MONOLOGUE WRITTEN BY CLYDE LEWIS
A few weeks ago, we had a classic Ground Zero show about phone calls from the dead. The show was called undefinedCalling on the Lifeline.undefined If you remember, what inspired the show was a tragic and chilling story about Arnie and Myriam Notkin, an old couple who lived in Apartment 302 in the now destroyed Champlain condominium in Surfside, Florida.
Jake Samuelson, their grandson says that his mother’s house line has been receiving calls from the Notkin’s landline phone that he said rested next to their bed in the now demolished condominium.
But there was no human sound on the other end of the line, only static.
The family claimed that they received a total of 16 calls with the first one coming in the evening of the condo collapse.
The family held out hope that they were still alive and that they were trying tio get the attention of rescuers.
I received an e-mail from a listener who told me that the Notkins did not survive the collapse.
Arnold “Arnie” Notkin’s body was found and identified on July 9, police said. The couple’s family is still awaiting word on Myriam but chances are she too had perished in the collapse.
Two days before the Champlain Towers South condo building fell in Miami, Myriam Notkin shared a meme she had seen on Facebook.
It was an adorable, illustrated picture of an older couple holding each other in bed.
The caption read:
One day, you are going to hug your last hug, kiss your last kiss and hear someone’s voice for the last time. But you never know when that time will be. So live every day as if it were the last time you will be with the person you love.
That last day was June 24.
However, the mysterious phone calls will linger -as it appeared that even after death the Notkinundefineds were trying to say their last goodbyes.
Can the dead manipulate electronic devices? Can they reach back through the fabric of time and space, from wherever they are, and influence the workings of our communications devices undefined our phones undefined to leave one last messageundefined to say one last goodbye?
As fantastic as it seems, the mystery of phone calls from the dead is not an uncommon one. Those who have researched the phenomenon have determined that these calls usually occur within the first 24 hours of the death, but there have been cases in which the calls were received as long as two years after.
I have done shows in the past where i have demonstrated that electronic devices like the telephone can be manipulated by powers that are unexplainable, whether they are glitches or intentional undefined land lines form the past were always somehow tied to strangeness and now with the invention of the cell phone people have received calls or have called th numbers that have left them speechless with stranger calls and creepy callers.
These calls are not necessarily from the dead- some of them sound as if they are coming from aliens undefined or from somewhere unexplained.
Sometimes people make calls and sometimes they get a wrong number they wish they hadnundefinedt or received a voice mail accidentally that was not meant for them.
Being a talk radio host undefined and between jobs a phone center worker I have has experiences with these types of calls and I have collected them over the years and every once and a while people send me phone numbers they want me to check out.
Many are kind of goofy, while others are creepy and downright weird.
My first interest in these phone calls and phone numbers began when I was tipped off back in the 1990undefineds about a phone booth that was in the middle of nowhere.
Situated in the middle of the Mojave Desert, over a dozen miles from the nearest pavement, a lone phone booth sat along a dirt road. It became a mystery in the late 1990undefineds.
Godfrey Daniels appeared on Ground Zero to talk about the mysterious phone booth and we were given the phone number. It was 760-733-9969. Every time we called there was no answer. I encouraged my listeners to keep calling the number until someone answered
I started getting emails from people who would tell me that undefinedone guy was taking a leak and heard a phone ring in the middle of nowhere, looked earnestly for the phone, found it and answered.undefined I called the number once and a woman answered saying that she was carrying cinder blocks from a cinder block factory that apparently was near the booth site.
This all happened in 1997.
While popular with callers and tourists, the phone booth, located on a nature preserve, was becoming a nuisance to the National Park Service. The booth rang constantly, disturbing the wildlife, and it brought in additional traffic as well. This obscure structure had exceeded its design intent and capacity and was now too famous for its own good.
I felt like I had a part in that.
I actually had someone call me back from the booth undefined they wanted to know who I was and what my address was undefined I just said that I lived in Utah because I did not want to give my number to strangers
There was a movie made about the booth in 2006, starring Steve Guttenberg.
