Things that make you scratch your head.

[Rusty Edge]

There are lots of things I don't understand, like dark matter and energy ( as examples) .
They probably exist, because smart people with science reasons say so. Some times I'm more open minded. Sometimes I'm more skeptical.

Have you run across something that may or may not be true? Something that makes no sense? Something with a weird explanation?

[Elok]

On our way south from MD, the wife and I ran into a gas station quick-mart named "The Hobo's Pantry."  Visions of dead pigeons and roadkill strung up from the ceiling danced through our heads.

WHY WOULD YOU PICK THAT NAME?!

[Rusty Edge]

Today I was telling my wife about a guy I once met about 15 years ago.
He claimed his house was haunted, so did his live-in girlfriend. Usually it was the sounds of footsteps on the stairs, although a women did appear to him, standing over him as he lay on the coach once or twice. The footsteps occurred again just after he told me about it, but I couldn't perceive a damn thing, only the residents could. They seemed sincere, maybe it was my undiagnosed damaged hearing masking something. I've heard houses settle, and contract in the cold, but this was warm and I heard nothing, and I was listening intently.

Maybe it's too much Scooby Do, but I don't believe in ghosts. Then again, I don't really want to.  I knew somebody who did, but it turned out that they were psychotic.

Anyway, this guy said it wasn't his only experience with a mysterious woman in white. Once he was in an accident with a truck in an intersection, he was knocked unconscious. Two guys  couldn't pull him form the wreck because they couldn't force the door open. A mysterious woman in white appeared , opened the door, pulled him out and vanished, just as suddenly, saving his life from a fire.  That's what the bystanders told him. He knows he didn't save himself.

That doesn't make any sense, obviously.

Some people would call it a ghost.

Or a guardian angel.

Or maybe it was a meddlesome time traveler.

Or a knot in the string theory.

I don't really know. I was just pondering how a person's world view affects their attempts to rationalize the unexplained.

Now if I were to read a fictitious book about it, I'd want it to be about a meddlesome time-traveler. That's me.

[Rusty Edge]

On our way south from MD, the wife and I ran into a gas station quick-mart named "The Hobo's Pantry."  Visions of dead pigeons and roadkill strung up from the ceiling danced through our heads.

WHY WOULD YOU PICK THAT NAME?!

No! That is unfathomable.

[Unorthodox]

Uno's haunted building story.

Decrepit old buildings have been a norm for my line of work for 20 years. 

My time at Boeing featured 7 years in (from the outside, I think it was part of the security system to look like a dump) a very old decrepit building.  I was told it was haunted, and I'd be spending most my time in there ALONE. 

I'm more of a practical guy.  I DO happen to believe in ghosts, but I also believe 99% of what people claim is their imagination running away with them. 

Visitors KNEW the place was haunted.  I had more than a small part to play in that, however, and had a few things rigged to spook people.  (whaaaaat?  It's what I do.)  Flipping lights and moving papers while "no one is there" is a simple matter. 

During my time, however I had several spooky instances I eventually explained:

Footsteps.  Tracked it down to a leaky cooler.  Odd acustics of the place would echo so it sounded like it was coming from different places, or even following you.  Creepy effect. 

VOICES!  A person of less constitution would have fled.  One day, voices started talking in the place.  I'm alone.  It's stormy.  Not NORMAL voices, deep, garbled, incomprehensible.  Again, acustics of the place known to me now, the fact they sounded like they were following me didn't drive me off.  Inside a box way back in a corner buried under a ton of sports equipment was a megaphone that had somehow been turned on and the trigger pulled, and it was talking from thin air. 

I started walking around the building with it, and finally figured out it was picking up radio stations whenever it was close to a power conduit.  If I put it up ON the conduit you could make out the talk radio, further away it was garbled nonsense.  Go figure. 

Teh ghost spirit!!!

One end of the building was a secured area.  Heat/motion detectors were installed and would only trip if something with human body temp and size was moving in the facility.  (no mice, etc)  It started going off one stormy day.  Go check.  Nothin.  4 times it goes off, so I lock myself in and wait....

There was a massive spider web up by the heaters, when they kicked on it heated the web and moved it. 


I tell these to show I'm not easily taken in by stories.  Then there is the time I can't explain:

The Picture. 

