At least, I think she is…
The deal: ‘Julie’ (not her real name) has a cellphone. She doesn’t give out her number to strangers or anybody she doesn’t trust.
Recently–for a few weeks, so far–she’s been getting a call every night at 2:30 in the morning; she picks up, says “Hello?”, and the person hangs up. Every. Single. Time.
So she turns off her cellphone, but this person keeps calling. She talks to Rogers, her phone company; they can’t trace the number–it’s not a land line. She talks to the cops, and they say the same thing. On Monday she told me she would be forwarding the calls to her house phone, so it’s possible the police might get a trace after all.
That happened to me about five years ago. Turned out it was a fax machine for a TV news station and someone had mistyped a number on a distribution list. It was trying to fax me news updates at all hours of the night. I ended up having to do a reverse lookup on the number and called the front desk, then got bounced from department to department till we found the machine with my number on it. Took most of a day to get it taken care of.
That sounds like BS to me. They have the technology to know exactly where every call that goes through their network comes from. They just don’t want to be bothered.
That’s the thing. I thought initially, maybe it’s some sort of automated message that’s pinging her number by accident. But she swears it’s an actual person–she can hear the breathing and everything.
Since it happens at the same time, and during what would be considered “off-hours”, I am almost certain it its one of millions of devices, from alarm systems, control systems, order management systems, vending machines, pay phones, etc. etc. that are programmed to dial a phone number and report on their status overnight. Whatever it is, it’s not getting an acknowledge/connect tone, and just hangs up. The tech probably suffered a case of fat finger syndrome when entering the number during the config. It may stop by itself when they notice that the updates are not making it in, but this may take a while.
Also, this does not really fit the pattern of most typical stalkers. Stalkers are people too, and also tend to need sleep. For a good book on avoiding and dealing with stalkers, check out The Gift of Fear by Gavin DeBecker. Imho, it should be required reading for every girl who reaches puberty.
Just look at your next cell phone bill. They have a detailed record of every call you made and received. On the incoming calls, they may not show the actual number, but they do have that information in their computer. The old days when you had to keep someone talking for 10-15 minutes while the police ran a trace on the line are long past.
Every phone call made these days, whether cell or landline, has to go through so many different switching systems and networks that computerized control and interaction is a necessity. Every time your call is routed from network A to network B there is a computerized record both for operations and billing.
Yeah, but in the case of cell phones usually the best we can tell you is that it came from a phone somewhere in a 2-mile or less radius of X cell tower. Any further refinement usually comes from analyzing recorded conversations for ambient noise.
This was happening to me about six months ago. Every few nights, between 1 - 3:00 in the morning I would get calls on my cell phone from a number that only showed up as ‘unknown’ on my caller id. I picked up the first few times, could hear a t.v. or something in the background, someone breathing, some other unidentified muffled sounds. Asked who it was, repeatedly, got nothing. So I hung up, and whoever it was would call right back. I stopped picking up after the first couple times, but the calls didn’t stop.
This went on every few nights for a couple months. I called my phone company and they said they couldn’t trace the calls, but for $50 they could ‘research’ my call logs and see what they could find. Then I’d have to pay more for them to release this info to the police. :rolleyes:
The calls stopped for awhile, but I got another one just a few days ago. I’m in the habit now of never answering unless I know the number.
::trupa blushes, stammers a bit, ::
Oh you’re welcome, it’s nothing, just doing my job… it was a team effort…mumble…
::looks at ground, scuffs feet, smiling::
Can you get a restraining order against the fax machine? At first it may backfire and she may get cartridges of ink in the mail with weird lettering on them and she may wake up in the morning only to see plasting machines running towards their cars and taking off, but over time I think the dreaded fax machine stalking will end. What you really have to worry about is when toasters start to stalk you, they wont stop until one of you is dead. I know, I have the burn marks to prove it.
