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Things Breaking

I was probably the last person he spoke to. Certainly the last friend. He drove back to London, car skidded on ice into a lamp-post - within yards of his parent's house - and his neck was broken by his seatbelt.
...
(We'd been gently teasing him all night after he told us off, ironically for not wearing our seatbelts when he gave us a lift to the pub, before party started...)
Says I, out loud "that printer does very well for us: the toner cartridge has never been changed in four or five years"

(I have NEVER said this before- ever. Nor thought of it. And you know what happens next...)

The very next sheet printed...instant gap down the middle. Illegible print.

Despite no warning whatsoever. No detectable wearout, no hints.....just thousands and thousands of flawless pages. I verbally-state my wonder at its longivity, and it dies instantaneously.
In both of these cases, the verbal singling out a specific item (the printer) or class of items (seatbelts) was followed soon thereafter by instantaneous destruction (death/malfunction) involving the singled-out item (as either recipient of – or mere agent in – the destruction), directly impacting the one who had done the singling out. There seems to be something more along the lines of an associative logic at play here than would be suggested by the retributive justice model (whether conceived as biblical punishment or as karmic payoff)...
 
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I have had odd happenings with light bulbs. One shattered in the bulb holder- exploded and made us jump. Another popped out of the ceiling bulb holder across the room and remained intact! We have also had bouts of various bulbs not working then some time later working again after we didn't bother to change them. This happens a lot and we just tut and sigh about it.
After my husband died I had to replace most of the appliances in the house and the lights would blow as soon as anyone touched a switch. Maybe our being upset caused it somehow.
I've become worried that you both might have wiring problems which could be a fire hazard! Have you had your electrical system checked?
 
Yes have had new powerboards etc since that time. That was 13 years ago.
 
November and December are bad times for me, bringing back awful memories of people I have lost before their time, and other distressing events. Why always these two months I know not. This year has been particularly bad. On the last day of November this year I had been staying elsewhere and got back to mine to find that the top shelf of my display cabinet had collapsed smashing everything on the bottom two shelves, including expensive ornaments I had bought for my parent's wedding anniversary (both now deceased) and my wedding gift to my wife (also deceased) and other treasured things. Only "stuff" I know but still. Perhaps a sign that some things are over forever and to get on with it?
 
PeteS, I'm sorry to hear that. I always think this time of year should be written off and we should just go into hibernation (perhaps emerging briefly for some upside down yule misrule with lots of lights and nice food in the middle of it). And then emerge refreshed in the spring. You know, maybe April or something, that would do me. I hope you can find ways to be kind to yourself, and try to think of the good memories of people who've gone. Hang in there. We're nearly at the shortest day. It always helps me a little bit to think we're nearly on the way out.
 
Apparently one of her diver chums was discovered 5 years after he didn't surface, needless to say it was just his wet-suit that was holding everything together. :sick2:

What the ACTUAL. That must have been a nightmare for his family, from the time he went missing to the finding his body and, well, forever afterwards.
 
Thought I'd posted this but it's disappeared, not even a draft!

Anyway, I've mentioned it before but it fits here.

The stapler that HATED me!

When I was 10 we moved house and I started a new school for my last junior year. This school taught in a newer way than I was used to and one of the processes was sitting in groups a tables instead of in rows of desks.

A couple of times a week the teacher would come round the tables with huge stapler to attach each kid's worksheets together into a little book.

(This was my first experience of child-centred learning and I thought it was absolutely wonderful.)

Anyway... as the teacher came round the tables with the stapler, everyone knew that when he reached me it would jam. Every single time, and never for anyone else.

It was a class joke, to the extent that he'd try to sneak up on it by approaching my table from a different direction or stapling just my work out of sequence.

The stapler wasn't fooled and he'd still have to take it apart to unjam it and take all the staples out and replace them before it would work again.

To his credit the teacher didn't get annoyed or embarrass me about it, or even leave me till last. We'd all just laugh about it.

Now and then I've heard of similar happening to other people, where they say a gadget just will not work for them, and I believe every word. Been there!
 
