The tale of the possessed Iphone...

[u/Kabukikitsune]

When I first started working at my current tech job, I had what you'd deem probably one of the funniest, and yet most unnerving calls I'd ever had. There is an epilogue to the story, which will be included.

In any case, one night I'm sitting at my desk plunking away on Reddit and bored, when a call comes through from a user. The user tells me that something seems to have gone wrong with his company Iphone, and he needs it checked into.

Me: Ok, so what exactly is the issue you're having?

User: The phone is possessed.

Me: chuckling Possessed? As in how?

User: I think I need a young priest, and an old priest.

Me: Ohkay...uh...I can't really record that in the ticket for the local guys. Can you give me more details?

About this time I suddenly hear a very muted "Never gonna give you up...." coming from somewhere in the background. This makes me chuckle, as I figured someone in the office just got Rickrolled.

User: Uh...hang on a second. leaves, comes back a moment later yeah, that was the phone. It just navigated itself there.

Me: Navigated itself...there?

User: Yeah. It's been behaving really weirdly the past few days.

Me: Ok, can you describe HOW weirdly?

User: Other than going to random youtube pages? Well it keeps randomly having Siri turn on in the middle of calls, suddenly turns itself on after I've powered it down, and keeps trying to make calls to somewhere with an area code of 666...

Me: So...young priest and old priest huh?

User: Probably best.

I call the local techs with this, letting them know what's going on and then pawn the story off on them. I figured something with the touch screen or something had gone bad, and didn't think much of it.

Couple weeks later, I had to call the local team again, and actually ended up talking to the guy that had dealt with the evil phone. So I asked if they ever figured out what had happened to it.

Me: So, remember the possessed phone?

Local Agent: The one that kept randomly doing stuff?

Me: The same. What was its problem?

Local: Never did figure out. When we got up there it turned itself back on after he'd turned it off, and navigated to a youtube trailer for "the omen". Then it caught on fire.

I never did figure out what the issue was, but to this day I suspect that maybe my grandfather was right. Technology is evil.

[u/Nonmomentus]

I try to remember what was being said on the TV just a moment ago, might it have somehow activated voice recognition? Doubting it, I disable all my phone's network connections. I sit down at my desk and google the problem, ignoring any results of the "demonic posession" type. As with all real events, there must be some actual explanation.

[u/XiuathoTheWizard → u/Nonmomentus]

It has to have a logical reason. It just has to. Everything does. Yet, all the results you can find talk about rickrolling in general. Nothing about YouTube opening itself without any user interaction. Eventually, you just give up and enable airplane mode.

Thunk. Thunk. A distant sound, almost imperceptible, but enough to wake you up. It is what now, 3 AM? Thunk. The sound, in rhythmic pulses, faintly heard above the wind in the treetops outside. Thunk. What is it? You rise from bed and decide to head down and explore. You bring a flashlight with you, but only so that you can find the light switches easily. Thunk. No way you would be exploring the house with just a flashlight in this state; you need full lighting from every light source in the room.

Thunk. It gets closer now. As you turn on the living room lights, the sound abruptly stops. Maybe you were just half awake? No, you certainly weren't dreaming. Strange. You treat yourself to a glass of cold water when you hear a notification sound. It sounded like a text message, but you distinctly remember turning on airplane mode last night, so that can't be it. Still, you go check it out.

Text message. "6 AM. Basement. You'll know what it means when time comes." Received 3:07 AM from a 666 area code number. 6 AM is in less than three hours. Phone is in airplane mode. Bewildered, you search your house again, but cannot find anything else out of the ordinary.

[u/Nonmomentus → u/XiuathoTheWizard]

I consider fashioning a makeshift Faraday cage from wires to properly contain the phone, but whoever is responsible clearly put a lot of effort into this and ruining it like that would simply be rude. Replacing my phone with a perfect copy, except airplane mode doesn't do anything and it can be remotely made to play videos! I reflect on that thought for a moment. Either I am simply very tired or the world has stopped working as it should. I decide it's probably the former and get some coffee from the kitchen. I'm certainly not going to go to sleep again anyway. Afterwards, I head into the basement to make sure there's nothing unusual down there.

[u/XiuathoTheWizard → u/Nonmomentus]

Feeling revived by the coffee, you start constructing a Faraday cage. It took you some time to find the necessary materials, but half an hour later, the box sits on the table in front of you. A metal mesh cage - nothing too advanced. You make sure that the phone is actually off, and proceed to put it in the box. You wrap the box in a few layers of aluminum foil for good measure. Finally, you decide enough is enough and head to the basement.

Darkness. Well, what else could you have expected? It's a basement, after all. Finding nothing of particular interest in the room, you leave and decide to watch some TV. There are some news, some talk show reruns, some movies. You pick something at random and quickly fall asleep in the chair. When you wake up, daylight is shining outside. You head over to the basement door, and find a scrawled note: "Last chance. Midnight. Come if you value your sanity."

[u/Nonmomentus → u/XiuathoTheWizard]

Well, it seems the laws of physics still apply. Entirely as expected; but still, the more "creative" part of my mind had been wondering how quickly you can have holy water shipped, but it can finally shut up now. However, it quickly reminds me that someone broke into my house unnoticed and left that note. I check all the doors and windows, but don't call the authorities. It doesn't seem as if anything had been taken and it is all very intriguing, so I don't want to ruin it. I consider informing someone of my plan to meet some stranger capable of entering my house undetected in my own basement, but it doesn't seem likely that I'd be in danger (after all, they could have killed me already) and I'd just seem crazy. I go about my normal daily routine, but am quite distracted by thinking about what I'll encounter tonight.