Alternate Perceptions Magazine, July 2021
Phone call from dead woman and other odd and personal stories
by: Claudia Cunningham
This happened with my sister-in-law, Dottie Jeffers, a person absolutely NOT interested in anything occult. She had a neighbor, an elderly lady, who was kind of forsaken by her kids and was in failing health. Dottie would call her and ask if she needed anything and would bring groceries to her. Just being a good neighbor. The lady passed away and several weeks later Dottie was doing dishes and her phone rang. She heard funny sounds, kind of crackling noises, and then here was this old lady. It was "definitely" Margaret. She simply said, "Dottie, thank you for caring about me"...and the phone went dead! True occurrence.
This isn't a phone call from the dead scenario, but another event in this family: Dottie's daughter and my niece, Lisa, had a happening after her father died. Lisa was ten. Her father called her "Tootie"...and poor Lisa was devastated, as you would imagine her to be. Jeff, her father, used to sit on their front porch in a big rocking chair. He was very much older than Dottie, by over 30 years. His health was not good, suffering from heart issues. So shortly after Jeff passed on, Lisa grabbed her books and went outside to the enclosed porch where the rocking chair was enroute to school. Suddenly, the chair started rocking away, and Lisa heard the clear and unmistakeable voice of her father crying, "TOOTIE!"..Another true happening. This started Lisa on a lifelong interest in the beyond, one which we share to this day. This happened in 1978. By the way, she met Tim Beckley when he came to Albany on our trip to Albany Rural Cemetery.
My other "phone call from the dead" (by the way, I had Rogo's book for many years and was always enthralled by it!) happened when I was married and living in our second house, having just moved. My husband was not home around 8:30 p.m. as I sat in bed reading and listening to an interview with Betty Hill, of the famous UFO Hill’s. It was on WGY, I still remember. I was reading a book about phone calls from the dead and listening to the interview and it could have been Rogo's book, but I don't remember. I would say 85 percent chance it was his book. I remember how it said you would hear a static sound when someone or someTHING was calling you. All of a sudden, the phone rang and there was nothing but static on the phone! I thought I'd die on the spot. This was around 1977. Every time the phone rang and I was alone I panicked.
Last incident: I worked for the New York Telephone Company in 1965. As a new employee they gave me a pink phone for my bedroom. I had the phone on my dresser. I was living with my parents then...being very young. I have always had a vivid imagination, believe me. When I was young I was pretty high strung, and at the time was having boyfriend troubles and other family related crises were going on. So I was on edge. Negative energy all the way.
My boyfriend, later my husband, was in law enforcement. He lived in Albany, about five miles from my suburban home at that time. I would meet him when he got out of work around midnight and many nights at his parents' home to watch Johnny Carson, and then I’d drive home. If he didn't come to my house, I'd always go to his. This night I left after Carson and started the familiar trip home, which I hated because Albany at night wasn't a great place to be and I had had someone follow me home one time. When I went past this cemetery by my house I always hoped the car wouldn't break down (having that vivid imagination!)
It was a Friday evening. My parents always went out on Friday nights or Saturday nights to dinner or dancing. They never got in until very, very late on those nights. I hated coming home late at night by myself and finding them not home. We lived by a field (on one side of the house) and it was then a rural area and not many people around. I imagined someone would jump out of the field and grab me! I would talk myself out of it and just say to myself: Just go inside and lock the door. Don't be stupid. SO........................
this night I arrived home, I would imagine around 12:30 or later, and they weren't home! My heart started to beat fast and I just literally ran onto our enclosed porch and locked the door behind me. I opened the inside door and immediately turned on the light that was on our mantle on the fireplace. That was the first light I could find in that dark house. I heard my phone ring which was totally crazy. No one ever called at that time of night. Remember this: the phone was just installed and I had my own private number (my parents had theirs). NO ONE had the number except boyfriend Denny, and two girlfriends. I had just gotten the phone, literally just go it installed. It was unlisted so no one had the number except those three. A gutteral male voice said in a very menacing voice: "Claudia? I see you just got home. I'm coming over there and do you know what I'm going to do to you?" I have never been so horrified in my life. In my mind I planned on running down the cellar stairs and going out the two double doors in the cellarway in the back of the house and running to a neighbor's. Then I heard a car pull in the driveway. OMG! I looked and it was my parents!!!! Thank God in heaven....and I never heard from this entity again.
So here is what I think and always have thought: The number was unlisted. Dennis was a very serious guy and would NEVER EVER pull a prank like that, being very protective of me. Yes, he had the number but he lived five miles away. How would he even know I just walked in the door, as this gutteral voice told me? The voice was not a voice I had heard before. It was NOT him so let's put that aside. My two girlfriends? Never..they lived miles and miles away. Even if they put someone up to do that (no way!) they had no way to know I had just gotten in the door. A neighbor? No...no one had my phone number. Since I was very nervous and upset during this time I feel I opened a doorway where some negative energy...I call it demonic...was playing with me. I was up to my eyeballs in UFO books. Anything regarding life after death, paranormal, you name it, I was reading about it. Everything always interested me, and especially and above all, the unknown. So that is my other experience, one I want to forget but never will. The voice was not like anything I ever heard, ever. It was awful. That voice. UGH.
Editors Note: For anyone interested, we did a great interview about other strange happenings in Claudia’s neck of the woods, from MIB-type capers to UFOs, in the January 2020 issue: http://www.apmagazine.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1421&Itemid=53
Then too in the February 2020 edition we interviewed Claudia about reported Bigfoot and other cryptid encounters in New York State that she had researched: http://www.apmagazine.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1439&Itemid=53
