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Minor Strangeness (IHTM)

The chocolate snowman incident reminds me of when I read the former Mr Snail's mind.

I was at home one day and he was due in from work, and I suddenly decided to go out and meet him.
I walked down the front path just in time to see him pull up and jump out of the car.

He called out excitedly 'GUESS what I've just seen?' and I just knew that it was a lorry that'd driven under the low railway bridge and got stuck. It'd happened right behind the ex Mr Snail's car.

Dunno how, but I could tell by looking at his face what had happened. Nuts, eh!
 
Here's a puzzle (it's a bit involved so you'll need to concentrate):

So one evening I was trying to call a friend of mine on his mobile but he wasn't answering.(I need to make clear at this point that I had successfully made use of this number before). It later transpired that he had lost his phone - so that explained that.
About a week later he found his phone again - it turned up in the car of an ex-girlfriend of his. So all was well we thought.
Later I tried ringing him and texting him few times on his recovered phone and, again, there was no reply. Then when I met the guy in the flesh I asked him what was afoot this time, he remarked that he had not received any calls from me - and also that he had been having the same problem with other friends of his. I then asked him to call me - then experimentally rang back on the same number of the incoming call: sure enough I got through on this occasion.

We then compared the number of my incoming call and the number saved in my phone as his - and the last four digits were different.

So since losing his phone and recovering it, his phone number has altered.Can phone numbers just change in this way? now I'm a little bit of a technophobe who knows nothing about such things, but my mate is quite a lot younger than me and more clued upon such things - and he is baffled by it.

I did wonder aloud that maybe his ex-girlfriend had put a new chip in his phone as some sort of revenge attack - but he insists that their relationship is not at such a low point - and anyway, why on earth would anyone do such a thing? What would be the point?

Can anyone explain this? It's got us stumped!


 
I'm guessing that something about the network changed, and the call was routed through an alternative connection.
Maybe a transmitter or other part of the infrastructure was down, so the phone engineers rerouted the calls through a service known as backhaul, appending new digits to the end of the caller ID.

Alternatively, someone - either hackers or the police - were intercepting and rerouting calls that day...
 
Zeke Newbold said:
Here's a puzzle (it's a bit involved so you'll need to concentrate):

So one evening I was trying to call a friend of mine on his mobile but he wasn't answering.(I need to make clear at this point that I had successfully made use of this number before). It later transpired that he had lost his phone - so that explained that.
About a week later he found his phone again - it turned up in the car of an ex-girlfriend of his. So all was well we thought.
Later I tried ringing him and texting him few times on his recovered phone and, again, there was no reply. Then when I met the guy in the flesh I asked him what was afoot this time, he remarked that he had not received any calls from me - and also that he had been having the same problem with other friends of his. I then asked him to call me - then experimentally rang back on the same number of the incoming call: sure enough I got through on this occasion.

We then compared the number of my incoming call and the number saved in my phone as his - and the last four digits were different.

So since losing his phone and recovering it, his phone number has altered.Can phone numbers just change in this way? now I'm a little bit of a technophobe who knows nothing about such things, but my mate is quite a lot younger than me and more clued upon such things - and he is baffled by it.

I did wonder aloud that maybe his ex-girlfriend had put a new chip in his phone as some sort of revenge attack - but he insists that their relationship is not at such a low point - and anyway, why on earth would anyone do such a thing? What would be the point?

Can anyone explain this? It's got us stumped!
Click to expand...
Never needed to do it but all you need is your account details and then contact whatever the company the phones plan is with. I'd not be surprised if it was the ex. Why was he leaving it in her car and why did it take her so long to find it? What was he doing in her car?
 
Zeke Newbold said:
We then compared the number of my incoming call and the number saved in my phone as his - and the last four digits were different.
Click to expand...

I keep my old iPhone as a 'burner' on a PAYG contract. Sometimes if I text on it, the reply goes to a different number.

So I text Escet, Escet replies, and a stranger, X, receives the reply.
X says 'Wrong number!'
Escet texts back 'No Ma, it's me, I'm waiting for you pick me up!' and X replies 'Wrong number!'

Meanwhile I text Escet again and get a reply from him saying 'Sorry, thought I was texting my mother!'

This goes on for a bit, with texts from Escet randomly bouncing to X and me.
The X texts are from a number with one digit different from mine. It's mad.
 
