The Mysterious Phone Number From The 90's

when it comes to looking into topics or mysteries in the internet I really enjoy topics that are more obscure it's refreshing to look into things that aren't covered to death and it allows me to bring attention to something likely close to being solved the number we're gonna be looking in today isn't something I would generally look into or even consider as an internet mystery it might be arguable that this isn't even an internet mystery whatsoever this number and all of the strange things surrounding it in essence is a real-life incident that has only been kept alive by the Internet what we're gonna be exploring is 20-some odd years of first-hand accounts to try and figure out what happened with what may be the most mysterious phone number that existed in the 90s [Music] to clarify before we go forward this number is a telephone number or a 1-800 number and I'm gonna name it momentarily but I highly advise against calling this number as not only is it not home to the same owner as it was in the 90s but it's also home to an erotic hotline we're gonna get into how this number changed ownership here in a bit but for now you just need to have a fair warning if you choose to call this number during this video with that disclaimer out of the way let's get to the number its 1-800 Gulf tip well that might seem incredibly random just know that things are about to get a hell of a lot weirder for further background we're going to dive into the rumors regarding this number as it appears countless times in Google searches and as you'll soon learn people are just as confused as to what happened to this phone number as we are at first I thought this was some prank number that was meant to make you call on a rhotic hotline but after messing with all the possible combinations none of them are even remotely funny enough to make a joke out of I'm gonna leave all the numbers here on screen in their positions and maybe you can come up with a combination that will make sense to this entire situation this mysterious phone number has no discernable understanding and there's even a website dedicated to submitting your memory to try and figure this thing out this website is entitled 1-800 golf tip com the homepage reads the following hold the phone remember the 90s remember high school remember calling 1-800 golf tip if you don't you're a fraud if you do what the was that we're here to find out please join us as we try to solve this mystery from the past since I've read through just about every single first-hand account there is about this telephone number I want to give you a common consensus of what I found essentially what would occur after calling this number is that a pre-recorded line would play with a man counting to 10 over and over again with notable pauses being made on certain numbers something that varies here with a lot of the first-hand accounts that are on the Internet is that some people remember a pause around a 6 7 or 8 the man speaking on the telephone is widely regarded to have an Indian or Middle Eastern accent a few people also noted that if you left the phone on long enough a loud scream or a synthetic siren would play to shock listeners in an odd jump-scare by all accounts the origin this number is almost certainly Canada and in a couple of testimonials people mentioned a billboard to be the original origin we're gonna touch more on the billboard later but something I want to point out is that if you google the numbers associated with this the only one that comes up transcribed is 1-800 golf tip this shows us this rumor came from some form of source material and not from people dialing numbers randomly if people were dialing numbers randomly then they would have come up with different variations like 1-800 golf VIP and so on this leads me to believe that there was clearly something going on with this number back in the 90s that this many people would have the exact same memory I submitted a question to the contact page of the website I mentioned earlier in hopes of getting a first-hand account but I haven't heard anything back from the site's owner but maybe they will in the future going forward with this search I decided to look for references to this telephone number anywhere else on the internet in hopes of gathering new information unfortunately though I was pretty much empty-handed until I came across one reddit thread from someone who lived in st. Catharines Ontario and had seen the Billboard go up at the time this reddit thread that I found comes from a user named oh I get jokes and about 10 months ago he was in the exact same situation as us today while most of the info in this thread is stuff we've already talked about this reddit thread does have quite a bit of new information that I want to go over in his reddit thread he outlines his experience with calling the number after seeing the Billboard in his town he states that he used to practice imitating the individual man on the other end of the call after calling the number so much as a kid the most notable contribution that allows us to confirm that this number exists in the 90s comes from a user in the thread named Connie Lindy who found an archive to school newspaper from Carleton University Ottawa dating all the way back to 1993 here on this archive it lists this phone number as the thing that was talked about by students on a list of things that they quote liked in this thread oh I get jokes even goes as far as to provide an individual sound file for anyone looking into the topic let's take a listen to his impersonation okay here is my imitation of the 1-800 golf tip recording and keeping in mind it's been a couple decades but the voice went something like 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 etcetera etc and where that pause was I mean I I remember the breath after the seven other people remember it somewhere else but I do know that the loop was seamless almost positive to that in a further update to this thread oh I get jokes also mentioned what the Billboard looked like here's what he had to say this was 20 years ago but to the best of my recollection full color with a close-up of a golf ball a club angled away from the camera green grass and some blue in the upper left one 800 golf tip was in a big yellow 3d lettering I reached out to oh I get jokes and he told me the town it was spotted in was st. Catharines Ontario this means that by 1993 this individual number had spread by word of mouth over 600 kilometers in another 4chan thread from 2017 we learned that the Billboard was across from an old Bijou theater and after reaching out to oh I get jokes and asking him about the location he mentioned that the theater had a Bijou arcade on the first floor and a theater on the second floor since then this theater has been torn down and replaced with a Tim Horton's I even managed to get a picture of what this billboard looks like today something to note here is if this billboard is rather small meaning it wouldn't have been too incredibly expensive in this town by the way I've linked oh I get jokes down below as well as his thread as I'm incredibly appreciative of posters who take time to get back to me within 15 minutes and provide additional info almost a year later after making their post that being said as much as I trust very friendly