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I know someone that can't wear a watch they only last a few days, I never
thought about it before reading this thread but they are always changing
light bulbs, automatic doors often do not open for her, she jokingly says it's
due to her not having a sole.
 
IbisNibs we haven't had the electric checked better get on to the Landlord methinks. I do have a problem with electrics in that Railway Notice Boards go silly when I am around which baffles my mate when he has been with me. I also was a standing joke in a local small store as I used to apparently affect their Lottery Machine and the ceiling lights. The owner used to tease me a lot about it. "Look out she's in the shop again...' . My daughter has the same affect with irons and hoovers she goes through loads and has had this affect since a child. I was relieved when she left home as I was sick of replacing irons. I don't wear a watch nowadays as they seem to go silly at times and stop for no reason so I gave up. Seems it could be me re: the lights. However better safe than sorry so need to get things checked out.
 
I do have a problem with electrics in that Railway Notice Boards go silly
:wide:

automatic doors often do not open for her, she jokingly says it's
due to her not having a sole.
Is she short? I sometimes have to wander around in front of the door to find the spot where it will see me. Sometimes I wave my hands at it, trying to engage the electric eye. I'm sure I look like an idiot, but eventually it works. :willy:
 
In both of these cases, the verbal singling out a specific item (the printer) or class of items (seatbelts) was followed soon thereafter by instantaneous destruction (death/malfunction) involving the singled-out item (as either recipient of – or mere agent in – the destruction), directly impacting the one who had done the singling out. There seems to be something more along the lines of an associative logic at play here than would be suggested by the retributive justice model (whether conceived as biblical punishment or as karmic payoff)...
No clue. It's just what happened - the seatbelt laws had only just come in and none of us were going to bother with seatbelts, knowing there were rarely any coppers on that particular short route to the pub. So friend tolud us all off and refused to take us unless we did up our seatbelts. Within hours that - he was killed, technically by his seatbelt. So the association was sort of unavoidable. I remember at the time those of us in the car - and I can only be certain out of my housemates, of one person and myself being there but I know the car was full - were all immediately struck by how strange it was, that the seatbelt thing had caused us to rib him all night - and then he'd died like that.

Never had that seatbelt conversation before or again. My most vivid memory, as it was so long ago, is of all of us (it was a fairly big household) sat round the kitchen table, when we were back there, together - writing this letter to his family, and we were all discussing this at that point. How weird that we were talking about seatbelts, that night.

But of course, when you relate a narrative, you inevitably will point out a pattern, if there is one. After the fact, you see the correspondences, kind of thing. At the moment of having that discussion in friend's car - and pub was maybe a five min drive, if that - we had no idea what was about to unfold, of course.

I can remember seeing the loathsome Jimmy Savile with those 'clunk click every trip' ads and throwing things at the telly, afterwards. The only part of that probably fairly brief discussion re. seatbelts I remember is us saying "Come on, it won't matter - there aren't any police along x road" (well, a later incident proved that there were, but that's another story). Being immortal young adults, we thought it wouldn't matter and our mate was acting like a dad, or something.

I thought it interesting to mention our discussion about the seatbelts, though, as it is such a striking coincidence/weirdness.

For the Brummies, the last part of that journey was on the Hagley Rd, in Bearwood. We lived in walking distance of the pub but none of us had cars, just our visiting friend - so we wanted to have a lift.
 
:wide:


Is she short? I sometimes have to wander around in front of the door to find the spot where it will see me. Sometimes I wave my hands at it, trying to engage the electric eye. I'm sure I look like an idiot, but eventually it works. :willy:

At work there are doors you have to press a button to open. Every so often for certain mechanical reasons they open spontaneously and I stride through majestically, looking like a door GOD to the customers.
 
I
.

For the Brummies, the last part of that journey was on the Hagley Rd, in Bearwood. We lived in walking distance of the pub but none of us had cars, just our visiting friend - so we wanted to have a lift.
I live near the Hagley Road. Drive on it frequently. Lots of nasty accidents have happened on it, but thank goodness I've never witnessed any of them.
 
