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Impossible Physics

Trish71

Devoted Cultist
Joined
Jan 1, 2019
Messages
158
Location
Bamfurlong, Wigan
A tentative hello to everyone here, I'm feeling quite nervous about writing my first ever post and hope that I have followed procedure.
Please forgive me if I should have posted this elsewhere?

For a few years, what happened on the evening of my dad's funeral has really made me scratch my head in confusion and caused my (limited) understanding of the Laws of Physics to have a massive wobble!
My partner and I were both in our young son's room reading him a bedtime story. The curtains were drawn and no windows were open. At the end of each curtain pole was a small, extremely flimsy half plastic football which acted as a stopper so the curtains didn't fall off. (I don't know the technical name for it!). All was normal I guess and although I'd attended dad's funeral I wasn't overly upset or emotional because, my dad split up from my mum when I was about 5 (I was 44 at this point) and he chose not to be involved in my life following their divorce. (We had only reconnected 2 or so years before his passing.)
What I'm trying to get across is that although he was my "dad", he was also a total stranger to me and I had only met with him three times before his death so although I felt saddened, I didn't feel devastated.

As I was sat on the bed reading to my son, there was an almighty THUD on the middle of the floor and I was dumbfounded to see that one of the plastic footballs had somehow dislodged itself from the end of the pole and landed with extreme force on the carpet in the middle of the room! My partner and I looked at one another in shock and disbelief! This almost weightless, small plastic object, about the size of half a small ping pong ball had managed to travel about 2 feet, very fast and landed hard exactly as though it had been thrown purposely on the floor in a fit of temper!
We examined the pole in detail and could find no logical explanation for what had happened.
In fact, I reattached the football and gently nudged it off the end to see if it could have just fallen off naturally and "bounced" itself over to the middle of the room. All that resulted in, was the plastic bloody football getting cracked in two as soon as it hit the floor! (it was cheap and cheerful) . As it landed, there definitely wasn't any "bounce" nor did it travel any distance. It just fell to the floor and broke!

There is simply no explanation for it landing heavily as it did and no logical reason for it happening.

One other weird aspect of this event is the fact that despite my partner and I being spooked by what had happened, we didn't really talk about it much afterward. Like our brain refused to remember it because it was too out there!

Part of me likes to think it was my dad saying a final goodbye (or saying sorry) to a daughter he never really took the time to know!
I sincerely apologise for the length of this post and thank you for reading it. I just hope it makes sense?
 
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Yes Trish 71 it does shake you up a bit when you can't work out how something happened.
Today I was sitting in the lounge reading when I heard a thump and looked up to see a roll of kitchen paper just stop rolling in front of the kitchen bench.
It had been near the back and there were other things in front on the bench it would have to have bumped over.
Really it was rather funny because just at that moment I had been reading a psychic's column in a magazine explaining how to ask spirits something.
 
Hi Trish. nice to meet you. :) Your story is very interesting and not too long at all.

I can't say much about the laws of physics or why they might have gone awry in your home that night No doubt other members here can cover that aspect.

I can say that after a neighbor died under mysterious circumstances in 2003, we (and another friend of said neighbor) had a spate of similar occurrences. Pictures flying off walls, perfectly secure curtain rods falling, heavy jars of change flinging themselves off countertops, all that sort of thing. It didn't stop until the other friend and I decided to say something to the police about our suspicions that our neighbor's death was not natural. The toxicology reports did show an unknown substance in her blood, but no foul play could be proven. However, just making the gesture seemed to calm things down.

Visitations from an angry ghost? Uncontrolled telekinesis due to stress? Who knows, but like in your case, the force with which things were being flung around seemed to defy natural explanation.

As if to prove a point, at our neighbor's funeral, the mechanism holding her casket broke and our friend's body tumbled halfway out. The company insisted that their equipment was working perfectly well and such a thing had never happened before. It was all very horrifying, but we figured our neighbor was trying to get one last message across.
 
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Anyway... I've had a fair bit of this things moving that shouldn't business.

A couple of years ago I was strolling along in a shop when I heard a thud and looked around to see a big tub of baked beans on the floor behind me! It must have jumped over other things to get there. Nobody else was nearby.

Last year I was in work talking with my boss, just us two in the place, when we walked past my locker and saw a shoe on the floor. There was a gap on top of my locker behind the other shoe where it had been when we'd walked past a minute before.

Boss was a bit rattled as the place is indeed supposed to be haunted*! but I just laughed and said 'Ghost, you're gonna have to do better than THAT!'

*I have posted elsewhere on'ere about my haunted workplace. Some female staff hate having to some in at night to sign out. Doesn't bother me. NOTHING scares me.
 
