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Discovered a neat trick that was considerably less than a treat?

A phone system that was around at the same time as the printer in this article had the (designed) ability to play the music on hold through the phone loudspeaker. If an idle tech set a few jumpers, enabled and disabled a few different software options and then did a bit of "other than expected design" wiring it became possible to set a separate input channel for music on hold, and the "playing from the phone loudspeaker". This input could then be wired to a computers audio output, letting you play anything heard over the computer's audio to the speaker of every phone in the office. Think an 8.1 sound system is good? Try a ~130.0 system; what it lacked in base and treble was made up through sheer numbers of mid's. This was quite good for playing music when working in the office late at night when nobody else was around.

However, idle hands etc. Come halloween, I thought it might be funny to get one of those halloween haunted house effect CD's and play with it a bit. You know, the occasional creaking door, footsteps, lightning, odd chuckle, loud breathing, ghost moans and groans etc. I just had one effect playing at random at quasi random intervals. That may well have freaked out a few people, especially when people who weren't superstitious would deny having heard anything at all etc. Everybody being asked to point in the direction they thought the sound was coming from to track down the ghost (or hidden speakers) was one of my favorite highlights since practically everybody was (correctly) pointing in different and some totally random directions.

Management also found it funny, but a seniorish chap mentioned loudly in the middle of the IT department that while he didn't want to be a killjoy it would be convenient if the frequency of ghosts visiting could drop. They duly dropped to one every five thousand seconds, and the volume dropped a bit too.

The only problem was not turning it off overnight. The next day a memo (remember those?) circulated suggesting that what was midly funny in a very full and quite light office was apparently not so amusing for a couple of people working alone in a practically empty, darkish echoing office, leading to freaked out people fleeing a haunted house office, and that it would be rather convenient if the ghosts didn't revisit.

Oops.

I never did get caught, but nobody was looking too hard, and everybody who was looking was looking was doing so in the direction of finding hidden speakers, looking at if the PC's had all been set up to play something or if the PA system had been used to pull it off. :/