They were invented by Itaru Sasaki, a Japanese garden designer who lost a cousin to cancer in 2010. Wanting to stay in touch, he set up a telephone booth in his backyard equipped with a disconnected rotary phone by which to call his dead relative. Then, after a devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami killed more than 15,000 people, he opened it to the public and, voila!, a movement was born.
Today there are over 300 Wind Phones worldwide. And for nearly a month now, there’s been one in Joshua Tree, California, where my family and I are spending the summer.
It too was borne of grief, specifically that of Colin Campbell and Gail Lerner whose teenage children, Ruby and Hart—17 and 14 respectively—were killed by a drunk driver in 2019. “Anyone in grief can visit, sit down in the privacy of the vast desert, pick up the rotary phone and call their loved one via the cosmic connection,” Campbell told the Washington Post.
I’m not exactly grieving for my parents, dead now for nearly 40 years. I am, however, fascinated by the concept of a Wind Phone. And so drove to the obscure place where a yellow telephone sits in a glass-lined wooden cabinet overlooking the boulders and cactus. And wondered how my long-dead dad would react to hearing from me. “Hey, son, why are you calling?” I imagined him saying. “Don’t you know I’m busy up here?”
The reality was vastly different.
Sitting at the phone, gazing out over the barren landscape, I had to force myself to pick it up. This is ridiculous, I thought. What am I doing? Slowly, I leaned into the receiver. “Hello?” I offered, feeling silly. Thank God I was alone, or I’d never have been able to go on. “Dad,” I continued uncertainly, “are you there? Can you hear me?”
Not surprisingly, my inquiry was met by silence.
Then something happened. Forcing myself to continue, I started talking to him. “I’m calling,” I explained, “to catch up. So much has happened since you died. I want to tell you about my life. About your grandkids. I want to thank you for all that you did.”
And suddenly it was real. I have no illusions that my father was actually there. And whether he heard me, I can’t truly say. Yet the conversation went on for several minutes. I told him about my career, my marriage to a wonderful Filipina and my new life in the Philippines, which he visited several times in his life. I talked to him about his grandchildren and how much he would love them. And I told him how his advice and inspiration had made me what I am.
By the time we said goodbye, I was bawling like a baby. And so picked up the phone again to call my mother. “Hi Mom,” I began, “are you there? Can you hear me?”
It’s not that I believe my parents were actually at the other end of the line. Nor do I have the faith to profess that they were truly listening. What I can say with certainty, however, is that talking to them seemed real. And that, when it was all over, I felt a strange sense of comfort and relief.
Apparently, that’s not unusual. “I called my grandma and wished her blue jays, cold beer, and bliss in the cosmic drift,” one visitor wrote in the guest book.
Others struck a more serious tone. “I called my best friend and soulmate [who] decided to stop living in 2024,” someone else wrote. “I think of him and miss him every second of every day; this is truly a wonderful gift.”
My gut reaction? I think we need one in Mindanao.
FIND YOUR NEAREST WIND PHONE HERE
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David Haldane is an award-winning American journalist and author with homes in Southern California and Northern Mindanao. His latest book, Dark Skies: Tales of Turbulence in Paradise, is available on Amazon. This column appears weekly in The Manila Times.