A tentative hello to everyone here, I'm feeling quite nervous about writing my first ever post and hope that I have followed procedure.
Please forgive me if I should have posted this elsewhere?

For a few years, what happened on the evening of my dad's funeral has really made me scratch my head in confusion and caused my (limited) understanding of the Laws of Physics to have a massive wobble!
My partner and I were both in our young son's room reading him a bedtime story. The curtains were drawn and no windows were open. At the end of each curtain pole was a small, extremely flimsy half plastic football which acted as a stopper so the curtains didn't fall off. (I don't know the technical name for it!). All was normal I guess and although I'd attended dad's funeral I wasn't overly upset or emotional because, my dad split up from my mum when I was about 5 (I was 44 at this point) and he chose not to be involved in my life following their divorce. (We had only reconnected 2 or so years before his passing.)
What I'm trying to get across is that although he was my "dad", he was also a total stranger to me and I had only met with him three times before his death so although I felt saddened, I didn't feel devastated.

As I was sat on the bed reading to my son, there was an almighty THUD on the middle of the floor and I was dumbfounded to see that one of the plastic footballs had somehow dislodged itself from the end of the pole and landed with extreme force on the carpet in the middle of the room! My partner and I looked at one another in shock and disbelief! This almost weightless, small plastic object, about the size of half a small ping pong ball had managed to travel about 2 feet, very fast and landed hard exactly as though it had been thrown purposely on the floor in a fit of temper!
We examined the pole in detail and could find no logical explanation for what had happened.
In fact, I reattached the football and gently nudged it off the end to see if it could have just fallen off naturally and "bounced" itself over to the middle of the room. All that resulted in, was the plastic bloody football getting cracked in two as soon as it hit the floor! (it was cheap and cheerful) . As it landed, there definitely wasn't any "bounce" nor did it travel any distance. It just fell to the floor and broke!

There is simply no explanation for it landing heavily as it did and no logical reason for it happening.

One other weird aspect of this event is the fact that despite my partner and I being spooked by what had happened, we didn't really talk about it much afterward. Like our brain refused to remember it because it was too out there!

Part of me likes to think it was my dad saying a final goodbye (or saying sorry) to a daughter he never really took the time to know!
I sincerely apologise for the length of this post and thank you for reading it. I just hope it makes sense?
Hi, welcome to the forum. Interesting first post.

The first possibility that sprang to my mind was that the thump caused the finial (the ball) to fall, and that you unconsciously reversed the order of events in your perception.

Where I live, large lorries go past at high speed. Every so often one hits a particular bump in the road and there is a loud bang. Now and again, an item is dislodged in the house.

When you are not expecting something to happen, your brain may process the sound and the sight slightly differently, giving the impression that the bang was the finial landing, rather than the cause of the finial becoming detached.

That said, there is so much anecdotal evidence for poltergeists that I have an open mind on the subject. Whether poltergeists are the spirits of the departed, or a different sort of sprit, or involuntary telekinesis by a living person, I do not know.

A friend of mine bought a small statue of Jesus and it kept flying off the shelf. It was a polterchrist! Thank you, you've been a wonderful audience, I'll be here all week.:p
 
... The first possibility that sprang to my mind was that the thump caused the finial (the ball) to fall, and that you unconsciously reversed the order of events in your perception. ...

When you are not expecting something to happen, your brain may process the sound and the sight slightly differently, giving the impression that the bang was the finial landing, rather than the cause of the finial becoming detached. ...

Agreed ... This is by far the most likely explanation. Conscious apperception for vibrational stimuli (physical shocks; sounds) is more direct and faster than for visual stimuli. By the time you consciously 'collated' or 'assembled' an impression of the environmental changes, the sound seemed coincident with the finial's landing on the floor. By the time the conscious visual observation of the fallen finial 'registered' the shock / sound seemed to have happened along with it rather than milliseconds before it.
 
Thanks for your reply but I think I should say that the thud I heard actually was the plastic football landing in the middle of the room. I live on a dead end road on a small estate opposite farm land and trees, there isn't any traffic at all.
 
Yes Trish 71 it does shake you up a bit when you can't work out how something happened.
Today I was sitting in the lounge reading when I heard a thump and looked up to see a roll of kitchen paper just stop rolling in front of the kitchen bench.
It had been near the back and there were other things in front on the bench it would have to have bumped over.
Really it was rather funny because just at that moment I had been reading a psychic's column in a magazine explaining how to ask spirits something.
Agreed ... This is by far the most likely explanation. Conscious apperception for vibrational stimuli (physical shocks; sounds) is more direct and faster than for visual stimuli. By the time you consciously 'collated' or 'assembled' an impression of the environmental changes, the sound seemed coincident with the finial's landing on the floor. By the time the conscious visual observation of the fallen finial 'registered' the shock / sound seemed to have happened along with it rather than milliseconds before it.
Thanks for your reply but I think I should say that the thud I heard actually was the plastic football landing in the middle of the room. I live on a dead end road on a small estate opposite farm land and trees, there isn't any traffic at all.
# I have tried without success to reply to some people but can't for the life of me figure out how to do it! When I press the reply button, I'm just seeing the person's post with no box for me to pen my response. (# technology hates me....)
 
