Continual Prank Calls for Phone Number

Previously: 11 Creepy Phone Numbers That Actually Work.

The telephone is a strange and wondrous thing, when you really stop to think about it. By pushing a few buttons and holding a small device to your head, you can speak to anyone, anywhere in the world. But not all phone numbers are benign; in fact, some phone numbers seem haunted, creepy, scary, cursed, or downright frightening.

And if you actually call these creepy, scary phone numbers that actually work? Well, some believe that, after listening to whatever strange and disturbing messages that wait for you on the other end of the line, you may end up haunted, cursed… or worse.

I published TGIMM's original list of scary phone numbers you can actually call back in 2018 as part of the site's Halloween coverage that year. The idea was to offer an unusual idea for something you could do to celebrate the season if you're more of a spooky homebody than a spooky going-out-and-partying kind of person — but apparently, I underestimated how useful many readers would find the list. In the years since, it's become TGIMM's most popular post by far, even going so far as to dethrone our previous most popular post, the Most Dangerous Games entry on the Elevator Game.

So, knowing all of this — and knowing that we've pretty much all become spooky homebodies over the past year — it seemed like a good time to revisit the original list of creepy phone numbers, update it, and add some new creepy phone numbers to it, if possible. We'll start with the new creepy phone numbers; then we'll move onto the old ones, with updated descriptions and information where applicable. (Tip: If you remember the Wrinkles the Clown number, you'll want to give that one another look. There have been some… interesting developments since 2018.)

[ Like what you read? Check out Dangerous Games To Play In The Dark,available from Chronicle Books now! ]

How daring do you feel today?

It's worth considering — especially if you're thinking about trying any of these phone numbers out.

1-877-77-CREEP

1-877-77-CREEP — or, 1-877-772-7337, for easy dialing — is perhaps the least mysterious of this crop of creepy phone numbers, mostly because we know exactly who created it and why: It belongs to horror-themed apparel and merch company Creepy Co., and they made it just for fun. It apes the format of the many, many horror hotlines that proliferated in the 1980s — the kind where you could dial a 1-900 number and listen to, say, Freddy Krueger read you a bedtime story.

Unlike the 1-900 numbers of yore, though, Creepy Co.'s hotline is 100 percent free to call; what's more, it gives you a few options to explore one you do dial in. If you're the mood to hear a good, old-fashioned urban legend, 1-877-77-CREEP can help you out with that. Same goes if you want to hear some spooky music. And if you're looking for some groan-worthy dad jokes? Let's just say you've come to the right place.

The recording I've made here goes as far as the menu options you reach right at the beginning of your call to this creepy phone number. From there? Well, you'll have to find out what each choice reveals for yourself.

Listen here.

646-868-1844

[Note: As of April 2022, this number is no longer in service. However, you can still hear what used to play when you called it by clicking the link below.]

The area code for the number 646-868-1844 is based in White Plains, New York — but that doesn't really mean much, because it's a VOIP (meaning its owner could be based anywhere). And while it's true that the initial message you'll hear upon dialing is weird — it starts with odd, bell-like tones, leads into garbled, unintelligible words, and then ends with an answerphone tone — the really weird thing about this one doesn't happen during the call itself. It happens after you hang up: Within seconds, you'll receive a text message containing a jumbled mix of words.

They're arranged to look like sentences, but they aren't sentences — they're just nonsense. They read things like, "Surprise steepest recurred landlord Mr. wandered amounted of. Continuing Devonshire but considered its. Rose past oh shew roof is song neat," and "Chapter too parties its letter no. Cheerful but whatever ladyship disposed yet judgement. Lasted answer oppose to ye months no esteem."

Here's what I can tell you about the texts: They were likely generated using Markov chains or other, similar processes; furthermore, a quick Google search for each chunk of text reveals them both to function more or less like like lorem ipsum texts — that is, they're placeholder texts used to test out and demonstrate the visual appearance of a document or typeface in a draft or trial run before the design is finalized.

