The Phone Phantoms

 

    

Some years ago, I wrote a blog post about a phone call my mother received back in the mid 90’s, in which she clearly heard her mother repeatedly saying hello. This would not be all that unusual except her mother had died in 1981.  

Fast forward a bunch of years and I am now living at the homestead where eerie things still occur, of course. To make up for the poor quality cell service in my area, I still have a good old-fashioned land line. There’s probably only 20 people left in Nova Scotia with a land line  and I am well aware of the fact that Eastlink is ripping me off every month when the bill arrives but hey—I need it and will keep it until I can talk on my cell without having to go outside and stand under a certain maple tree facing east in order to carry on a conversation that doesn’t cut in and out or drop altogether. 

But I digress. 

I was thinking recently that the summer months and early fall had been pretty quiet, paranormally, as not a whole lot had been going in the house. This is totally typical of my ghosts; they might make their presence known 3 days in a row, then not make a peep for 2 months. 

But then I remembered the phone calls. 

The first mysterious phone call incident happened about a month ago. I had been talking to my son, Scott--he on his cell phone, me on my (expensive) land line. We were just having a normal conversation about something when suddenly a man’s voice interjected into the conversation to say, “Well now I have to re-think my whole plan.” 

 The words were slow, like someone speaking at half the speed they normally would. I knew immediately it was not Scott. It was not his voice. It was much deeper, like an older male. Scott doesn’t speak extraordinarily slow, either. And the sentence made zero sense in relation to whatever we had been talking about. 

At that moment I knew three things:  

1. 1. That sentence was not spoken by my son.  

2. 2. Someone (or some ‘thing’) else had joined our conversation.  

3. 3. I had no idea what plan they were referring to or what this meant. 

4. 
   

I asked, “What? Re-think what plan?”  

Scott said, “What? What are you talking about?”  I told him the strange sentence I just heard clear as a bell. He stated he never said anything of the kind. To make it even stranger, he did not hear the man speaking. Only I heard it. And it was definitely on the phone, not a tv or radio or anything else in the background. It was right in my ear, coming from the phone receiver.  

We discussed what had happened. Did phone lines get crossed? Is that even still a thing these days? A quick internet search tells me it is unlikely between a cell phone and a land line, although possible between two cell phones if voice data signals should get re-routed during a glitch, which rarely happens. 

Spirits communicating through various electrical devices have been widely reported and exhaustively investigated in paranormal circles. This includes phones as a method of communication and has happened to many people. Electrical energy makes it easier for a spirit to interact somehow. 

Given that this is not the first time a spirit has made contact around here using the phone, I am leaning towards “ghost” on this one, although I cannot tell you who the ghost was or what his plan is that he has to re-think. Not sure I want to know that one. 

I sort of forgot about the telephone ghost and a week or so went by. One evening I was once again talking to Scott—same deal: he on his cell and me on my landline. 

In the middle of our conversation, I heard a female voice shriek one loud word. It was not a voice I recognized. I have no idea what the word was she was abruptly yelling but it was loud and urgent. I asked Scott if he just heard that, to which he replied, “Heard what?” I described what just happened. He hadn’t heard a thing. 

It’s hard to entertain the thought that phone lines were crossed once again between a cell and a land line, as unlikely as that is to even happen once. And most people don’t yelp wildly when they are talking on the phone. 

So once again, I am left with questions: Who? Why? What did it say?? Why can’t Scott hear it when it’s interjecting in our conversation? 

I know one thing: when my phone rings and the caller ID says “unknown caller”, I pause for a moment before answering because you just never know who (or what) is on the other end of that call. Do I want to answer it? 

Would you want to? 

Nova Scotia Paranormal Events

The Noises Continue

 

Back in January 2024, I wrote a blog post about the noises during the last year that have been clearly present in our house. Plenty of things have been heard, mostly by me (except for that one time I had a witness other than my cat—hold on to your Ouija board, I am getting to it).

Couple of things to consider with these noises:

1.  I haven’t actually SEEN anything strange within the past year. I have only heard it. That doesn’t mean it isn’t visual, but maybe I am just not in the same room when something is going on and therefore I am only hearing it.

2.  Maybe these entities are preferring to just make sounds and noises and can’t be bothered to materialize.

3. I am alone often during the day so there is usually no one else here to hear the noises.

4.  It is possible I have become more in tune with the clairaudient side of things. I have no idea why or how.

I can’t say for sure which of these is the explanation or if it is a combination of things, as I have been able to record some noises—not sure you can do that if you are experiencing the sounds through clairaudience through your own personal hearing ability. However, I have been in a room with someone else when noises were clear and present and only I heard it.

5. The source of the noises described in the previous blog posts and this one have been ruled out to be anything sensible and easily explained. Trust me when I say all have been investigated and found to NOT be: rodents, squirrels, chipmunks, the cat, birds, bats, and my all-time favorite from the skeptics: the house is “settling”. It’s an old house, built in 1871. It’s completely settled.

