Got Your Number on the Wall [Unknown Armies]

Got Your Number on the Wall – Google Docs

Got Your Number on the Wall

[Unknown Armies]
Yes, the song was a spell. In Unknown Armies terms, it was gutter magic that managed to get elevated to some weird cross between it and a no-fooling ritual (and getting to that point was thought to be flat-out impossible).  It largely went out of style when pay phones disappeared from the American landscape, but the few pay phones that do remain tend to be very well protected.

Got Your Number on the Wall

Cost: Two minor charges

Ritual: Well… strictly speaking, the song was a spell mnemonic.  To make it work, you needed a coin that once was possessed by your target (a dime was traditional), which you then dropped in a pay phone.  You then entered your number, hung up the phone, then immediately dial 8675309 in a very particular way: “8 :beat: :beat: 675 :beat: 30 :beat: beat: 9.”  While doing that, you traced out the outline of a torch and two trees on the ground.  And, of course, while casting this ritual you had to hum in harmony with the original refrain.
Effect: If you did successfully did all of that, when you picked up the receiver again you’d find that you were connected with the number of the person whose dime you were on.  This essentially allowed the user a way to bypass call blocking, call tracing, and unlisted numbers: it’d even call a disconnected phone if the number hadn’t been re-assigned yet (because, hey, magick). But note that nothing about this ritual would require somebody to actually pick up the phone. It just connects you.