Ok, What Was It?

[Jodie]

I contacted the Mods to do it. I think it was too late for you to edit the OP.

Thanks, Parcher.

 

[Spindrift]

Ahhhh, well what would make a defective light bulb blow up? It wasn't brand new, don't they usually just burn out?

When they implode, would the glass from the bulb drop to the floor or would it be thrown across the room? The glass from this one went across the diningroom table into the livingroom which is why I ask.

The defect causes the filament to overheat and the pressure builds up inside due to the excess heat until it explodes. And yes the glass would go flying and not just drop to the ground. It doesn't happen every day but it's not uncommon.

 

[Jodie]

What it is is you wanting there to be ghosts, so you find them. They don't exist but you want them to so much that you see weirdness everywhere.

I don't believe in ghosts, I'm an atheist, sorry.

 

[bruto]

I unlocked the latch ( on the inside of the bathroom ) and yanked the door open.

Yanking is relative, of course, but I would suggest that if the door was not very hard to open, then it was at least no harder to close, and the difference in a door between binding and not binding is very tiny. If, for example, it was binding at the threshold, a foot placed in some small spot near the sink might just be enough to lower the threshold a half millimeter, and...the door swings shut.

 

[Jodie]

^This. Jodie, there's extraordinary irony at play with your posts over the past couple of days. You've been at once trying to school us on what "true" skepticism means while committing perhaps the most basic error in critical thinking: failing to recognize the fallibility of human memory and perception.

Shrike, my memory isn't perfect, but I tend to forget where I put my keys or ink pen, or in not quoting people verbatim while gossiping, but not when it's something odd that happens. That tends to make my memory sharper, possibly, because of the kind of work that I do. If it's something unusual I'll immediately pay more attention to it, or notice it for that matter, out of habit.

Here, there is a mechanism for it that is noted in the research that describes what I'm talking about:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2676782/

This belief in the durability of emotional memories – a term that is often used as short-hand to denote memories for events that elicited an emotional response at the time of their occurrence – is closely related to the concept of a “flashbulb memory,” a phrase coined by Brown and Kulik (1977). These authors argued that when a highly surprising event occurs, a special memory mechanism takes over, causing the moment to be recorded with picture-perfect accuracy.

 

[Jodie]

Utter nonsense highlighted. Never hire that electrician again. I had a 5 bulb lighting fixture explode just one bulb while they were off in the middle of the night. Scared the poop out of me. It's a defective light bulb and nothing more. I have not had a problem with it since.

Trunk. The gravel bags added weight to the car causing the suspension to compress. Once part of the weight was removed the cars springs began to return to their normal extended position. This transfer of energy from the springs to the car caused the weakened struts on the trunk lid to give and recover. Simple transfer of energy.

Kleenex. You are remembering this wrong. It's the most likely answer. That or the kleenex moved but was not being dragged down it just looked that way.

Door. Things like temperature, humidity, and weight can reshape a poorly constructed door way. One day the door fits the next it doesn't. Won't close when empty but interior weight changes the frame shape. You almost certainly closed this door without thinking or the wind did it for you.

Threads like this always remind me of Tim Minchin's "Storm." There are so many wonderful amazing mysteries and questions in the world. Why people get so hyped about trunk lids and kleenex is beyond me.

I wondered about the electrician, he may have meant that it was a defective bulb and I just didn't understand what he was saying.

I think someone further up said that the mechanism for the struts can wear out, that with the added weight could have caused the flopping trunk lid.

I was writing an e-mail, it was quiet, I heard the scraping noise and looked up to the see the tissue being completely drawn back into the box first one side, then the other. I remember it very clearly.

No, it was cold, the window was closed. I can't see a door frame adjusting itself that much without me hearing something like a creak, popping noise, the door scraping the jam as it closed, or that soft thump sound you sometimes hear when a door closes.

 

[Jodie]

The defect causes the filament to overheat and the pressure builds up inside due to the excess heat until it explodes. And yes the glass would go flying and not just drop to the ground. It doesn't happen every day but it's not uncommon.