In 2015, I talked about it again undefined people called the number to find that the booth had been removed and now it has been replaced by a chat line. The show that I did was about how over the years I have heard some of the strangest calls on my voicemail undefined and how some people have slipped me phone numbers to call that certainly are strange and in the right state of mind can keep you up at night.
It has been about six years since I have dug them up from my audio vault undefined phone numbers and recordings that you may find disturbing.
The first phone number on the list originates from Marion, North Carolina. It is a Voip line and the number is 828-756-0109. Now I have to tell you that if you try calling, you are doing so at your own risk, meaning if someone calls you back undefined it may not be a pleasant experience.
Some of these phone numbers when you call them may trace your line back and you could be getting phone calls anytime day or night.
When you call the number, a recording is heard of a man desperately trying to give out binary ones and zeros.
The first thing that youundefinedll hear is a loud staticky sound that will likely make you pull the phone from your ear, followed by the frantic and out of breath man listing off a binary code, a series of zeros and ones.
You can tell that he is trying to stay calm. The recording ends with a strange sound, it is like he is being swallowed by either a monster or he is being sucked into some electronic device. You hear him scream.
Then the call abruptly ends.
But the most disturbing thing is that converted into text form, the binary code that the person in the recording delivers spells D-E-A-T-H, death.
There is absolutely no explanation for this phone number undefined only that it is a call where you hear a man crying out binary numbers that spell death.
The next number is highly strange because many people believe that what you are hearing are mind control triggers that have been used by Harvard Sciences.
The number is 858-651-5050.
It is random sentences.
Some say it is a poem while others claim that they are random trigger phrases that wake up sleepers that the government created for the MK Ultra program.
The sentence line begins with a man that says undefinedfishing in a mountain stream is my idea of a good time.undefined
Then you hear a womanundefineds voice say undefinedafter the dance, they went straight home.undefined
The sentences continue on for several minutes, none of them seeming to make much of a connection. Needless to say those who listen to these Harvard sentences say they get an uneasy feeling.
This would indicate that these sentences do something to the mind when you hear them, which is why some people believe that these are triggers sentences provided by an intelligence agency and that they are undefinedcode sentencesundefined like what you would hear when you listen to Numbers Stations.
These stations are used to alert agents to move or make a contact. Some of the coded sentences and numbers may give the location of a person who may be a target for assassination undefined or that the sentences trigger would be Manchurian candidates to make their move.
Apparently all is known about the Harvard sentences is that they were developed in the 1940s in a secret lab in the boiler room at Harvard University. Theyundefinedre designed to be phonetically balanced and are the result of experiments involving the effects of sound on the human ear.
Despite this, they can cause an unsettling feeling in those who hear them. They have been known to trigger images in the brain undefined or they create cravings for certain foods undefined or have triggered people into taking spontaneous trips.
The next number on our list is one that when i fist heard it gave me an easy felling that triggered a panic attack- I warn people that this particular number may disturb people.
Calling 701-347-1936 will get you a recording of what sounds like garbled chatter, at one point accompanied by ominous music. Some people claim that it is a recording of someone speaking in tongues or is possessed by a demon.
At first, it almost seems like whoeverundefineds speaking is talking backwards, but many have made out the phrase I am friendly, how are you, and even I will kill you. I didnundefinedt stay on the line long enough to even figure it out.
Now these weird calls are calls that you can make but when you receive a strange call that leaves you an even stranger message undefined you feel a little uneasy and wonder how someone or something got your number.
If you live in a part of the country that has a large Chinese immigrant population, you may have recently received a robocall in Mandarin — or even several of them. The calls seem to be blanketing certain phone exchanges without regard to the national origin of the recipients.
Non-Mandarin speakers may find the robocalls baffling — or annoying — and just hang up. But some Chinese immigrants who have followed the robocalls prompts have found themselves sucked into an international phone scam.
