In the 1953 short story “Long Distance Call” by Richard Matheson (spoiler alert coming), a frail Miss Keene receives several calls from a mysterious source, which drives her to the point of madness. When the calls are finally traced, it is revealed that the call is coming from…the cemetery.
Miss Keene is part of a supernatural tradition of phone calls postmortem. Phone calls, that warn, cry for help, say good-bye. or frighten. And while technology changes, so do the ways the dead communicate with the living. No longer is it phone calls from beyond the grave, but texts, emails, or social media messages.
There is even a post-death social media tool for scheduling messages after your death in advance, appropriately named DeadSocial. While DeadSocial is public, If I Die allows you to schedule more personal messages if, for example, you have to tell someone where you buried the money.
In today’s post, I’ll share 5 stories of phone calls (and more) from beyond the grave. True or not, they made me shiver.
1. LA Train Victim Makes 35 Calls from Beyond the Grave
According to Gizmodo:
If you haven’t been creeped out yet today, this crazy morbid story from the scene of the recent Metrolink train disaster should do the trick. Apparently, family members of passenger Chuck Peck received 35 calls from his cellphone throughout the night of the crash. There was nothing but static on the other end of the line, but Peck’s fiancee used these opportunities to shout encouraging messages into the phone like “hang in there baby. We’re gonna get you out. You’re gonna be okay.” The authorities managed to trace one of the calls which lead them to the first train and eventually to his body. Unfortunately, Peck died on impact. It is logical to assume that the phone calls were the result of a technical malfunction and not supernatural forces. And, as far as I know, there has been no analysis of the condition of the cellphone itself. But consider this—all 35 calls were made to close family members only: his son, brother, sister, stepmother and fiancee.
2. Woman Texts Husband From the Coffin
And, another one from Gizmodo.
Frank Jones, whose wife Sadie died five years ago, says he has been plagued by SMS messages and missed calls since she was buried—her beloved cellphone in the coffin beside her.
The weirdest part of all of this is that 20 years ago, when Frank and his family moved into their house in the British resort town of Blackpool, they were plagued by paranormal behavior. Doors were slammed, bedclothes pulled off the kids while they slept, taps were turned on—and all this was put down to a malevolent presence called “The Thing.”
So, the Joneses called in Blackpool’s answer to Ghostbusters, the Fleetwood Spiritualist Church, who cleansed the property of The Thing, according to them a spirit “trapped between two worlds.” For five years everything was A-OK until the family was hit by a double tragedy: first the death of son Steven, then Sadie just three months later. After she was buried, the weirdness returned.
Shortly after his wife’s death, Frank claims to have had a missed call on his mobile, which didn’t ring. “The call was from my own home number, but there was nobody in the house,” he explains. “When I went inside there was a smell like cigarettes which Sadie used to smoke and the smell of her perfume.” The 59-year-old also claims that his late wife has been sending them all SMSes from beyond the grave. “There have been messages with words Sadie would say but there’s no number.”
3. Ghostly Emails From a Deceased Friend
In June 2011, Jack Froese (32) died suddenly of a heart arrhythmia. Several months later, friends and family began receiving mysterious emails. ABC reports:
Five months after Froese’s death, his best friend Tim Hart said he received an email from Froese’s account, with the subject line, “I’m Watching.”
“One night in November, I was sitting on my couch, going through my emails on my phone and it popped up, ‘sender: Jack Froese.’ I turned ghost white when I read it,” Hart told the BBC. “It was very quick and short but to a point that only Jack and I could relate on.”
Inside the email was the message: “Did you hear me? I’m at your house. Clean your f-ing attic!!!”
Before Froese died, Hart said the two had been alone in Hart’s attic, talking about what to do with the space.
“Just he and I up there,” Hart said. “That’s it.”
Froese’s cousin Jimmy McGraw also claimed he received a posthumous email from Froese in November, telling him, “I knew you were going to break your ankle, tried to warn you, gotta be careful.”
McGraw said he had broken his ankle about a week before he got the email.
“I’d like to say Jack sent it, just because I look at it as he’s gone, but he’s still trying to connect with me. Trying to tell me to move along, to feel better,” McGraw told the BBC.
The source of the emails is still a mystery. Froese’s friends say no one had his password and they don’t believe the account was hacked. Hart said he thought Froese’s mother had been sending them, but when he asked her about it she said, “Think what you want about it, or accept it as a gift.”
4. A Deceased Girlfriend Reaches Out Via Facebook
In July 2014, Reddit user Nathan shared a scary and sad story about postmortem communications he received from his girlfriend Emily on Facebook. Along with Facebook messages, she began tagging herself in photos.
She even posted a photo on Facebook of him on the computer…from outside his house.
Read more about this story on a past post.
5. A Paranormal Expert Makes a Postmortem Call
XOJane wrote an article on phone calls from beyond the grave, and introduced me to Konstantin Raudive, a pioneer of Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP). Since he devoted his life to capturing disembodied voices on tape, he too wanted to communicate from the grave.
Supposedly he was quite successful, making contact numerous times via phone, computer, even fax.
In 1994 Meek [fellow researcher] claimed that he recorded a telephone conversation between that feisty Raudive and himself. Give it a listen here.
While there’s understandably a lot of controversy over the authenticity of this and other recordings of Raudive’s disembodied voice, you’ve got to admit that it’s a pretty darn creepy recording.
I don’t know about you, but I’m turning off my phone for awhile.
Notebook of Ghosts 
[…] For more about phone calls from beyond the grave, check out this past post. […]
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