Furthermore, the text you'll receive might not always be the same from call to call: I first dialed the number in March of 2019 and received the "Surprise steepest recurred" message; but when I called it several more times in January of 2021 while working on this piece, I received the "Chapter too parties" one.

But I haven't been able to figure out much beyond that. This creepy phone number remains a mystery — for now, at least.

Listen here.

618-625-8313

If you're a Stranger Things fan, you probably recognize the number 618-625-8313: It's Murray Bauman's phone number — that is, it belongs to the Netflix series' resident conspiracy theorist, played by Brett Gelman. Calling it presents you with Bauman's answerphone recording, which seems to offer a few hints about what might be in store for us whenever Season Four finally drops.

It isn't super creepy in and of itself; however, it's a fun Easter egg for fans — and, as I noted in an in-depth exploration of the number in 2019, I think it also functioned as a trailhead for the larger ARG that emerged from Stranger Things' third season. (There's a transcript of the actual voicemail message you hear when you dial the number within the TGIMM piece on the number itself, so head on over there to check it out.)

 What's notable about the Bauman number, I think, is that it's still operational now, despite having been put into service in this capacity several years ago. That's unusual for horror pop culture tie-in numbers: Carrie White's phone number, set up in 2012 for the Carrie remake starring Chloe Grace Moretz, hasn't worked for years — and even the phone number set up for Mike Flanagan's 2020 follow-up to The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, was only operational for a brief while. (I desperately wanted to include it in this updated list — I did call it when it was functional and found it delightfully spooky — but alas, I discovered when I was starting to do the early groundwork for this piece at the end of 2020 that it was no longer in service in its promotional capacity.)

There's no guarantee that the Stranger Things team will keep it up in perpetuity, but at least we can enjoy it for the time being. And hey, two-ish years isn't a bad run, all things considered.

Listen here.

508-690-6143

Like another longtime favorite spooky phone number, this one has a special place in my heart because of its area code: 508 numbers are based in Massachusetts, where I grew up. (True, I haven't lived there in, uh, close to two decades now, but still. Old habits die hard and all that.) And, like the other Massachusetts-based number, it isn't at all clear what's going on when you call 508-690-6143.

Initially, there's a loud, repetitive honking noise some have likened to a car horn and others a buzzing sound before a minute or two of clanging takes the stage — like someone is repeatedly smashing a hard, solid object against a tabletop or something. An ear-splitting burst of static eventually breaks in; then, lastly, a "We're sorry, but the number you have dialed is no longer in service" message plays, but not cleanly or easily — it's interspersed with more static and interference. It finishes off with a classic answerphone beep before falling silent.

But I have no idea what any of it means. I don't know if it's connected to something bigger — an ARG, an abandoned art project or marketing push, a podcast, or something of the like — or if it's just a spooky, standalone piece of weirdness. It sure is unsettling, though.

Listen here.

909-390-0003

Legends surrounding so-called "doppelganger numbers" — phone numbers which, when dialed, allow you to converse with your own doppelganger — are popular in Japan; there, it's said that calling one, such as 073-499-9999 or 090- 2048-1972, might result in anything from an unsettling experience to a potential death curse. But although these kinds of numbers are well-known in Japan, they're not limited to Japan: You see, 909-390-0003 is a doppelganger number you can call within the United States.

None of these numbers are actually cursed, of course; they're just test lines — phone numbers which allow you to test the audio quality of your phone through something called an echo test. As I noted in my deep dive into doppelganger number legends in 2020, there are two main kinds of echo tests: One of them lets you record a message, then plays it back to you — not unlike how, say, test calls work on Skype — while the other echoes your voice back to you, live and in real time as you speak. The 909 number listed here performs the second kind of echo test — that is, if you call it, you aren't speaking with your doppelganger; you're simply hearing your own voice all over again.

…Or are you?

951-572-2602

You might know this particular creepy phone number as "the SCP number": When you dial it, you hear a voicemail recording informing you that you've reached the Southern California, Division 19 branch of the SCP Foundation and instructing you to leave the date, time, location, and description of any "incidents" you may have witnessed which you believe require the organization's intervention. Essentially, it sounds like a tip line of sorts.

