Previously: 801-820-0263.
There are, as youâre almost certainly already aware, a number of supposedly âcursedâ phone numbers floating around out there â including the phone number 090-4444-4444. Itâs not a U.S.-based number; you can probably see that based solely on the number of digits it’s got. This number belongs to Japan â and over there, itâs known as Sadakoâs phone number. Itâs said that if you dial it, youâll hear strange and eerie noises drifting down the line⊠and that within a week of making the call, youâll suffer a terrible accident.

Or maybe youâll suffer something worse.
After all, there are a lot of superstitious beliefs surrounding the number four â a number which can be read one of two ways in Japanese: As yon, or as shi. Trouble is, thereâs another word in Japanese thatâs also pronounced shi: The word for death.
Some say that if you call Sadakoâs phone number⊠well, letâs just say that at the end of seven days, your time on this planet will be up.
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Iâll confess that I havenât called Sadakoâs number myself; thereâs a lot Iâll do in the name of research, but incurring terrifying long-distance fees calling Japan is not one of them (right now, at least. Here’s how to make it more likely that I’ll do so in the future). A number of YouTubers have given it a shot, though, so there are plenty of videos you can check out if you want to see an actual call to Sadako in action. (Just make sure that, if the YouTuber youâre watching is based in the United States, they make the call correctly; you have to dial out from the United States and add Japanâs country code before inputting the number itself in order for the call to go through, meaning that U.S. callers trying to reach Sadakoâs number have to dial 011+81+090 4444 4444 for it to work. Or, yâknow, just find a video of someone dialing the number within Japan.)
Anyway, Iâm admittedly less interested in the alleged âcurseâ held by the number than I am in some⊠other aspects of the legend associated with it. If youâre at all familiar with J-horror, the name âSadakoâ is undoubtedly well-known to you: Sadako Yamamura is the primary antagonist â and occasional protagonist â of the Ring novels and movies. As such, we know sheâs fictional; thereâs no chance weâre actually dialing a cursed number, because Sadako isnât a ârealâ ghost. But even if the number isnât actually cursed, there is still a mystery attached it: You do hear something weird when you dial it. But⊠why? What exactly is the number? And how did it gain the reputation of being the number you call if you want to say, âHello, is Sadako there?â into the receiver with a totally straight face?
So: Letâs take a look and see what we can find.
Before You Die, You See The Ring
Although Sadako has her roots in Japanese folklore â sheâs very clearly an onryo, a vengeful yurei depicted in Kabuki theatre as having a white face and wild black hair and dressed in a white shinishozoku, and the element of the well was drawn from Bancho Sarayashiki and the story of Okiku â sheâs quite a recent creation; she was brought into being by writer Koji Suzuki, with her first appearance occurring in the 1991 novel Ring. Indeed, her fictional nature is actually what led to the commonly accepted explanation for the numberâs existence: Itâs frequently repeated that itâs thought to have been created as a marketing stunt for one of the films in the big-screen adaptation series based off the Ring novels.
These kinds of stunts arenât unheard of; one of the most notable in recent memory, for example â which set up to promote the 2013 remake of Carrie â allowed people to call up the White household and then receive a call back. (Sadly, the number is no longer operational; I checked). So, thatâs where I started: By trying to figure out whether such a promotion had actually been executed for any of the Ring movies, and if so, which film it was used to promote.
Hereâs the timeline of major Ring releases: Ring, directed by Hideo Nakata, and Rasen, directed by JĆji Iida, both arrived in Japanese cinemas in 1998, with Ring 2, again directed by Nakata, following in 1999 and Ring 0: Birthday, directed by Norio Tsuruta, in 2000. Then thereâs a gap in Japan; the American remakes, The Ring (dir. Gore Verbinski) and The Ring Two (for which Nakata returned), were released during this time, premiering in 2002 and 2005 respectively. The Japanese series resumed in 2012 with the release of Sadako 3D, followed by Sadako 3D 2 in 2013 (both directed by Tsutomu Hanabusa). Then, several crossovers â the canonicity of which is debatable â began appearing: In 2015, Sadako faced off against Hikiko-san with director Nagaoka Hisaaki at the helm, while in 2017, she took on Kayako Saeki of rival film series Ju-on: The Grudge (dir. KĂŽji Shiraishi). In the U.S., Rings (dir. F. Javier GutiĂ©rrez) was released in 2017.
(There were also a few television efforts â two series, both released in 1999, and a TV film, which, with a 1995 air date, predates all other adaptations â but none of them were as successful as the later films, so we probably donât have to concern ourselves with them much. Iâm also discounting the South Korean remake and a few Chinese crossover films.)
