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Minor Strangeness (IHTM)

icarusgirl, I think your unpleasant dream can be explained like this:

You did remember the birthday, in a subconscious way. You remembered, but as your Grandad was not there to greet on his birthday, it was bit pointless.

So your mind was saying, hmm, something about Grandad, but it's all wrong...

Which is where the 'wrong' picture of him came into it.

The subconscious can be very literal sometimes. ;)
 
tilly50 said:
I think that I read somewhere that handwriting styles were learnt and so all those children taught in the same way...

Possibly more in this than you know. In the Seventies at primary school (junior school) I was taught a new way to write which involved making almost triangular shapes when writing a's, or d's. I have a friend who recalls this as well but apparently it was taught for only one term, throughout our school. Possibly the government wanted eligible handwriting from it's future drones.

The chances that some handwriting is similiar in style isn't that strange, particularly as another poster pointed out only a few years difference in age between themselves and their handwriting doppleganger.
 
HenryFort said:
icarusgirl said:
I think it's a wonderful idea to have a post for "minor" forteana. There are some small events that have happened to me that I never really thought was worth drawing everyone's attention to...

Hi Icarus, when I first joined this board, a little over a year ago, it was with the sole express purpose of posting a friends lucid dream, that had so affected him and that he so believed in, in an attempt to connect with the other protagonist in the dream. Purely and only for that reason. (Hence I called myself HenryFort because I thought, well, its only going to be for a week, I wont be going back there regularly. Otherwise I would have picked something a little less conspicuous. You can probably deduce now that Im also henryebay on ebay, [email protected], henrymyspace on myspace, henryBDSM on etc etc.)

Of course, after a week of reading the entire of IHTM I was hooked, but still only thought about posting fortean events from friends etc lives. It was only during the course of revisiting this board that I realised how many inexplicable things have happened to me - and Ive heard other posters echo this.

I also noticed that minor strangenesses are almost a daily/weekly occurence, and some of these needed recording but where do you stop? Another poster on here, The Old Time Radio (who I personally think is Charles Fort beaming in on LW frequencies) related how he spent a particular period of time being super-attentive to events around him and after a while began to see strangeness at every turn (link).

Theres no question we let things slip by, that maybe we should scrutinise.

I so agree, there have been so many instances in which i've seen things that simply don't add up... but then just puched them out of my mind or disregarded it as a dream or hallucination. I saw a medieval dressed woman walk right through my wall beside my bed at night which resulted in me cowering under my duvet for hours... only to think of it as a weird dream the next day... if i was that scared was it a dream? To this day I do not know.

Escargot, thanks for your imput and i'd like to think it's true. It is indeed strange the way the mind works.

By the way, nothing to do with Forteana but i've just seen Perfume at the cinema tonight and think it's absolutely breath taking... so... go see it. Lol sorry.
 
Strangely enough something semi weird happened to me last night, well this morning actually. I was walking home at about 3am... yes hugely intoxicated but bear with me...

On my way back from Sheffield nightlife to my humble abode i walk past the entrance to the university gym. I was approaching this, when suddenly a man walked out a good 10 metres in front of me, dressed in gym attire, complete with towel thrown over his shoulder, and i think he may have even had some sort of sports equipment in his hand, like a squash raquet or something.

I instantly thought this was strange, as who goes to the gym at 3 in the morning, and more importantly, which gym is even open at that time?

Being drunk, i followed the guy, looking curiously at the back of him, half hoping he's turn translucent and eventually disappear in a puff of ectoplasm. When he went down a different road to mine, I watched him for a while, but alas, no mysterious vanishing, no ghostliness... just a bloke walking about in a gym kit at three in the morning. I was highly disappointed.

By the way I am never drinking again. Ouch, my head.
 
Minor Strangeness: Tapping from the Floorboards

Just not even ten minutes ago this happened. I was sat reading latest FT in utter silence at my desk, but with my chair facing away from the desk and I was kind of hunkered forwards, arms on my knees. Suddenly from immediately beneath my feet a very clear rapping sound began, exactly like the sound of knuckles on the ceiling of the apartment beneath. It was utterly clear and sounded like someone was stood directly beneath me, tapping the ceiling. I sat up a bit and listened around the flat to see if I was mistaken. Definitely from beneath me.

I was a bit unnerved straight away, which is not like me. The rapping carried on for a few moments and became more intense, not louder but quicker until it got to the point where it was so fast it could not possibly have been made by a person, although the sound still had a very human quality.

By now Im pretty spooked and it took me a while to think about moving out of the chair. I was even worried that I had not locked the door to my place as I had had my hands full coming in. I decided to get a recording device and try and catch the sound. As I turned around on the chair the sound immediately receeded, not in terms of sounding distant but growing slower and fainter.

I stopped in the chair and listened. It came back for a moment more, so that it was as clear as when it had begun, then it was gone.

Where I live is the 2nd floor (as in ground, first, second) and the top floor of the building. There is only one apartment beneath me, the guy is not home, he lives alone. The sound was preceeded and followed by utter silence. My heating was off, not sure about his. But I have lived here for 10 years and never heard anything like it, although the guy downstairs only moved in about 6 months ago.

Immediately afterwards I walked around my flat, looking for an apparent source of the sound for a minute or two when the door from the bar into the hallway audibly clicked itself shut even though I had not come through it. That spooked me even more but I was on tenterhooks by then though, and it could have just been caught on the latch mechanism and waiting to close properly (it never does that though).

Hopefully unconnected but the weekend just gone was the 1st anniversary of the premature death of an acquaintance of mine, and I did a perhaps disrespectful thing on the anniversary, but a thing that was nevertheless better done than not. Hate to sound cryptic. It did occur to me at the time that maybe I was going to invoke some wrath, lets hope this isnt it.
 
