This episode was written and produced by Doug Fraser.

In the late 80s and early 90s, 900 numbers were all the rage. For a couple bucks a minute, you could call and hear from Hulk Hogan and Freddy Kreuger, have a psychic predict your future, and even find true love. In this episode, we dig into the wild world of 900 numbers, and explore why they came about, what made them so appealing, and why they ultimately faded away. Featuring Doug Fraser of the Curious State podcast, 900 number experts Bob Bentz and David Wood, and a surprise guest…

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

Original music by Wesley Slover
Teenage Color by Falcon Dives
Born in the 80s by Falcon Dives
Silver Dollar by Roy Edwin Williams
Fishing With Aletta by Harry Edvino
Musique by Rasure
Binary Motion by ELFL
Tibro Mountains by Daniel Fridell and Sven Lindvall
Game by Sound of Picture
Admin by Sound of Picture
The Plan by Wendy Marcini, Elvin Vangaurd
An Obsession by Dayon
Bossa Noisa by Sound of Picture
Goodbye Goodnight by One Two Feet
Prologue from Nightmare on Elm Street OST
The Thing from the Grave from Tales from the Crypt
(Can't Live Without Your) Love And Affection by Nelson

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View Transcript ▶︎

A quick note to any parents out there: The following episode is clean, but it does briefly hint at some adult themes. We did our best to edit in a way that would go over the heads of younger listeners. But if you want to completely avoid that because you have little ears around you, you might want to come back later. Ok, here we go.

[music in: Falcon Dives - Teenage Color]

You're listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz

When I was a kid in the late eighties and early nineties, I looked like a character straight out of Stranger Things. Poofy brown hair. Thick plastic-rimmed glasses. Tight white pants. And the most generic high tops you could imagine. Think Napoleon Dynamite, but less cool.

Now, there's a couple of things you should know about eighties Dallas. The first is that I was obsessed with professional wrestling.

[clip: Hulkamania wrestling]

The second is that when I thought my parents were away, I’d sneakily watch things like Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street and especially Tales from the Crypt. That’s the one with the Crypt Keeper… that creepy skeleton puppet guy.

[music out into clip: Crypt Keeper + sfx: thunder]

As a kid, I watched a lot of TV. And back then, it meant a lot of commercials.

[Clip: Doublemint commercial]

But in every commercial break, there was one thing that you were almost guaranteed to see advertised: a 900 number. These were phone numbers that anyone could call in to. You’d call, and pay by the minute to hear all kinds of wacky, prerecorded messages. If you wanted to hear from Santa Claus, you could.

[clip: Santa 900]

New Kids on the Block, MC Hammer, Corey Feldman… Anyone who was anyone had a 900 number. Even the Crypt Keeper.

[clip: Tales from the Crypt 900]

There was also one for Hulkamaniacs like me.

[clip: Hulk 900]

But it wasn't just celebrities. You could also get the weather forecast, hints for video games, and even the inside scoop about UFOs.

[clip: UFO number]

And that's just scratching the surface of how weird things got.

[sfx: TV switch + clip: Pet Reincarnation]

Now, if you’re on the younger side, all of this might sound completely bizarre to you. But anyone my age or older will definitely remember the 900 number craze. And that includes plenty of our listeners.

Adam S.: When I think of 1-900 numbers, I think of late night Saturday television. You'd see 900 number ads constantly.

[Clip: Freak 900]

MaraD: When I was younger, like six or seven // I heard about a 900 number, probably on a cartoon. And I called it. It was a grandmother type voice who would read stories, children's stories.

[Clip: Snow White Story Phone] Brian: When my brother and I were about 10 or 11, we saw the commercial to call and hear Freddy Krueger tell us a scary story.

[Clip: Freddy Krueger 900] Matt V.: I actually got kicked out of a Sunday school class because I shared the Freddy Kreuger 900 number with all of my classmates in there, and they all tried it and got in trouble by their parents.

[Clip: Freddy Krueger 900 + music in Falcon Dives - Born in the 80s]

And it's not just our listeners who remember. Because there's someone else coming with me on this hoverboard ride of nostalgia: 20K producer and host of the podcast Curious State Doug Fraser.

[music out]

Dallas: All right. Well, uh, yeah, let's dive into this thing.

