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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/khakiabyss on 2026-05-13 18:44:52+00:00.

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I'm probably not supposed to be sharing any of this, and I'm definitely not supposed to be typing it at my office. I don't know how many confidentiality agreements and licensure rules I'm violating by posting here, but please know that my intentions are only to let someone, anyone, know some of what's happening around me before they take away my access to the assessments & claims systems.

You can call me Anna. It's not my real name, not even close, but I wanted to give myself a moniker so the dialogue makes sense. I've always instinctively disliked short womens' names that start with a vowel. Maybe it's a jealousy thing - maybe I was just tormented by some super average white girls in elementary school in the early 90s. Either way, I'm adopting it now because it's the furthest thing I can think of from my true self. I need to make sure my identity is protected, both from the company and from anyone who is or was kin to the claimants in the following stories.

If you've ever been to the great state of Illinois, the Land of Lincoln, I'd bet $100 cash on the spot that you've been to northern (or, at a stretch, central) Illinois, and most likely the Chicagoland area. The metropolitan sprawl of the Chicago suburbs are, truly, massive, rolling 50 to 60 miles away from the lakefront to the north, west, and south. If you keep going due west, along Rte 47, you'll eventually run into DeKalb, home of Northern Illinois University. Roughly speaking, if you cut south from there on 55 for about 2 hours, you'll drive past Illinois State, then U of I in Champagne/Urbana. But if you keep going south, for about another 5 hours, you'll start getting into my area of the woods: Southern Illinois, and specifically Carbondale, home of Southern Illinois University, in the heart of the Shawnee National Forest. Honestly, it's closer to Paducha, Kentucky than it is to any other "major" metro area in Illinois, and is generally considered to be part of the south by those that live there. On some maps, you can see that parts of this area did claim to fall below the Mason-Dixon Line during the Civil War (something that certain locals will not let you forget easily).

**Note: At this point, it would be super helpful for you to look some good maps of the area for reference. Here are a couple of links, along with what they're helpful for. These will do more to teach you about how weird this place is than I can explain in words. If you have any questions, I'll try to answer in a follow up. Just trust me, all of this will become relevant as I go on.

Google map: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Illinois/@37.6273282,-89.1397752,9.25z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x880b2d386f6e2619:0x7f15825064115956!8m2!3d40.6331249!4d-89.3985283!16zL20vMDN2MHQ?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDUxMC4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

Forestry service map: https://www.roseandacompass.com/s/Shawnee-national-forest-trail-map.jpg

Storm track map: https://www.weather.gov/ilx/tropical_climo

Fault line map: https://www.nprillinois.org/statehouse/2019-10-15/iema-fema-be-prepared-for-illinois-earthquakes

2017 & 2024 eclipse map: https://blog.wolfram.com/2017/08/14/double-eclipse-or-why-carbondale-illinois-is-special/

Map of Native Tribes: https://www.museum.state.il.us/muslink/nat_amer/post/htmls/popups/index_terr.html

1818 (first year of statehood) map (you can really see how the state developed from the south up in this one): https://mapsofthepast.com/products/historic-state-map-illinois-melish-1818-23-x-31-74-vintage-wall-art?srsltid=AfmBOooCiwv22OUG5z4q5uvuuO9U7ogMoAzKQ_eaeav54ScnuujTFZ5T

So my office is in Carbondale, one of the largest "cities" in this part of the state. It boasts a population of 22,223 permanent residents, plus the university. The surrounding towns are mostly a mix of unincorporated villages and townships, with a few larger towns like Marion closer to the interstate. It's an awesome college town, famous for it's downtown strip of bars, clubs, and restaurants, which harken back to the city's busier days, when the university was at its peak in the 70s and 80s. John Belushi based Animal House on his experience at school here, and I'm proud to say that the real Animal House was very real, and that I'd been there before it burned down in the 2010s. Students, largely from Chicago, always joked that they loved going to SIU because it was the furthest away from home they could get and still get in-state tuition.