Ok, that one's explained, thank you.

 

[Jodie]

Here is the next odd incident. I was helping my 76 year old aunt take care of my 90+ year old grandmother with dementia. My grandmother's partial went missing, we assumed she had misplaced it somewhere and that we would eventually find it.

A few days later I was getting my grandmother ready for bed and turned the light on in the room. The light had a flush mount fixture. I happened to glance up and see a U-shaped shadow outlined on the glass shade.

I went and got a chair, stood up on it, unscrewed the glass cover, and found my grandmother's partial inside the glass shade. Any suggestions on how it got up there? Neither relative was agile enough to climb up on a chair, so it couldn't have been either one of them. I got nothing......

 

[Jodie]

Here is the next odd incident. I was helping my 76 year old aunt take care of my 90+ year old grandmother with dementia. My grandmother's partial went missing, we assumed she had misplaced it somewhere and that we would eventually find it.

A few days later I was getting my grandmother ready for bed and turned the light on in the room. The light had a flush mount fixture. I happened to glance up and see a U-shaped shadow outlined on the glass shade.

I went and got a chair, stood up on it, unscrewed the glass cover, and found my grandmother's partial inside the glass shade. Any suggestions on how it got up there? Neither relative was agile enough to climb up on a chair, so it couldn't have been either one of them. I got nothing......

 

[Loss Leader]

Here is the next odd incident. I was helping my 76 year old aunt take care of my 90+ year old grandmother with dementia. My grandmother's partial went missing, we assumed she had misplaced it somewhere and that we would eventually find it.

A few days later I was getting my grandmother ready for bed and turned the light on in the room. The light had a flush mount fixture. I happened to glance up and see a U-shaped shadow outlined on the glass shade.

I went and got a chair, stood up on it, unscrewed the glass cover, and found my grandmother's partial inside the glass shade. Any suggestions on how it got up there? Neither relative was agile enough to climb up on a chair, so it couldn't have been either one of them. I got nothing......

Partial was half on the dresser, half off. Somebody set something down, or hit it with her hand, partial went flying, ended up behind the shade.

Or maybe God is communicating to us through dentition.

 

[Jodie]

Partial was half on the dresser, half off. Somebody set something down, or hit it with her hand, partial went flying, ended up behind the shade.

Or maybe God is communicating to us through dentition.

It was a flush mount fixture, it means that the fixture is flush with the ceiling.

 

[tsig]

You sound like you are being sarcastic, but I have a true story.

My boyfriend and I were in the living room of our house when the portable radio came on in the kitchen. No one was in the kitchen and we were both there, it wasn't me forgetting the radio was on.

I have no idea how it came on, it did not have any remote control capacity or I would ascribe it to a random signal.

I had one that did that, turned out it had an alarm feature that was easily activated.

 

[Olowkow]

We immediately both went in the kitchen, found nothing but the radio playing, turned the radio off and the mystery was never solved.

And no one in the forum had a good explanation that I recall, but I still don't chalk it up to anything supernatural. Sometimes inexplicable things happen.

Some radios have a volume knob you have to turn in order to turn on the radio. This is an actual switch which is part of the volume control. Other radios have a momentary button (like a doorbell button) which is pressed to turn on the radio, and the volume control is a totally separate control. I am guessing that your radio was the latter type.

The way that works is that a circuit senses your pushing the button and causes another transistor circuit to turn the radio on, then pushing the button again toggles the radio off. Either your radio has a defective, possibly heat sensitive, transistor in the circuitry that triggers the on/off "flip flop" function, or some device such as a refrigerator compressor created a radio frequency pulse which was detected by your radio and interpreted as a turn on control signal.

It is unlikely that a radio of the first type could have turned itself on, but not impossible. Those switches are made very cheap and can fail either in the "won't stay off mode" or "won't stay on mode".

Of course, another possibility is that this radio was a clock radio, and someone had inadvertently set it to "auto/alarm" without realizing. When the alarm time came, the radio did what it was supposed to do.