So: Of these eight to 11 films, which could the âcursedâ number have been set up for?
On the English-language internet, one of the most frequently cited resources concerning Sadakoâs phone number is Saya in Underworld, whose post on the number is dated May 11, 2010. That means we can rule out both installments of Sakako 3D, as well as both of the crossovers: Each of these films was released much later than 2010. We can also toss out the three American films, because, well⊠theyâre American. It doesnât make sense for âSadakoâs phone numberâ to be tied to either of these movies: Any phone-based marketing stunt set up for the American films would use a number based in the United States â and also, the number wouldnât be called âSadakoâs phone number,â since the characterâs name in these two films is Samara. (For what itâs worth, The Ring Two did have its own interactive advertising campaign connected to the DVD release of the film in the UK â but that stunt was definitely unconnected to the rumors surrounding 090-4444-4444.)
This leaves us with the first four films in the series, all of which were released between 1998 and 2000. However, Iâve been unable to find any evidence that a phone-based promotion featuring a âcursedâ number was used to advertise any of these options. All Iâve found is random people saying, time and time again, variations on, âItâs believed that the number was set up to advertise the Ring moviesâ â but with no reference to any concrete, primary sources. Itâs all hearsay. In the absence of anything even resembling proof, the only conclusion we can draw is that the assumption that âSadakoâs numberâ was created as a marketing stunt is erroneous.
Cracking The Mystery
Interestingly, though, the earliest mention of the phone number in connection with the Ring series Iâve been able to dig up is dated Jan. 31, 2000 â and itâs this source which, I believe, actually cracks the mystery.
The source is a website with the address Okametaro.com. Thereâs a lot I donât know about this site; since I donât read or speak Japanese, nor am I terribly familiar with the conventions of the Japanese internet, Iâm limited in my understanding both linguistically and culturally. What Iâve been able to deduce is that the site is an online diary or journal run through a piece of open-source blogging software called tDiary. The diary seems to belong simply to a regular, everyday person; the entries span many, many years, detailing everything from trips the writer took to records of simple, day-to-day minutiae. After June of 2011, however, the writer seems to have mostly abandoned the diary: Following an entry dated June 19 of that year, the only two remaining entries are from February of 2014 and December of 2017.
In any event, the writer noted in their Jan. 30, 2000 entry that they had tried calling Sadakoâs phone number â which means that the legend was already fairly well-known in Japan by that year, even if it didnât make it to the English-speaking internet in any meaningful way until a decade later. There isnât much to the entry; the writer merely described it as unnerving, saying that when you dial 090-4444-4444 (via Google Translate), âYou can hear a strange noise.â They added, âI was a bit scared.â
The next day, though â in the Jan. 31 entry â the writer described what they found when they looked into the number itself. Via Google Translate:
âSo, when I looked it up a bit, a stupid fact was discovered. This number was the number used in IDOâs cdmaOne access relationship. I forgot the details, but this number seems to be operated from a cdmaOne terminal. In short, it was like a detection sound of a modem. Therefore, it sounds [like a] strange electronic sound, and it will expire when it times out.â
IDO is one of Japanâs mobile phone carriers. Itâs currently part of KDDI, the larger company that formed when IDO, DDI, and KDD merged in 1999 to create a telecom carrier capable of competing with NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone), the countryâs dominant carrier â and indeed, the number 090-4444-4444 does appear to be operated by KDDI, according to various reverse phone number lookup services. Meanwhile, Interim Standard 95 (IS-95) â also known by its proprietary name, cdmaOne â was the first digital cellular technology based in CDMA (code-division multiple access) ever created; itâs still used as the access method in quite a few mobile phone standards.
The picture begins to emerge: What we seem to be looking at here isnât a âcursedâ number; rather, the number known as âSadakoâs phone numberâ is a sort of test line or access number. Itâs not meant to be used to reach someone, so when you call it, you just end up hearing weird noises â kind of like what happens when you call a fax machine.