I was cleaning out the filter in my aquarium the night before last and removed three trays that sit in the back and suck up all the sludge to give them a swish out. The trays are about 25cm long and about 1cm deep, full of porous ceramic pieces with a fabric front. When you pull them out they're sopping wet and dirty, I do one at a time, quick swill out in a bucket and then straight back into the back of the tank. When I went back later to fiddle with something in the tank - I've only got two trays in there. No clue where the third has gone but wherever I put it, it would have been soaking and pretty obvious! We live in a bedsit so I have no idea where I've put it but it' can't have gone far, can it?!
 
birdy said:
I was cleaning out the filter in my aquarium the night before last and removed three trays that sit in the back and suck up all the sludge to give them a swish out. The trays are about 25cm long and about 1cm deep, full of porous ceramic pieces with a fabric front. When you pull them out they're sopping wet and dirty, I do one at a time, quick swill out in a bucket and then straight back into the back of the tank. When I went back later to fiddle with something in the tank - I've only got two trays in there. No clue where the third has gone but wherever I put it, it would have been soaking and pretty obvious! We live in a bedsit so I have no idea where I've put it but it' can't have gone far, can it?!
Click to expand...


My advice to you birdy, is to stand in the middle of the room, look at the ceiling, and in a normal voice ask, "put it back please" - it works for me just about every time, and the object of my search is usually found...in some of the oddest places.
 
The mysterious switching on lights here. Someone mentioned a while back (I can't remember who, possibly Rynner?) that I could have done it and forgot, which is a distinct possibility for some of them. But, my mother was in the hall, and witnessed the landing light switch itself on. So, I think it might be a split between me being forgetful and something pissing about. I know the wiring is sound cos I had an electrician here to check everything over, just to be safe
 
It's 4am and I'm sat in my studio working on some artwork when one of my oil paintings, a self portrait, flies off the wall with a big crash. It flew forward though, and was hung on a solid nail, and the nail is still deep in place.
 
FrKadash said:
It's 4am and I'm sat in my studio working on some artwork when one of my oil paintings, a self portrait, flies off the wall with a big crash. It flew forward though, and was hung on a solid nail, and the nail is still deep in place.
Click to expand...
how far did it go Dash?
 
Naughty_Felid said:
how far did it go Dash?
Click to expand...

It looks like it's gone a few feet and bounced back as it hit a pine trunk which must be what mad the sharp crash sound. Made me jump because I'm sat in the dark with just light of the monitor.
 
FrKadash said:
It looks like it's gone a few feet and bounced back as it hit a pine trunk which must be what mad the sharp crash sound. Made me jump because I'm sat in the dark with just light of the monitor.
Click to expand...


You ok? From experience stuff like that can be a fright.
 
FrKadash said:
Yea thanks I haven't picked it up yet, I have some cats keeping me safe. First weird thing that's happened in a long time, it's always when you least expect it!
Click to expand...


Cats I've found are ALWAYS badass when it comes to supernatural beings. You are in good paws.

You are right, I've not experienced any real weirdness for ages but when it happens it happens.
 
Cycling along to the supermarket along the cycle track I saw a cyclist approach and I recognized Alice as she is one of the only other people in the village who cycles to work. I also know her as between us we know all the neighbourhood cats and we hook up now and again to try and identify strays or lost kitties.

Anyhow I didn't recognize the bike or her usual cycling get up and wierdly she completely ignored me as she cycled past.

However about 10 minutes later Alice came into view on her usual bike in her usual clothing and shouted out hello.

The first person obviously wasn't Alice although the build, hair and mouth were identical, (she has a quite distinctive mouth). It was uncanny, Alice is a quite unique hippy lass not your average cyclist either.

The thing is I'm sure I've posted something similar before but I can't find the post, it involved Alice again.
 
Yup, I reckon you 'recognised' the 'other' Alice, maybe when you glanced up at her and saw someone in the same place and resembling her at the right time. I've done similar.

You'll probably see the other Alice again and think, aaah right! ;)
 
I had half a story to tell, it just wasn’t weighty enough for IHTM or any of the Ghost threads, as you will see. It was so unremarkable that I didn’t even think it would do for Minor Strangeness, however a strange denouement occurred (ten years later, in PART 2 below) that spurred me on to write this down.