Doug: Cool, cool. Okay, So when you think of 900 numbers, what's the first image that pops into your mind?

[Arkansas trailer scene in, incl. Roy Edwin Williams - Silver Dollar]

Dallas: Sitting in my grandmother's trailer out in the country, on a hill, in Northwest Arkansas. They had a back room. And I remember there was a phone there in that room.

Anytime I ever called a 900 number, it was under the influence of the cousins that were like four or five, six years older than me who would be like, “Why don’t we call that?”

Cousins: Yeah, come on! Don’t be a wimp!

So the ones that I know I for sure called were like the wrestling and like the Crypt Keeper. [sfx: dialing] Probably nudged by the older kids, because like the 14 year olds knew the Crypt Keeper was, you know, a giant puppet. I did not know that when I was like nine.

Cousins: Oh my gosh! Shut up!

[click + Crypt Keeper clip]

And he had this real high pitched voice. And I thought it was terrifying.

[Crypt Keeper laughter + gasp + abrupt hang up]

Doug: When you called those numbers // after you actually had the call, was it worth it?

Dallas: It was thrilling. It felt like I was really talking to this person, or this character. And so, yeah, I felt like it was worth it.

[music in Harry Edvino - Fishing With Aletta]

Doug VO: 900 numbers were originally launched in the early seventies. The idea was that they could be used for numbers that expected a lot of calls, like public information hotlines.

Nick: Thank you for calling the national sidewalk safety hotline. Press 1 to report a problem with your local sidewalk. Press two to hear those options again.

Doug VO: But it wasn't until 1977 that a 900 number came to national attention. That was when Jimmy Carter took part in a live call-in show, hosted by Walter Cronkite.

[clip: Ask President Carter]

Doug VO: Okay, so it wasn't as exciting as the Hulk Hogan hotline, but it was seriously popular. More than nine million people called in… although only 42 of them actually got to speak with the president. In fact, it was so popular that it was turned into a sketch on Saturday Night Live. It starred Dan Akroyd as President Carter and Bill Murray as Walter Cronkite.

[clip: SNL Sketch]

Doug VO: Pretty soon, phone companies realized they could turn these calls into cash. So they decided to run another national call in - and again, Jimmy Carter was involved.

[clip: Presidential Debate 1980]

Bob Bentz: Back in the early eighties there was a vote line during the Carter Reagan debates.

Doug VO: That's Bob Bentz. Today, Bob’s the President of Advanced Telecom Services. But back then, he was a 900 number pioneer.

Bob Bentz: People phoned in and for thirty five cents, they got to vote for whether they thought Carter or Reagan had won the political debates.

Doug VO: 700,000 people called in to cast their vote. Or at least, that’s how many got through. The rest just heard this.

[music buttons into sfx: busy signal]

Doug VO: Despite the technical issues, people were wowed by the technology. They could actually interact with the television show in front of them. Once the public got a taste, there was no turning back.

[music in: Rasure - Musique]

Doug VO: At first, only select organizations were allowed to have a 900 number. But that all changed in 1987.

Bob Bentz: That's when AT&T decided “Okay, we got a pretty good thing here. We're going to roll this out to the masses and let as many people as possible get a 900 number.” And that's when I said, "This could be very lucrative. I think we want to start our own business."

Doug VO: So Bob partnered with two of his friends and got things rolling.

Bob Bentz: We had to invest in quite a bit of telecom equipment. We were just three guys who started a business who took second mortgages on our homes. We were all still in our twenties.

Doug VO: They got the funds they needed, and started experimenting with different kinds of 900 numbers. Early on, they had a lot of success with sports lines, where people could call in and get the latest scores and updates about their favorite team.

Bob Bentz: The beauty of sports was that there's always new information.

Doug VO: So began a cultural - and technological - revolution. 900 numbers offered news, weather, and traffic reports instantly. At the time, it was mind blowing.

Dallas: Something about 900 numbers were, it was thrilling… It was just 80s awesome and // just a great moment in phone history.

[music out]

Doug VO: Before long, 900 numbers were a big business.

[music in: Wesley Slover - 1am]

David Wood: The calls would just roll in one after another, after another.

Doug VO: That's David Wood. David spent more than two decades in the 900 number business.

