curious incident

[AngelAlice]

This happened two days ago to a friend of mine. It's possibly very minor, but still I think it should be recorded.

Just to give a little background, the person this happened to - call him Chaz - is an unusually observant, methodical individual. The sort of person who will always know the number of stairs in any house he visits, will always be able to tell you the background details of a given scene in a movie he's been watching, always be able to have a good go at describing the appearance of the people he's shared a train compartment with. An excellent witness in other words, and very methodical to boot.

Anyway, on Sunday he came in from work, went up to his room, took his wallet out of his pocket and put it on his clothes chest, sat on his bed, took his phone out of his pocket, looked at it, noted there were no missed calls (since he'd had it on silent while at work), put it on his night stand, then got up and left the room to talk to another household-member.

When he returned to his room the phone was gone. He searched the house. No sign. He thought his house mate had taken it for a joke and nagged him to give it back, but the guy hadn't seen it. Eventually, having exhausted all other possibilities, a friend checked Chaz's car - and there was the phone, lying on the passenger seat.

Ok, obvious explanation is he just forgot and left it there - only he swears he knows he didn't. And this is a highly methodical, careful, observant man. He swears he never put it on the passenger seat. Swears he took it out of his pocket, while sitting on the bed, looked at it carefully, because he thought he'd felt it vibrate and was checking for a missed call or text. He swears he put it down on the night stand. And that it just vanished from there. He was simply dumbstruck when the friend found it in his car. And is still firmly positive he didn't leave it there.

Probably he's just mistaken, right?

 

[SHAYBARSABE]

Well, right.

As my husband says: you only remember where you parked the car the night before last, not last night.

Memory does odd skips, as has been noted on this board several (x infinite) times.

 

[PeniG]

Nonsense. It's the fairies.

Or he slid universes and in his old universes the self who slid in after him is saying "but I KNOW I left it on the seat of the car; how'd it get up here?" The trouble with parallel universes is the events that separate them are often so subtle you can't tell when you cross over even when you do it in the middle of the day.

 

[SHAYBARSABE]

The trouble with parallel universes is the events that separate them are often so subtle you can't tell when you cross over even when you do it in the middle of the day.

Indeed. Good to meet you, PeniG. Have you ever written to these boards before?

 

[PeniG]

I didn't think I had but I didn't need to register and that's certainly a picture of me...

BTW - the protagonist of this story sounds really Holmesian. Was there also a dog in the nighttime?

 

[coaly]

A dead dog? A dead dog who was curiously killed by a garden fork?

 

[AngelAlice]

No, no dog, but I'll tell him about the Holmesian thing, he'll get a kick out of it.

The thing about moments like these is that to anyone on the outside it seems so obvious it's just a slip of memory, but does that necessarily mean it is? Most 'weird' experiences happen within the kind of vague awareness you can quite easily believe is mistaken or confabulated, and so is easy to dismiss. You think you see a figure out the corner of your eye, turns out it's probably just that shadow cast by a half-open door. That kind of thing.

But sometimes, as with my friend, a very detailed moment of recall coincides with a Fortean experience, and allows you to simply know in that moment that you didn't dream it up or mistake it. But the trouble is only you, the observer, can know the difference, and no matter how many times you try and convey it to someone else it always sounds like special pleading.

Like, we all have the experience of thinking we hear footsteps on the stairs, only to find no one has gone up or down, don't we? But mostly we were only half listening to the sound and can't really be sure of what we heard. Only there was one night when I was babysitting and sent my younger nephew downstairs to tell the elder to go up to bed. In consequence I was sitting upstairs actively listening for footsteps to make sure the kids didn't linger.

Well, footsteps duly sounded, and I listened to them coming up the stairs, solid and real. I waited to track whether they turned left or right at the top so I would know which of the boys it was. The steps stopped at the top and didn't seem to turn either way. It later developed neither kid had yet come up. The only other person in the house was a younger nephew very soundly asleep.

