The Voicemail

i expected this night to be a little cute. coz its halloween! and yeah i'd be seeing cute people in their costumes, with their headsets on and talking to freaked out customers who needs technical support. other than that i wasn't expecting anything unusual. (hindi ako lapitin sa multo, i've had no ghost experience in my life, and my third eye, as they would say, is firmly shut, sewn, locked, taped and cemented!)

it was a little over past 9 when i arrived at the office. i came in late for work because of the long queue at national bookstore (its where they sold rihanna-chris brown tickets-and yesterday's the last day for the early bird price...) and in a super rush mode, i immediately turn the computer, got my phone and when to the locker to get stuff. when i got back, i started pressing numbers to check the voicemail, to see, and by default there would be, anyone who might have called the hotline. 

and so the damn ivr spoke.. gave instructions and menu and then the freaky "a-c-c-b-c-c-c..." sound made by the phone came. then the start of the voice messages. nothing new for the first few messages. i would normally make fun of it. id say "wag ka nang lang pumasok forever (referring to someone who kept calling almost daily...), asus, body katamaran! (for people claiming that they are experiencing body pains), feeling mo lang yon! (people for claim that they are not feeling well...) and so forth...

then there this voice mail. it was all a garble to me when i first heard it. it came to me like "oh, probably someone just forgot that he was calling this number and he left the phone hanging..." and so i listened until at the end of the voice mail... there was this really disturbing sound... a sound in between distorted sound of a gun and big appliance being thrown to the ground... 

my boss, who was intentionally listening to the voice messages, got alarmed by this sound that he asked me for a replay. we played it again, and both of us had our ears to the phone with the loudspeaker on and the volume to the highest level...

then there was this unrecognizable sound or perhaps conversation... then after a few seconds... some words became clear...

"bakit po?"

"kidnap to..."

holy f*ck. what the hell is this? we continued to listen. trying to discern every sound made.

"taas mo kamay mo!"

"stupido!"

then a few more unrecognized sounds. then there were sound of a couple of men talking. sounds of the guy almost crying and begging for help. there was this sound of perhaps the caller being held on his neck and him gasping for air.

shit. real shit. this is freakier than halloween.

after playing a couple of more times. we're left stuck nowhere. we had hoped its a prank call but it would have been so concerted that it sounded so true. and our instincts are telling us this is not a practical joke!

we had our managers listened to it and they were shocked and clueless as well. there was no name mentioned on the call. and the number was not given. but there was a time stamp - 10:31 am! Voice IT personnel came and checked the voicemail. unfortunately, the can't trace it. even globe, to whom the company's lines are based on, can't trace it for there was no "tracer" when the call was made (at least, that' what i heard from what OM told me...) 

we ended up not being able to know who the caller was. or what was the number used. as told by our OM, this would be handled by HR and perhaps be forwarded to the authorities... i just hope the guy's ok...

we tried to discern carefully the words spoken on the message. little by little we understood. but what struck us the most was this few words spoken by one of the "bad" guys...

"wag mo muna papatayin!"

...can your halloween get any freakier than this?

...the voice message is still stored in the phone