Are there any water pipes under the floor boards? Air trapped in the pipes can make some terrifying noises. Mine currently howls like a banshee if I put the hot tap on too suddenly.
 
icarusgirl said:
Strangely enough something semi weird happened to me last night, well this morning actually. I was walking home at about 3am... yes hugely intoxicated but bear with me...

icarusgirl. Please tell me you weren't walking alone? :eek!!!!: :no-no: I hate to scare you but there have been many attacks and rapes in Sheff over the last few years.. especially on intoxicated females that are alone.

You were lucky the man who walked out infront of you, wasnt just lying in wait for someone like you to come along.

Be careful and take care please. I know the place 'rather well' and was quite horrified to read that.

Look after yourself.
:likee:
Witchflame.
 
mindalai said:
Are there any water pipes under the floor boards? Air trapped in the pipes can make some terrifying noises. Mine currently howls like a banshee if I put the hot tap on too suddenly.

Hey - there are certainly pipes under my floorboards, although Im not sure if they are precisely under where I was sat. My heating system only comes on when a tap is run or the timer is engaged, neither of which was the case.

In any case, thats my normal reading chair and I probably spend about an hour or two most days sat there and never encountered this or indeed any remotely spooky sound before. Not that I would rule out pipes on that basis.

But it was so strangely human sounding...
 
Techy's PC makes a funny noise. Well, we have been hearing the noise for a couple of years now, and we think we have tracked it down to his PC.

It sounds like a few notes from a snake-charming act. If I can, I will record it, if anyone is interested.

Thing is, the sound comes from the actual PC box, not the speakers, when all the sounds and speakers are turned off. We are baffled. In a good way. :D
 
I had a mystery noise in my house for a while. It was a very quiet scratching sound from somewhere near my bed. It was just like fingernails lightly scratching paintwork and it would scratch three times, stop, then scratch three times again (from memory). I tracked it down to the shelves by my bed but even after emptying the shelves I could still hear it, could see exactly the point I could tell the noise was coming from but could see nothing that could cause it. I can only think it was some kind of insect actually inside the wood. It stopped after about a year anyway.
 
escargot1 said:
Techy's PC makes a funny noise. Well, we have been hearing the noise for a couple of years now, and we think we have tracked it down to his PC.

It sounds like a few notes from a snake-charming act. If I can, I will record it, if anyone is interested.

Thing is, the sound comes from the actual PC box, not the speakers, when all the sounds and speakers are turned off. We are baffled. In a good way. :D

Both the motherboard and internal modems have small speakers, and some hard drives can make noises...
 
Aha, there we go then! :D

Why a snake-charming tune though? :lol:
 
escargot1 said:
Aha, there we go then! :D

Why a snake-charming tune though? :lol:

:lol:

Just a theory, but it could be the Windows start-up music being played through the motherboard speaker at very low volume. With the speaker quality being a bit scratchy, it might sound a bit like a snake charmer...

If you double-click on the speaker icon in the bottom right of your taskbar, this will open up the Master Volume dialog. You can adjust the PC Speaker volume control.
After you've done this, you can see whether or not it has had any effect.
 
Thank you. Tried that - couldn't find the PC Speaker volume control on the master volume dialogue. :(

It's only a few notes, though. Wouldn't charm any snake I've ever met. :lol:
 
escargot1 said:
Thank you. Tried that - couldn't find the PC Speaker volume control on the master volume dialogue. :(

The control is on the far right of the dialog. If you clicked twice (rather than double-clicking), you may have got the simple volume control, which only has volume and mute on it.
 
Nope, I double-clicked, but there is no PC Speaker volume control there.
There is on my laptop though, as I practiced on that first.

Maybe I should buy a snake in a basket and see what happens.
 
escargot1 said:
Nope, I double-clicked, but there is no PC Speaker volume control there.
There is on my laptop though, as I practiced on that first.

There isn't one on my home PC either, probably 'cos I've got so many other icons down in that corner...
Final suggestion - you could look for the 'Sounds and Audio Devices' icon in the Control Panel.

escargot1 said:
Maybe I should buy a snake in a basket and see what happens.

:lol:
 
The snake charm really works by the charmer tapping the basket with his feet. The snake then rears up see what's going on.

I could give the PC a tap, I s'pose. ;)
 
Fairly sure I have read about snakes being found inside of PC units.
Only with XP SP2 and higher. Of course, they were standard with Mac OS years earlier.
 
Well, that's the first time I've heard that. Of course I knew you got adders in calculators...
 
HenryFort said:
Fairly sure I have read about snakes being found inside of PC units.
Yeah, but no snake charmers, with snake-charming pipes.

Though the limited repertoire of ours might be related to the cramped condtitons. ;)

When Techy first heard it, he thought we'd had a mosque secretly built down the road and he'd heard a call to prayer. It really sounds like that, sort of Middle Eastern. :D
 
computer_snake_2.jpg

computer_snake_3.jpg

buster_small.jpg


That last one might be faked.
 
escargot1 said:
When Techy first heard it, he thought we'd had a mosque secretly built down the road and he'd heard a call to prayer. It really sounds like that, sort of Middle Eastern.
Apparently, it's a common problem with Windows ME.
 
Peripart said:
escargot1 said:
When Techy first heard it, he thought we'd had a mosque secretly built down the road and he'd heard a call to prayer. It really sounds like that, sort of Middle Eastern.
Apparently, it's a common problem with Windows ME.

What, 'Windows Middle Eastern'? Or 'Windows Muslim Edition'?
 
I'll tell Techy it's an MI5 surveillance program. 8)

In fact, if anyone reading this is also following the conspiracy threads, they might want to suggest that to him themselves. He'll rush home and tear the pooter apart looking for the bug. :lol:
 
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