The extraordinary claimed phenomenon of telephone calls from the dead, one of a variety of new forms of contact with the dead using modern technology, was raised by parapsychologists D. Scott Rogo and Raymond Bayless in their 1979 book Phone Calls From the Dead. Their research had been stimulated by a report in the September 1976 Fate Magazine from Don B. Owens of Toledo, Ohio, concerning his close friend Lee Epps. They had lived in the same neighborhood for years before Lee moved away and their contact became limited to occasional meetings or telephone calls.
On October 26, 1968 at 10:30 P.M. , Don's wife Ethel answered a telephone call and immediately recognized the voice as that of Lee. He said: "Sis, tell Don I'm feeling real bad. Never felt this way before. Tell him to get in touch with me the minute he comes in. It's important, Sis." Ethel tried to ring him back but got no answer; neither did Don when he came in. That evening Don learned that Lee was in a coma in hospital, six blocks from their home and died at 10:30 P.M. It would have been impossible for Lee to have made the call himself in his condition, yet Ethel had immediately recognized his voice.
Although this case was purely anecdotal, without firm supporting evidence, Rogo and Bayless were sufficiently intrigued to follow up the phenomenon of "phone calls from the dead." After collecting a few cases, they wrote an article in the October 1977 issue of Fate Magazine titled "Phone Calls from the Dead?" More cases came to hand and led to a two-year investigation of the claimed phenomenon. It proved peculiarly difficult to establish in a manner acceptable to the present standards of psychical research, since the accounts dealt with spontaneous events, usually without the opportunity of rigid factual verification. Moreover, it was difficult to rule out coincidental hoaxes. Rogo and Bayless concluded, however, that such paranormal phone calls actually did occur and might even be more common than supposed.
A satisfactory theory to explain such cases presents difficulties. On the face of things, if one grants that mediumistic communication is possible through a trumpet at Spiritualist séances, or even by direct voice, the use of a telephone earpiece is hardly more far-fetched, but the prior ringing of the telephone announcing a call is another matter. Is there an actual PK manipulation of the telephone apparatus, or are the ringing tone and the voices actually in the subject's mind? Many individuals have experienced the hallucination of "phantom bells" when they think they hear a door bell or a telephone ringing but find no one there.
In some of the cases examined by Rogo and Bayless, it seemed that the call was placed in a normal way through an exchange that caused the phone to ring. In other cases the phone calls appeared to be placed through long-distance operators. Some subjects reported hearing the familiar "click" at the end of the call as the communicator apparently hung up. Rogo and Bayless suggested PK-mediated electromagnetic effects and discussed the possible relevance to the related phenomenon of Raudive voices or electronic voice phenomenon.
Sources:
Rogo, D. Scott, and Raymond Bayless. Phone Calls From the Dead. Englewood Cliff, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1979.
