My phone just rang around 2:00 AM, and even though the caller ID said “Unknown Caller,” calls this late are rare enough that I decided to just answer.
When I said “Hello,” I heard my voice repeated back to me with about a one-second delay. Then the voice started speaking - the quality was kind of distorted and staticky in the way that automatic recordings usually are, or the way it sounds on those rare occasions when you accidentally pick up one end of a phone conversation on a cordless phone.
It was a very rednecky sort of voice, and it was saying things like “…I’d kill my own mother…(mumble-mumble)…two men should not lie with one another…even if they peein’ off a bridge…you know what i’m talkin’ about…” but then it started repeating with the “I’d kill my own mother” line. The whole thing seemed to be on a loop, and repeated three or four times. Any time I’d say “Hello?,” I’d hear my voice repeated back to me after about a one second delay.
After several more cycles, the voice stopped, and then I heard other voices that almost sounded like lines recorded from a television show - they had that particular sort of pacing and inflection. They were too fuzzy and staticky to really make out what they were saying, though.
Eventually, there were no more voices, just a static sound, and more echoing of my voice when I’d say anything. After about five minutes, I hung up.
So…WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT? Anyone have any ideas what could have been going on? I don’t really know anyone who’d prank me like that, and the few that might are completely lacking in the technical know-how.
I’m going to take a WAG here and say that it might have been someone with a cell phone in their pocket that accidentally dialed you while they were watching TV. You get delays (which is going to delay the echo of your own voice too) sometimes with cell phone systems. Sometimes you get delays with long distance calls too, especially when they bounce the call off of a satelite.
That is horror movie fodder right there. Seriously, if that had happened to me, I would have been a wreck. Very creepy. Other than that, I have no idea what you experienced. Very bizarre stuff.
The echo makes me think it’s a VOIP (voice over IP) connection, but that can also happen with cell phone connection, so that’s not a lock.
My first WAG is that some telephony VOIP developers were testing the system they were working on, possibly using recorded audio (hence the looping), and accidentally called your number.
I got a similar call a month ago, and I was going to post here but I never got around to it.
When I answered the phone, I heard a very professional sounding announcer’s voice saying “Is Mrs. minor7flat5 home?”
When I asked who was calling (standard response I give for telemarketers), the voice began to ask “Can you hear me? Can you hear me?”, interrupting me. I simply repeated: “Who are you?” and it said stuff like “Are you there?”
On reflection, it’s clear that it was some kind of automatic dialer, but at the time it was really creepy because it sounded so realistic and responded to my own words immediately, not like any machine I have ever spoken to.
Of course, the voice didn’t start talking about killing mothers and the like. We would have spent the night in a hotel if that had happened. :eek:
This is another WAG, but it could have been a simple, random (or not so random) prank call involving a java-based “soundboard” online. There are a ton of these things. People take a television show or film and rip the suitable lines, then make a little webpage where the user simply clicks on the buttons and instantly the snip will play.
A few examples I’m aware of involve Chapelle’s Show, Sling Blade, and Ah-nuld. Sometimes the calls are recorded and make their way onto the internet.
The one-second delay you experienced with your own voice could mean the user called with VOIP, or it could have been some convoluted thing with a standard phone and a computer.
The best soundboard prank I’ve ever heard is called “Arnold calls Gateway” and has some pretty good moments:
Gateway Customer Service Rep: “Thanks for calling Gateway, may I have your first name please?”
Arnold (from Kindergarten Cop): “I’m detective John Kimball.”
Then, a little later…
CSR: “Do you already own a Gateway?”
Arnold (from Terminator): “My CPU is a neural-net processor, a learning computer.”
CSR: “…ohhhkay.”
At any rate, that’d be my guess. Just a stupid kid with a bad-quality rip of some obscure TV show or movie made into a soundboard.
Hmm, I just got something similar. Well I don’t know when I got it as I don’t check my messages often and didn’t listen to the end of it to hear what day it happened.
It had filled up my 30 minute tape and I was fast forwarding through it and stopped twice to see what it was. It was a recording from “The Incredibles.” Not bits of it but one big long piece.
Damn kids!