For several months now, a hair-raising, inscrutable mystery has played out on the streets of New York: Why the hell is the Mister Softee jingle creepily blasting at half-speed from some of the city's LinkNYC kiosks? Is it a hack or an "old-fashioned phone prank"? A guerrilla commentary on the invasive nature of these data-siphoning obelisks that seem to be sprouting from the pavement each day? Or just another ice cream scam? Is it weird that we're hungry and frightened at the same time?

Some answers to our questions remain elusive, but others are beginning to snap into focus. Over the weekend, tipster Jason Eppink encountered one of the singing kiosks at 35th Avenue and 37th Street in Astoria, and managed to jot down a phone number from the tablet's screen.

Apparently, someone—something?—is using the public WiFi hotspots to dial an answering machine in Iowa, which is, or at least was, connected to a recording of the latest version of the slowed-down jingle. That number is 563-999-1308, and up until last night, you could call it and hear an even stranger variant on the soundscape. In this iteration, the slowed-down ice cream jingle is remixed with some cryptic mutterings—"There are 47 airplanes in the underground hospital, airplane #17 is performing stomach surgery on airplane #7," followed by a string of numbers.

We don't know, either, but go ahead and listen for yourselves:

Eppink—who has his own history of public pranks, but swears he's not the culprit—says he heard the dramatic song on both Saturday and Sunday this past weekend. He noted the active call had been going on for about 5 minutes (the calls are programmed to time out after 10 minutes), and says he's unsure whether it's "the original provocateur or someone building on their success."

The latest remix comes after some New Yorkers noticed the creepy theme song accompanied by an air raid siren in Astoria earlier this month.

@LinkNYC @Gothamist @BrianLehrer LinkNYC stations around B'way & 33rd St in Astoria are all playing slow-mo Mr Softee music accompanied by an air raid siren. #LinkNYCApocalypse pic.twitter.com/w14Y8YfYe2
— Scott Ethier (@ScottEthier) September 2, 2018

The first slowed-down jingles—sans air horns or hypnotic airplane mumblings—were first heard in May of this year, and have since been spotted all over the city. There's also another LinkNYC kiosk in Astoria that, according to Eppink, has been known to play a call-in show focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We're not sure what to make of that, either.

We're Getting Closer To Cracking The Creepy Mister Softee LinkNYC Jingle Mystery