"...At first, it was hard for me to believe that our departed friends and relatives have nothing better to do in the next world than cavort around calling up the living over some astral pay phone." - D. Scott Rogo     Personally, I think it's entirely possible that the next life could be boring. How you answer this question has a lot to do with the angle you are coming from on this. If you believe that these phone calls are really placed by the dead, there are a couple options. First, if they are in the great beyond or whatever, maybe they miss you and want to talk to you again. Second, some calls are obviously to provide some kind of help to a person. In addition to calls requesting assistance for still living loved ones, some phantom callers will impart important info to loved ones ("The million dollars is hidden in my sock drawer!").     The only thing about this point of view is, why do so many dead people call up and not say anything of importance, or repeat some weird phrase? Even though I think this phenomenon is interesting, I can't say that most phone calls from the dead are really useful. Why don't dead loved ones call us and tell us what's up with the afterlife?     There are a few cases in which spooky callers have mentioned things like, "They said I couldn't call," or something of that nature. Maybe it's not easy for them to get through, so lots of times the conversations are lame. Face it too, most people would freak if some dead person called them up. That's the basis behind the idea that most prolonged calls occur when the living person involved isn't aware the other person is dead.     There's also another kind of paranormal view, that people use their latent psychic capabilities to make the calls occur. Obviously, this would be part of denying that someone was gone, or maybe a self-comfort measure. People could also just be totally nuts, or crazy crack smokers. The possibilities are rather endless.     People that are into aliens and extra dimensional type things have proposed maybe it's them faking us out, although I thought all the aliens were busy giving anal probes. Interestingly, if you've seen the movie The Mothman Prophecies, it kind of goes with this angle. The spooky creature seems to be masking itself as different real people, and calls Richard Gere's character as his dead wife. Kind of going into how could the calls occur, even after ol' Dick rips the phone out of the wall, it keeps on ringing. Cue scary music here. . .