NationStates Jolt Archive

I've probably told the base story about my poltergiest here a couple of times in the past, in threads about whether or not you believe in paranormal and ghosts et cetera.

Now, since grave digging is a frowned upon practice here, I thought I'd start my own thread and not hijack someone else's paranoid ramblings just so I can get my 15 minutes of fame.

-- Background --

When I moved to Toronto from Ottawa nearly four years ago (it'll be four years this June), I heard stories from a couple of residents about their being unexplained activities and slight hauntings that were known to take place in the building.

I'm not sure, but, I think it might have something to do with the fact that we have a 13th floor in my building and most buildings by convention skip over this number because it's associated with bad luck. Or, it could be that it's an ancient burial ground and the violated souls that live there aren't too happy with the living.

-- Paranormal Activities --

Now, I don't remember what happened to others in my building, but, I have my own assortment of first hand accounts regarding this.

The first of such incidents came when my desk lamp flickered, my TV turned itself off and on, whiley computer didn't show any reaction.

Next, there came the resetting of the digital wristwatch. My ex-boyfriend had left it on the desk for a minute. When he went to get it, the thing had reset itself and it read 12:01AM instead of 4:30PM...

My father has told me about the sounds of cubboards opening and closing. Mind you we do have a cat, but, at the time, the cat was in the room with him and I was out.

My TV likes to frequently turn itself off. When it does this, I have to unplug the damn thing because the remote and ON/OFF button on the TV no longer work.

I believe there migh tbe more than one because this one time, I went to get on elevator 3 and when I pressed the up button to open the door, I blink and it went from G-4 in literally a blink, without evening showing the numbers for the two floors in between. I then had to stand there and wait for it to come back down.

Last Friday, during the 5:00PM episode of the Simpsons on CBC, my TV acted weird. It kept changing between the video setting, used for my DVD player and/or the PS2 and channel 6. Mind you, I wasn't sitting on the remote and the original remote for the TV was nowhere to be found. I was also using a universal remote, which didn't have the option to switch between TV and VIDEO. I spent nearly 20 minutes fighting an uphill battle. I had to press the channel changer ever 2 minutes just to see my show.

Finally, this past Sunday, I turned off my cellphone because I needed it to dry out after I accidently spilt liquid on it. I dried it out first. After I left it to rest on my desk, it suddenly turned itself on... I had to remove the battery in order to turn it off.

-- Conclusion --

Am I paranoid?

Something in the area is affecting electronics in your apartment. Ask around your building whether anyone else is having these problems; it could be due to an underground stream of water flowing directly under your building, or something else magnetic causing selective problems with electronic devices. I really have no idea -- I'm no expert -- but that sounds like it could be a cause.

The cupboards is an unrelated incident; those things frequently close by themselves under the force of a sudden draft.

If I recall correctly, poltergeist activity is supposedly triggered by individuals undergoing stress or changes, in particular young adults and children. Or, it could be an actual ghost, but given the lack of actual manifestations of spirits it seems more like a poltergeist...look in to the history of that area if you can.

Personally, I think electrical problems seem to be an issue here, given that many disturbances are caused in electronic devices; depending on the age of the building, settling and distortions in the structure might be producing things like the slamming cupboards. If it's an old building, the wiring might have suffered damage or there might be problems with water leakage.

Underground water or even large deposits of magnetite might also affect the electronics in the building. Also, what time of the year do the occurances seem to reach a peak? Is it constant year round, or does it have seasonal or intermittent periods of increased activity?

If you want, I could post the story on the Fortean Times Message Board for you and see what they say...in case you haven't noticed, I take a quite serious interest in paranormal activity.:D