
Wind Telephone: A disconnected rotary phone for "calling" lost loved ones - curtis
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/wind-telephone
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arkades
I can’t speak to my fathers grave: it is disconnected from him, by definition
the one place he most certainly never was.

I can’t speak at the sky; I’m not any sort of believer.

Despite our never texting, though, I recently found some great comfort in
texting my thoughts to him. Texting is already such an asynchronous form of
communication, it didn’t feel like talking to myself.

Apparently the phone company has reassigned his cell number, though. So it
really didn’t feel like talking to myself when I got a text back asking me to
stop.

~~~
rmason
At the end of his life my late father would call me four times a day. One of
the hardest adjustments for me has been getting used to those calls not
coming.

I'd always call my dad every time I made an out of town trip. He'd worry so I
always would let him know that I'd returned home safely. Multiple times I've
had the phone in my hand, start to dial his number and stop. Grief is a bitch
folks.

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hliyan
I'm wondering whether I should make some recordings (or even train a chatbot)
to respond to these type of calls if/when I'm gone. Already, when I go through
my past email & chat archives, I see that there is enough there to reconstruct
my responses to most day-to-day questions.

But I personally believe that humans forget the faces and voices of departed
loved ones over time by design. We're not meant to relive pain but to
gradually have the associated memories overwritten by new ones. Our digitally
augmented memories are an impediment to completing the grieving process. But
then again, I'm a person who feels grief in a very muted form so I'm not
really qualified to pass judgment here.

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gumby
This is reminiscent of the untraceable phone hotline in The Shockwave Rider
(the 1975 novel that gave us the term, and idea, "computer worm"). In this
case the worm protected the anonymity of the "Hearing Aid" \-- you could call
that number, say whatever you liked, and at the end someone at the other end
would say "only I heard that" and hang up.

The ability _not_ to be overheard is becoming increasingly precious.

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zw123456
I know it can seem a little silly but I know for me, when my Mom passed away I
sort of struggled with deleting some voice mails from her. I know I could have
transferred them to hard drive but in the end it seemed like the right thing
to sort of let the 1's and 0's go off into the ether-sphere along with her
spirit.

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mmorearty
This American Life had a nice segment about this phone. It's one of the
stories on this episode: [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/597/one-last-thing-
before-i...](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/597/one-last-thing-before-i-go)

~~~
SyneRyder
One of their most memorable episodes, definitely worth the listen.

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gfody
Thomas Edison worked on the two-way variant of this:
[https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/dial-a-ghost-on-
thomas...](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/dial-a-ghost-on-thomas-
edisons-least-successful-invention-the-spirit-phone)

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zeeZ
There is a 2016 documentary about this by NHK:
[https://youtu.be/ke-H5EEqvRs](https://youtu.be/ke-H5EEqvRs)

This is not an official channel, but it's completely gone from their website.

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Dowwie
Spielberg ruined this for me.

The child Carol Anne in the movie poltergeist could communicate with the
spirit world through her child's toy phone.

I can't think of anything redeeming about a spirit phone because of this.

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jayess
I've occasionally sent emails to a friend of mine who passed... despite
getting bounce backs.

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psergeant
> Know Before You Go

Don’t go, leave it for the people who need it

~~~
ars
> Don’t go

Who are you saying that to? Maybe the person reading the article needs it?

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purplezooey
It's like the Wave Organ in SF.