The SCP Foundation is, of course, the (made-up) organization at the center of the long-standing collaborative fiction project of the same name. The project saw its beginnings on 4chan way back in 2007, when the infamous entry now known as SCP-173 was posted to /x/ paranormal board. The first incarnation of the project in the wiki format went live on EditThis in January of 2008; then, in July of that same year, it moved over to Wikidot, where it still lives today. And in the years since, it has grown exponentially, with users all over the world contributing artifacts, reports, and other stories to the mix, building out an enormously entertaining universe that's part X-Files, part Warehouse 13, and all fun.

The number, which is a VOIP number based in Banning, California in Riverside County, just south of the San Bernardino National Forest, has existed at least since 2015. SCP Foundation user genesplicer has claimed to be its creator several times in the wiki's forums; according to one post from this user dated 2017, it's a repurposed Google voice number.

Some folks who have actually left messages in the number's voicemail box over the years have said that there's a chance you might receive a call or a text back; I've never done this, so I can't verify it independently (and besides, the number has existed for so long that it's a distinct possibility its creator doesn't monitor it all that closely anymore) — but if you're feeling daring, you can always give it a shot.

Listen here.

512-937-2346

This one is actually a second SCP number, although it serves quite a difference purpose than the previous one: It's the hotline number for Foundation After Midnight Radio, a podcast set within the world of the SCP Foundation designed to sound like an in-universe radio show. (If you're a fan of Welcome To Night Vale, you'll probably dig FAM Radio.)

The 512 number actually is used for call-ins from time to time; the podcast's creator, toadking07 (aka Eric J. Stover), has put out calls on the SCP forums for listeners to dial in and leave messages for inclusion in several holiday episodes, for example. Right now, though, the podcast seems to be on hiatus — the most recent episode as of this writing was uploaded in March of 2020 — so whether or not the line is currently monitored remains to be seen.

You can still call it to hear an entertaining message, though: The voicemail box greets callers by informing them, "Our site is currently experiencing a site-wide lockdown due to a containment breach," before asking them to either stay on the line or leave a message after the tone. "Stay safe!" it chirps at the end. How… optimistic.

Listen here.

408-634-2806

[Note: As of April 2022, I received only a busy signal when I dialed this number, so it may or may not still be in service. You can still listen to what used to play when you called at the link below.]

The most persistent legend associated with the creepy phone number 408-634-2806 is that it's a so-called "red room number" — that is, if you either call it or answer a call coming from it, you'll be tracked down; kidnapped; brought to a "red room"; and tortured, killed, or both during a live broadcast viewable via the deep web.

This isn't actually the case; red room numbers are simply an urban legend, albeit one that's used quite effectively in the video game series Welcome To The Game. But there's no denying how unsettling the message on the other end of this phone number is: Garbled voices give way to a brief burst of music — the kind that sounds as if it's coming from a music box, or maybe an ice cream truck — before another voice cuts in, saying, "All's well that ends well." Some have reported hearing a voice say the words, "Return again when the dark moon reigns," as well.

It turns out, though, that the number isn't anything sinister on its own; it's a tie-in for the 2011 iOS game Superbrothers: Sword & Sorcery EP, developed by Capybara Games. The conclusion of the game presents players with a number, which, when called, gives you… that message. Its meaning has never been fully decoded; as of 2020, players are still wondering about it.

But the game itself is still worth playing — as a 2016 retrospective of Superbrothers published at The Verge noted, its influence can be widely seen in many a title that came after it, including the 2014 hit Monument Valley. It's now available for iOS, Android, Windows, Mac OS, and Linux; it was also ported to the Nintendo Switch in 2018.

Listen here.

The Binary Number

[NOTE: If you try this one, make sure you dial it correctly. A common misdial for this one goes to a real person's phone number.If you hear anythingother than the message heard in the video here, you've misdialed. Don't bug the person, and don't be rude or obscene. But, again, ideally,check to make sure you've entered the number correctly BEFORE you hit the "call" button so as to avoid that whole situation in the first place. Also, as of April 2022, I received only a busy signal when I called, so it may or may not still be in service. You can still listen to what you used to hear when you called it at the link below, though.]