  I know what every single thing listed here sounds like, unfortunately. When you hear pots and pans crashing to the floor in the pantry at ten o’clock at night, trust me when I say that it is not caused by any of the things in this list. To put the proverbial nail in the coffin (see what I did there?) on that as an explanation, when the pantry was investigated, not a thing was out of place. Therefore, my cat and your alleged mouse were not having a wrestling match in the pantry and knocked ten stainless steel and aluminum pots to the floor. This goes for all the other unexplained sounds and rackets. If you read the blog, especially the posts about unknown noises, you can easily see for yourself that animals  is not the answer. Any time an animal was the answer, I did not write about it here because duh, the blog is about ghosts, spirits, and entities and not about animals in houses.

The reason we KNOW there are ghosts in our house is because over the years many different people (myself included)  have seen, felt, smelled, photographed and heard them. Name a form of communication and we have received it from these ghosts. It has been ongoing for generations and so far, is completely harmless.

Some additional auditory incidents have occurred within the last little while:

 

The Music

About 2 months ago, we were having supper in the kitchen. The house was quiet; no appliances like washer, dryer or tv were on. We hadn’t  been at the table long when behind me I suddenly heard music that seemed to be coming from one corner of the kitchen. It sounded kind of far away but still within earshot. I’d like to say it was something good like Aerosmith or Van Halen but no—it was soft orchestra music. I turned my head and concentrated on listening  to be sure I was hearing what I thought I was actually hearing. I was. Shaun was also at the dinner table and when I asked him if he heard it, he said no, pausing to listen closely but could not hear a thing while I continued to hear it. No, I don’t have ringing in my ears. There was definitely music there and after a minute or so, it stopped.

Fast forward a few weeks, same scenario: supper at the table. The music started again, soft and faraway but definitely there. I asked Shaun again if he could hear that. This time he said yes. We listened for a minute and it eventually stopped. Neither of us have any explanation for that.

Side note, and written about elsewhere on the blog: my mother always told me the story of the time she was a little girl in this house and one evening her father suddenly stood up, stating he could  hear music coming from upstairs. He proceeded up the staircase, with her on his heels and then she also heard the music and became terrified. They did not have a radio or anything similar that music could be played on. It was the mid 1930’s. Halfway up the stairs, the music stopped. My mother’s mother had been with them when the unexplained music started but she never heard a thing.

 

Maybe You Need Cough Medicine? Try Mucinex.

It was June 11, 2024. I was home alone working. The house was quiet. I gotta have it quiet when I am working. Winston the cat was nearby power-napping. I had a kitchen window propped open but the main door was locked. I was working away doing some complex math formula thing from my office in the far end of the house when I heard someone cough. Based on the sound level of the cough, I would guesstimate they were likely in the dining room. I paused what I was doing and listened. Winston became alert and popped his head up off the chair because he was aware it was just him and me in the house. There was no more coughing after the initial outburst, but I did get up to look in case someone could have had their head close to my open/screened kitchen window and coughing. No one was there. No sign of anyone outside or inside. It was definitely a man’s cough, as it was deeper than what a woman would normally sound like. Maybe my long-departed father was inhaling one of those unfiltered cigarettes he was so fond of? I guess whoever it was just wanted my attention. Okay, you got it. Now what?

A Familiar Sound

Not long after the coughing incident on another day when I was home alone working, I heard a very interesting sound from the kitchen. Again, the cat was in his usual spot on a chair near me. The house was quiet. Suddenly from the kitchen area, I heard a noise. Shaun had left a few minutes earlier to go to an appointment so I went to check if he had come back for something. I could see through the dining room windows that one of our vehicles was gone, so I knew he hadn’t returned. I went into the kitchen to have a look when it suddenly and clearly dawned on me what the noise was I had heard: It was the unmistakable sound of the woodstove door opening.

I have heard it millions of times over the years; the metal handle turning and the door creaking open. Nothing else sounds like that. My mother used to put wood in that stove continually, even in the summer if she considered it cold out, which was most of the time. She did this right up until she moved to a nursing home in 2022.

Normally, the sound of the woodstove door opening  would not be concerning except on this particular day, the woodstove was not even in the kitchen anymore, plus I was alone in the house. We had moved the stove to a location in the back porch a few weeks earlier because the kitchen floor is undergoing repairs.

The weather was sort of damp, yet humid and muggy on that day, and if my mother had been here, she definitely would have had a fire going in that stove, and said she was cold while the rest of us died from the heat.

I guess she was throwing another log on. “There’s nothing like wood heat”, she often said.

I actually rather enjoy the fact that this incident happened, knowing my mom might possibly still be around at times. I miss her immensely.

I’ve heard nothing unusual since that day but the ghosts come and go so there’s no predicting when the next incident will be.

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