On Apr 29, 7:22 am, "Matt J. McCullar" wrote:
"Sal M. Onella" wrote in ...



I had an El Cheapo phone on my nightstand for years. It was a one-piece
unit that I laid face-down to hang up. It always gave out a chirp right
before the ring, which I imagine was related to the ghost ring your friend
heard.

In addition, that phone emitted an offbeat three chirp pattern every
evening
about 10:45. If my wife and I were there together, one of us would
usually
wisecrack about the FBI and phone taps. I imagine it had something to do
with testing the line. I had forgetten all about that.

I recall during my teen years in Fort Worth, TX (Southwestern Bell) in the
mid-80s, during the summer months I would stay up for most of the night. I
had one of those el-cheapo electronic handheld phones in my room and it
always emitted a quick chirp at the same time each night: 2:10 a.m., without
fail! My guess is that it was responding to some high-voltage blip sent
down the network by the phone company for maintenance tasks or something.
Cecil Adams covered this topic in his column "The Straight Dope."

And oh yes; some telephone systems had 'Routiners' or 'Line Insulation
Testers' that would typically test through all the lines often late at
night when there are/were few calls and identify any leakage due to
wet cables and other non-normal conditions etc. two such incidents
were when a member of a telephone company vice president's family left
a phone outside in the rain and another when someone washed their
telephone set in the kitchen sink and put it aside to dry, without
unplugging it!
Keep looking for the ironic and the humorous.