# I have tried without success to reply to some people but can't for the life of me figure out how to do it! When I press the reply button, I'm just seeing the person's post with no box for me to pen my response. (# technology hates me....)

Simply enter your text in the same text box where the other poster's quoted text appears. When finished, hit 'Post reply'.

Or are you not seeing the quoted text within a text entry box? If this is the case, please specify how you're accessing the forum.
 
Thanks for your reply but I think I should say that the thud I heard actually was the plastic football landing in the middle of the room. I live on a dead end road on a small estate opposite farm land and trees, there isn't any traffic at all.

It wouldn't have to involve traffic ... Any sort of shock would do - for example, a minor seismic event (earthquake), nearby fracking activity, a shift in air pressure within a well-sealed building, the building settling, or even a sudden gust of wind outside.
 
Simply enter your text in the same text box where the other poster's quoted text appears. When finished, hit 'Post reply'.

Or are you not seeing the quoted text within a text entry box? If this is the case, please specify how you're accessing the forum.
No, that's exactly what I'm seeing! I didn't think it was right though lol!! Thank you.
 
I forgot to mention ...

You don't have to include the prior poster's quoted text. You can simply delete it in the text box before writing your response.

Alternatively, you can simply enter your new text in the text box without ever hitting the 'Reply' button associated with an existing post.
 
Great post, we had a coffee mug move itself (apparently) from a beam to the floor , the exposed beams of the kitchen had about 90 hooks with a mug on each , it suffered no damage , only 3 people in the house with no practical jokers (it is old and haunted though):)
 
But where do all the teaspoons go . . . ?

It wouldn't have to involve traffic ... Any sort of shock would do - for example, a minor seismic event (earthquake), nearby fracking activity, a shift in air pressure within a well-sealed building, the building settling, or even a sudden gust of wind outside.
Some years ago I heard that there are many unnoticed seismic occurrences in Britain which the narrator linked to spooky, ghostly incidents of doors opening on their own. It might have been on a radio program from Canada called "Quirks and Quarks." https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks
 
As I was sat on the bed reading to my son, there was an almighty THUD on the middle of the floor and I was dumbfounded to see that one of the plastic footballs had somehow dislodged itself from the end of the pole and landed with extreme force on the carpet in the middle of the room!

Hi Trish71! Welcome to the Board. I love this sort of story. Bravo!

Time for some critical thinking and for following a logical chain of thought.

When I read your post, my first reaction was to put myself in that situation. When I am reading for my son, I am looking at the book. You probably were too. There was then an almighty noise and you looked at the floor. And saw the curtain stopper. This doesn't mean that the stopper made the noise though. Like it a window smashes and you see a cricket ball amongst the glass. The ball may have been there from the start and the glass may have shattered onto it.

So the first question is: Did you see it fall, move or hit the floor? Or did you only see it once it was on the floor/carpet?

Now imagine the curtain stopper hadn't been there when you looked up. What else in your home (and only you can tell us) coud make that sort of sound and make you think it came from the floor? Could another toy have fallen and made you look up? Could your son's heel have hit the floor while he was swinging his leg over the side of the bed? Is his bedroom on the first floor? Do you have neighbours under you? Is their a door somewhere that makes a racket when it is slammed? A neighbours garage or wheelie bin lid?
 
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I was cooking and the lid of a bottle of olive oil which was standing beside the cooker flipped up in the air with an audible 'pop' to come to rest on the stove top next to the saucepan I was stirring. I actually saw it happen as I was just staring around the kitchen as you do when performing some boring task.

It made me laugh. I've no idea what caused it, but, as the oil bottle was plastic, it was probably something thermal going on and the worktop next to the cooker heating up, heating the bottle and causing the stopper to pop off. It's never happened before or since, but maybe the conditions just haven't been right. Or...it might have been a ghost/poltergeist. Whichever, it amused me.
 
I was cooking and the lid of a bottle of olive oil which was standing beside the cooker flipped up in the air with an audible 'pop' to come to rest on the stove top next to the saucepan I was stirring. I actually saw it happen as I was just staring around the kitchen as you do when performing some boring task.

