Supernatural: Long-Distance Call

At the start of the month, commenting on the Torchwood radio play The Dead Line, I drew attention to the iconic power of the telephone in horror scenarios.

In our modern age, there are few things more intimately unnerving than "the mystery phone call"; add that to the horror gimmick of the call on a disconnected phone and you've got guaranteed shivers.

In Long-Distance Call, people in Milan, Ohio - the birthplace of Thomas Edison - are being plagued by calls from deceased loved ones, coaxing them to take their own lives "so they can be together".

Meanwhile tension is running high between the Winchester brothers as the deadline for Dean's "deal with the devil" draws closer and his chances of worming out of it are looking increasingly bleak.

Then, while investigating the mysterious phone calls, Dean gets one from his late father, offering a possible way out of the demonic contract.

This sets up a reversal of the norm, where Dean takes the calls at face value while Sam is more skeptical.

It takes solid detective work by Sam - and walking into a trap - to unmask the true villain of the piece: a Crocotta, a mythical beast believed to lure people to their doom by mimicking voices; although the clue to its lair was very unsubtly signposted reasonably early on in the episode.