Phone allows ‘conversations’ with the dead
Tucked away on Wellington’s south coast, a telephone booth is providing the living with a chance to call the dead.
The wind telephone is not connected to anything, but is meant as a one-way communication so people can dial the number of a loved one who has passed away and have a conversation with them.
Wellington nurse Mo Blishen installed the booth after she heard about the Japanese wind telephone that was used by thousands of people to come to terms with the loss of loved ones after the 2011 tsunami and earthquake.
The phone could help people who were having difficulty saying goodbye to find closure, she said.
‘‘But yeah, talking to dead people, it’s weird.’’
Blishen, who has experience working in palliative care, has seen how people ‘‘really turn themselves inside out’’ over lost opportunities when the people they love die.
‘‘We don’t often get to say what we want to people before they die,’’ she said.
‘‘I suppose the reason why I did the phone is to sort of help put to rest some of that regret.’’
The original idea for the phone came from Itaru Sasaki, a septuagenarian garden designer who placed the phone booth in his back garden in Otsuchi, Japan, in 2010 because he was struggling to come to terms with the loss of his cousin.
He named it the ‘‘wind telephone’’.
His house was located on a windy hillside overlooking the Pacific Ocean and the phone gave him a place he could speak to his cousin in an uninhibited way.
After the 2011 tsunami it was opened to the public and thousands of people visited it to say goodbye to people who were lost in the disaster.
When Blishen heard about the wind telephone on an episode of This American Life podcast last year she immediately wanted to install one in Wellington.
‘‘I just thought, yeah, they need one here.’’
Having a telephone to call the dead is not just an act but a ritual, Blishen said.
People can go through the routine of dialling the phone number of the person who has passed away on the disconnected rotary phone that Blishen picked up on Trade Me.
The phone booth was installed on Sunday at a quiet spot on Owhiro Bay Beach.
Blishen invites anyone walking along Wellington’s coast or going to Red Rocks to drop down off the footpath and have their private conversation on the open beach.
‘‘You can just find a moment.’’