It was the early summer of 2005, May perhaps, that I decided to dig a pond in the back garden. The hole I was creating was approximately 9 X 7 feet across to a depth of 2 feet and it was a hot day, so it wasn’t until the late afternoon that I had the liner in place and started filling it with water with a hose attached to the kitchen sink. As it was still daylight and quite warm, I set up a deck chair next to the pond, got myself a bottle of wine and sat for a while admiring my handiwork. As it got darker I realised that it wasn’t going to fill up anytime soon, so I went indoors and left the tap running.

It was at some point during the evening that my wife mentioned she thought she had seen an old lady sitting in the deck chair I had left out. I’ll mention here that the chair was facing away from the house. Although we did joke about ghosts at the time, she insisted that it was just a mistake and nothing more than a trick of the light. She ’thought she saw’ something being a bit different to actually seeing something.

In either 2008 or 2009, she ‘thought’ she saw something else in connection to the pond. It was autumn and I had gone out to trim the vegetation at the edge of the water right back so that I could pin a net over it and keep leaves out during winter. This meant slowly making my way around it with shears, but this continual squatting was quite hard on the joints so what I ended up doing was trimming a bit here and there, walking around the perimeter every time it became too uncomfortable.
Later, my wife asked me who I had been talking to down the garden. From the kitchen window to where I was working is a distance of about forty or fifty feet with nothing blocking the view and it was this window she had glanced from. She told me that she thought she had seen a man at the pond talking to me, moving along the opposite side as I made my way around. I was not looking at him, but at the plants I was trimming and didn’t seem to be talking back. Which of course, I wasn’t. When I explained that I had been alone the whole time I had spent outside she again reasoned that she must have been mistaken.

And when I brought it up again yesterday as I was planning this post, she still insisted that she imagined everything. It wasn’t anything ghostly, just her not really paying attention and thinking she saw something that wasn’t there.
But I can’t help wondering how you imagine actual people.

PART 2

Just the other day I was looking on a popular photo-sharing site and discovered there was a ruined mansion in a forest a few miles from where I live. I’d never heard of it and a quick search on Bing gave me this site -

http://www.keystothepast.info/Pages/pgDetail.aspx?PRN=D1319

After a general look about the area I thought I would use the interactive map and see if there was anything of interest closer to home. Surprisingly, there was and not only was it close to where I live, it was in my back garden.
I would love to post the actual link, but in doing so I would effectively be publishing my home address so I took this screenshot instead. The red circle on the map is indeed within the boundary marked as my garden and it represents the site of a ‘Post Medieval Well’. That puts a date between 1540 and 1901, however the earliest available historic map with it marked is from around 1860. It could of course be earlier, I don’t know if wells have ‘life-spans’. Can a well be in operation for centuries, for instance? If the red dot is an accurate position (of which I have doubts) then it is approximately 20ft from where the pond is situated.

Of course part of me would like to think that I somehow summoned spirits to my garden, attracted by the new water feature.

Screen Shot 2016-02-07 at 07.53.21jpeg.jpg
 
davidplankton said:
After a general look about the area I thought I would use the interactive map and see if there was anything of interest closer to home. Surprisingly, there was and not only was it close to where I live, it was in my back garden.
I would love to post the actual link, but in doing so I would effectively be publishing my home address so I took this screenshot instead.
Click to expand...
An interesting tale!

I like messing about with maps, and I'm a nosey b*gger, so I thought I'd try to find clues to your location. Putting 2 and 2 together (and making 5) I thought I had a partial address, so I searched on streetmap.co.uk for it. That produced a dozen returns, but none of them matched your map. However I did get a surprise - on the last one I tried my target street was just a couple of streets away from where my parents had once lived! What are the chances of that happening, eh?! :D
 
Watch out, Mr Plankton! Agent Rynner is on your case! :D
 
davidplankton said:
I had half a story to tell, it just wasn’t weighty enough for IHTM or any of the Ghost threads, as you will see. It was so unremarkable that I didn’t even think it would do for Minor Strangeness, however a strange denouement occurred (ten years later, in PART 2 below) that spurred me on to write this down.

