Four "Phantom Phone Calls" in One Hour

Yesterday I posted in the afternoon a post entitled "Another Day, Another Spooked Device."  Perhaps I should have waited to post until later in the day, because I then might have titled the post, "Another Day, Another Two Spooked Devices." For in the evening my cell phone started acting as if it had a mind of its own.

At 10:16 PM on September 28, 2018 (yesterday) I got a call from one of my daughters, just as I was about to enter back into my apartment building after taking a walk for the better part of an hour. My daughter said she was calling me back because I had left two messages on her phone. But I had not done that, at least not with my fingers. I told her I hadn't left any messages. Then I checked the call log on my phone.

My phone is the humble little Samsung cell phone shown below. It has few features, but one of them is a Call History feature allowing me to see a log of previous calls. I was astonished to see that according to the Call History,  my phone had twice dialed my daughter during the past forty minutes, during which I hadn't touched the phone. One call occurred at 9:43 PM, and another at 9:44 PM.  But during the whole time from 9:30 PM to 10:15 PM my cell phone was in my pocket, and I never touched it during that period. There were also two other calls in my Call History for the hour I was walking: calls to my wife at 9:57 PM and 10:00 PM.  I hadn't dialed any of these four calls.

So we have here a strange case of "phantom dialing." Looking at my cell phone's Call History, I found some other cases, such as a call to 1555 and 8888 and 6235. We can account for such four-digit calls by imagining that there was some random depressions on the front of my phone (such as could occur if something else was in my pocket along with the phone while I was walking).

But accounting for 4 cases of "phantom dialing" to two of my relatives is much harder. I have no hotkeys on my phone for dialing any of my relatives.  Below is the shortest sequence of button presses that I could make to make four such calls.

(1) First I must press the top of the right top End button to bring up the Contacts menu on my phone.
(2) Then I must press the little metal bar below the OK button twice to get the row for my daughter.
(3) Then I must press the OK button again to bring up my daughter's phone.
(4) Then I must press the OK button again to make a call to my daughter.
(5) Then I must the press the End button to end the call.
(6) Then I must press the OK button again to call again my daughter.
(7) Then I must the press the End button to end the call.
(8) Then I must press the top left metal bar next to the OK button to move to my wife's record in the Contact list.
(9) Then I must press the OK button again to dial my wife.
(10) Then I must press the End button to end the phone call.
(11) Then I must press the OK button again to dial my wife again.
(12) Then I must press the End button again to end the call.

Now, on my humble Samsung cell phone there are 21 possible button presses I can make, counting each of the possible buttons I can press. You see only 15 buttons in the photo below, but the metal square around the OK button has four bars, which each is like a separate button.  And the button on the top left and top right are "two in one" buttons. So what is the probability of getting the sequence of 13 keystrokes above by chance? It would seem to be about 1 in 21 to the thirteenth power. That is a probability of 1 in 1.5447238 X 10¹⁷, less than one chance in a quintillion. 

There might have been a higher chance if somehow my old cell phone had been infected by some type of computer virus. But the phone had no internet connectivity that I have ever used, and I don't think it has ever connected to the internet.  Also, when the phone calls occurred, I was walking far out of the range of my Internet Wi-FI. 

So we have here an astonishing case that is very hard to explain naturally.  Once again (as in these cases) I have a spooky case suggesting some invisible intelligent agency. 

My humble cell phone