Ah, yes: The biggest mystery of the bunch. This creepy phone number (828-756-0109, but again, check before you dial) is now widely known as "the binary number," due to the fact that its main feature is a panicked-sounding person spouting a bunch of ones and zeroes which convert to the word "death" in English.

It's a North Carolina number, for the curious — my phone identifies it as being based out of Marion, which is in McDowell County about 85 miles west and slightly north of Charlotte — but it's also a VOIP number set up through Google Voice, so who knows where its owner actually lives.

Alas, nothing new has emerged about this number in the years since I originally wrote about it. It's just as mysterious now as it was then — and unless someone steps forward to reveal who they are and why they set the number up, it will likely remain as such.

Listen here.

407-734-0254

[Warning: Spoilers for the documentary Wrinkles The Clown ahead!]

Since the mid-2010s, a creepy phone number has circulated that purportedly belongs to "Wrinkles The Clown" — "Wrinkles" being a nightmarish clown character dreamed up by a 60-something retiree who, for the right price, will come to your house and scare your kids into behaving. Video footage of Wrinkles doing just that emerged in 2014; naturally, he went viral shortly afterwards, and by 2015, news coverage in outlets as major as the Washington Post had followed. Wrinkles kept his identity under wraps in these interviews, but he said he was originally from Rhode Island, had retired in Florida, and thought that maybe his services might be useful to local parents.

Except that, ultimately, it came out that there was more to the story than met the eye. In 2019, the documentary Wrinkles The Clown was released — and midway through it, there's a huge reveal: The story of Wrinkles as it's been told so far is, it seems, entirely false. Wrinkles doesn't exist; nor, in fact, does the man we've been told is Wrinkles. Wrinkles is a construct — he was built, piece by piece, by a person who keeps their own identity in the shadows using the anonymity of the internet. Wrinkles is a manufactured legend.

That doesn't mean the phone number doesn't exist, though. It does — and you can still call it today. Sometimes the mastermind behind the Wrinkles myth answers and speaks to callers in character; more often, though, you'll reach the number's voicemail box. "You've reached Wrinkles The Clown," a gravelly voice will tell you. "I'm not here to take your call. Leave a message and I'll call you back." Then the voice will laugh — evilly, of course. He is an evil clown, after all.

Here's the really interesting thing, though: We don't really have any way to confirm whether the reveal in the 2019 documentary is, in fact, the truth — just like we didn't really have any way to confirm whether what we thought we knew about Wrinkles before the documentary was the truth, too. The second story might be as much of a fiction as we're told the first one was.

Food for thought, no?

Listen here.

270-301-5797

Superbrothers isn't the only video game to have had a telephone-based tie-in; Kentucky Route Zero, a magical realist point-and-click adventure game released episodically between 2013 and 2020 has one, too. Called Here and There Along the Echo, it's one of a number of auxiliary experiences that Kentucky Route Zero developers Jake Elliott and Tamas Kemenczy released between episodes — and it is delightful.

What you get when you dial 207-301-5797 is a phone tree — that is, format-wise, it's a lot like the 1-877-77-CREEP hotline set up by the Creepy Company. But it's an entirely different experience than 1-877-77-CREEP, claiming instead to be "a guide to the Echo River for drifters and pilgrims" presented by "the Bureau of Secret Tourism." As I wrote back in 2018, "It's weird and surreal, yet also wonderfully serene — and there's plenty to explore as you dial your way through the various menus to which it gives you access."

What's more, as a Metafilter user put it in 2016, "You don't have to know anything about the game to appreciate the sheer oddity and scope of what there is to listen to on this phone number." Go head. Explore. I recommend pressing 5 the first time you're presented with some options, but you do you. Have fun, kids.

Listen here.

786-519-3708

[Note: As of April 2022, I received only a busy signal when I dialed this number, so it may or may not still be in service. You can still listen to what used to play when you called at the link below.]

One more video game tie-in for the books: This one is for the Hotline Miami series — and, even better, 786-519-3708 actually is a Miami-based number.

