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Mystery 'Lost' Items

Bah. I've lost/misplaced/had gnomes walk off with a fairly critical handbook to do with a road rally I'm taking part in. It's not small, and I know I had it right here at the computer at about 11pm last night because I was looking something up in it and that's when I sent an email about it...

I've got builders in at the moment so the place is crammed full of stuff, but that means it would be on the top, and there's only two habitable places in the house at the moment - here at the computer and part of the bedroom, and it's at neither. And the builders only started work this morning and haven't been upstairs at all, so I know they've not moved it...

I'm sure I must be looking right at it and not seeing it, but still rather irritating... Hopefully the gnomes will bring it back soon ;)

Steve.
edit: typo.
 
Ah, yes - the Gnomes (as we've also taken to calling this sort of thing). Certainly not the most helpful of phenomenon, but it's usually good for a mildly amusing anecdote, neh? Ours pull the usual tricks of course - borrowed jewelry, returning stuff where you'd just finished looking, ect. - though we occasionally get a turn where they're feeling particularly creative.

One that immediately comes to mind is an instance where my brother accidentally dropped a CD at his feet, thoroughly (though futilely) searched the immediate area, then found the disc thirty to fourty minutes later inside of a closed cardboard box. Strange enough, certainly, though I think their most spectacular job has to be the missing action figure.

Bro and I were playing in his room and we sent this particular figure flying through the air where we both wached it hit the far wall and fall down behind his toybox. Moving the box revealed no erstwhile birdman. Clearing the box out was similarly fruitless. Eventually, we decided that it somehow passed through 6-8 inches of exterior wall or managed to phase through the hardwood flooring (not particularly likely, admittedly, but neither is random hunks of matter vanishing into thin air). Though it occurs to me now that perhaps the lil' guy is simply subject to a particularly persistant SEP field.

In any event, it's been over 10 years and the bloody thing still hasn't turned up, despite dozens of re-orderings of the furniture. Though I fully expect we'll eventually find it sitting in plain sight on Bro's deathbed some decades hence. Until then, I suppose he will continue to reign as the wise and benevolent king of the Mountain of Left Socks and Pen Caps.
 
I may have already mentioned this somewhere, but when I was little I went to the movies or something with my grandmother and lost one of my care bear toys. My parents replaced the toy, only to have the original turn up in one of my grandmother's drawers. A few days ago, my grandmother was at the pool and she lost one of her toe rings in the water. It later turned up on the floor in her house. There seems to be something special about her house.....
 
When I was living in my apartment in Jersey, we had a lot of unusual things happen, but one of the strangest ones involved my wedding ring. I have a habit of fiddling with it when I'm distracted.

My wife was watching TV and I was on the computer. I dropped my ring, and it should have fallen on the carpet right next to the chair. It wasn't there.

We tore the room apart looking for it, and it was nowhere to be found. I thought it might have fallen and lodged in a cuff of my clothing or something, so I even disrobed down to my underpants and shook everything out.

I had just said, "I give up," and then sat down on the carpet. At that point, I heard a metallic ding type of noise, and the ring fell from about 6 inches off the floor, appearing out of thin air. It came to rest right next to my right knee.

I looked at my wife and asked her if she had just witnessed the same thing I had, and she replied that she had just seen my ring fall out of the air. Then she told me to hurry and put it back on before it disappeared again.

I've kept a close eye on it ever since.
 
LurkerX said:
When I was living in my apartment in Jersey, we had a lot of unusual things happen, but one of the strangest ones involved my wedding ring. I have a habit of fiddling with it when I'm distracted.

My wife was watching TV and I was on the computer. I dropped my ring, and it should have fallen on the carpet right next to the chair. It wasn't there.

We tore the room apart looking for it, and it was nowhere to be found. I thought it might have fallen and lodged in a cuff of my clothing or something, so I even disrobed down to my underpants and shook everything out.