Canadians I still wanted to look a bit further into this and decided that I'd look into the number itself this dropped me into an entirely separate rabbit hole by looking into who owns 1-800 golf tip today I managed to find the company by the name of Mayfair communications the date listed for this number being updated into the 1-800 database is January 20th 1998 what's interesting here is that this was updated five years after it's referenced in the student magazine since we have this discrepancy here I wanted to look into Mayfair communications as a company to try and figure out what happened to this number after googling Mayfair communications I found that quite a few businesses came up we can cross-reference the number were given on the 1-800 directory and it gives us this company called Mayfair communications in Philadelphia Pennsylvania in my opinion this company seems sketchy something to note about Mayfair communications is when you google them a large number of scam reports seems to be associated with this company Mayfair communications incorporated doesn't even appear to have its own website which is incredibly suspicious I'm not even entirely sure if Mayfair communications is still even in business after doing a bit of digging I believe this company was taken over by another company called prime telecommunications what's interesting is that prime tel was also located in Philadelphia and they owned some of the same numbers my best guess is that prime tel took over the number and never updated the 1-800 record what's interesting is when you search Mayfair communications on Google Prime tell even comes up on the first page despite never directly referencing them after looking into what Prime telecommunications does as a company it's crystal clear as to what happened to 1-800 golf tip this company is notorious for hoarding millions of phone numbers and buying them as soon as they expire this company is well known for redirecting any number it buys to an erotic chat line this leads me to believe that Mayfair communications scooped up this individual phone number in 1998 and then was taken over by Prime tell if they're not one in the same the reason that I believe it's important to understand what happened to Mayfair is that it allows us to rule out that this was ever a joke phone number meant to call an erotic hotline by referencing that student newspaper we learned that 1-800 golf tip did have a previous owner as it was referenced there now the big question still remains though what is the purpose of 1-800 golf tip why would someone go through all of this trouble just to set up a phone number and perhaps a billboard and get people to call it I'm gonna throw forward three theories as to what happened one of which I favor immensely keep in mind since there's no recording and all we have our first-hand accounts it's hard to say anything definite the first theory that seems to be passed around a lot around this phone number is that this was some kind of social experiment or hoax but one thing that doesn't line up here is that if this was a hoax just to mess with people why sink money into it for no payoff potentially there definitely could have been cheaper ways to get this phone number jump-started since you couldn't leave messages for this individual phone line it's hard to see why someone would get satisfaction out of trolling this way the only other way to hear about what you had done and set up a billboard and created a graphic for would be from word-of-mouth and while this seems possible let's look in other theories the second theory is that the person who paid for this billboard passed away or something happened to them after setting it up they could have used this counting to ten recording as a placeholder but that doesn't seem to explain away the scream that was heard at the end or the siren the only way to know for sure is to see who paid for the billboard and see if there's an obituary for them but good luck finding who paid for it the last theory is the one that I would like to entertain the most as it requires the least assumptions and provides a motive I personally believe after looking into this whole situation assuming all the rumors were true that this was some kind of marketing lead generation tactic and if you don't know what that means it was likely a way to collect phone numbers for telemarketing purposes caller ID was definitely around at this time and it could have been a ploy to get people to intentionally call in with a cryptic phone number that way they could collect active fresh phone numbers to be sold to later on this makes sense in my opinion as telemarketing was much more lucrative in the 90s and was gaining traction cult calling would have been much more effective and today we kind of get robo calls every two seconds but people in the 90s were not used to that at this time there wasn't even a Do Not Call list until 2004 so it makes sense that this was some kind of tactic they paid for a relatively small billboard and could have gotten thousands of phone numbers over its existence people clearly passed this thing around like crazy so this would have been a goldmine this theory provides a motive for paying for the billboard and shows how they could have made their money back later on they could have even directly sold these phone numbers to other companies in the area but as far as this mystery goes this is my best guess keep in mind this is somewhat logical but it's still complete conjecture as based on first-hand accounts that we can't even technically prove to this day in conclusion I want to point out that what I'm providing is based off of first-hand accounts and unless someone comes forward or new evidence comes out it's really hard to say anything for certain if there's something I've learned from rumors and first-hand accounts is that they're incredibly inaccurate so like I said this is my best guess what we have left today is an internet urban legend and while it's fun to entertain theories I'd love to know what you guys think about this entire thing as I said I'll leave that one thread link down below if you guys want to look into this for yourself and if we can come up with something new that would be awesome but for now this is barely sociable have a good night [Music]

Channel: Barely Sociable

Views: 3,276,668

Rating: 4.9017973 out of 5

Keywords: mystery, internet mystery, mysteries, internet oddities, strange number, mysterious number, unexplained mysteries, unsolved mysteries, mysterious, analysis

Id: _28b0P_6VvY

Length: 12min 33sec (753 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 16 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/klg0143]

Can’t wait to watch this later this week!

[u/jpagel]

Didn’t hook me as much as the others so far, but still pretty entertaining 👍🏻

[u/Axlxlxl]

69 upvotes

[u/DarkMSTie]

Found a reference here - http://scholars.wlu.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1876&context=thecord - page 19 - Seems it's listed as an inside joke based on the caption. -- Nov 1993

"Beat the evil stress monster!! Relief is just a phone call away 1-800-465-3847 - call now! toll free! - this message brought to you by wlusr"

(wlusr being the college paper)

[u/twhite5]

If the Barely Sociable video guy sees this, pm me. I have a pretty solid explanation for this number.