David Wood: Our company provided the hardware and the software to make it all work., and most importantly, it provided what we call "content." So it provided the people at the other end of the line.

Doug VO: Soon enough, the money was rolling in. Because people like David knew the secret sauce…

David Wood: The key to 900 was keeping people on the line as long as possible. The longer you kept the people on the line, the more the call was. So you always wanted to get them sucked in either through menu selections,

[clip: annoying menu options]

David Wood: or just things to slowly build up the time.

[music out + clip: example of slow build up]

Doug VO: One of the 900 numbers David set up was with the certified double-platinum band, Nelson.

[clip: Nelson - I Can’t Live Without Your Love and Affection]

Doug VO: When you called in, the band members had some juicy info worth paying for. Eh, kind of.

David Wood: “Hi, this is Gunnar. Hi, this is Matthew. We're going to be performing in Toledo next Tuesday night” “Gunnar and I went out to dinner last night and we sat next to so-and-so.”

[Nelson back in]

Doug VO: Fans called the Nelson line in droves.

[chorus up]

Doug VO: For a little while, anyway.

David Wood: It was an instant sensation for all of like two weeks. And then that passed, as did their career.

[sfx: Nelson song grinds to a halt]

Dallas: Even though it didn’t last long, the Nelson hotline is a great example of what made these numbers so addictive. They gave you what felt like a personal connection to your favorite celebrities. All you had to do was pick up the phone and you could hear from Paula Abdul.

[clip: Paula 900]

Dallas: Or hear what the Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff were up to.

[clip: Jazzy Jeff 900]

Dallas: It was like an early form of social media, but decades ahead of its time.

[clip: Corey & Corey line]

Doug VO: Celebrity 900 numbers were big business. But the biggest earners by far were the [clears throat] adult entertainment lines.

[Clip: Romance Line]

Doug VO: But perhaps more interesting was the dating side of the business. That was something that Bob Benson and his team invested a lot of time and money in.

[clip: Adult line]

Bob Bentz: It was quite an intense program. There was a lot of work on our end but they were an extremely lucrative category.

Dallas: Here’s how it worked. The 900 number companies would partner with local TV stations and newspapers. They'd put spots like this on TV.

[clip: Dating ad into music in: ELFL - Binary Motion]

Dallas: They’d also run classified ads in the local newspapers.

Bob Bentz: And you'd read a classified ad from a woman, and you'd say, "Oh, she seems kind of cute. I think I'll call and leave her a message."

Dallas: So, you’d call the 900 number and set up your own mailbox. Then, you could send a voicemail directly to the person you saw on TV or in the newspaper. If they liked what they heard, they could send one back.

Bob Bentz: Usually men and women would exchange three or four voicemail messages back and forth until they agreed to meet in a public place for a proper date.

Doug VO: But fellas, there was a catch. Guys had to pay, but...

Bob Bentz: Women were free. Cause it's kinda like having a party when you're in college, if you got enough girls there, the guys are going to find it right? So the women could take out a mailbox for free. The guys had to pay to take out a mailbox.

[music out]

Doug VO: But of all the 900 numbers, there was one that held the championship belt, thanks to dedicated fans like Dallas...

[clip: Hulk Hotline Commercial]

Doug VO: And Bob was the person who actually created that hotline.

Bob Bentz: I have a trophy in our trophy chest that from 1991 to 1994, the Hulk Hogan hotline was the single most called 900 number in the country.

[clip: Hulk Hotline Commercial]

Bob Bentz: We also had a number with Randy Macho Man Savage.

[clip: Macho Man]

Bob Bentz: But when it came to the Hulkster, he was all about “Say your prayers and eat your vitamins.” And so they'd put in messages like that.

[Clip: Hulk vitamins]

[music in: Daniel Fridell, Sven Lindvall - Tibro Mountains]

Doug VO: For a while, it seemed like having a 900 number was a license to print money.

[sfx: 900 number montage]

David Wood: That was the peak. And it was hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Bob Bentz: I mean, // everyone was making money and it was fun.

Doug VO: But, just as quickly as it began, the 900-number craze ended with a crash.

[music out + sfx: phone being smashed into receiver, followed by dial tone]

[music back in]

Doug VO: After the break, the thing that finally took 900 numbers down… Plus, Dallas gets a visit from an old friend.