The voice claims to be from the Chinese Consulate and the woman in the voice mail says that the person on the other end needs to call the Beijing Police Department because they are being investigated for financial crimes over in China,
That person then tries to execute what is known as a undefinedparcel scamundefined — pretending to be from a courier company and claiming that a package addressed to the victim is connected to a criminal case. The phone call is then transferred to a fake police officer who says that itundefineds a money laundering investigation and that if the victim transfers money to a Hong Kong bank account, the police will resolve the case.
Back in 2018, we reported that a Twitter user who called himself Ty received an unknown call on his cell phone. The call came in late at night and so it went to voicemail. When Ty checked his voicemail, the message that was sent was some cryptic code that sounded like it originated from a Numbers Station.
On March 13, 2018, Ty posted a recording of the creepy voicemail message he received on his mobile phone and asked for help translating it.
The bizarre voicemail features a robotic voice droning out an automated message entirely in NATO phonetic alphabet. Many Ground Zero listeners, both active and retired military deciphered the code and reported that it says:
“S Danger SOS it is dire for you to evacuate be cautious they are not human 042933964230 SOS Danger SOS.” Many internet sleuths and conspiracy theorists attempted to decode the numeric sequence and many had come up with coordinates that were somewhere near Malaysia.
This led to the wild speculation that perhaps this was code that was actually revealing where the doomed Malaysian Flight 370 had crashed. This spun into the wild speculation that perhaps aliens had brought down the doomed flight.
There were other Twitter users that also received the same military coded message which has since terrified those who have received it.
Ty also posted unsettling direct messages he had been receiving on his Twitter account, one in Indonesian, another in Malay, a couple in Morse code and one which appeared to be five groupings of numbers: “20.8.5.25 1.18.5 20.1.11.9.14.7 15.22.5.18 41818”.
The Indonesian message, when run through Google Translate, turned out to be a warning:
“End the post you just shared about the recording in your phone.”
Since then there have not been any explanations as to what the sequence meant or why he got the call. There have been some speculations that maybe the sequence was related to the so called sightings of UFO;s seen by the military.
Finally, the creepiest call of all is a voice mail that was left behind by a man named Henry McCabe.
Henry McCabe’s story is certainly a strange one. You have a man out on the town just trying to enjoy a long Labor Day weekend. Then, in the span of 30 minutes and one bizarre voicemail, he becomes a missing persons case shrouded in mystery to this day.
Henry was 32 years old and had immigrated to the United States from Liberia. He lived in California for a while with his wife and daughters. The family had been very active in the Liberian-American community in California by all accounts. At some point they decided to move to Mounds View, Minnesota where Henry worked as an auditor for the Minnesota Department of Revenue.
He was described as outgoing, friendly, and outspoken. Just a fun kind of person to be around. He was reportedly devoted to his family and had no reason to want to disappear or end his life. Henry was a young guy with a beautiful family, a good, stable career, he was active in his community, and had a whole life ahead of him. So, how did a night out of fun turn into a nightmare?
On the evening of September 6, 2015, Henry left his home in the town of Mounds View, Minnesota to go to a nightclub with his friends. They went to a club called Povlitzki’s in Spring Lake Park, which was about a five minute drive from Mounds View. Their time at the club must have been mostly uneventful, other than one of Henry’s friends allegedly taking his wallet to prevent him from buying more drinks, because no major clues were derived from within the place. It seems like it was just a normal boy’s night out with the typical types of shenanigans. At least until they left the bar
The guys left the club around 2 am. Henry hopped into the car of William Kennedy, who had planned to take him home from there. However, as he later told investigators, Henry asked to be dropped off at a gas station in Fridley. Fridley was another town a six minute drive from Spring Lake Park and was also in the complete opposite direction from Henry’s home. So, William obliged Henry and took him to this gas station.
At the time there was some mix up about what gas station it actually was. William mistakenly thought he had dropped Henry off at the SuperAmerica station on the corner of highway 65 and 73rd Avenue. He was so sure that he actually took investigators to that station and showed them where he believed he had parked that night. However, surveillance footage shows Henry actually being dropped off at the Hotel station between Central Avenue and Hackmann Avenue.
These two gas stations are more or less down the highway from each other, about a 7 minute drive. And the footage is there to prove Henry was actually dropped off, it just seems that William was mistaken on the exact location.
