Michael L. Diamond

@mdiamondapp

LONG BRANCH - The telephone at Freddie's Restaurant and Pizzeria in Long Branch doesn't stop ringing, but instead of a blessing, it is a curse.

The calls are from children nationwide, who want to know if Freddie's is, in fact, Freddy's Fazbear Pizza, the setting for a popular online video game called Five Nights at Freddy's.

The calls are relentless.

"We give cellphones to our kids, and we are not paying attention to what they are doing," said Oscar Hernandez, manager of Freddie's. "One number, for example, he doesn't call 10, 15 times. No, over that. Imagine one number calling over 20, 30 times."

And multiply that by thousands. Freddie's is trapped in a sea of never-ending telephone calls, and it is hurting business. The restaurant added phone lines. It shifted employees around to handle incoming calls. And its regular customers have had trouble getting through to place their orders.

It finds itself a casualty in a modern-day urban legend that has careened out of control. Once, children sat around the campfire and told ghost stories, a flashlight to their face for effect. Or they called the local bar, Bart Simpson style, as a prank. But it ended there.

Now? They have come together in a virtual community fueled by video games, YouTube channels, and their smartphones with unlimited long distance plans. And Freddie's is helpless to stop it; changing its number is a lousy option.

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"Think about how much business would be lost," said Marilou Halvorsen, president of the New Jersey Restaurant & Hospitality Association, a trade group. "That number has been in existence for so long, and then all of the sudden you change the number and people think you're out of business. It's not that easy. Hopefully, it will die down.”

Freddie's Restaurant offers dine-in, take-out and delivery. It was founded in 1944 by Fred Scialla, and it remains family-owned. Mark Brockriede, a cousin of the Scialla family, operates it.

Eerie feel

For the past year, though, the restaurant has taken on an eerie feel. The phone starts ringing when school gets out, picking up the pace in time zone after time zone. On the other end, last Tuesday afternoon were children from non-Jersey Shore area codes such as 929, 276 and, multiple times, 218. They weren't placing orders.

They seem to be enthralled with Five Nights at Freddy's, an online game created by Scott Cawthon in which the player is an overnight security guard at Freddy's Fazbear Pizza. The restaurant has animatronic robots who entertain children during the day but become unhinged at night.

"This game is one of the first horror games to actually scare me in a long time," BIGQU2 wrote in a review on Desura.com, a digital distribution service for gamers.

Or, as Oscar Hernandez described it: "Imagine Chuck E. Cheese. Imagine Chuck loses his mind."

The game has struck a chord. A YouTube personality who goes by the name Markiplier made a video in which he played Five Nights at Freddy's. It has gotten nearly 50 million views. There are Five Nights at Freddy's action figures. A movie reportedly is in the works.

Its players, including young children, have run with it and tried to find out if Freddy's exists. But instead of exchanging tales in the schoolyard, they are making video blogs on YouTube, sharing leads with the world. In his vlog, Random Man 787, for example, dials Freddie's Restaurant and Pizzeria's phone number in Long Branch. It has 400,000 views.

At times, it seems like every one of those viewers has given it a try.

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'200 calls in an hour'

"I've never seen anything like this," Edna Moore, a waitress who has worked at Freddie's for 34 years, said. "You can get 200 calls in an hour. It's very annoying. You try to do your job, and you keep picking the phone up."

Long Branch's Freddie's isn't alone. Fast Freddie's Pizza & Pasta in Roseville, California, also has gotten its share of gamers tying up the phone lines, said Tyler Thompson, an employee.

"It looks pretty bad sometimes when we have a full line of customers out the door and we’re hanging up on people," Thompson said.

Cawthon didn't respond to an email seeking comment. But in an automated response, he says: "Please do not call any phone numbers that you think may be associated with the game; there are NO phone numbers associated with the game or marketing; all locations are fictional."

The message doesn't appear to be reaching his audience. And Freddie's in Long Branch is stuck. Its long-time phone number is on take-home menus, signs and magnets that customers can attach to their refrigerators.

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So the restaurant has added telephone lines to accommodate the calls. Employees answer the phone with a brief "Hello," instead of a traditional "Freddie's, pick-up or delivery?" And they look at caller ID, trying to weed out area codes beyond the Shore's 732 or 908 while trying to be careful not to skip over a customer who might be from out of town.

Oscar Hernandez keeps a rosy attitude. It could be worse, he says. The restaurant could be getting no calls at all. Still, there are times he is driven to the brink.

"I used to work for another restaurant," he said. "I went the other day. I was talking to the owners, who are friends. While we were talking, I was paying attention to the phones, and they were not ringing. They weren’t ringing. And when it rang, it was a customer. It’s been a long time.”

Michael L. Diamond; mdiamond@gannettnj.com