As I noted in TGIMM's original creepy phone number list, the Hotline Miami Twitter account began tweeting this phone number in 2012, before even the first game in the series was released. Tweets from the account dated early 2015 also included the number, along with something new: An extension. Calling the number led players to the message above — something about "we march into the future" and "you have reached a wrong number," garbled and set amidst an unsettling audio background to imply something bigger at play.

And, indeed, it was: Enterprising players set to work analyzing the number, the message, and the extension, and found that, together, they revealed the title and release date of the second game in the series. Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number subsequently came out on March 10, 2015.

Hotline Miami developer Jonatan Söderström is currently at work on a new, secret project, by the way; wrote Söderström in a Dec. 31, 2020 tweet, which was then retweeted by the Hotline Miami account: "It's new years and I wish I could write about what we're working on. It is a passion project so I'm not sure who will enjoy it. But I'm sure some people will be horrified and others delighted!" Sounds like my kind of thing, whatever it is!

Listen here.

630-296-7536

Remember Boothworld Industries? This is the number paired with the 2013 r/NoSleep story by Christopher Bloodworth that kicked off that whole universe. It still works now; if you call it, you'll hear a pleasant voice telling you, "You have reached Boothworld Industries. Your number has been logged and traced. A service representative will be with you shortly for remodeling. We at Boothworld Industries say thanks. You have a marvelous day."

You may or may not actually receive a call back. Some have; in fact, Bloodworth noted in a 2014 interview with Bubblebeam Magazine, "Sometimes I call back. The reactions are usually fun." Even if you don't, though, there's still some fun to be gotten out of leaving a message for Boothworld.

Listen here.

801-820-0263

This one is the second Boothworld number, although at first listen, the connection isn't necessarily clear. A little digging, though, reveals a ton. Head here for more.

Listen here.

978-435-0163

ote: As of April 2022, I received only a busy signal when I dialed this number, so it may or may not still be in service. You can still listen to what used to play when you called at the link below.]

Lastly, we have the creepy phone number I've come to think of as "the sobbing man number," mostly because if you call 978-435-0163, the bulk of what you'll hear is a looped message of a man sobbing. He sounds like he's somewhere wet and cavernous; his voice echoes quite a bit, and there are a lot of damp, dripping noises in the background.

He's not alone, either. There's… something else there with him. Something big. Something loud. And something… probably not human.

Alas, like the binary number, this creepy phone number remains a mystery. I have a soft spot for it that's similar to the one I have for the 508-690-6143 number further up the list; 978, you see, is also a Massachusetts number. This specific one is based in Billerica — a town not too far away from where I grew up.

No additional information about this one has been forthcoming in the years since I first covered it. But two things occur to me now: One, the soundscape that plays in the message is perhaps not dissimilar from what I would expect to hear from someone who had gotten lost in some kind of underground tunnel system; and two, Billerica, although possessing of many fine qualities, is, to my mind, synonymous with the defense contractor Raytheon, largely because every time I drove through the town, my route invariably took me past Raytheon's Billerica offices.

These two things are not necessarily connected to the number; in fact, they're probably not.

And yet…

…And yet.

Listen here.

Now then.

Do you dare call any of these creepy phone numbers?

It's likely that nothing will happen to you if you do. You'll just listen to a spooky little voicemail message, hang up, and carry on with your day.

But you might still… wonder.

What if you have been scheduled for "remodeling?"

What if you have reached an evil clown?

What if you have come into contact with something otherworldly?

There's only one way to find out.

Just… don't say I didn't warn you.

***

Follow The Ghost In My Machine on Twitter @GhostMachine13 and on Facebook @TheGhostInMyMachine. And don't forget to check outDangerous Games To Play In The Dark,available now from Chronicle Books!

[Photos via christels, Glavo (remixed by Lucia Peters), StockSnap, Thaliesin/Pixabay; 幻影多媒体 3D, Unsplash/Pexels]

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Source: https://theghostinmymachine.com/2021/02/01/15-creepy-phone-numbers-that-actually-work-updated/

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