It made me laugh. I've no idea what caused it, but, as the oil bottle was plastic, it was probably something thermal going on and the worktop next to the cooker heating up, heating the bottle and causing the stopper to pop off. It's never happened before or since, but maybe the conditions just haven't been right. Or...it might have been a ghost/poltergeist. Whichever, it amused me.

Changes of pressure can do remarkable things.

My most spectacular experience was when I was scuba diving. I had an expensive new dive watch. It was a shallow dive down to about 10 metres or so. (1 extra atmosphere of pressure.) I surfaced and glanced at my watch and saw that water had got in, presumably past the winder. Back on the boat, I took the watch off in disgust and put it on a flat surface. A couple of minutes later, the watch glass flew off with an audible pop. What had happened was that the water had leaked in under pressure while I was 10 metres down, compressing the air inside the watch. The glass had not come off because of course there as equal pressure on the the outside of the watch. As I had surfaced, the water had not come out, or had not done so quickly enough, so the air inside the watch remained under pressure. It had eventually been too much for the glue and the glass had popped off.

A common example in my childhood was to make water rockets using old squeezy bottles. We partly filled the bottle with water, then pumped air in using a bike pump and the sort of adapter that you use to pump up a football. Eventually, the pressure was too much for the grip of the plastic bottle top and it popped off, allowing the water to shoot out of the neck of the bottle, sending the "rocket" in the opposite direction.

Another common example used to be the trick of putting a peeled hard boiled egg inside an old pint milk bottle. You could achieve this by heating the bottle, then putting the peeled egg on top. As the bottle cooled, the air pressure within dropped, and the normal atmospheric pressure then pushed the egg into the bottle. A similar principle is used to seal jam jars, which is why they make that popping noise when you open them the first time.

In your case with the oil bottle, the connection between the top and the bottle is probably only a push fit, not designed to withstand any significant degree of pressure. If the bottle was near enough to the stove top, it may have heated the air inside the bottle just enough for it to try to expand, increasing the pressure, until the top popped off.

Unrelated, but a similar feeling when you experience it: toughened glass. This is the glass that is designed (a) not to break but (b) if it does break, then to break into small rounded pieces rather than jagged sheets.

My former partner was a double glazing salesman. She had a sheet of toughened glass on a small wooden frame and would demonstrate how strong it was by dropping an industrial sized ball bearing onto it. It made an incredibly loud noise but did not break, thus demonstrating how tough the glass was. However, each impact introduced microscopic stress fractures and sooner or later, she would drop the ball bearing and the glass would shatter. Without missing a beat, she would say to the customer, "As you can see, even if a burglar does break it, it is loud enough to wake you or your neighbours, and there are no dangerous sharp edges when you clear up afterwards.

Then one night, we were woken by an enormous crash. The toughened glass double glazed panel in her back door had suddenly broken. There was no immediate cause: just the cumulative effect of expansion and contraction with changes of temperature. It was glass in an aluminium frame and the two materials expanded and contracted at different rates. Someone who did not know this might have suspected either an attempted burglary or some paranormal explanation.
 
AAt the end of each curtain pole was a small, extremely flimsy half plastic football which acted as a stopper so the curtains didn't fall off. (I don't know the technical name for it!).
For the record, all those people who are scratching their heads about this issue. Those knobs at the end of curtain rods are the same as the top ends of flagpoles; they're called "Finials".

As if to prove a point, at our neighbor's funeral, the mechanism holding her casket broke and our friend's body tumbled halfway out. The company insisted that their equipment was working perfectly well and such a thing had never happened before. It was all very horrifying, but we figured our neighbor was trying to get one last message across.

That message... "HELP ! I'M NOT DEAD ! I'M GETTING BETTER. PLEASE DON'T BURY ME YET!" (jk)
 
Our bedroom windows, subject to changes in pressure I suppose, expands and contracts and in the process can make a loud cracking noise that has made both of us jump before now. This may relate to the original posters experience. I referenced the Freud Jung experience because that it what it reminded me of and not necessarily a comparison.

And a thread on such loud popping / cracking noises from windows can be viewed here: https://www.doityourself.com/forum/...6578-window-frame-popping-cracking-noise.html
 
Those knobs at the end of curtain rods are the same as the top ends of flagpoles; they're called "Finials".

I knew this, having studied interior design, but until this moment it hadn't occurred to me that 'finial' literally means 'knob end'. From now on everyone who annoys me at work is a finial.
 
I knew this, having studied interior design, but until this moment it hadn't occurred to me that 'finial' literally means 'knob end'. From now on everyone who annoys me at work is a finial.
Yeah, the term Boss (defined as a knob or ornamental stud), is getting a bit well worn. Go for it Esc.
 
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