This reminds me of a story I read in a Dave Barry book where a woman was getting repeated phone calls from an unknown number (back before cellphones and easy blocking were a thing.)
Turns out they were from another state where a furnace and oil tank had a system in place to call the oil company when it ran low. The company was out of business and the woman later received the same number as her home phone.
She was being harrassed by somebody’s furnace in another state.
