THE CALL OF CIPHER

There have been many instances in my career of investigating the paranormal where I am asked, along with some professional ghost hunters to investigate some haunt, or chase after a ghost. In my career the two most chilling ghosts I have ever investigated are the ghosts of both the Zodiac Killer and John Wayne Gacey the man known as the clown killer. I also had an opportunity to work with a police psychic that used Psychometry to identify a piece of wooden shingle that was once attached to the shed where the well known Killer Ed Gein did his handy work.

These ghost investigations were very controversial. In the Gacey investigation I was able to come in contact with the suits he wore and held in my hand the hard tack mint candies that still remained in his vest pocket. When we investigated the Zodiac I was spiritually attacked where whatever spirit was in the room decided to attack me while I was on the air.

I actually broke down on the air because of it – because I felt as though I was being pulled from my body.

When I was suffering from the 5 pulmonary embolisms that sent me to the hospital I was at the home of Northwest Ghost Recon’s founder Roger Clooten in Vancouver Washington. I was spending Labor Day weekend with him and I had finished lunch. I walked into the bathroom as we were preparing to leave the house and suddenly the same feeling I had in Martinez attacked me but this time it wasn’t some panic attack I started to see lights surrounding me and in front of me just before my forehead I saw a window opening in the air. In the window was a vortex and at the end of the vortex was a light. All I could think of was all of those life after death stories where people were being hurled into a tunnel and meeting up with the light. I looked at Roger and said to him. “Don’t let me die.”

I awoke in an intensive care unit at a Vancouver Hospital. I was told by the doctors that I was lucky to be alive and I spent nearly two weeks in bed. While I was in the hospital I started getting phone calls on my cell phone from an unknown number.

The number would show up on my caller ID as 0000000. I also received phone calls at the hospital on the room phone, and I did not tell anyone what room I was in, and my friends know that I prefer that all my calls come on my cell.

This was going on for days and of course I was thinking that perhaps the numbers were from some computer or perhaps a bill collector. The 0000000 combination being seen on a caller ID is a bit intimidating because it isn’t a natural 10 digit number.

When I came home from the hospital I was up late catching up on my favorite TV shows while I was resting and at 11:30 PM the land line that we have at our apartment rang. The land line we have is for a fax machine that we no longer have hooked up to our printer and the number is not listed anywhere.

Out of curiosity I decided to look at the caller ID on he landline phone. Sure enough it was a series of zeros and once again, late at night it is a bit chilling to see the zero sequence on the phone. No messages are left on the machine, no voice mail and no one answering the phone.

I returned to the air after my harrowing near death experience and after two or three days had to go back to the hospital suffering chest pain. The irony is that my show was about Barack Obama appearing to look like the devil when he made his speech on September 11th about his plans to attack ISIS.

I took the Friday off and was continuing to get these strange calls. Still no voice, no answer no voice mail, nothing.

I returned from my rest and decided I wanted to finish where I left off and decided to discuss the ISIS crisis and was preparing a week of different shows that I hoped would make up for the time I was missing.

During my show my producer Wes Skotko had been told that he had to go through old GZ files and extract music from them. He also happened upon notes and hard copy writing of past shows and also found a list of phone numbers.

The numbers turned out to be some old numbers left behind by one of my producers named Austin. He apparently had all of these phone numbers that were connected to intercept lines and some of them were also even more unexplainable.

The discovery actually reminded me of a story I read in popular science about intercept calls and bogus cell phone towers. I figured that this would be an interesting topic for the air.

During the show I received a call from a listener that spoke about receiving calls from ghosts. He claimed that he had received ghost calls and that when he did he would find that the caller ID would show the number 0000000.

This floored me because the whole time I was sick and even afterwards I was getting these so called ghost calls. I asked him if he heard them speak, and he said yes. I had never received a message from any of the calls I received but the notion was actually frightening me a bit.

