Phone Calls From the Dead!

A widely reported phenomena in the realm of communicating with the dead are phone calls from the deceased. 


Here is a classic example from paranormal investigator, Linda DiMarchi:

My mother and I had gone to the afternoon matinee Movie, I was newly married at the time and I always looked forward to having these outings with mom . My dad had died the previous year and, yes, my mother felt loss. 

My younger sister Donna had stayed home, she had recently graduated from high school, but this celebrations was bittersweet. Her boyfriend Paul had been fighting a rare cancer only known to be found in horses. Later, we had put the puzzle pieces together when we realized he had flown missions in Vietnam spraying Agent Orange from his helicopter, used to kill weeds and overgrowth, to better able see the enemy and where they were hiding. Paul was an amazing young man. He was fun to be around, a great storyteller and a zest for life like no other. It's his laugh I remember most; that deep down, heavy-throated laughter that bubbles up and explodes. He just had too much love for life to keep anything in like laughter. Well, that was Paul, he never gave up .. he never believe he was gonna die and he kept buying things for the farm he had in the mail that came long after his death. 

I mention all of this because none of us thought he would die. He fought until the end and made plans for the future with my sister like nothing was gonna happen to him.

So, the day my mom and I came home from the theater, my sister met us at the door crying telling us Paul had died. 

The house was filling up with friends of my sister and Paul. This was a big old "Shady Rest " type of house, was one of the first apartment type houses in my hometown. The main entryway and hotel lobby was in the middle of the house and straight up was the staircase, the apartments ran off both sides off on the staircase. Our family, of course, opened most of these doors up to made bedrooms upstairs and a living room kitchen and laundry room on the bottom floor. The main hotel was converted to a sun room and storage room. So it was a big house.

Back then, we didn't have cell phones, our old-fashioned black rotary dial phone had a long long coiled cord on it so that we could take it mostly anywhere on the main floor if we wanted too. When we were teenagers we would take it into the lobby staircase landing to sit on the steps and have a little privacy with the doors shut (this is important to the story).

So, as I said we came in, heard the news and the steady stream of even more people filled our house. 

I think I was numb or in shock from the news. I wandered around aimlessly from room to room, listening.... It was just too much!

I was in deep thought when all of a sudden I heard our phone ring. At this time, it was in the living room and I was in the Kitchen. It rang and rang and rang.

I took a few looks towards the living room, a little annoyed that no one was answering. It was like no one else even heard it! 

I called out, "I'll get it," trying hard not to sound annoyed. Everyone was in shock, I reminded myself.

I picked up the phone and because of all the noise, I told whoever was on the phone, "one minute" and I went into the foyer area by the staircase and closed the door behind me.  Now I knew, I could hear.

I said "Hello. Can I help you?" and silence on the other end except for labor breathing. It seemed like this person didn't know what to say, so I asked again, "Can I help you? Did you want to talk to my mom or my sister Donna?" And, still the silence. I could hear the labor breathing and knew this person was hurting.

I gently asked, "You want me to go get Donna?" 

And, he said, "Did ... Did ..... Paul ...die?" 

At this point, I didn't want to be the one to tell this friend of his (whoever he was) the news, but if he didn't want me to put down the phone and get Donna or my Mom, then I knew I had no choice.

As gently as I could I answered, "Yes .. I'm sorry Paul passed away earlier today," and after that there was nothing but heart-wrenching sobbing like I had never heard before and I hope I never will again; tortured agony!! 

I kept saying, "Let me get Donna for you" and he would give a deep gulp and start again with more sobbing.

Then, the line went dead and I looked at the receiver for a minute or so. Who was that? And, how would I tell my grieving sister about it? 

Well, I told my mom and then she told my sister. My sister insisted that anyone who was close to Paul was there. Of course, she wanted to know if I had gotten a number and I said, "no, he hung up before I could get it."

Through the weeks to come they had asked around and the mystery of who that person on the phone was never solved. 

But, a couple of months later when I was reading an article about ghostly phone calls and how a lot of time the person who answers the phone doesn't recognize who the person is -- that's when it hit me ---  more like struck me like a bolt of lightening ....

It was Paul. He didn't know he had passed and he had called to find out if he had passed. The heart-wrenching uncontrolled sobs I had heard that day was a soul caught in between this life and the afterlife he had to pass over to; something he thought would never happen to him - did.

How Does This Work? 

Communication from the dead can take so many forms from use of cell phones and texting to dreams and physical signs - like butterflies flitting around. 

What does seem to be universal; however, is that the communication the vast majority of the times occurs at the moment of death and soon after, within 24 hours usually.

At the moment of my father's death, he was in my room - his silhouette, pulling at my big toe. This was something that he often did because he traveled all the time and mom wouldn't let him wake me up but he knew I wanted to know he made it home safely, so he would give my big toe a little tug. This was our signal. 

