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Minor Strangeness (IHTM)

There's a blocked up doorway in my bedroom that puzzles me.

The house was built symmetrically, and at first glance I assumed that it was installed to reflect the door to what is now the en suite on the other side of the room.

But there is a gap behind where this door would have been, which is quite deep (about the size of an average person), and typical of Georgian doorframes. Beyond the gap, the wall seems like a modern patch-up, and behind that is the stairwell. As far as I know, the staircase is the original, but I suppose it could have once led into this room and was altered later. The remnants of the hinges suggest the door would have opened into the room, but that would have blocked the pathway of the main door/entryway. The space is too small for it to have been a cupboard.

Sidenote: there is a fake door still in situ in the hallway downstairs. It matches all the other doors in the house, and would open inwards (i.e. away from the hall) if in use. If the door in my room was also fake, why would it not have been designed as if to open outward, away from the room, and toward the stairwell, in the same way as the downstairs one?

Very very minor, but I really wish I could see the house as it originally was, if only to make sense of it all.
 
Not that strange but worth a mention: I often go to sleep wearing fabric, soft headphones (sleep phones) whilst listening to the same, on repeat, soundscape - which I created myself via a mix of subtle white noise and other soft sounds - due to being a light sleeper.

I’ve been doing this for about 2 years now so am very familiar with the sounds, which do not vary; basically a very straightforward white noise mix with no sudden additives such as bird song or crashing waves,etc.

Over the past few weeks I have been woken shortly after drifting off by hearing a loud noise, like a baby cry/laugh or a cat meowing. My cat is usually aleep as is my partner.

Last night’s sounded like a kazoo!
 
escargot said:
Yeah, I get that too. :D
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May it please the jury that snoring is the evident elephant in the room. Especially if there's an elephant, asleep, in the room. With blocked sinuses.

Or an under-cover lover, under the covers. With blocked sinuses.

Unless...did you remember let that Yodel driver out of the wardrobe, or is he still in there?
 
Not sure if this counts as minor strangeness as such but within the space of an hour today walking round town I was passed by three hearses (with coffins inside) and three ambulances (with blue lights flashing). Is this an inauspicious portent..?
 
Carse said:
Not sure if this counts as minor strangeness as such but within the space of an hour today walking round town I was passed by three hearses (with coffins inside) and three ambulances (with blue lights flashing). Is this an inauspicious portent..?
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If you live in a small city/town then is perhaps a few too many!
 
Carse said:
Not sure if this counts as minor strangeness as such but within the space of an hour today walking round town I was passed by three hearses (with coffins inside) and three ambulances (with blue lights flashing). Is this an inauspicious portent..?
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It's the time of year I'm afraid. The most common time for the elderly to pass. Can be heart rending given that people are celebrating Christmas and New Year. Edit = happened to me with my mum.
 
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PeteS said:
It's the time of year I'm afraid. The most common time for the elderly to pass. Can be heart rending given that people are celebrating Christmas and New Year.
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Yup, it gets a bit Bring out your dead! this time of year. Even if the person the ambulance is sent for is a. 89 b. known to be in failing health and c. already dead, you still might get the blues & twos if the traffic's heavy.
 
I had a browse at the charity book table in my local Co-op this evening. Nothing of Fortean interest but a big old book called 'Places to visit in Britain' caught my eye. I picked it up, opened it at random and my home town was spread across the first two pages I saw. What are the chances?
 
heisenbear said:
I had a browse at the charity book table in my local Co-op this evening. Nothing of Fortean interest but a big old book called 'Places to visit in Britain' caught my eye. I picked it up, opened it at random and my home town was spread across the first two pages I saw. What are the chances?
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Probably reasonably high if you live in London, less high if you live in Rotherham and miniscule if you live in Lochgelly..
 
Here's one I've just remembered. Probably not Fortean, probably more an indication of my peculiar brain.

It's snowed here today for the first time this year and it reminded me that as a kid whenever it snowed I could hear music playing distantly. Just vague tinkly music that you couldn't quite identify. it was rather beautiful.

Now all I can hear is a faint continuous chime and that's probably the tinnitus.
 
Cochise said:
Here's one I've just remembered. Probably not Fortean, probably more an indication of my peculiar brain.

It's snowed here today for the first time this year and it reminded me that as a kid whenever it snowed I could hear music playing distantly. Just vague tinkly music that you couldn't quite identify. it was rather beautiful.