The “Ghost” In The Machine
Granted, I donât have an incredibly firm grasp of how CDMA and other cellular technologies work; additionally, hereâs another reminder that nearly all of the research Iâve dug up while looking into this one is in Japanese, so Iâm working through the extremely imperfect filter of Google Translate. But a number of responses to a query regarding 090-4444-4444 on Hatenaâs anonymous question-and-answer site (which looks to be kind of like Quora or Yahoo! Answers) all suggest that this is the case: âNTT’s test line and so on,â says one; âThe lower side says, âIDO is using it for data communication to cdmaOne,â says another, pointing to an additional source; âProbably it is a number for testing. Because fees do not occur,â says yet another; one points to this user manual, which includes the use of the number 090-4444-4444 in a section titled âVideo transmission is performed using quadruple multilinkâ (itâs on the page labeled 45, for the curious); and, says one more, pointing to this page (which is mostly gibberish when run through Google Translate, but does appear to be relevant):
â[This is] about how to make a cdmaOne phone stand by as the receiver side and display the phone number of the other party when receiving an incoming call. This is the number of the center that [KDDI mobile phone carrier] au is setting for communication. So, it sounds like noise, here and here. It seems that you are being stoked by ghost stories.â
That last line is particularly interesting to me â and I actually think itâs what completes the picture. Hereâs what I think âSadakoâs phone numberâ really is, and how it got its reputation for being âcursedâ:
The number itself is a test line â kind of like the phone equivalent of the Webdriver Torso YouTube channel â whose existence was discovered by the general public around the time that the Ring series began to take off, thanks to its successful film adaptations. Folks drew connections between the unsettling images and sounds present in the cursed videotape in the movies and the sounds you hear when you dial 090-4444-4444 â a number already considered to be kind of freaky-sounding, due to the superstition surrounding the number four in Japan. Add to that the idea that something terrible will happen to you within seven days of performing a completely mundane action (watching a video, making a phone call) being fresh in peopleâs minds, and, well⊠if you put all the pieces together, itâs not hard to see how you might end up with a phone number with a reputation for being cursed by a favorite fictional monster.
The human capacity for creative invention never ceases to amaze me. We are constantly building stories in order to explain to ourselves things we donât understand about our world. Sometimes that tendency can come back to bite us in the arse â but sometimes, it results in some truly incredibly feats of storytelling. Ultimately, thatâs what I think is going on with Sadakoâs phone number â and honestly, I think itâs a heck of a lot more interesting than it just being a marketing stunt.
But, I mean, hey â this is all still just a theory. Feel like tempting fate? Give the number a call. Tell us when you do â and then report back to us after the seven days are up.
âŠIf youâre still around, that is.
Thatâll give us proof of the âcurseâ either way, wonât it?
***
Follow The Ghost In My Machine on Twitter @GhostMachine13 and on Facebook @TheGhostInMyMachine. And donât forget to check out Dangerous Games To Play In The Dark, available now from Chronicle Books!
[Photos via Tama66, KlausAires/Pixabay; KENPEI/Wikimedia Commons, available under a CC-BY-SA 2.5 Creative Commons license.]
called it today from mexico, strange noises came up, I’ll check back on y’all in 7 days
Ooo that sounds mysterious. How do you get this creepy stuff? Well this was something I’d like to try once. Great job Lucia!
There is also a girl named Sadako from Japan who died due to radiation of the bomb dropped in Hiroshima. She tried to fold a thousand paper cranes before she died so she could get a wish. She is honored in Japan. Would this be of any relevance to the story??
THIS legit freaked the living daylights out of me. Holy gouack’a moly im gonna eat maccaroni
Correction: the Japanese telco name is “KDDI”, not “KKDI”. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDDI
(I know, Wikipedia shouldn’t be cited as source, but I’m lazy.)
Oops, sorry about that! My brain scrambles acronyms sometimes. It’s been fixed. Thanks for the correction!
So technically, this is a good sign TheyDidn’tBelieveMe. Well, so far…
I dialled this number and changed my phone to the Japan setting and it freaked me out …
I haven’t died so that’s a good sign !
Can we talk about how not only this is an incredibly interesting story (I hadn’t heard about this particular “cursed” phone number!), but this is also great investigative journalism?
Really great stuff, Lucia, as usual! Thank you for sharing such excellent content with us gentle readers. Reading your new posts is my fun little ritual on Monday and Thursday mornings. <3
Thanks so much for the kind words! So glad you’re enjoying the site — appreciate you reading!
Hey is this stuff real bc me and my little sister are rlly freaking outđ«đ„ș
Nice detective work!
Re: the first video – yes, that’s a ‘the number you have dialed is not currently in use’ message.
Thanks so much! And excellent, re: “the number you have dialed is not currently in use” — thanks for confirming that!
So, what happens if you text or something? I installed WhatsApp specifically to call for free, and I had to add Sadako to my contacts. Then I had to invite her to join WhatsApp, is the curse invoked?