Lastly, if the on/off switch was a big toggle switch, and it was switched to the "on" position, that was definitely a poltergeist.

As for exploding bulbs. It is not common for incandescent bulbs to explode/implode, but it happens. Even vacuum tubes (valves) can explode. I suspect that when the inside of the glass becomes darkened by a tungsten vapor deposit after long usage, it begins to overheat and then the glass expands preferentially in one spot causing it to crack. Since the bulb is nearly a vacuum with some partial pressure of an inert gas, when the glass breaks the tungsten filament quickly oxidizes and develops a hot spot which fractures it heating and expanding the inrush of air, and the failure can be heard as a pop or slight explosion with a bright flash and scattered glass.

In my experience, what usually happens is that a very small leak develops and permits air to enter the bulb after it is shut off. The next time the lamp is lit, it then lights brightly for an instant and burns out, due again to the oxidation of the filament.

Smaller incandescent bulbs like those in sconces are more prone to this kind of failure. The small quartz halogen cycle lamps use a different principle and burn hotter to keep the tungsten contamination off the envelope.

 

[Pope130]

You sound like you are being sarcastic, but I have a true story.

My boyfriend and I were in the living room of our house when the portable radio came on in the kitchen. No one was in the kitchen and we were both there, it wasn't me forgetting the radio was on.

I have no idea how it came on, it did not have any remote control capacity or I would ascribe it to a random signal.

If it had a two position on/off switch, it's possible that the last time it was switched off the switch was not placed in the full off position. A detent type switch can be moved far enough to break electrical contact, but not far enough to lock into the off position Riding the detent ball it can, over time, slip into either the full off, or full on position.

 

[theprestige]

Three pages in, and I'm beginning think the best explanation from here on out is probably "pics or it didn't happen".

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

When they implode, would the glass from the bulb drop to the floor or would it be thrown across the room? The glass from this one went across the diningroom table into the livingroom which is why I ask.

The way things implode is the pieces go in toward the center then hit things in the center and fly out. Ever read how a supernova implodes?

Of all the things you described, this one is the easiest to explain. The fact you don't accept the explanation on this one speaks volumes.

 

[ComfySlippers]

I have to chime in here.

Pretend paranormal experiences aside, if a competent electrician was to say "that's not possible" I'd shoot him.

Utter bollyhocks .

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

If it had a two position on/off switch, it's possible that the last time it was switched off the switch was not placed in the full off position. A detent type switch can be moved far enough to break electrical contact, but not far enough to lock into the off position Riding the detent ball it can, over time, slip into either the full off, or full on position.

Yes, we speculated this. It was the only explanation that was plausible. And as I said, I don't buy the "don't know, ergo it was inexplicable" point of view.

But it was still one of those things that one can't say, this was definitely what happened. I don't know for sure how it happened, just that it did.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Some radios have a volume knob you have to turn in order to turn on the radio. This is an actual switch which is part of the volume control. Other radios have a momentary button (like a doorbell button) which is pressed to turn on the radio, and the volume control is a totally separate control. I am guessing that your radio was the latter type.

It's been a long time but my recollection is it has an on off switch that was a knob you turned. It was definitely not the volume on off combo dial and I do not believe it was a push button on off.

..It is unlikely that a radio of the first type could have turned itself on, but not impossible. Those switches are made very cheap and can fail either in the "won't stay off mode" or "won't stay on mode".

Of course, another possibility is that this radio was a clock radio,

No, it was not a clock radio. That I'm sure of. It was a portable radio, no clock, no timer mechanism. I'm not stupid.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I had one that did that, turned out it had an alarm feature that was easily activated.

No no no, this speculating is as bad as telling someone ghosts did it. Like I said, I'm not stupid and if you had a radio with a timer you didn't know about, I'm not sure how you wouldn't have known, but this was a simple portable radio. It was in the early 80s, which means the radio was probably made in the 70s, there weren't built in timers and computer chips in everything.