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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Asteroth6 on 2024-09-30 17:47:09+00:00.

Just about everyone under the age of 60 in the United States knows about the “Wild West” days of the early internet.

First came the days when Google was only a dream and you had to actually explore unknown lands to find topics that interested you. The alternative was to stick to one little board, making the internet your own little party line. Then search engines cracked the internet wide open and anyone could suddenly find any crazy place. In both eras, finding new and weird places the fun for anyone brave enough to leave their (digital) shell.

Far fewer people know that there was a technological Wild West where savvy people explored electronic frontiers before the World Wide Web.

I’m not saying that phreaking is super obscure, but it can’t be denied that it never hit the mainstream like hacker culture did.

First, to make sense of what happened, a little background: Phreaking is the art of manipulating telephone services. Unlike computer hacking, the vast majority of phreaking had a single goal: to make free calls.

Switchboard operators were replaced by automatic signaling. That signaling uses a tone. On original single-frequency systems, that tone was at 2600 hertz (Hz). You’ve seen that number if you’re even faintly acquainted with tech, this is why. Once this frequency was found, the art of phreaking began. Of course, more complicated multi-frequency lines followed that then needed to be broken anew.

The very basics of phreaking, which I will be thoroughly simplifying here, are to play the necessary tone spaced with pauses to dial the number you are trying your reach. The main tool to make the frequencies and intervals is called a blue box (or red, or silver, the colors had somewhat accepted meanings, but the details are not important here). Technically, anything that can reach the frequency needed works though; cereal box whistles, gum wrappers, or your mouth.

Once you are not bound by the phone book and cost of placing calls the possibilities are endless. While I said phreaking was about placing free calls, and this was almost always true, we had far more fun than just calling family out of state, the sense of exploration was just as incredible as the early internet.

So what can you do with the ability to dial any frequency and do it for free?

First of all, invent real-time forums before the web. With a blue box, you could dial unlisted numbers like unused business voice mailboxes and have any number of phreakers join the call. People from ten or more states could all be chatting at once, something otherwise unheard of before BBS. Yes, I know legal conference calls existed. But those were so costly and hard to arrange, does anyone alive remember seeing one used outside of a boardroom or convention?

Now, with a box you could dial hidden codes not meant to be reachable by consumer phones. Some of the most useful were “loop around” lines; test systems built for the phone companies but great for free conference calls. Some military and government lines locked behind priority codes could, in theory also be accessed. No, you can not phreak NORAD to launch missiles. But frequencies outside of the ones used in the 1 through 9 keys on your phone could be used to dial lines an ordinary phone could not. And that is how this all started.

It was the early 1980s. As crystal clear as I still remember the events, I’m not quite sure of the year anymore, had to be between ‘81 to ‘83 though. The end of the golden age of phreaking. I’d been pushing the limits for a few years by then. I wasn’t a big name. You wouldn’t see me mentioned in any of the histories on this even if you knew my name. But I did know a few people in the community and shared a bit. Ask some of those big names (well, the ones who are still alive anymore, damn this is all old now) and I wager a few would know the name.

Anyway, the companies (well, mostly company back then. The “Baby Bells” hadn’t been born yet) had gotten wise to our tricks back in the ‘70s. Test lines and proprietary systems were being increasingly guarded behind mute tones, shutoff switches, and the aforementioned non-standard frequencies: firewalls before the internet.

I knew these guarded lines could be dangerous to break into. Call tracing existed and this was illegal, but it was also thrilling. For the past… I’m gonna say six months I had been pushing through I related string of strange numbers I had found. The first number caught my attention because I thought it was a loop around, but it didn’t have multiple ends, it was just a single line playing an unusual tone. Okay, so just a weird form of test line. Playing with numbers similar to the one I dialed to get that, I found another line. This one had a voice, it freaked the hell out of me the first time I got in.

“1.”

“2.”

“3.”

“4.”

“5.”

