The Calls Are Coming From Inside the House: Difference between revisions

This is a partly [[Discredited Trope]], because the whole urban legend relies on a myth about old analog land lines: the idea that you could, by tapping the receiver button carefully, manage to dial the telephone number of the building/home you were occupying at the time. Before cell phones, it was generally not possible to call someone from the same house you were in (at least without additional land lines, which are uncommon in a single dwelling). <ref>In fact, tapping the switch-hook is electrically no different than what the dial does: It momentarily opens the circuit. Five momentary openings in quick succession registers at the exchange as the digit "5", and so on. The dial just does it more conveniently. And if you dial the number of the line you're on, whether with the dial or the switchhook, whether or not there are other extensions on the line, you get a busy signal; that line ''is'' off-hook, after all. Nor is it electrically possible for the exchange to ring the other extensions on a line when one of them is off-hook; the low impedance of an off-hook phone will essentially short out the ring voltage.</ref><ref>I can't speak for all carriers, but Verizon in Western Washington as of a few years ago, when you dialed your own number you got a quick recording telling you to hang up the receiver... when the receiver was hung up, they would ring your number with nobody on the other line. So on at least one phone network, at at least one point in time, this urban legend was plausible.</ref><ref>When you do same party calling (phone company term) on a land line like this, the carrier will play a similar message when the caller picks up the phone, identifying the call as being from the same number. This is still used commonly in places with multiple buildings on the same phone line.</ref>

* In the 2011 remake of ''[[The Mechanic]]'', the hitman uses this to get the mark out of the building, by making him think the call is coming from a room above -- inabove—in actuality the hitman has rigged the switchboard to give a false signal.