Ok, What Was It?

[tsig]

I started writing a response regarding the bathroom door as I own an old house (almost 130 years old) but after seeing where the thread is heading I decided it wouldn't be helpful after all.

Instead, I want to thank everyone who explained the workings of trunk lids. My Subaru Forester is getting up in years and I'll be mindful that the rear lid could lose some stability as it ages. I'd hate to get bonked in the head one day while loading groceries.

But that could be the bonk of enlightenment that you need to start singing in harmony with the universe and become one with all living things.

 

[Olowkow]

Exploding bulbs. Hmmm.

I repaired electronic equipment of all kinds for over 30 years. It was not uncommon to find a bad transistor that failed either shorted or leaky after 20 years of service, and of course the customer always asks, "What caused it to fail?" The easy answer is, "I have no earthly idea. Things fail every day."

But something did cause this failure. Was it a ghost or poltergeist or god? Most probably not. It could have been some stray gamma ray that just happened to hit the junction, or it could have been destined to fail from the time it was manufactured, and it just took 20 years for the failure to cause the circuit to not work properly.

We like to know answers, but sometimes there is no answer, or quite often the answer is very boring or even arcane, and we just have to move on and fix the next item on the list. I was always intrigued by a customer's amazement that something could work for 20 years, and then fail when he needed it most. With no expertise in the physics of metallurgy, even a simple filament failure can be mysterious.

The mindset which takes for granted that it is very unlikely in the extreme that any cause of failure is supernatural is going to be much more efficient at solving problems and at enjoying a happy life generally in the long run.

As for exploding or imploding lamps--all kinds of reasons, all equally boring and arcane if you don't have any background in the principles needed for understanding. No power surges or poltergeists needed.

 

[Mike!]

I don't know how productive this exercise is going to be. Reconstructing how something happened long after the event based on someone's possibly flawed recollection of it is never going to be easy. I think we can say with some confidence that whatever it was in each case it wasn't magic, fairies, elves, psychic powers or Bigfoot, but beyond that there will be little anyone can say.



The description is so vague there's nothing much to say. Maybe a bird landed on it and then flew away.



As described the incident is impossible or close to it, so the most likely explanation is that you misremembered something. Most likely you shut the door and latched it yourself in between standing up and washing your hands while thinking about something else, and by the time you finished washing your hands you had forgotten about it.

That or Elvis did it.



Gravity.

Never rule out Bigfoot. Especially when it comes to pulling a Kleenex back into a soon to be manually flattened box.

 

[Scordatura]

But that could be the bonk of enlightenment that you need to start singing in harmony with the universe and become one with all living things.

Considering I sing like Kermit the frog that could be useful though I'd prefer any gained enlightenment go towards my violin playing.

As a general observation I kind of understand why occurrences in old houses are sometimes misconstrued as paranormal events. Creaks, cracks, shaking, doors moving, etc. can be traced to very ordinary sources once you understand old house construction and how it ages. Unless you're the owner of one it can seem very mysterious. But it's all explainable, as most homeowners learn after spending the first 10K on repairs.

 

[CORed]

I started writing a response regarding the bathroom door as I own an old house (almost 130 years old) but after seeing where the thread is heading I decided it wouldn't be helpful after all.

Instead, I want to thank everyone who explained the workings of trunk lids. My Subaru Forester is getting up in years and I'll be mindful that the rear lid could lose some stability as it ages. I'd hate to get bonked in the head one day while loading groceries.

I had a tailgate on an old Bronco II that bonked me in the head on one or two occasions.

 

[Loss Leader]

Once I was posting in a thread that was tagged as bigfoot. While I was reading a post, I excrete you not, the tag changed to "ghosts, physics, poltergeist".

Ok, what was it?
(Don't come with all your materialist computer bible code talk either.)

That was the guiding hand of Almighty God, working through his appointed earthly agent who I'm that person.

 

[William Parcher]

Jodie, I'm a bit confused as to why you don't ask these questions from experts on the representative website forums.

Why not post on a Toyota Corolla owners forum about the trunk?

Why not post on a carpenter's or home builder's forum about the door?

Why not post on a home/office bath/bed/kitchen forum on the tissue?

Why JREF?

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

The only time I've ever had it malfunction is if the next kleenex doesn't unfold properly to be pulled through the hole at the top of the box. Once the kleenex is in the proper position, the cellophane guard around the lip of the hole prevents it from falling back into the box. This wasn't falling, it was slowly tugged back into the box.

I'm pretty sure it's just gravity. I've seen the exact same thing happen and yes, it's weird the first time you see it.

It turns out that the plastic lips on a packet of tissues sometimes only just barely hold the tissue in place. When that happens it takes almost no force to push a tissue back into the box, and a tissue can slide back in of its own accord.

Actually now I think about it, I don't think I can absolutely rule out atmospheric pressure as the active force either. If the tissue was positioned just right so that the plastic lips of the box formed a seal around it, and the atmosphere outside the box cooled faster than that inside the box, it seems possible that air pressure might suck the tissue back in. Did this happen in the afternoon as it was getting cool?

 

[bruto]

I started writing a response regarding the bathroom door as I own an old house (almost 130 years old) but after seeing where the thread is heading I decided it wouldn't be helpful after all.

Instead, I want to thank everyone who explained the workings of trunk lids. My Subaru Forester is getting up in years and I'll be mindful that the rear lid could lose some stability as it ages. I'd hate to get bonked in the head one day while loading groceries.