Every syllable was deeply enunciated, the voice low, methodical, and slow.

Then, an even stranger tone played.

Okay, it was definitely a test line. I redialed in a few times. The voice always played from one. The recording was in response to my call, not playing permanently on loop, which is what you would expect. The point escaped me though I will admit. Normal test lines played a simple tone immediately.

After playing with that discovery, I found myself getting a headache and laid off the phreaking for a few days. Of course, it wasn’t long to I was back at it, poking around that mysterious line.

It took a while to find the third line in what, once I found it, I became certain was a series.

“1. 2. 3. 4. 5.” The same voice as before counted up. Then, as before, a tone played.

I screamed in pain.

It felt like my eyes were bleeding, the sound hurt like hell. I fumbled to hang up the call as quickly as I could.

“What the hell was that?” I spoke to myself out loud.

I took a step back from exploring those strange numbers again after that. Eventually, I told another phreaker the story. “Jimmy from Oklahoma”. After an early great used the “X from Y” pattern for nicknames it kind of became a recurring thing in the community. Of course, none of us used our real names in this very illegal hobby.

“Maybe it’s a military experiment. Y’know, testing tones that can kill you or mind control.” I had called him up and ran down the basics. Just as I expected, Jimmy leapt right to wild theories. Still, I can’t say I hadn’t thought the same.

“Maybe,” I admitted. “Seems a little weird to just leave the thing running though, doesn’t it? You can’t need to call in anytime and test something like that on a lark.”

“Who says they aren’t still tinkering with that shit? You could’ve got… lucky? Unlucky? I can’t rightly say.” He retorted.

“Wanna see?” I had known the whole time I was going to nudge him to call the line. Ever since number three, these things had freaked me out, pun intended, but not bad enough I didn’t want to share the weird.

Jimmy paused.

“Fuck it. Give me the number.”

I was merciful and gave him the second number. It was weird, but not ear-shreddingly painful. I waited while he made the call before reconnecting.

“Well shit. That was weird. Couldn’t hear the tone you talked ‘bout though. Just that damn creepy voice countin’ up.”

“Huh? Is this one of those sounds on the edge of our hearing? Like, did you screw up your ears and can’t hear it? Because that sound wasn’t subtle.” I was confused.

“Can’t say I know. Anyhow, you wanna follow these? Then my advice is don’t listen close and be quick to hang the hell up.”

We chatted a little about other news, he quickly hung up though, complaining of a headache. The similarity to what I endured was not lost on me.

I want to say that I seriously thought about dropping the chase. But as long as I forced myself to stay away, I don’t think I ever believed that I wouldn’t go back.

With numbers one, two, and three I had enough to start seeing a pattern in how the to reach these weird lines. Each was increasingly secured, that is used more of the key tones not found on your phone. If a normal phone number looks like 555-5555 then number four looked more like 5*5-AC5D. The “numbers” weren’t just randomly adding more of the little-used tones though, it had a pattern to it.

Two weeks after nearly fainting dialing the third line, I held the phone far away from my ear and dialed the fourth.

Nothing happened. The call disconnected.

For a moment I considered that I had the wrong number. I redialed, this time holding the phone to my ear. A 1000Hz tone sounded and the line hung up.

The behavior of a completely normal test line.

I refused to believe that a test line was squatting on this weird number by chance. So, I began to play around with it. Eventually, I cracked the code: It needed me to put in an “answer” tone before disconnecting.

The other end of the line sounded like something between an ocean and a dozen squeaky wheels squealing out of synch with each other. It wasn’t as painful as the last, but it was strange. I took a recording of the sounds on cassette.

Encouraged by not dying, I chased number 5, then 6 over the next few weeks. The security kept getting tougher. I needed to put in priority codes before the number, time keys and sounds after answering, stuff that made me feel like a genius for cracking even if it was more obsession and way too much time sunk.

The squeals in five were like four, but somehow clearer. Six really started to excite me. I thought I could start to…

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