successful case of communication with the dead through the technology we have created. Onething seems certain, and this was also the belief and the findings of Rogo andBayless (1979). Electricity within the phone or any communication device islargely responsible in some way for these messages we seem to be receivingfrom some form of life beyond death. However the vast majority of cases appearto be paraphysically produced.

ONCLUSION

The events that I have outlined are fascinating and show that not only are phonecalls from the dead still occasionally being reported, but text messages from thedead are also a phenomenon on the rise and therefore require consideration.However, in these cases it is important to consider the possibility of fraud asthese calls could be replicated by anyone and may fool unsuspecting recipients who have recently lost a friend or loved one (this may also apply to some ITCcases). At the same time, some of the original and classical examples of phonecalls from the dead by Rogo and Bayless (1979) show that some of theinformation discussed in the dead callers’ conversation is so specific that therecipient of the call is adamant that they have spoken to their deceased friend orloved one. This then helps to rule out the possibility of fraud to an extent due tosuch specific information being discussed. Also, with fraudulent cases, theprank caller would have to replicate the caller’s voice to fool the recipient whichseems like a lot of trouble to go to just to prank someone and would also seem adifficult task to perform (also a long standing one if Case 2 were fraudulent).Therefore this brings us back to our original assumption of PK and auditory hallucinations or a crisis poltergeist as possible explanations.By no means are phone calls from the dead easily explained away by psychology or physics and it seems that within parapsychology a large question mark hangsover the explanation of these calls and messages, once fraud has beenconsidered and ruled out. Therefore, these events are potentially supportive of brief survival of personality after death (Myers, 1903) if indeed they aregenuine. If I am correct in my judgement, calls and messages from the dead arenot about to stop being reported. The more we advance with technology andelectrical equipment for human communication over distance, the more people will at some point report messages from the dead occurring through thesedevices (this was also hypothesized by Bayless, 1980). Though the cases are

Journal of Research Into the Paranormal [Vol.44, November 2010]

heavily anecdotal, this is what we have come to expect of spontaneous cases. To witness an active case of a phone call from the dead would be as magnificent (if indeed real) as being able to observe an apparition of the dead and study it’s behaviour. Therefore, whether a reported phone call from the dead has arational explanation or not, they create for us a larger collection of cases toreview and attempted to understand. This would allow us to review fraud andelectrical faults that may occur, the psychology of the receiver of the call andcases that appear genuine and fit into Rogo and Bayless’s categories of callsfrom the dead. Just like any spontaneous cases there is no universalexplanation, each situation and set of circumstances would be different in some way, and this is what we would expect of human behaviour and experiences.This paper was not designed to explain how phone calls from the dead happen, but to simply demonstrate their complexity and the possible explanations that we could explore to answer how they

might

have occurred.

‘‘The field of telephonic communication is extremely complex and becomesmore so as research continues’’

(Bayless, 1980, pp.40)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks are due to Dr. Simon Sherwood of Northampton University’s Centre forthe Study of Anomalous Psychological Processes (CSAPP) for his kind co-operation on this paper. I would also like to extend my deepest thanks to Dr.Jones for presenting me with his fascinating case, eyewitness accounts and diary extracts. It was an honour to be one of the first to hear of his case after it wasleft dormant for many years within the family history. I’d also like to thank all who have sent me their own cases of phone calls from the dead for considerationin this paper and my research.

EFERENCES

Altman, L. (2008)

A loved one's final call

Retrieved December 27

, 2008, fromhttp://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_10483232Barušs, I. (2001) Failure to Replicate Electronic Voice Phenomenon.

Journal of Scientific Exploration

, (3), 355-367.Bayless, R. (1976)

Voices from beyond

. Secaucus, New Jersey: University Books Inc.

Log In