Since there's so little seriousness here, I'll interject a moment of this, and mention that that is indeed an issue, as after a long time one gets used to a certain clearance. When the strut misbehaves, it's often in the form of an unexpected whack upside the head.

 

[William Parcher]

I'm pretty sure it's just gravity.

I heard a soft scraping sound...

Would tissue rubbing on the plastic lips make a scraping sound that could be heard in an office?


Maybe she heard a scuttling sound...

 

[Ladewig]

I have have no idea what caused those things.

But if we are playing the consider-all-possibilities game, then I am going to say a cat or dog jumped on the front bumper. And I'll also throw out the possibility of a minor earthquake that was too small to feel through one's feet but just large enough to make the trunk lid wobble a bit.

 

[tsig]

That was the guiding hand of Almighty God, working through his appointed earthly agent who I'm that person.

I thought Darat was just the forum liaison and admin.

 

[LTC8K6]

I thought it was hilarious that an attempt was made to murder the mouse, rather than simply set the tissue box outside and set the critter free.

 

[The Shrike]

Jodie, I'm a bit confused as to why you don't ask these questions from experts on the representative website forums.

Why not post on a Toyota Corolla owners forum about the trunk?

Why not post on a carpenter's or home builder's forum about the door?

Why not post on a home/office bath/bed/kitchen forum on the tissue?

Why JREF?

This is a really important post, to be considered for any potentially paranormal claim.

 

[theprestige]

There's an entity that can communicate from 'beyond' and it locks bathroom doors and jiggles trunk lids? That's believable? Is there some kind of rule for the paranormal that they can never be straightforward?

Not only are they not straightforward, they're not even useful.

Jodie seems to have discovered a supernatural force that, if it exists at all, exists in such a way as to not matter for anything ever. It can't be predicted, it can't be measured, it can't be harnessed, it provides no useful information about reality... What was it? It was a ghost. A useless ghost. Jodie is haunted by a useless ghost. Congratulations, I guess?

 

[Scordatura]

This is a really important post, to be considered for any potentially paranormal claim.

I agree. A while back there was a thread about a strange key that unlocked the claimant's front door. S/he called it an "apportment," given to them by a spirit. A quick visit to a locksmith forum revealed that keys often fit multiple locksets, especially older ones. Case solved. Well, for me, not the claimant....

 

[PixyMisa]

Ok my next incident was in the diningroom. Behind where I was sitting was a wall with two sconces on it. I was sitting in a chair directly beneath one of them during the middle of the day when the lights were off. The light bulb in the sconce over my head exploded.

Light bulbs do that. The filament in an incandescent bulb is very very hot, and bulbs are made as cheaply as possible. When they fail, mostly they just stop working, sometimes they flicker and/or buzz, and some times they explode. I've seen that happen to one bulb in a set as well.

These are all very trivial everyday things, Jodie, that we can't necessarily answer because we don't have enough data. Certainly there's nothing in any of them that should have anyone looking for any but the most mundane and boring of causes.

 

[Foolmewunz]

I'm pretty sure it's just gravity. I've seen the exact same thing happen and yes, it's weird the first time you see it.

It turns out that the plastic lips on a packet of tissues sometimes only just barely hold the tissue in place. When that happens it takes almost no force to push a tissue back into the box, and a tissue can slide back in of its own accord.

Actually now I think about it, I don't think I can absolutely rule out atmospheric pressure as the active force either. If the tissue was positioned just right so that the plastic lips of the box formed a seal around it, and the atmosphere outside the box cooled faster than that inside the box, it seems possible that air pressure might suck the tissue back in. Did this happen in the afternoon as it was getting cool?

Actually the scenario would appear to be the opposite. Thanksgiving is a four day weekend. Her office was empty (and likely cold or cool depending on where she lives) and she was one of the first people to arrive when the systems would've just turned on again on Monday. So it's much more likely that the air was getting warmer as the last week in November is usually a little cool. Of course, if she lives in a "sunbelt" state, the building might've been hot or warm and the aircon may have just kicked in and chilled the air near the box.

Or Bigfoot.

 

[asydhouse]

I didn't hypnotize myself or tune out while I was using the rest room. The toilet was directly facing the door, so for the couple of minutes I was sitting, I was looking straight at it. I didn't spend an inordinate amount of time trying to force the door shut because there were only females at this party and co-workers I had known for several years. I just pushed it to and called it a day.

So it might have only needed a little more effort to successfully close. Standing by the sink, the tilt and warp of the floor caused by your new position in the room released the door from the slight mound where you had left it wedged, and it fell closed and the slight bump caused the hook to fall down to latch the door.

Not impossible, I think. And infinitely more likely than a new force so far undiscovered by all the physicists working every day.

In fact, what's impossible is that such an undiscovered force could exist. PixyMisa posted a link to a video of physicist Sean Carroll explaining that Quantum Field Theory shows that there is simply no room for such a force to exist. Check out this thread, the discussion is quite interesting, and very revealing!

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=279144&highlight=woo+stops

 

[SezMe]

I had a tailgate on an old Bronco II that bonked me in the head on one or two occasions.

'Splains a lot of your posts.








'Jes kidding.

I'm pretty sure it's just gravity. I've seen the exact same thing happen and yes, it's weird the first time you see it.

....


Actually now I think about it, I don't think I can absolutely rule out atmospheric pressure as the active force either.

Can we rule out the effects of static electricity?