Psychokinetic event-give me some plausible explanations

Son of Rea

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So my sister and I had a long talk today on a 4 hour drive, much of which revolved around my disbelief in anything supernatural.

She agreed with most of what I said, but then said she has a hard time not believing in the paranormal because of the "chess incident". She thought I knew about it but she had never told me, and proceeded to relay the following.

Years ago she was playing chess against my older brother and was very determined to beat him, and focusing hard on her next move. Suddenly the captured queen slides forward a few inches. She thinks that she's being pranked, grabs it and turns it over to look for a magnet. They both then awkwardly laugh off the strange occurrence, and continue playing.

Moments later, again during a moment when she claims to be really concentrating, she said the queen moved along the edge of the board, then turned the corner and moved along the other edge for a few inches.

She said at that point they were both so freaked out that they just stopped playing and went to bed.

I believe wholeheartedly that she is not lying about the event, and I grilled her about it and mentioned that no matter how unlikely some other explanation was, that it would be more likely than breaking the laws of physics.

I don't expect you to believe this happened, I wouldn't from just reading it on the internet. But for the sake of argument, please assume it happened as described and give me some possible non-supernatural explanations.

Thanks!
 
Son of Rea said:
So my sister and I had a long talk today on a 4 hour drive, much of which revolved around my disbelief in anything supernatural.

She agreed with most of what I said, but then said she has a hard time not believing in the paranormal because of the "chess incident". She thought I knew about it but she had never told me, and proceeded to relay the following.

Years ago she was playing chess against my older brother and was very determined to beat him, and focusing hard on her next move. Suddenly the captured queen slides forward a few inches. She thinks that she's being pranked, grabs it and turns it over to look for a magnet. They both then awkwardly laugh off the strange occurrence, and continue playing.

Moments later, again during a moment when she claims to be really concentrating, she said the queen moved along the edge of the board, then turned the corner and moved along the other edge for a few inches.

She said at that point they were both so freaked out that they just stopped playing and went to bed.

I believe wholeheartedly that she is not lying about the event, and I grilled her about it and mentioned that no matter how unlikely some other explanation was, that it would be more likely than breaking the laws of physics.

I don't expect you to believe this happened, I wouldn't from just reading it on the internet. But for the sake of argument, please assume it happened as described and give me some possible non-supernatural explanations.

Thanks!
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Good, Because I don't, anything else?
 
Vibration of the board because it wasn't completely flat (warped board used by kids?) - caused movement of certain pieces, maybe those that were top-heavy or had damaged padding underneath.

I used to use a cheap cardboard board and lightweight wood pieces that would fall over if you sneezed at them. It's not hard to imagine something causing them to move around.
 
Son of Rea said:
she said the queen moved along the edge of the board, then turned the corner and moved along the other edge for a few inches.

no matter how unlikely some other explanation was, that it would be more likely than breaking the laws of physics.
Click to expand...

Illegal move. [\debunk]
ETA: checkmate.
 
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Nay_Sayer said:
Good, Because I don't, anything else?
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Yes, actually. Please see the sentence after that to understand what I am requesting. Whether you believe it or not is irrelevant to what I am asking. Your failure to imagine that it could have happened with a plausible, non-paranormal explanation pointedly marks your closed-mindedness. If I did a magic trick that mimicked the event, I suppose you would not believe your eyes.
 
Tiktaalik said:
Vibration of the board because it wasn't completely flat (warped board used by kids?) - caused movement of certain pieces, maybe those that were top-heavy or had damaged padding underneath.

I used to use a cheap cardboard board and lightweight wood pieces that would fall over if you sneezed at them. It's not hard to imagine something causing them to move around.
Click to expand...

Thanks for offering those explanations. I failed to mention however that the queen was off of the board (since it was captured) and on a solid dining room table. Non-magnetic, wooden pieces.
 
HighRiser said:
What does the older brother have to say about this pretty fantastic story?
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Well, I haven't talked to him about it. I just got back from my trip, and it would be kind of weird for me to call him out of the blue and ask him about this as if I consider this a big deal worthy of a special phone call.
 
Son of Rea said:
Well, I haven't talked to him about it. I just got back from my trip, and it would be kind of weird for me to call him out of the blue and ask him about this as if I consider this a big deal worthy of a special phone call.
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If I had a sister who was insisting she remembers impossiblities as actual events, I might expect myself to consider the possibility that it is a big deal and talk it over with my brother.

I might even do that before I asked a bunch of random weirdoes to think up plausible explanations for implausible events.

But that's just me.
 
Son of Rea said:
Thanks for offering those explanations. I failed to mention however that the queen was off of the board (since it was captured) and on a solid dining room table. Non-magnetic, wooden pieces.
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I predict this will turn into a thread of people suggesting explanations, each of which will be pointed out as impossible due to some condition added to the event.