So it’s not really known what happens from here. What we do know is that Henry made a series of three calls, which pinged on towers in three separate towns. One in Spring Lake Park. One in Fridley. And one in New Brighton, a town that was in close proximity to the other three.
In the span of 30 minutes, Henry’s cell phone pinged on towers in three separate towns. Now, remember that he was on foot and had no money in the middle of the night. According to Google Maps, it would be a half-hour to an hour walk between any of those points, depending on the starting and ending destinations.
The last call, the one that pinged in New Brighton, resulted in a two minute voicemail left on Henry’s wife’s phone. What can be heard in this voicemail is two full minutes of sounds that are, quite frankly, hard to believe are made by a human. There are moans, groans, high pitched squeals, it’s indescribable.
The entire two-minute voicemail was not released by police undefined only a short segment. But in that segment we have to wonder what happened to him.
According to police at the end of the voicemail there’s a brief pause and a low voice says “stop it.” It has never been determined if that voice was Henry’s or that of an unknown assailant.
Members of the Liberian-American community came out in droves to help search for Henry. Some volunteers even came from California to assist. They used his known locations and the cell phone tower pings to narrow in on where to look. They did multiple searches over the two months that Henry was missing.
Volunteers searched Spring Lake Park starting at Povlitzki’s. They searched the areas of both gas stations in Fridley. Then they searched the Creek View Park area of New Brighton, which was where Henry’s cell phone last pinged. Unfortunately they were not able to find any clues to what had happened to Henry.
A $10,000 reward for information leading to the discovery of Henry’s whereabouts was offered by Minnesota Community Policing Services INC. This was a nonprofit organization that specialized in public safety. I couldn’t find a distinct description of their services because they no longer have a website, but they were pretty instrumental in helping organize the searches for Henry and seemed to help with press statements as well. I suspect they did a lot of work with things like victim advocacy, taking on some private investigating and fundraising.
Interestingly though, on October 23, 2015 the Minnesota Community Policing Services retracted the reward after there was a conflict with Henry’s wife. A spokesman for the organization told a newspaper that the reward was discontinued because of her “willingness to mislead the public.
In September of 2015, the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office Water Patrol did a massive search of Rice Creek. They started in Long Lake located in New Brighton and followed the river to Locke Lake in Fridley, cutting off right before entering the Mississippi River. They were also unable to find any clues to Henry’s fate.
Then, on November 2, 2015 the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office was notified by a kayaker of a dead body sighting in Rush Lake in New Brighton. The water patrol was sent out to retrieve the body. At the time of retrieval, the body was so decomposed that race, gender, and age could not be determined by sight. The Ramsey County Medical Examiner determined two days later, on November 4th, that the body was Henry McCabe.
The full autopsy details were released on November 20th with Henry’s cause of death being determined to have been drowning. There was no signs of Trauma -no suspects have ever been named and his death hasn’t necessarily been labeled a homicide, but the investigation is still open.
What could those noises possibly have been? Was Henry actually the one who made them? And how was he able to ping off of all those cell phone towers in such a short time? It kind of makes me wonder if he was picked up by someone after he left the field of view of the gas station’s security camera.
Is it possible that he was lost and confused and wandered really far really fast trying to find his way home and some awful fate befell him? I just want to know how he ended up in that lake.
The voicemail, however, is quite odd –some people claim that McCabe may have been attacked by an animal or that perhaps it was a Bigfoot – there are some that even claim that he was on drugs or that he was transforming into some hideous being.
It reminded me of a 911 call that I had in my collection of a woman who was distressed because her son was sitting in their front room naked claiming that he was turning into a were wolf. You can hear him screaming and howling like a monster in the call.
Apart from phone calls that are believed to be from the dead are the very real phone call and numbers that leave us feeling cold and creeped out. Even parapsychologists have no explanation for phantom calls undefined and the phone companies are also baffled.
While we can say that phantom phone calls and numbers of the weird can be attributed to psychokinetic phenomena, we know that they are very real and the human element can also be just as macabre and unknown.