I worried that maybe my close brush with death had somehow triggered this. I have always heard that people who have out of body experiences either see ghosts or even their loved ones after their experience. Some even get messages from their radios, hear EVP or get phone calls from the dead.

There is the true story of Charles Peck a man who died in a train crash back in 2008.

Chuck Peck was among the 25 dead in the Los Angeles Metrolink crash on the 12th of September 2008. His family, knowing that Chuck was on the train that faithful evening, kept getting calls from his cell phone. No voice was on the other side of the line, no audible voices. All they could hear was static on the other side of the line.

Throughout the night, Chuck’s sons, brother, stepmother, sister and fiancee all got the phone calls after the crash had been reported. Chuck’s son believed his dad was alive and trying to contact them. Chuck’s son CJ kept yelling into the phone: “We love you, Hang in there. They are coming to get you.”

It was not until 3:28 am that the phone calls stopped. None of the family members got any more phone calls. One hour later, Los Angeles firefighters recovered the remains of Chuck Peck. Coroner’s officials told Peck’s family members that he was killed instantly. His body showed no sign that he lived even for a short time after the crash.

For years, the “phone calls from the dead” phenomenon has been a thing of urban legends. Paranormal cases that involve ghostly phone calls are just reports, never official recordings or actual proof that they were indeed made from the departed. One thing is for certain, the calls were made to loved ones and the calls were made all night up until the discovery of the body.

Coroners say that there is no way the body could have lived even for a short time after the crash. Peck’s phone was never found.

This morning I was awakened by a call that was from an Unknown number. There were no zeros – just the words UNKNOWN NUMBER on my caller ID. I went down stairs to get online to look at e-mail and news stories.

There was an email entitled “Phone calls from the dead.” The email was from a listener that said that last night as I was on the air she could hear voices under me speaking. Every once and a while she could hear them popping in and out during my broadcast.

I listened back to the archive and there were sounds being heard. I did hear some voices but I was curious if they were just glitches that were happening during the show. One can never tell. I have had ghost voices on the air before when I did an experiment called the Edison enigma where we intentionally tried to get voices to speak to us on the air.

After I listened to the archive of the show, I moved to the sofa. I fell asleep and was awakened by a Fed Ex delivery man. He was delivering something for Janine. I realized that it was late. I am usually in the office by 1:30 PM. However I wasn’t even on the bus until 2:35.

Just after I got out of the shower and was dressed, the land line in our home rang again. The numbers on the caller ID once again said 0000000. By this time I was fed up and hurried out the door. I walked to the market nearby to get change for the bus and realized that I had forgotten my cell phone. I ran back to apartment and noticed a red light on the land line phone. It meant there was a message left on the machine.
I decided to hit the button and listen back.

What I heard scared the hell out of me. The massage sounded like a voice that sounded unearthly and metal sounding trying to get through. I distinctly heard the words “GET THIS ON THE AIR!” Then I heard what sounded like moaning laughter or an animal sound and then more static. After about 30 seconds the message abruptly stopped.

I immediately took my cell phone and recorded the voice off the answering machine.

The timing all seemed to fall into place because I ran back out the door just as the bus was coming. I immediately called Wes my producer and told him to listen to last night’s show and listen for EVP or ghost voices.

He listened back to the show and said he heard one voice underneath me and that the voice said the name ED like Edward.

From time to time I do have paranormal experiences. However since my hospital stay and my close brush with death I have been somehow spectrally harassed.

I can’t think of a logical explanation as to why this is happening. All I know that what is happening to me is real, and that if I could explain it logically I would.

In the meantime I have decided to make good on the request from the spirit to put his call on the air. I am doing it in the hope that it will no longer bother me and that I will no longer get these annoying calls with the number 0000000.

The phone company says that Ghost calls are the cause of packet loss or auto dialer malfunctions. I have a hard time believing that what I am experiencing is anything dealing with some digital malfunction.