Now, I know I heard those footsteps with a certainty I can't question. I listened to them closely, counting the stairs they climbed. To me there is no comparison between that incident and all the other numerous 'was that someone going upstairs?' moments we all have from time to time. But nothing I can say to you or anyone will ever make that difference apparent. It's entirley true, I am sure, but still evidentially useless.

Like my friend and his phone.

 

[jeff544]

I know exactly what you mean AngelAlice. You could not have articulated it better imho.

(edited - I wish I could spel prperly)

 

[Epicurean1]

Well, right.

As my husband says: you only remember where you parked the car the night before last, not last night.

I tend to agree with Shaybarsabe: at least that's my usual experience. Probably our brain's obsession with filling in the missing information, even when it does not have it: it does not remember where it left the (car, keys, phone...) but it cannot accept it.

 

[Dr_Baltar]

Can I just ask, why did a friend check Chaz's car and not Chaz himself?

 

[AngelAlice]

Can I just ask, why did a friend check Chaz's car and not Chaz himself?

Because Chaz was so entirely sure his phone was in the house and kept saying someone must be playing a joke. He felt like checking the car would be just looking like a sucker in front of his mates.

I do agree about the brain filling in blanks thing as an explanation almost all of the time - and yes, possibly all of the time. But I think in Fortean discussion we do need to recognise the possible significance of the different types and depths of recall. It can't be used scientifically obviously, but for anecdotal and informal purposes I think it can and should.

In my experience of the footsteps I know it wasn't brain idling and filling in because I was very consciously focused on the sound, thinking 'which of the boys is this?'. If it was imaginary then it was a full-blown if minor hallucination, complete with conscious tracking. I think the same must be said of Chaz's experience. He had clear and detailed recall of taking his phone out of his lefthand pocket, of looking at the screen expecting to see a missed call, because he thought he'd felt it vibrate, of thinking 'oh, no call', of putting the phone down on the night stand as he went to speak to his friend.

Hallucination? Possibly, but full-on, detailed hallucination in otherwise healthy fully conscious individuals with no known predisposition is a lot less probable than vague misidentification, and can't really be as lightly invoked. And that is what makes these types of experiences - IMO - so interesting and baffling.

 

[SHAYBARSABE]

Now, I know I heard those footsteps with a certainty I can't question. I listened to them closely, counting the stairs they climbed. To me there is no comparison between that incident and all the other numerous 'was that someone going upstairs?' moments we all have from time to time. But nothing I can say to you or anyone will ever make that difference apparent. It's entirley true, I am sure, but still evidentially useless.

Like my friend and his phone.

That's the thing, isn't it? These events tend to be a bit unnerving, but, in fact, are trivial.

I believe you about hearing the footsteps. Someone else might say that you were expecting to hear footsteps, so you brain made some for you. But, I'm thinking there was a trickster* involved who at least got a laugh for itself by faking you out.

*Yes, I've seen one, and had a witness, to boot. But that was many years ago.

 

[Dr_Baltar]

Because Chaz was so entirely sure his phone was in the house and kept saying someone must be playing a joke. He felt like checking the car would be just looking like a sucker in front of his mates.

Unlikely, I know, but is it possible the friend was playing a joke and took it down to the car him/herself?

 

[plusky]

Hi Angel,

I had a very similar experience to your footsteps on the stairs story, which turned out to have a rational explanation.
When I was a boy, in the early evenings in winter the whole family would hear footsteps going up the stairs when there was no-one there. This really used to frighten me. Finally my dad (a physics teacher) investigated the phenomenon over several days and found that:
1) When a real person walked up or down the stairs their weight would misalign each step slightly.
2) Over time the steps would "spring back" randomly
3) However in winter when the central heating came on in the hall and the heat gradually rose, the steps would spring back one after the other going upwards - it sounded just like someone walking up the stairs.