But here's mine. If the queen was sitting on the table, not the board, turning the corner seems to indicate pretty clearly that it was being vibrated/moved in one direction but stopped by the edge of the board, so it moved along the board, then when it came to the corner and was freed from that obstruction, it moved more directly downhill. A vibration or motion of the table seems most likely, either due to someone leaning on it, resting their foot or leg against the underside or the tableleg, or a truck or train going by outside.
 
Son of Rea said:
So my sister and I had a long talk today on a 4 hour drive, much of which revolved around my disbelief in anything supernatural.

She agreed with most of what I said, but then said she has a hard time not believing in the paranormal because of the "chess incident". She thought I knew about it but she had never told me, and proceeded to relay the following.

Years ago she was playing chess against my older brother and was very determined to beat him, and focusing hard on her next move. Suddenly the captured queen slides forward a few inches. She thinks that she's being pranked, grabs it and turns it over to look for a magnet. They both then awkwardly laugh off the strange occurrence, and continue playing.

Moments later, again during a moment when she claims to be really concentrating, she said the queen moved along the edge of the board, then turned the corner and moved along the other edge for a few inches.

She said at that point they were both so freaked out that they just stopped playing and went to bed.

I believe wholeheartedly that she is not lying about the event, and I grilled her about it and mentioned that no matter how unlikely some other explanation was, that it would be more likely than breaking the laws of physics.

I don't expect you to believe this happened, I wouldn't from just reading it on the internet. But for the sake of argument, please assume it happened as described and give me some possible non-supernatural explanations.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Faulty recall of the memory perhaps - over time memories change and details are added and removed. Memory is notorious for this. Or the entire event fabricated by the imagination and recalled as an actual event.
 
Son of Rea said:
Thanks for offering those explanations. I failed to mention however that the queen was off of the board (since it was captured) and on a solid dining room table. Non-magnetic, wooden pieces.
Click to expand...

This must be the "add more just-so detail" phase of the exercise.


ETA: pipped at the post by Pup.
 
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Awesome, I like it! Or maybe a furnace or refrigerator motor coming on and causing imperceptible vibrations. And maybe the queen was of the proper mass that it alone bounced in time to those vibrations.
 
tuxcat and I have the same (partial) explanation. Memories of events "years ago" are highly unreliable.

If your sister holds this incident as a reason to entertain the paranormal then I think a call to big brother about it is entirely appropriate: "Hey, bro. Sis just told me a fantastic story. What do you remember?"
 
Wow, you guys are negative. It's not an added detail, as I had already stated the queen was captured, and everyone knows that a captured piece is off the board. Sheesh.
RoboTimbo said:
This must be the "add more just-so detail" phase of the exercise.


ETA: pipped at the post by Pup.
Click to expand...
 
SezMe said:
tuxcat and I have the same (partial) explanation. Memories of events "years ago" are highly unreliable.

If your sister holds this incident as a reason to entertain the paranormal then I think a call to big brother about it is entirely appropriate: "Hey, bro. Sis just told me a fantastic story. What do you remember?"
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I agree. Perhaps an email at least.
 
Qualia soup, the great youtube skeptic had a great hypothetical once. I'll paraphrase because I don't remember it in every detail.

Two friends, A and B are talking in A's living room. The moment they mention a recently deceased friend, B notices a lampshade begins swaying back and forth. No windows are open and nothing else in the room appears to move.

In this story, there is a simple explanation. A had placed a small oscillating fan on the floor behind a chair for some unrelated reason and B had only noticed the movement it caused in the lamp after they talked about the dead friend.

However, if B is telling me this story, I have no way of knowing about the presence of the fan. Even though a fan is fairly mundane, the presence of a small one in an unseen place for mundane reasons isn't something most people would think of. In fact, B might imagine that he'd looked all around if he wasn't looking for something so small, and assure me there's no where a fan could be even if I asked!

Humans are fairly good at discovering causes based on trickery, because that involves thinking like another human, but thinking like happenstance is a lot harder.

Maybe the pieces were sliding along the path of moisture left by your sister's fingers from the copious sweat from her water glass. Maybe the pieces were recently carved from wood and some still living insects inside jostled the piece. Maybe there was a sudden and localized gust of wind as two family members at opposite ends of the house opened windows.

Now you can tell me that the details needed for these possibilities weren't present, but I don't know what details ARE, and as I said, an infinite number of details could be relevant, some you don't know, some your sister doesn't know, some that you or your sister may think you know but are wrong about.

The set of all circumstances that causes things to move is an infinite list, we can only guess at those that are fairly generic and common and even those that are slightly uncommon, like a fan in an unseen unusual place will be very difficult to guess.

And that leaves aside the whole category of faulty information. Your brother could have been tricking your sister. Your sister could have been having a daydream she misremembered as real. Your sister could in fact be lying, no matter how certain you are to the contrary.

Someone was in here a while back with a photo containing a ghost. He said the picture was showed to him by a friend who could not POSSIBLY be lying. The friend had saved his life in the war or something, the camera had never left his sight or whatever.

A quick Google showed the image of the ghost was from a popular smartphone app that adds ghosts to photos.

So I put zero stock in honesty testimonials.
 
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