It was the early summer of 2005, May perhaps, that I decided to dig a pond in the back garden. The hole I was creating was approximately 9 X 7 feet across to a depth of 2 feet and it was a hot day, so it wasn’t until the late afternoon that I had the liner in place and started filling it with water with a hose attached to the kitchen sink. As it was still daylight and quite warm, I set up a deck chair next to the pond, got myself a bottle of wine and sat for a while admiring my handiwork. As it got darker I realised that it wasn’t going to fill up anytime soon, so I went indoors and left the tap running.

It was at some point during the evening that my wife mentioned she thought she had seen an old lady sitting in the deck chair I had left out. I’ll mention here that the chair was facing away from the house. Although we did joke about ghosts at the time, she insisted that it was just a mistake and nothing more than a trick of the light. She ’thought she saw’ something being a bit different to actually seeing something.

In either 2008 or 2009, she ‘thought’ she saw something else in connection to the pond. It was autumn and I had gone out to trim the vegetation at the edge of the water right back so that I could pin a net over it and keep leaves out during winter. This meant slowly making my way around it with shears, but this continual squatting was quite hard on the joints so what I ended up doing was trimming a bit here and there, walking around the perimeter every time it became too uncomfortable.
Later, my wife asked me who I had been talking to down the garden. From the kitchen window to where I was working is a distance of about forty or fifty feet with nothing blocking the view and it was this window she had glanced from. She told me that she thought she had seen a man at the pond talking to me, moving along the opposite side as I made my way around. I was not looking at him, but at the plants I was trimming and didn’t seem to be talking back. Which of course, I wasn’t. When I explained that I had been alone the whole time I had spent outside she again reasoned that she must have been mistaken.

And when I brought it up again yesterday as I was planning this post, she still insisted that she imagined everything. It wasn’t anything ghostly, just her not really paying attention and thinking she saw something that wasn’t there.
But I can’t help wondering how you imagine actual people.

PART 2

Just the other day I was looking on a popular photo-sharing site and discovered there was a ruined mansion in a forest a few miles from where I live. I’d never heard of it and a quick search on Bing gave me this site -

http://www.keystothepast.info/Pages/pgDetail.aspx?PRN=D1319

After a general look about the area I thought I would use the interactive map and see if there was anything of interest closer to home. Surprisingly, there was and not only was it close to where I live, it was in my back garden.
I would love to post the actual link, but in doing so I would effectively be publishing my home address so I took this screenshot instead. The red circle on the map is indeed within the boundary marked as my garden and it represents the site of a ‘Post Medieval Well’. That puts a date between 1540 and 1901, however the earliest available historic map with it marked is from around 1860. It could of course be earlier, I don’t know if wells have ‘life-spans’. Can a well be in operation for centuries, for instance? If the red dot is an accurate position (of which I have doubts) then it is approximately 20ft from where the pond is situated.

Of course part of me would like to think that I somehow summoned spirits to my garden, attracted by the new water feature.

View attachment 1945
Click to expand...


David, I know of some of the association of spirits with water, going as far back as the ritual murders with the Celts, The danger of the Kelpies, well dressing, the saints at Lourdes and even over here in Australia we have fishers ghost on cowpasture road who sits on the bridge, the bunyip who lives in still waters, the spirits that live in water holes as well as the ritual to approach a water hole that the Old People went through to not offend the little people, also the danger to young Girls of getting pregnant because the water holds the babies, prior to finding a human mother, so to me it is otherworldly and yet at the same time, it seems appropriate - one of those 'ah yeah' moments.
 
On Saturday just gone, I went into the kitchen to stop the washing machine spinning (it had been put onto a manual spin), stopped it and turned the dial to stop. Then I went back into the living room for a few minutes as it takes so long for the lock to disengage. When I went back in, the door was open slightly. Which was slightly odd...

Ps First post, long time lurker :)
 
Thanks Staticgirl

There seems to be a few 'odd' things happening at the moment, just things disappearing and reappearing. Nothing major, just 'odd'. I have started thanking whoever it is when things are returned...just in case...
 
Dad had a freaky occurrence yesterday morning when putting the bins out. There was a small voice saying what sounded like 'murder' it said it a couple of times. We don't think anyone was about. We suspect it might be a bird or something. But it was too cold in his nightmare to investigate. It's just a bit odd. I do wonder if we've been watching too much Midsumer Murders and Father Brown. :eek:
 
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