 

[AngelAlice]

Plusky - interesting! Did your father actually prove this or just deduce it? I don't think any such explanation fits in my case though, as I know the house well, and this was the only time such an event ocurred to the best of my awareness. Also, the sound wasn't the creak of floorboards, it was the actual sound of footfall on the thin stair carpet, a muffled tapping that is quite distinctive. I was in a room right next to the stairway and the door was open, so the sound was very clear.

As to Dr B's suggestion that Chaz's friend put the phone in the car as a joke. I have to say it's not that likely. The friend whom Chaz thought had hidden his phone was not the same guy who went out to check the car. The first guy was upstairs in his room and didn't come down until after the phone had been found. The second guy was downstairs throughout and I am fairly sure he didn't venture up at any time. (I was sitting in their living room, a passive observer of the drama.)

 

[thenumenorian]

anathema to forteans

the most obvious answer is probably the correct one.

since he is such a creature of habit, it might be that he is mistaken about the day in question, and he remembers his pattern.

OR- his friend was messing with him/borrowed the phone and left it in the car without telling him because he knows what a fussy pants he is,

OR- somebody found the phone on the ground outside the car and put it in the car to be nice. i know this happens because i actually did this once in a parking lot.

 

[PeniG]

But none of those explanations address the specific to-the-day memory. Checking your messages in response to having thought you felt it vibrate is not, by its nature, an habitual action; it would be different if he checked his messages routinely every day and the occasion he was remembering was one more of that routine.

I'm with AngelAlice. Sure, our perceptions can be unreliable, but they're all we've got. If we can't separate the genuine anomalies from the expectation-glitch, we're going to miss important cues. If you don't have the paranoid self-importance that requires you to distort reality rather than admit to a mistake, you have no particular motive to insist that a minor perception glitch didn't occur - and plenty of peer pressure to admit it as a possibility.

I make a lot of jokes about fairies and universe changes, knowing deep down that most of the time I wasn't paying attention or have had a memory revision. But once in awhile, I know for a fact that something weird has happened. My big inarguable weirdness is the time I left a book open on top of a couch cushion in the game room and couldn't find it when I went back. I'm continually walking around with a book, laying it down while I do a job, and then forgetting it, so I didn't take it seriously and retraced my steps around the house, several times, without finding the book - and the thing was, I remembered clearly leaving it open on the couch cushion, so I kept going back, going so far as to pick up the cushion and turn it over. Finally I pulled in the big guns and called my husband, the Finder - who as I was explaining the situation went into the game room and found the book open on the cushion in exactly the position I remembered.

Even if I'd had that selective-focus thing where you can't see what you're looking for when everyone else in the room can (which is probably the source of my husband's skill as Finder for the World), picking up the cushion and turning it over would have revealed it to me - or at least changed the position it was ultimately found in. So I call it fairies and get on with my life. But I can't prove that I turned the cushion over and if you happen to be someone who's uncomfortable with this sort of behavior from the universe, you will conclude that I must not have done so, or changed my memory of where I'd left the book to match where he found it, or any number of other condescending and unreasonable conclusions, rather than accept that weird things can happen for no good reason.

Given how important the accuracy of our day-to-day perceptions are to our survival, I call this straining at the gnat and swallowing the camel.

 

[AngelAlice]

Re: anathema to forteans

the most obvious answer is probably the correct one.

since he is such a creature of habit, it might be that he is mistaken about the day in question, and he remembers his pattern.

Possible, of course. But this guy is very rational, and if anything overly prone to self-questioning. It's very unusual for him to remain that certain in the face of 'reason', and the fact he was is very persuasive to me, because I know him very well. Also - as PeniG says - he had a distinct recall of a series of thoughts that linked the event into that day.

OR- his friend was messing with him/borrowed the phone and left it in the car without telling him because he knows what a fussy pants he is,

No time for any of that really. The events unfolded within at most twenty minutes of him coming home, and the guy he suspected of hiding his phone hadn't even gone downstairs, let alone left the house.

OR- somebody found the phone on the ground outside the car and put it in the car to be nice. i know this happens because I actually did this once in a parking lot.

