; Phantoms and Monsters: Pulse of the Paranormal

Monday, September 24, 2018

What Answered My Phone?


I recently received the following account:

It was winter of 2001 in Michigan. I work construction as an electrician and one particular evening I was working late and it just started to snow. As it got darker, me and my work partner decided we were going to pack it in for the day and go home. This was right around the time when cell phones were getting more and more popular but still not everybody have them yet. I had one through my employer and only had given the number out to a few people including my girlfriend at the time, so I still had a regular landline at my house.

My girlfriend called my cell phone and sounded pretty upset with me and asked me if I had a girl at my house. Confused, I asked her what on Earth are you talking about (as I have lived alone for the past two years). She stated that when she called my house a woman’s voice answered. My girlfriend asked “is Mark there?” and the woman responded (quite angrily), “Mark is dead”.

At first I didn’t believe her because she was kind of the jealous type and she may have been trying to catch me in some sort of act of cheating. I again asked her are you making this up and she quite adamantly said absolutely not and that the person on the other line abruptly hung up after she had stated Mark is dead. She then called back and nobody answered and then tried calling back one other time and again nobody answered. After grilling her with questions and trying to get her to confess that she was making it up she stood her ground and I told her I would call her back later and that this is all pretty strange. She was absolutely convinced that somebody was at my house. Once I got off the phone with her I turned to my work partner and told him what had just happened. He thought that was pretty concerning as well and suggested that he follow me home just to be sure that someone is not in my house. The significance of me stating that it had just began to snow is that I figured that once I pulled up to my house I would see fresh footprints or tracks leading up to the property. It was fresh billowy snow completely undisturbed so I knew once we got to the house that would be the first clue.

The jobsite was about 20 minutes from my house, so as we drove I called my girlfriend again and told her that my partner was following behind me and we were going to check out the house together. I tried calling my house phone while on the way and oddly enough the phone would only ring once or twice without voicemail picking up. Once my partner and I got to the house we right away noticed that the snow was completely undisturbed. When I entered the house I immediately felt a strange vibe which I don’t know how to explain, but it just felt different. Maybe it was the paranoia but it did feel strange to me walking in there. It was now completely dark outside which made it feel even creepier. I walked down the hallway to my office where I promptly checked my caller ID just to verify that my girlfriend had indeed called at the times she said she did. I noticed that everything was as she said it would be and that she had tried calling three times and someone had indeed answered the first call. This still wasn’t proof enough for me, so later on that evening when I seen her I checked her cell phone to match it up with my caller ID at the house and it was a perfect match. The first phone call was received as far as her cell phone read.

The strange vibe I was getting while in the house prompted me to grab a few clothes and drive down to my girlfriend's house over an hour away to stay the night there because it bothered me that much. As I was getting ready to leave the house my work partner was investigating and looking around various rooms to see if anything was out of place. As I was on the phone with my girlfriend discussing this I was thinking I might be making a big deal over nothing. My partner from down the hallway shouted to me asking if I had just used the bathroom? I was in my office which was all the way at the end of the hallway, where as the bathroom was at the front of the house and off way to the left. He said he was looking in my kitchen which you cannot get to my office without walking through the kitchen, and the toilet flushed.

At this point I didn’t know whether or not he was now messing with me due to the fact he could tell I was a bit nervous. However when I seen the look on his face I could tell he was 100% genuine and truthful. The toilet had indeed flushed itself and not only that when we walked into the bathroom the toilet lid was placed down, and being a single bachelor I very rarely had the toilet seat down much less the lid.

I have read before that people feel cold spots when there is a presence nearby or something like that and that was absolutely noticeable when I walked into the bathroom. In fact that bathroom is usually as hot as a sauna because there is a huge heat vent that comes from the ceiling and the door usually has to be left open so that heat can get out to the rest of the house.

The catalyst to this whole ordeal was when my work partner went from acting nonchalant about it to becoming visually shook up. He did not want to be in that house anymore and frankly I did not either. As we were leaving out the front door I was completely taken back when right there in front of us both were very small footprints that started in the middle of my front yard just below a tree. There was absolutely no disturbance in the snow when we pulled up and that much I was sure of and so was he. The footprints were leading to the street where we could no longer follow them but it appeared to head towards the lake I lived only four houses from.

Suffice it to say I stayed at my girlfriend's house for about two days before my father had convinced me I was being ridiculous and I should return to my house.

One last piece of information, about a week after I had returned home I was cooking dinner for myself one night when as I poured boiling water down the sink (making pasta). I heard a big thud sound on my roof pretty much right over my head. Again it was just turning dark and I went outside to investigate the sound. I had one of those giant flashlights that is about as powerful as a car headlight, and I shined it up onto the roof. It was the oddest thing but a full grown swan had crash landed onto the roof (in the middle of December!). I went across the street to my friend's house to have him come take a look at it and as he opens the door for me, before I could say anything he said to me, “oh my God something just fell right off your roof!” "I said OK that’s what I was coming over here to show you, you’ve got to come take a look at this." This bird actually had tumbled and rolled down the roof and into my driveway. My neighbor walked across the street with me and when we got to where the swan landed it simply stood up and in the most peculiar mannerisms it marched right past us and walked all the way down to the lake as if it was a drunken bar patron trying to make his way home.

Now I have always been interested in the paranormal and have always wanted to see evidence for myself and I am still on the fence on what I believe and what is real, but it’s like people say, when it happens to them then it’s pretty hard to explain away. MIE

Supernatural: John Winchester Hardcover Ruled Journal (Insights Journals)

Supernatural: Bobby Singer's Guide to Hunting

The Michigan Road Guide to Haunted Locations

Ghosts of the Civil War: Exploring the Paranormal History of America's Deadliest War

Apparition Atlas: The Ghost Hunter's Travel Guide to Haunted America

Lon's Suggested Reading List - Books & Films / DVDs