[music out]

[music in: Daniel Fridell, Sven Lindvall - Tibro Mountains]

In the late eighties and early nineties, 900 numbers were everywhere. They usually cost between one and four dollars a minute, which they would charge to your phone bill. The idea might sound cheesy now, but at the time, it was revolutionary. All of a sudden, anyone with a landline could call in and hear from psychics, celebrities, musicians, wrestlers and even fictional characters.

[clip: music out + MOTU]

Doug VO: With how much these lines charged, it’s no surprise that kids like Dallas and me got in big trouble for calling 900 numbers. When our parents got the phone bill… let’s just say we paid a heavy price per minute.

Dallas: I was not busted until the phone bill came in. And then it was, “Who has been calling this random 900 number and it has a $27 charge?” Which felt like, you know, a million dollars to like an eight year old.

Doug: Yeah, that's a couple piggy banks worth of coins in there.

[music in: Sound of Picture - Game]

With 900 numbers, there were lots of ways to rack up your phone bill. For instance, there was a TV station called The Box that was basically a jukebox for music videos. You’d call a 900 number, and request a video for two dollars a song. One listener remembers calling it a lot.

Adam S.: You'd be super pumped because you would call that number and see your requests pop up on the television. $2 a song, you don't really even think about it as a teenager. And then a month later, you know, you're getting uh, your butt kicked by your parents for ringing up the phone bill with 900 number calls.

Doug VO: Another listener remembers hearing from one of these angry parents.

David B.: Back in the early 1990s, I was an elementary teacher in Southern California. And one day, the father of a fifth grade boy came in very angry, very upset. // His son had racked up almost $400 in 900 number charges // That night after I got home, I called the number, and I was greeted with a prerecorded message of this very breathy woman telling the story of, “Today I went to a new restaurant and I saw a waitress with the most beautiful eyes. I wasn't in her section, but I watched her all through my lunch.” I listened for four minutes and then hung up. I can see how that very quickly could have amounted to $400 for this child.

[music out]

As the phone bills got higher and higher, the phone companies got flooded with calls from angry customers.

David Wood: The phone companies were tired of getting the calls from the wives or the husbands about, "Oh, what is this? What is this charge on my telephone bill of $22? My son Jimmy would never do that!" Well, Jimmy did, and the husband did.

Doug VO: Soon enough, the Federal Communications Commission stepped in. [music in: Sound of Picture - Admin]

Bob Bentz: As it would happen, the FCC and the FTC came in and they made rules. The Consumer Protection Act, which is still in effect, that started in 1993. And that was really invented to stop the abuse of 900 numbers. And an industry that was totally unregulated suddenly became totally over-regulated to the point where the consumer could call in and request a chargeback.

Doug VO: A chargeback is where you dispute a charge on your card. If it's accepted, the money is then refunded back to your account.

Bob Bentz: They had to show no proof whatsoever to get the chargeback. We would have people call us, and say, "Oh, my cat dialed the number." [sfx: meow] Or stupid things like this that you know just could not possibly have been true. And they would get a chargeback and they were essentially stealing.

David Wood: So you think you made all this money on all these calls until nobody was paying for the calls. And the carriers didn't want anything to do with it. The carriers just said, "This is more trouble than it's worth. We never want to deal with this again.” // So, that's what shut down the 900 numbers.

[music out]

Doug VO: Of course, not everyone who requested a chargeback was a scammer. Because, while plenty of these lines were legitimate, others were pretty questionable.

Bob Bentz: There were some programs that would guarantee you a place in a major motion picture if you called the 900 number, and that was very deceiving because what they would offer you is a chance to be in a stadium when an airplane flyover would occur and they’d take your picture.

Doug VO: [sfx: crowd] So you got your face in a movie… in the middle of a huge crowd of people who also got duped. [sfx: awww]

Bob Bentz: Did they deliver what they said? Yes, but it wasn't really what the consumer thought they were gonna get.

Doug VO: Other deceptions had more serious consequences.

[Clip: Psychic Hotline]

[music in: Wesley Slover - We Are Wallpaper]

David Wood: With the psychic lines, one of the reasons they were shut down, is they were really appealing to a demographic that didn't have the money to do this. Because they were promised that they were going to make a lot of money and that they were going to win the lottery and they were going to find a rich husband, and they're kind of preying on people's vulnerabilities when they need money.

