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An odd occurrence

Paranormal phenomenon. I've had quite a few 'Electrical' occurances. If you can't figure out why, shrug it off...oh, well. When my my laid back dog barks at 'it' or slinks away, tail-tucked; then I don't feel as comfortable. 91 lbs of sissy :)

Sue
 
I doubt that.



Tell me about it!



Nope, lamp was against a wooden wall. The one window in the room is completely obscured behind a seven foot tall Oak bookshelf. Someone could be standing at the window with a flood light and it would not have cast a glare.



Possible, of course, but the absence of any swamps or marshes in the nearby vicinity makes me rule that out. Also, swamp gas traditionally burns a bright blue or green (golden yellow if reacting to phosphate) and this light was most decidedly an electric white with a yellowish hue. I've seen swamp gas light in action, and you couldn't ever mistake it for the glow of an electric lightbulb.



Nope, again, it was against a wood paneled wall.



This is an area I'm studying closely. Without knowing enough about vintage lightbulbs I can only guess as to what kind of metal is used in its construction. Whatever identifying markings were present on it have long since faded away.



Nope, I was the only one in the room. I'm really leaning as far away from the hallucination angle as I can. I know it's entirely feasible that I imagined the whole thing, but I highly doubt it. I'm trying to approach this as being a real event that actually occurred outside the confines of my mind, so a figment of my imagination is not the avenue I want to explore until I can rule out all physical explanations.



I've lived here for five years and this is the second weird thing to happen to me. That's not too bad a track record so far. :biggrin:
In my childhood home we all witnessed very strange shadows, lights and things moving throughout and we all just kind of acted as if they did not happen. In my mothers current house there has been many odd things since my Dad has passed but we always can seem to find some answer to rule out the unthinkable.
 

OldSaw

The wife's investment
The pack of cigarettes is easy. One of your friends played a trick on you. He attached an invisible thread, available from any magicians supply shop, to the pack and used it to propel the pack.

I'm leaning toward metallic reaction in the bulb. After fumbling with it, unscrewing and re-screwing it, perhaps the filament reacted with the other metal pieces in the bulb.

If you think all of your friends are immune to playing the cigarette pack joke, as the son of a joker, I can assure you that there are people that will go to great lengths to play a joke and even keep it from you. For years my dad had a spare remote control for the TV that my mother liked to watch in the living room. Every few months, he would change the channel a couple of times from the other room. My mother would tap her remote in her hand and change it back. My dad got a big kick out or teasing her like this, but never told her. He did this for a few years and would email us about it, but my mother never caught on. So never think that you are safe from friends when it comes to messing with you.
 
If you think all of your friends are immune to playing the cigarette pack joke, as the son of a joker, I can assure you that there are people that will go to great lengths to play a joke and even keep it from you. For years my dad had a spare remote control for the TV that my mother liked to watch in the living room. Every few months, he would change the channel a couple of times from the other room. My mother would tap her remote in her hand and change it back. My dad got a big kick out or teasing her like this, but never told her. He did this for a few years and would email us about it, but my mother never caught on. So never think that you are safe from friends when it comes to messing with you.

Well, if someone can attach a thread to a pack of cigarettes while it resides in my pocket, that's pretty impressive. The pack went directly from my front pocket to the table, while in plain sight not thirty seconds later it rose in the air, paused, and shot straight out across the room. Of the seven other lifelong friends and family members that were there are some sort of masters of illusion I'm pretty sure that I would have known about it somewhere along the line. :biggrin:

As far as the lightbulb, I'm not ruling out a metal anomaly, but it just seems strange that something that hasn't been touched in five years would all the sudden decide to grow hot, especially when there's no filament to house a current.
 
I propose another theory that is not paranormal but rather extraterrestrial. Did you suffer any lost time?

Nope. Between the light flaring up and me inspecting it and sitting back down to my desk, a whole minute had passed. 12:00 am - 12:01 am.
 
Was there a source of radio frequency radiation nearby? I've lit light bulbs with RF before, we used to use them to test transmitters, but they were typically fluorescent, not incandescent, bulbs. I doubt it's the cause because the RF source would have to be strong and close, depending on the frequency, and it would have affected other bulbs as well. I lean more toward a paranormal explanation.

No, no RF sources that I'm aware of. This was the same thing that my brother-in-law proposed, but he deemed it unlikely being that there is another fluorescent lamp five feet away that would have surely flared up before this one did.