I work for a major insurance carrier, one you've definitely heard of, with a celebrity mascot and a catchy phrase and everything. There's a very good chance you have a line of insurance with us or one of our subsidiaries/partners, if you have auto, homeowners, small business, or life insurance. We do all kinds of other stuff too, like boats and RVs, which are super popular in this area with the National Forest right here, but I'll come back to these later. My main point is that this isn't some shady 2-man operation or anything - it's a huge company, and I work at a local agency. I'm licensed nationally and by the state, and I work under a main agent. It's his name on the door, not mine, but I still bind policies, file claims, and pre-assess for underwriting. I'll call him Ben Easterly. I love Ben; he's the best boss I've ever had, and I maintain that through all of this. Ben has always had my back.

We run a tight ship of an office. Ben is ex-Marines, and sounds more like John Goodman than he realizes. Bigger guy, with a very calming and confident presence. I imagine him getting along well with my dad. His son, Caleb, works the front desk as our main customer service person, and there's been a slow rotation of other sales staff that have come and gone over the years. Ben, Caleb, and I are really the only old timers. This month's fresh meat in sales is named Shelley, but she's only been here about a week so far. We'll see how long she lasts.

Strange things always happen in Carbondale - there's even a Facebook page about it called WTF Carbondale that posts all the crazy happenings. Since the economy in this part of the state is severely depressed, tech isn't always up to date, and things like phone & internet service are not constant. Between that & the geography, mail moves slowly, calls drop, emails don't go through. We have outages all the times, but that never explained the thing with the phones to me.

The calls started happening around Christmas, right after I joined the agency years back, maybe 2012. I had just gotten to the office in the morning before we opened, around 7:45 in the morning. It had been a cold, misty drive in, with lots of slick patches covering the poorly-repaired blacktop of Giant City Drive. I lived out closer to the state park back then, in a small apartment that was remodeled from a hunting cabin into a duplex sometime in the '80s without rennovating the split-pea green bathroom fixtures. I unlocked the front door of the office and flipped the lights on, making sure the coffee maker was starting up on my way back to my desk. I dropped my bag onto the floor next to my ergonomic chair and sat with a resigned but vaguely optimistic sigh; just another innocuous, normal Monday morning.

Within moments, the sales line rang, which leads to my desk phone. Strange, I thought. Usually the automated phone system doesn't let any calls through until after our morning meeting is over at 9am, when office hours officially start. I grabbed my headset so I could take the call and have both hands available to type in the caller's policy information.

"Good morning, thank you for calling Easterly Insurance Agency, how can I help you?" My voice came through clearly, without the reverb you sometimes hear on a poor-quality or failing call, but there was no reply, only silence. "Hello? Hellooo?" I asked in my best professional-but-lively voice; still no answer. I looked at the caller ID on the desk phone, which read, clear as day:

CALLER/EASTERLYINSAGE/6185552151ex005

Our agency. Our number. My extension. I was somehow receiving a call from myself.

I quickly regarded it as a fluke - either a tech error, or some spammer spoofing our number - and it faded into the routine of the day. I forgot about it for about a week, until the same thing happened again. Monday, the first day of Winter Break for the students, 8:09am this time. Ben, Caleb, a sales girl named Jess, and I were having our morning meeting. The sales line rang, and I jumped up to get it - you never want to miss out on a hot lead. "Good morning, thank you for calling Easterly Insurance Agency, how can I help you?"

Silence.

I hung up, checked the number, and came back into the meeting.

"Just so you guys know, I think there might be an error in the phone system. This is the second time the caller ID has said I've gotten a call from myself."

"Weird," said Caleb. "I'll make a note and look into it more if it keeps happening." Ben nodded in agreement, satisfied that this would suffice to address the issue. We moved on.

The next time it happened, it was different.

It was just after lunch. 1:12pm, to be exact. I remember, because I was stuck in that minute on that phone call for what felt like hours.

It had been a while since the last mystery-internal-call. The sales line rang. I already had my headset on, having just replaced it after coming back in from my lunch break. It was December 23, two days before Christmas. It hovered around the freezing point all day, with c...

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