Aww, I'd sort of like to think this was it, but sadly it's not possible. The car was locked, and the guy who found the phone had to take keys with him to unlock it.

PeniG - great post, and lovely summation.

 

[thenumenorian]

what he thinks

he thinks he has total recall for the day in question.
we will never know.

 

[thenumenorian]

probable v possible

maybe the window was open a crack and the good samaritan tossed it in the car? or maybe he replaced the phone and in an extra dose of kindness locked the car door. maybe mr fuss was asleep and dreamed he checked his messages...
were there ever any other misplaced articles that appeared in weird places before or since that might suggest something untoward was happening in the house?
my friend livvy had several items disappear from her kitchen, only to be found later in her neighbors kitchen. (they shared a backyard) she wanted to blame a poltergeist, i thought her neighbor had sticky fingers.
why isn't it just as probable that our fussy friend was mistaken, rather than believe the phone teleported itself back into a locked car. in fact, the car being locked makes it more likely he left it there, rather than less likely.

 

[AngelAlice]

Re: what he thinks

he thinks he has total recall for the day in question.
we will never know.

Well quite - but see above discussion for why this is both saying everything and ultimately nothing. The man was wide awake, has no known history of hallucination or altered states, is highly observant, and the events unfolded within a few minutes, not enought time to easily fabricate a memory.

Of course this proves nothing. It might well be nothing but a weird brain-moment, but sufficient data - albeit anecdotal - exists to make it valid to consider other possibilities IMO.

 

[AngelAlice]

Re: probable v possible

maybe the window was open a crack and the good samaritan tossed it in the car? or maybe he replaced the phone and in an extra dose of kindness locked the car door. maybe mr fuss was asleep and dreamed he checked his messages...

All of course possible in the sense of there being no proof they didn't happen, but in my view, as an observer of the event, they can all be more or less ruled out, for reasons given above.

were there ever any other misplaced articles that appeared in weird places before or since that might suggest something untoward was happening in the house?

Actually yes. I don't have details of most of the occurences, which have been quite minor, but I'll check up and get what info I can.

why isn't it just as probable that our fussy friend was mistaken, rather than believe the phone teleported itself back into a locked car. in fact, the car being locked makes it more likely he left it there, rather than less likely.

Mmm, the thing about assessing probablities of the unknown as opposed to the known is that there is always obviously a bias toward the known as being - from our current POV - more probable. But that doesn't mean it actually is. It can end up being nothing but a fancy way of stating the limits of our current knowledge. At one time meteors were deemed impossible, and any discussion in which a person claimed to have found one would have ended with someone saying "what's more probable, that a rock fell from the sky or that you imagined it and this 'meeorite' is just a stone lying in a field?"

I'm not, of course claiming Chaz's phone did 'teleport', just pointing out the possible pitfalls of that type of argument. I actually have no idea what happened that day. It's tempting to try and explain it with the 'normal', but honestly, in this case, I'm not wholly sure that's justified.

 

[AngelAlice]

A small follow up.

I asked Chaz about other such incidents, and actually he couldn't think of anything specific in the house itself, and neither could the two other guys who live there, but while Chaz was talking to his dad on the 'teleporting' phone last night, he heard a breathy female voice whisper 'I'm sorry'! He was startled and thought his dad had a visitor and he was interrupting something, but turned out Papa was just eating dinner with his other son.

Just a 'crossed line' or something - but it creeped him out a little at the time.

 

[Trevp666]

We had a similar thing happen yesterday.

Left the house with my lodger to go to the local boozer, about 100yds away, and about an hour later she was bemoaning the fact that she had lost her fags in the pub. We asked when did she last have them, and she 'definitely' remembers smoking one there in the pub garden, so they must be somewhere around. We searched, even in the bins (just in case) but they were not to be found.
Of course, on our return home later they were here on the coffee table.
We were quite pished though.