[Clip: Psychic line]

Doug VO: Because of this, psychic lines tended to have the most chargebacks of all.

Bob Bentz: Chargebacks became the thing that brought the industry down because especially on programs like psychics, people would develop problems with psychic calls and they would call them to the point where they couldn't pay their bill.
David Wood: The psychic lines had that addictive quality to them. “I don't know what to do today until I know what's going to happen, so I have to call my psychic and she'll tell me if my boyfriend's cheating on me, or if I'm going to make a lot of money today.” And there was a lot of that. [music out]

Doug VO: Shady practices, deceptive advertising, addictive qualities. These all played a part in fracturing the 900 number business. But what ultimately brought the industry to its knees was…

[sfx: dial up modem]

Doug VO: The internet. Because the internet could do things that a phone number never could.

[music in: Wesley Slover - Scam the Public]

Bob Bentz: A very important part of dating is the physical attraction and, you know, that's usually why you go up and talk to somebody, right? We didn't have that on the phone. The internet, you were able to show a picture and that's a pretty big part of the dating process. So the internet is really what killed the industry.

Doug: And there was another problem that made 900 numbers totally incompatible with the modern age.

Bob Bentz: One of the negatives of 900 was they were only accessible from landline phones. They never in the United States and Canada made them accessible from mobile phones.

Doug VO: Today, 900 numbers are totally defunct in the US.

Bob Bentz: They don't exist in the United States at all. That all ended about six years ago. But they do still exist in Canada. They exist in Europe. // But, you know, they’re a small part of what they once were.

[music out]

Doug VO: So that was the end of 900 numbers… except, it wasn't. Not quite. Because although most 900 numbers went defunct over two decades ago, something bizarre is going on. In the countries where they’re still available, some of those old numbers are still getting calls.

[music in: Wendy Marcini, Elvin Vangaurd - The Plan]

David Wood: I also own some of my own phone lines, so I still get residuals on those. And these lines haven't been advertised in years.

Doug VO: But how do people know about them? The answer lies hidden in the backs of closets and attics across the country.

David Wood: We always used to say that, “No man ever throws away his favorite magazine.” So the magazine that he threw under the bed or whatever you could pull out five years later and the numbers are still going to be in there that he could call. [music out into clip 704-KISS]

Doug VO: And that got me thinking… Would the Crypt Keeper hotline - the one that had Dallas so spooked all those years ago - still work? We had to give it a try.

Dallas: This is so exciting.

Doug: Okay. Here we go. 900. 2 4 6 Crypt. Okay. So we got C-R-Y-P-T.

[sfx: touch tone dialing and ringing] Operator: The service you are attempting to use has been restricted or is unavailable. Please contact customer care for assistance.

Dallas: Aww.

Doug: Yeah, that's, that's too bad. I wish they had left personalized death messages behind // You know, the Hulk Hogan one was like, “Sorry, brother. This line is no longer available.”

Dallas: “This is gonna be the last message from the Macho Man.”

Doug: Yeah, there could have been a much better cooler way.

Dallas: Yeah, why not?

[music in: Dayon - An Obsession]

Doug VO: Well, the 900 number didn't work. So we decided to go directly to the source.

John Kassir: Hello boils and ghouls. It's your old pal, John Kassir, the voice of the Crypt Keeper. [laughter] And in tonight's terror tale, I get interviewed by a good fiend of mine, Dallas! [laughter] Take it away Dallas, but be careful what you axe for...you may get it! [laughter]

[music crescendos into laughter + thunderclap]

John Kassir: How are you doing Dallas?

Dallas: I'm doing all right. Uh, this is so exciting for me.

John Kassir: Excellent.

[music in: Sound of Picture - Bossa Noisa]

Dallas: So I'm curious what came first? Did you find the voice first, or did you see the creature first and pair that? And was there a journey to find that voice, or did it just pop up out of you?

John Kassir: Oh, it totally just popped out of me right there in Kevin's studio. When they wanted to find somebody to play the Crypt Keeper, I got to go down to Kevin Yeager's studio. Kevin was the creature maker who made the Crypt Keeper also, you know, designed Freddy and Chucky and all this great stuff.