We (had a partner at this point) found a slew of pictures in a back closet that had been inexplicably walled up, and I just had to open and see what was in there.  Mostly former officers and stuff, but there was some nice scenic pics.  Considering our office was 70's wood paneling and orange floors, a couple nice pics sounded good. 

Picture of a mountain, we come back the next day and found it on the ground.  I checked the hook, and rehung it, teasing my coworker she didn't know how to hang pics.  This sat directly between us on the wall. 

We were both working, and heard a big BANG! 

The picture lay in the middle of the room, 4 feet from the wall, face down on the floor.  Hook still in the wall, something would have had to pick it up off the hook and somehow get it to the middle of the room. 

I wanted to set up a camera, but my co-worker insisted we just take it back to the closet and leave it alone.  Still baffles me, that one. 

[Unorthodox]

On our way south from MD, the wife and I ran into a gas station quick-mart named "The Hobo's Pantry."  Visions of dead pigeons and roadkill strung up from the ceiling danced through our heads.

WHY WOULD YOU PICK THAT NAME?!

There are those that romanticize the Hobo life.  Moreso in days past.  Where Hobos were actually seen as a life choice of living free without the worries of home and family, rather than one who was down on his luck and an outcast. 

Red Skelton had a show on back in the 50's and 60s, and would often feature his Hobo Clown character, even. 

In that context, it actually makes sense. 

[Buster's Uncle]

  I'm a maaan of means by no means/ King of the road!

[Rusty Edge]

Thanks Uno!

Yes, I'm sure many a lesser man would have fled from the disembodied voices in a known haunted building.

And more would have fled from a megaphone in a box that spoke by itself. You deserve a salute for remaining rational enough to solve the mystery.


The falling picture mystery. I've heard of that in haunted places before, sometimes it's a crucifix.  In a "haunted" context, it's a scary thing! Invisible physical forces. Determined ones. It makes the hair stand up from your skin.

Now I could easily suspect that in an old house, with a nail in a lath and plaster wall, that under the weight of the wall hanging, the lath could twist, the nail could tilt, and the object would slowly slide off. Loose drywall could flex, too.

But not with an actual hook!!!

That's inexplicable, and a welcome addition to this thread.  Thanks, Uno, you always have some great stories!

I will always cherish "How Uno became an Urban Legend" .

[Buster's Uncle]

I wonder if, in an old gerry-rigged engineering facility, it couldn't have been another interaction with power lines in the wall causing a magnetic effect?

[Rusty Edge]

Magnetic repulsion? I have no idea.

But it sounds like a way to make spooky special effects!

[Buster's Uncle]

...Perhaps Uno can tell us whether repulsion is possible w/ incidental electromagnetic induction, even if there was a metal hook-mount in the back of the frame.  Maybe because the nail tip was an inch or two closer to the hypothetic line?  Different metal of different conductivity w/ static electricity also a possible factor?  I can't wrap my head around whether a galvanic effect could do it, though I suspect that would only cause corrosion...

[Unorthodox]

I don't have a good answer for what would make it fall off the hook.  It was a wire on one of the traditional picture hook/nail combo.  I can't think of anything that would have made the wire come up and out the hook as it was.  Presumably TWICE.  Once during the night, once while we were there.  The second time I KNOW I got it IN the actual groove/hook (the first time my coworker did it and I can't say)  There are a couple working theories, but none of them are especially convincing, still years pondering this has produced possibilities I would have liked to have tested. 

I can explain the middle of the floor, though I prefer to have people muddle over that.  I had that part worked out before they closed the place down...though the answer there makes the hook part more troublesome. 

[Unorthodox]

...Perhaps Uno can tell us whether repulsion is possible w/ incidental electromagnetic induction, even if there was a metal hook-mount in the back of the frame.  Maybe because the nail tip was an inch or two closer to the hypothetic line?  Different metal of different conductivity w/ static electricity also a possible factor?  I can't wrap my head around whether a galvanic effect could do it, though I suspect that would only cause corrosion...

There was no power behind the wall in question.  It was at one point a garage door that had been framed in to make the office wall. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Doesn't eliminate a static electricity effect, though - and a garage door could serve as a huge antenna, so maybe radio wave-induced vibration you didn't hear w/o a sound-producing membrane shook it off; that's pretty plausible, I think.

[Unorthodox]

Vibration was one of the things I wanted to test, yes.