How Can I Get a Call from a Disconnected Number

[PeekABoo]

My question involves private investigators in the state of: Any State

As a former victim of a stalker who was very well connected and very technology savvy I've worked very hard to keep my current location a secret. Normally I ignore phone calls that I have no reason to think someone would call me from but for some reason the other day I got a call and my instinct told me to call it back. I got a message that the number was disconnected. I thought that was very strange. I triple checked the number to make sure I was dialing it right. I was. I wondered for a moment about the likelihood that I had actually gotten a call from someone who both called the wrong number and was about to have their service shut off so that in the twenty minutes it took me to return a call I would get a disconnect message. Figuring the odds of that to be quite astronomical, I called my phone company to ask them how it is possible for me to get a call from a number that is disconnected. The operator had no idea. She did some kind of internet search and said the number was a landline and told me the state/city it was in. I got a little worried because my former stalker had ties to that area. I had already done whitepages.com search and what she said confirmed the information I received. Since I live far away from the region the call came from, I then called the service provider for the number that called me and asked the same question: How is it possible for me to get a phone call from a disconnected number??? I got the same answer. The operator said that did not make sense. She looked into the number and told me it had been disconnected since 2005. That seems like a long time for a number to be disconnected and not re-issued but, that's what she said. I've since had a neighbor tell me that a person can indeed have their phone service set up so that if someone tries to call back they'll get a message saying the number is disconnected. If that's really the case why would two phone operators from two different regional phone companies tell me that they have no idea how someone could call me from a disconnected number??? What worries me about this is that during my nasty little incident I was astonished to learn to just what extent technology can be manipulated and some part of me got a bit paranoid that something hinky is going on here and that, to my horror, I've once again been located and I'll go through the same phone tapping, computer hacking mess I went through before.

So, how about it? Can anyone explain to me how it is possible to get a call from a number that claims to be disconnected when you call it back and know that nothing hinky is going on???

Thanks.

PS - Just to verify that I am not insane, I used a friends digital camera to take a picture of my caller ID, showing, for a fact the number that I got a call from a number that can be verified as disconnected.

[cissycicle]

The caller could use call forwarding to have incoming calls forwarded to a phone number that has been disconnected.

[PeekABoo]

That would explain why I got the "disconnect" message when I called the number on my caller ID back because I wouldn't actually be reaching the number on my caller ID, I'd be reaching the number I was being forwarded to. But the phone company tells me that the actual incoming number that registered on my caller ID is disconnected and has been for quite a while.

Because this seems quite an unusual feat, I just wanted to confirm with someone knowledgeable in this area that my head isn't in the wrong place on this, that this truly does seem hinky. I thought that someone familiar with private investigations/surveillance could tell me better than anyone whether this sounds like "suspicious" activity or whether there's some perfectly logical and probable explanation that I just can't personally fathom.

Thanks for trying, though. What you mentioned is surely an interesting technique to know!

[mmmagique]

I apologize for her.

(I'm really curious!)

I once had the police contact me because someone had "called 911" on my cell phone, screaming. I had not used the phone that day, and neither did my fiance (we were the only ones in my house) I had to talk to them several times, and since I was in a different city than the one my cell phone originates in, finally called the police here in Louisville to come see me, and to confirm nothing strange was going on.

The police in the other town were threatening to press charges against me.

The police officer who came to our home explained that it is possible to make a call look like it's coming from another phone, but, I didn't really understand how.

It was very frustrating though, explaining over and over again to police officers who SO didn't believe me, that we did not make that call!!