 

[birdy]

Something similar the other day, i'd left my boyfriend making sandwiches only to be asked seconds later where the two huge packs of cheese (BOGOF ) we'd bought the day before were. Irritated by his incompetence I said they were in the fridge - where else!
He still couldn't find them... so I swung the fridge open prepared to show him up, only I couldn't find them either! We both remember putting the shopping away and I also remember very specifically picking up both blocks out of the shopping bag at the same time with one hand and struggling to hold on while I crossed the floor to put them in the fridge.
I searched the whole kitchen, and being an inner london pad it's the size of an airing cupboard, and still couldn't find them.

It was only later in the day that I had the epiphany - we'd walked out of the shop because of the queue and didn't actually buy anything!

I know you'll say I just remembered doing it at some other point in time, and i'm sure that's it but it was so vivid and in my memory something i definitely did in my current flat which we've only just moved into. We must be losing it!

 

[SHAYBARSABE]

I know you'll say I just remembered doing it at some other point in time, and i'm sure that's it but it was so vivid and in my memory something i definitely did in my current flat which we've only just moved into. We must be losing it!

Oh, it's just the barriers between the universes getting thin again. Somebody really needs to get around to repairing it, don't you think?

 

[meowfur]

That's the thing, isn't it? These events tend to be a bit unnerving, but, in fact, are trivial.

I believe you about hearing the footsteps. Someone else might say that you were expecting to hear footsteps, so you brain made some for you. But, I'm thinking there was a trickster* involved who at least got a laugh for itself by faking you out.

*Yes, I've seen one, and had a witness, to boot. But that was many years ago.

I agree it's the trickster. Here in the American Southwest he's known as Coyote.

Shaybarsabe, your comment about the trickster is very intriguing, and you certainly can't just leave it at that. What's the story?

 

[SHAYBARSABE]

Shaybarsabe, your comment about the trickster is very intriguing, and you certainly can't just leave it at that. What's the story?

It's around these boards somewhere. But, here's the brief version: my friend and I were walking in the hallway of her house one night, and we passed a bedroom that had a door open. There was no light in the bedroom: but there was a 6+ foot, black-and-white striped, kachina standing in profile to us. We'd passed the door before we both thought what we'd seen. Of course, in going back to the room, nothing was there.

 

[Iris]

I'm beginning to wonder if I'm losing it as well. I was driving my daughter to the station at 7am last Thursday and passed my friend's house on the way. I saw a small blue car in her drive but not their big grey four wheel drive.
I remarked to my daughter" He must have had a heart attack again and a friend has taken her to the hospital in their car to be with him" As it was early I thought I would ring just before 9.
However my friend rang first to report another match for the cards I did for her,and was very surprised when I asked her about the blue car as she said she didn't know anyone with one and their car was still in front of the garage.

 

[amarok2005]

Maybe it's just the march of time, and your friend's Holmesian faculties are losing their edge . . . For instance, despite the fact I have over 4,000 books, and despite the fact I move them around constantly, I always know where the one book is with the one reference I'm wanting, and I walk over to some random bookshelf and yank it out without even looking at it. Even when I go to a used book store or flea market, and there are mountains of books stacked so that I see only the bottoms and that tiny rim of the cover -- I recognize ones I already own. Tom Cullin's When London Walked in Terror -- dark green cover, paper edges now faded to yellow, has that green "VII" in Biro on the bottom, came from that used book store near the University of Tulsa, long gone now. . . Tahiti Nui by Eric de Bisschop, supposed mermaid sighting in it, has that cover of a unique shade of light blue, no other book has it . . . The Lost World by Doyle, oddly-sized hardback, lime-green color, crude drawing of a Stegosaurus on the front, on that white shelf in the closet . . .

Anyway, within the last year or two, I'd walk to the shelf to grab a book -- and it wasn't the one I wanted! A couple of times, I had to admit -- I didn't know where in my apartment a certain volume was!! My brain -- it must be wearing out!

Surely I can name all the Godzilla movies in order . . . Wait! Was Godzilla vs. Gigan before or after Godzilla vs. Megalon?!?! Senility approaches. . .