But, why phone calls? Why phone calls? Why not? We get EVPs (electronic voice phenomena) on audio recorders of voices talking that we didn't hear in the room, but play back our recorder and discover. Why not lay down a voice communication in other manners? To many people, calling your loved one is the most natural thing if you do not live with them. 

I had my own variation of this involving my Hotmail account online. My sister Tina died in 2005. The day she died, for some reason, her name popped up at the bottom of my email account saying "January 1, Tina's birthday." It was odd because that was not her birthday. It seemed as if something had reset in the systems, so I looked at other birthdays and they were correct. 

Over a year or so, I was tired of this popping up every time I tried to correct it. I was used to emailing my sister several times a day and now this incessant message reminded me of her absence daily. I went in to change the details of her birth date and it was correct - March 12th. 

And, the January 1st birthday and "send Tina a quick message" prompt remained.

I went in and even changed someone else's birthday to January 1st and still it said Tina's birthday was January 1st! 

It kept popping back all the time for years, saying "do you want to send Tina a message?" That prompt gave me chills.

I was unnerved by this continued, "send Tina a quick message" prompt. I tried to just ignore it, but one day I had an overwhelming urge to do something, so I did the unthinkable - I pulled up the box to message her and all I said was this - 

Are you there? 

I went back about my daily business, assuming that I was ridiculous for sending a message to someone who had been gone for years. 

I came back later on to log in to my Hotmail account and was shocked that there was a return reply from her address!

"Sharon, I guess you're missing Tina too. It's the four-year anniversary of her death today and I'm glad you contacted me." 

It was her husband! He didn't want to get rid of her account, so he kept it and used it. He was not a great communicator, leaving that up to Tina. 

I had no idea it was the anniversary. I hadn't recalled the precise date when she passed, but something made me act that very day on the message prompt when on other days, I did not. 

And, oddly, after that message from her husband, the January 1st birthday and prompt to send Tina a message was gone, and she was gone from the contacts, as well! 

Paranormal researcher, Scott Rogo, wrote a well-received book on the subject called Phone Calls From the Dead

Book Description: This well-researched classic publication deals with the phenomenon of telephone calls from alive people from other realities- a sensitive subject matter that is avoided by other writers. There are three types of calls: 1. People who had recently passed on or dead for years to out of the blue call family and friends. 2. The receiving kind: you call a house and somebody who is alive in other realities answers the phone. 3. A conversation with an alive person to another alive: yet one party later on denies either making or receiving such phone call. (These are people who intended to call but never did, yet it seems that the call was psychically made) To build a channel of communication among those here and those dwelling on different planes of life deeper and more advanced research on this subject must be done.

If this isn't odd enough, one time a friend talked to me about Scott Pogo's unsolved murder years ago. I didn't know of Scott Pogo at the time, except in a vague sense as a researcher. I had no idea he had been murdered. 

I sat down to get a psychic read and picked up my laptop computer. I wasn't sure what I was doing, but soon I was automatic typing. 

When I was done, I looked down at what I had typed and I had no idea what it said until I read it and it was not in any style I knew and the odd phrasings were unintelligible to me. It began with nonsense and went into wording - 


warehouse smerk chester silo bridges tunnel wharf pilfu zagreb forenight broth ecstasy mirrorr flock of gulls bitters once he came the valley seemed to close down. Everything was dark. There was no where to go. We reached the end of the street and then turned back. What was I going to do? Take him home with me? I had no choice. It seemed intevitable. If not tonight, some other night. Whe were rolling to a stop when I got the first sense he was not entirely whole. He was broken inside somehow. He needed his meds but asked for a drink. The conversation had been interesting. I was curious to see where it went. We both wer of a customary curiosity about the other in a physical sense, but the intellectual, I had to probe that portion to see if there was content worthy of my full attention. O therwise, I was just boning a shig.

A case of psychokinesis after death?

In LA there was a train crash of the Metrolink that killed 26 people. Ironically, it is believed the engineer was texting at the time. 

What is truly unsettling is that one passenger, Chuck Peck, called his family 35 times while rescuers rummaged. The only problem is, Chuck died on impact!

The family heard static and noises and his fiancee called out encouragements, assuming he was alive and would be rescued.

The 35 calls were made to his fiancee, his son, his stepmother, brother and sister. Only close family members. And, when rescuers go to him in the car, it was obvious he had died on impact and could not have made the calls.  

This reminds me of intention. When you plot out your day, you assume - I will go to work, I will have lunch, I will finish work, I will get in the car, I will drive home, I will have supper.... In all those intentions, you have a forward momentum - you are both here and there. If death does not stop energy from rushing forward to meet its directive, then a person who passes might just call as a natural "reflex" to wanting to communicate. 

Enjoy some suspenseful watching -

Here is an episode of "Twilight Zone" called "Night Call." Enjoy!

Please feel free in comments to share any experiences you might have had with a call from a deceased loved one.