I

I live near the Hagley Road. Drive on it frequently. Lots of nasty accidents have happened on it, but thank goodness I've never witnessed any of them.

We have relations who live in a notorious rat-run street at the westerly end of the A458. A carful of blokes burned to death in sight of their house. The driver was rushing everyone to work and seems to have misjudged a gap at speed.
 
I keep a framed mirror on the back seat of the car in case I need to stop for any impromptu Gnome photography - saw yesterday that it had badly cracked. An hour later my one food plate (I live alone) unnecessarily snapped in half as I rinsed it - it was a hand painted plate from Ile Maurice (Mauritius) with a dusky lady on a beach dancing the Sega. My plate - hope superglue can mend a broken heart.
 
How hot was the water? And please be advised that superglue is toxic. Do not ingest, do not inhale, do not pass "Go". Why not mend the plate, keep it for the memories, and get a new food plate at a charity shop (or whatever you call'em over there).
 
How hot was the water? And please be advised that superglue is toxic. Do not ingest, do not inhale, do not pass "Go". Why not mend the plate, keep it for the memories, and get a new food plate at a charity shop (or whatever you call'em over there).
Superglue is not toxic once cured. It's the fumes that are toxic.
 
I keep a framed mirror on the back seat of the car in case I need to stop for any impromptu Gnome photography - saw yesterday that it had badly cracked. An hour later my one food plate (I live alone) unnecessarily snapped in half as I rinsed it - it was a hand painted plate from Ile Maurice (Mauritius) with a dusky lady on a beach dancing the Sega. My plate - hope superglue can mend a broken heart.
Impromptu gnome photography could only happen with a forum member from here... (or maybe Reddit?) Love it. Have you photo'd any impromptu gnomes lately? I went through Cottingley last year and was most upset by the ordinariness of it.
 
Thanks for bumping this thread and bringing it to my attention, escargot. Interesting stuff. My contribution isn't my own personal experience, but was told to me by an old friend who it happened to. He has been baffled by it for years, and last time I asked him about it (a few years ago) he said it was the only really weird thing he had ever experienced. Nothing anything like it has ever happened to me. It makes me wonder (as do many other things!)

It was many years ago when he was in his 20s and living at home with his parents. One day, he was sitting with both his parents quietly in their lounge. I think he was reading, mum was knitting and dad reading a newspaper (or stuff like that) when they all heard a scraping noise that made them look up. According to my friend, before their astonished eyes, the large, heavy clock that had stood for years in the centre of the mantelpiece, was moving of its own accord, sliding its way forward off the mantelpiece, causing the noise they had all heard. Before anyone could react, it had slid off and crashed down into the hearth below. Needless to say, they could hardly believe what they had seen. He swears that there was nothing else happening in the perfectly still quiet room to explain what had happened, no weird vibrations or such like. I can't say how badly the clock was damaged, but next time I have the opportunity, I will quiz my friend again about the incident. He is a down-to-earth kind of guy but always has said he can think of nothing rational to explain it.
 
Thanks for bumping this thread and bringing it to my attention, escargot. Interesting stuff. My contribution isn't my own personal experience, but was told to me by an old friend who it happened to. He has been baffled by it for years, and last time I asked him about it (a few years ago) he said it was the only really weird thing he had ever experienced. Nothing anything like it has ever happened to me. It makes me wonder (as do many other things!)

It was many years ago when he was in his 20s and living at home with his parents. One day, he was sitting with both his parents quietly in their lounge. I think he was reading, mum was knitting and dad reading a newspaper (or stuff like that) when they all heard a scraping noise that made them look up. According to my friend, before their astonished eyes, the large, heavy clock that had stood for years in the centre of the mantelpiece, was moving of its own accord, sliding its way forward off the mantelpiece, causing the noise they had all heard. Before anyone could react, it had slid off and crashed down into the hearth below. Needless to say, they could hardly believe what they had seen. He swears that there was nothing else happening in the perfectly still quiet room to explain what had happened, no weird vibrations or such like. I can't say how badly the clock was damaged, but next time I have the opportunity, I will quiz my friend again about the incident. He is a down-to-earth kind of guy but always has said he can think of nothing rational to explain it.
Was it a Victorian clock in a black marble or slate case?
The weight may have caused a hairline fracture to occur, causing the clock to shift its centre of gravity.
 