And then when I saw the Crypt Keeper and I saw how he had holes in his throat and rotting teeth, I started doing this voice and immediately, he started shaking his head, like, “Yeah! Yeah!” You know, and pointing at me, you know, like that. And I started laughing ‘cause he was so animated, which kind of like was something that I infused into the character immediately. You know, the character that laughs at his own jokes, and it stuck.

[music out]

Doug VO: Tales from the Crypt ran from 1989 to 1996, and during that time, The Crypt Keeper was everywhere. He dipped his decomposing toes into hip hop.

[clip: Crypt Keeper rap]

Doug VO: He had a kids’ animated series.

[clip: TFTC kids show]

Doug VO: He even had his own holiday album titled “Have Yourself A Scary Little Christmas”

[clip: TFTC 12 Days of Cryptmas]

Doug VO: And of course, he had his 900 number. The one Dallas and I tried and failed to call. But what was special about his 900 number was that it was a trivia challenge.

[clip: TFTC trivia]

Dallas: On that 900 number, one of the advertised prizes was meeting the Crypt Keeper in the flesh. Do you remember meeting anyone from that?

John Kassir: Meeting the Crypt Keeper in the rotting flesh. [laughter] Well, they may have gotten to go down to Kevin Yeager's studio and seen the puppet or something. I mean, I remember people winning phone calls from the Crypt Keeper or their voicemail being done by the Crypt Keeper, that kind of thing, you know.

Doug VO: For John, the 900 number has become just another part of the Crypt Keeper's legacy.

[music in Wesley Slover - Mitosis]

John Kassir: The Crypt Keeper, it's everywhere. I mean, I see it on clothes. I see it on sports jerseys. I've seen it on hats. I've seen, you know, little figurines… And I'm really honored to be a part of that.

John Kassir: People consider me to be the Crypt Keeper, which, you know, obviously I'm not, but it's the part of the Crypt Keeper they can actually // talk to face to face.

John Kassir: The fact that I can go to conventions and sign autographs and have a following and people that I relate to as my own kind of horror, not only fans, but friends.

John Kassir: You know that it made an impression // when people come up to you and show you their Crypt Keeper tattoos.

Dallas: What I love about voice acting is when you can kind of encompass a character. And even now as a 42 year old, you just make me melt like internally when you jump into any of the—

John Kassir: Oh that's so nice of you to say I'm only 42 years old. No. [laughter]

Doug: So, you know, if young Dallas knew that one day, he would actually talk to the Crypt Keeper, how do you think he'd react?

Dallas: Oh, if young Dallas one day thought that he was going to talk to the Crypt Keeper when he was older, he would most certainly think that he must be dead, because the Crypt Keeper is dead and that older Dallas must also look like another version of the Crypt Keeper, but maybe not as funny.

[music out]

[music in: One Two Feet - Goodbye Goodnight]

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the sound design studios of Defacto Sound. For some bizarre and funny audio memes, go subscribe to Defacto Sound on Youtube.

Doug VO: This episode was written by Doug Fraser.

Other Voices: It was story edited by Andrew Anderson and Casey Emmerling, with help from Grace East. It was sound designed and mixed by Justin Hollis with original music by Wesley Slover.

Thanks to our guests, Bob Bentz, David Wood, and John Kassir. These days, John appears in lots of horror conventions. To find out where he’s going next, follow him on Facebook and Twitter. John’s also on Cameo, so if you want a custom video from the Crypt Keeper himself, now’s your chance.

[sfx: Crypt Keeper laugh]

A big thanks goes out to all of our listeners who left us voice messages about this topic. That’s Adam, Brendan, Brian, Clinton, David, Jason, MaraD, Matt and Morgan.

Also, a quick heads up: If you try to call the number that’s in the title of this episode, you’ll get an error message. Remember, 900 numbers don’t work with US cell phones. And even if you have a landline, we’d rather not charge you three ninety nine a minute just to hear a goofy message from us.

Finally, Doug has his own podcast called Curious State, where offbeat questions lead to unforgettable answers. Questions like, Could we have domesticated a T-Rex? What's the point of regret? Haven't all the possible songs been written by now? To find out, subscribe to Curious State right here in your podcast player.

Thanks for listening.

[music out]