Now all I can hear is a faint continuous chime and that's probably the tinnitus.
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Funny, that! I seem to remember the same.
 
"Why Is It Quiet When It Snows? ... However, according to Science Daily, snow really does have an effect on the way sound travels; specifically, it muffles noise. Snow stacks up with plenty of space between flakes, which means that sound waves have less surface area to bounce off than, say, raindrops"
So according to that perspective, you should've heard the sound of silence. Which might then promote the perception of internally-generated sounds....
 
Cochise said:
...as a kid whenever it snowed I could hear music playing distantly. Just vague tinkly music that you couldn't quite identify. it was rather beautiful.
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Perhaps a confused memory of Björk's Frosti?


maximus otter
 
Somebody has improved an abstract sculpture in Amsterdam. Funny and intelligent street art:
improved01.jpg improved02.jpg
 
I get the 'woken by noises' thing. When my children were young it used to be 'hearing my name called'. Then it became 'phone ringing, just waking up as the last ring dies'. Now it has mutated to 'mobile phone buzzing a message'. My mobile is on silent at night...

I think it's the brain creating a sound we are used to hearing to wake us up (for whatever reason, my brain is a bastard about waking me up when I've just got into a nice comfortable sleep). It makes us hear a noise we are guaranteed to react to.
 
catseye said:
(for whatever reason, my brain is a bastard about waking me up when I've just got into a nice comfortable sleep)
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I feel your pain - only in my case, it preempts my actual alarm, usually several times. I only actually set my alarm once a week (I only work one early shift) for 7:30, and I can guarantee that I will wake up at least three times prior to it going off - usually around 5:00, 6:00 and 6:30. This only happens when I set my alarm, and each time I'll come properly wide awake in seconds - on the other days I'll sleep like a log until 8:00 or so, and wake up fairly slowly. Stupid, stupid brain.
 
I was with my wife yesterday on the bus, coming back from Lancaster to Morecambe after a meal and a few drinks with friends.

As the bus was travelling through White Lund Industrial Estate, to my left (a Westerly direction) I saw a black object in the sky. It appeared to be a few hundred feet up and appeared to be a fixed shape (though I can't be certain). After a while I noticed that it was travelling faster than the bus and appeared to be about ten miles distant from us after about 5 minutes.

Afterward I noted the wind appeared to be blowing to the North and the object appeared to be travelling in a North Westerly direction (roughly towards Silverdale as an estimate). I can't see a balloon, bin bag or lantern travelling that fast. I'm not aware of drones travelling that fast or far without direct control. By the time we left the estate the object had also risen in altitude.

It is difficult to estimate in size but at a guess I would estimate it to be several feet in length. It was about 5:15 in the evening and it was still fully light.

I've no idea what it could be, it just puzzles me as it doesn't seem to fit anything I can think of. As I sat like a gonk staring at it it never occurred to me to get out my mobile phone and try to photograph it (although it would probably have just shown a black dot).
 
I wondered about that but am not sure whether you can take off or land wherever you like and I couldn't see any logic as to where it would be coming from or going to. I wondered if there is some kind of experimental drone but then why the hell would the military fly it over a town in daylight?
 
Spudrick68 said:
I wondered about that but am not sure whether you can take off or land wherever you like
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Note that British Aerospace (BAe) Warton is about 8 miles NNE from Morcambe and Lancaster.
2018-02-25 17.46.58.png


The BAe Systems Taranis is a prototype UCAV (Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle) which is a specialist drone, known to have been test-flown at Warton.
Screenshot_2018-02-25-17-56-45.png

Screenshot_2018-02-25-17-59-25.png

(I've captured these from the video)
How similar does that look to what you saw?

Alternatively.....
140202_bi_drones.jpg
 
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Similar. I think that its defining features would be the relatively very slow speed (for a flying vehicle) and no noise coming from it (although I was in the bus). and would they fly something across a town during daylight hours?

It more closely resembled the triangular drones at the top of the illustration of drones.
 
Spudrick68 said:
I wondered about that but am not sure whether you can take off or land wherever you like and I couldn't see any logic as to where it would be coming from or going to. I wondered if there is some kind of experimental drone but then why the hell would the military fly it over a town in daylight?
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Where I live, there's a little airfield across the A1 where microlights fly. Sometimes they fly low over the A1 and over the town.
 
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