Ok, this didn't happen to me, it happened recently to my long-standing good friend, who told me about it last night. His parents live in an old farmhouse (and have numerous weird tales about it, mostly about seeing figures and hearing things). Things can be a bit fraught in the family at the best of times. One day the extended family were round for dinner. During the conversation, a back-handed insult was aimed at someone who wasn't there, but who was actually an in-law of one of those present, and he rightly took exception to it. The atmosphere became super strained and no-one spoke for 10 minutes, apparently. Then (so he said) an expensive decorative plate which had forever lived on a wooden dresser (I think he said dresser... I mean you'd imagine it was propped up so it could be seen), fell on the floor and broke. The implication was that it had no real way or reason for doing so, and that with our previous knowledge of the weirdness of the house, the incident was in response to the appalling atmosphere and was just another mad thing that happened there. I wish I'd quizzed him on whether anyone actually saw it fall (or leap) but I was loathe to spoil the anecdote by quizzing him mercilessly (what kind of fortean am I? rubbish).
I personally might like to interpret it as a sort of spontaneous PK moment triggered by the mental anxiety in the room (I'm quite taken by accounts of poltergeists and not giving them an 'entity' explanation). But maybe his slant would have been more from the 'this house is haunted' angle. Or the sensible rationalist would go for coincidence, of course. If the plate had fallen down when people were just watching the tv, perhaps no-one would have thought quite so much of it (even though it had just as little reason for moving).
Anyway, thought you might like that. I can't think of a similar example that's happened to me though. Perhaps you have your own.
I agree with the PK theory rather than disturbed spirits. I have experienced something similar and think it was my dad throwing a temper tantrum. I did not know at the time but police went to his house and took him away to a mental health facility against his will because of a court order (too many incidents led to this). That morning I was in the kitchen making cookies with my grandson. I put the spices back in the cabinet and closed the door, turned my back on that cabinet to go back to the counter and the door flew open and every spice bottle in the cupboard flew out, some hitting me on the back of the head some hitting the refrigerator or slamming to the floor. The force of it was more than if the door was ajar and they had just fallen out (which they couldn't because they were in racks to keep them from falling).

Later I found out about my dad and that he blamed me.
 
The time that really stands out in my mind is when I'd been suffering a serious emotional upheaval. The lightbulbs and fuses in my apartment kept blowing out, one after another. The toaster and grill, too.
There was a time when I had to change light bulbs every 3 weeks. I finally started buying the led bulbs and those don't quit working. I have noticed that newer technology is more forgiving of my energy than the older technology. Back in the 80's I could walk past a computer monitor (the ones with tubes) and it would quit working. One even caught fire.
 
I've noticed that sometimes if I'm arguing with the wife things will randomly bang or whatever in the house. It does make me think someone's watching over us going, "Shut up you pair of idiots, there's other things to worry about than this stupid argument."
 
The time that really stands out in my mind is when I'd been suffering a serious emotional upheaval. The lightbulbs and fuses in my apartment kept blowing out, one after another. The toaster and grill, too.
Yes, this too! When our daughter was stillborn I was obviously very depressed and things just kept going wrong. The final straw was when the shower broke, I thought, "well, at least we can still have a bath", and that same day the boiler went. It was like the final straw - I could have given up altogether.
At that point, however, I made a conscious decision to try and be more positive and I started to sit in the car each day, just closing my eyes and being thankful for all the good things we had, like our daughter and our house and so on. Things began to get better immediately, I mean, to a huge extent.
I haven't sat in the car and done that for a while actually, better start doing it again!
I do now believe bad vibes lead to bad things happening, and being a positive person makes good things happen in general.
 
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