Freudian Slip much? :biggrin:

Good catch!
 
Ghostisses is usually a last resort as far as explanations go, but sometimes there are just no answers. One of my sig lines used to be "There is a logical explanation for everything. Just because it is beyond our current level of comprehension doesn't render it illogical." Like I said in my first reply, there is a lot we don't know about this planet.

I think an open mind, like a parachute in the same state, works best. A skeptic is going to look for every possibility to rule out anything he dismisses as "wackery," and a "believer" will grasp at the flimsiest notions to support their beliefs.
 
Rob...my advice is to call it an unexplained incident and forget about it. From personal experience the more you talk about it to other people the odder you will look to them!

One morning 2 winters ago I dropped my wife and kids at the local skating rink for their lessons and went back home to pick up something I forgot (a 2 mile drive). I wen't in through the back door (odd for me) and found the door knob almost completely off, the screws from the inside were loose. I didn't think much of it, went inside into the kitchen. I got no more than 5 feet into the kitchen and heard an extremely loud CRACK come from the stairs to the upstairs adjascent to the kitchen. I froze in my tracks. It was like a very very loud electrical crack and then nothing.

My mind ran to the door knob and the sound and I backed out the house, thinking...call the police. Only, my cell phone was with my wife at the rink. So I drove back to the rink to get the phone to call the police and explained what happened to my wife.

I called the police and met them at the house. They checked the place out and we found absolutely nothing.

My wife explained that the back door knob had been loose and getting looser for weeks and that I didn't notice it since I don't use it much.

I checked all the fuses and breakers and opened all the switch and outlet plates and found nothing.

My wife still makes fun of me and shares the story with everyone she can.

Keep it quite. You know something happened...I believe you, but most wont.
 
Well, I'm one of those folks that doesn't really care how odd someone finds me. I mean, who's more ignorant, the guy who out of the blue has an unplugged, non-functional lamp light up and is seeking a rational explanation for it, or the guy that goes "huh huh, what an idiot, ghosts aren't real" ? :001_smile
 
Well, I'm one of those folks that doesn't really care how odd someone finds me. I mean, who's more ignorant, the guy who out of the blue has an unplugged, non-functional lamp light up and is seeking a rational explanation for it, or the guy that goes "huh huh, what an idiot, ghosts aren't real" ? :001_smile

The first guy.
 
Call me ignorant then. I'll from here on out classify anything I can't explain with conventional science as a trick of the mind. Damn my eyes and short term hallucination!
 
Call me ignorant then. I'll from here on out classify anything I can't explain with conventional science as a trick of the mind. Damn my eyes and short term hallucination!

There ya go! :wink:

Sooo... Rational inquiry=ignorant, closed-minded condescension=not ignorant?

You can believe in ghosts, spooks, Heaven, aliens, whatever you want to. You'll never hear me calling you any of those names or labels you applied. Those are your words, not mine.

ignorant: lacking in knowledge or training. Unlearned.

By sheer definition, the inquisitive one admits to being more ignorant about a subject than the one who claims to know the "answer." Thus, he asked who is more ignorant, and the inquisitor is. If you choose to call someone who claims they have an answer "closed-minded" and condescending," that's on *you.* But please don't lump me in with your judgmental attitude.
 
I don't think anyone here is personally calling another person "ignorant", but its clear that our definitions of what constitutes ignorance are completely different.

Like I stated in my first post, rather than explain away what happened as a hallucination, I'm trying to find a more plausible explanation. Thank you for your insight, everyone who has chimed in so far.
 
I've had some strange occurrences myself. When I was in high school I had just come back from the movies and was in the bathroom brushing my teeth, when I heard the TV come on. I thought it was my little brother sneaking a late night cartoon-fest, so I didn't take much notice. I walked out of the bathroom 2 minutes later, and the sound had stopped as soon as I entered the living room. No lights, the TV wasn't on, and my brother was sound asleep in his room. I became a little freaked out and simply walked to my room, and tried to forget it.

Another time, when I was about 14, I was walking down my hallway to my room when I saw a 'arm' waving from behind the corner to my room. Well, I hurried to my room thinking it was a sibling playing around, and found nothing at all. Again, I simply tried to forget it.

I've also had windows open on their own, and doors slam shut whenever there's no wind or anything rational to explain it around. Am I haunted?

Perhaps some people are more or less 'magnets' to the absurd or paranormal activities of this world...
 
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