Spooky Halloween Story

Once there was a frazzled mother who did not know how to fit in all the fun things she liked to do for Halloween. Before she knew it, it was morning on Halloween day and she was not ready. She had to make a quick decision, should she pick up the house and do the dishes, or run out the door and hurry to do all the errands to make Halloween a success.
She threw some Halloween type clothes on the younger kids and decided to see how many errands she could run before picking her child and his best friend up from preschool. Menu labels had been printed, cut and glued, and dropped off at the location of the party for later that day. She had worked on things at the new church building. She even found the Kanga costume and made it work so she would be in costume with the rest of her family. The children were picked up from school, and the friend dropped off at her house. The mother thought of her list and was pleased with how quickly she had crossed four things off her list. She still had a lot to do though so she handed the baby his bottle and the toddler and preschooler a piece of candy from the school Halloween party. She hoped this would tide them over while she did the shopping for the food that she needed for that night. She tried calling her husband to check in with him regarding lunch plans. He told her that he was in a phone meeting at work and would need to call her back, so she hung up and went on her way.
Just then the phone rang, she picked up her cell and saw someone was calling from home. Her cellphone has an adorable picture of the kids that appears when the home number calls through. It seemed a little odd to her, but she thought maybe someone had stopped by and was calling. Although she remembered locking the door so even that seemed weird. There was no answer. "Weird", she thought. Then the phone rang again, she answered. There was a lady on the other and. The conversation went as follows:
"Hello", the mom answered.
"Hello", the stranger replied.
" Who is this?" said the mom.
"Who is this?" said the lady. The tone of this women's voice was quite rude.
"This is Amy, who is this and where are you calling from?"
"Never mind., it's none of your business."
"What? Who is this? Is it a wrong number? "
"Must be." Then the stranger hung up.

The mom tried calling back, but all she got was her own answering machine. The mom turned the van around thinking she should go back to the house and see what was going on. As she turned onto her street, she realized she could not go check, she did not want to leave kids alone in the car, nor did she want to bring them into a house with a possible intruder. She picked up the phone deciding she would have to interrupt her husband. Just then the cell phone rang. It startled her. She answered. It was her husband. She told him what had happened. She asked if he thought she should call the police. He said she should and that he would be right there.
The mom decided to park around the corner where she could still watch if someone entered or exited the house. She wondered how someone would have her cell phone, she remembered it was written in large print across the top of the calendar that hung in the kitchen. She called the police, they told her to wait there. Shortly after her husband showed up, followed by one police car, soon 2 cars, then 3 then a 4th squad car appeared. She did not even know there were that many officers in her small little town. So what seemed like the entire police force entered her home. They checked all over and said it was safe to enter the house. They wanted her to check to make sure things were how she had left them. It was then she had remembered the state in which she had left her home. After talking to the police and the police checking with the neighbors for anything unusual, the police left. They said there must have been wires crossed with cell phone.
Amy was not convinced. She second guessed where she had put every thing. She wandered around wondering who the lady was on the phone. She stared at her cellphone. Her husband pointed out that if someone had called from our phone it would show up when you pushed redial. He also pointed out that there home number is blocked so unless they manually unblocked the number, the cell phone would not have acknowledged that it had come from the home number. The only proof of her story was the phone log showing that someone had called her from her home number. Then she thought of something. She dialed her home phone number but with the area code of her cell phone number. A very crabby and rude but now slightly familiar voice answered. The mom asked the lady if she had called a wrong number about an hour earlier. She responded she had (not very nicely), the mom tried to explain that her home number was the same with a different area code, the rude lady did not care and once again hung up.


Things Learned from this Spooky Story.
1. Never leave your house embarrassingly disastrous, in case the entire local police department needs to search it.
2. Always lock your doors (All doors were locked except one back door which led to more paranoia).
3. Always be kind and acknowledge when you have dialed a wrong number. It doesn't take that long and you may save a frazzled mother a lot of panic and worry.
4. The captain of our local police department grew up in our house. Cori's bedroom was his. The Fiji room was painted by an artist in St. Paul, the police officer's parents had it decorated as a Tiki room for entertaining. The fourth bedroom downstairs terrified him when he was little. It was where his dad kept all the tools, and at that time had no window.
5. The neighbor directly behind us that never talks to us is the Methodist Minister. Which means all of the neighbors surrounding us are each ministers in one of the other christian churches in town.
6. If someone calls from the same area code as the number they are calling, the cell phone drops the area code of the number. If that number is programmed into your cell phone with a different area code, but the rest of the 7 digits are the same, then your cellphone will read that number as the programmed number. And although the odds of someone who shares the same home number with you but has a different area code calling the wrong number and accidentally calling your cellphone is rare, it is possible.