I had just said, "I give up," and then sat down on the carpet. At that point, I heard a metallic ding type of noise, and the ring fell from about 6 inches off the floor, appearing out of thin air. It came to rest right next to my right knee.

I looked at my wife and asked her if she had just witnessed the same thing I had, and she replied that she had just seen my ring fall out of the air. Then she told me to hurry and put it back on before it disappeared again.

I've kept a close eye on it ever since.

Which corresponds well with my theory about things and stuff also entering other dimensions and back again! :hah:
 
A few weeks ago I was tearing the house apart looking for tweezers. Finally decided Rooney must have shot them under the furniture or something and bought a replacement pair. Later I opened a drawer in the bathroom and saw one set of tweezers I'd been looking for. Every time I open the drawer it's joined by another set. I think they're all back now. It couldn't have been the bf putting them back in there as it's my personal bathroom drawer full of girly things he doesn't like to think about and I don't think he's ever opened it. I'm glad to see them trickling back because the replacement pair I bought were shite.
 
IT'S GREMLINS!!!

They're the ones who make electronics go flooey. They get into boxes and mess up your Christmas lights. If lose something, they took it(especially pieces of paper that you wrote something down to remember it, they love those). You want to know who's stealing socks from the laundry(leaving half a pair) , it's the gremlins! Luckily, just last week I figured out a way to beat the gremlins. But I wrote it down on a piece of paper and I lost it. And I think we all know who's responsible for that.
 
I'm new here, so first of all - Hello one and all :D

This used to happen to me very regularly in a flat I lived in some years ago. Just one example - one day I couldn't find my cheque book. I hunted high and low for it and was in a rush to leave the house and getting quite exasperated. I'd checked the kitchen countless times. Eventually I ended up screaming "For God's sake! I'm late and I don't need this now!" Lo and behold I walked into the kitchen and there was my chequebook, on the worktop. This worktop had nothing else on it - was completely clear and there's no way I could have overlooked it. I just said "Thank you", and felt quite bemused.

From then on whenever it happened, I'd just 'ask' for 'them' to give it back and it always worked.
 
This reminds me of something that happened to me a couple of weeks ago. Soon after moving to my current house (about 6 years ago) I lost a postcard which I was particularly fond of. I looked over the whole house for it several times over the years and it never showed up so I decided I must have either thrown it out by mistake or my ex took it when he moved out (5 years ago). Anyway, a week or so ago I started re-reading one of my favourite books and the postcard fell out of the book. Not that strange you might think - I probably used it as a bookmark last time I read it. But this book is one of my favourites and I distinctly remember reading it at least 5 or 6 times since the card went missing. There is no way I could have missed it because this card was special to me and I could not possibly have overlooked it.

I wonder where it's been all this time?
 
Speaking of books. My husband and I have quite a library and it's not always easy to find a specific one if we want to re-read it. However, we are currently missing 2 books that are of odd size and only go on 1 of 3 different shelves for that reason. One of them disappeared before several years ago and I bought a replacement for it as it's a part of a series and we like to have complete sets. Both books are from the same series and I only realised they were missing because I started re-reading the series. I refuse to go out and buy them again, especially since I've already done that once for one of them! Maybe I should try the trick of asking the gremlins/pixies for their return. Nice to know that if we have gremlins/pixies, they're literate! :lol:
 
a lot of stuff goes missing in our house, only to turn up in a place that has already been searched thoroughly. We assume that we have a ghost because of this. And we call her Betty. It's weird, but sometimes i ask her to please put whatever she has taken back, and when i walk back into the room a bit later on, what was lost is now sitting innocently as if it had never been moved. which of course, it had. strangeness.
 
I lost my mobile phone about a week ago, dropped it by my bed, it turned up a few days later inside of a pencil case :?:
 
They aren't gnomes, or pixies, or Gremlins.

They're Boggarts, sometimes also referred to as Boggles. Same word.

The trick to getting stuff back when you've been Boggled or Boggarted is:

a) admit it's funny and have a laugh at the joke. Out loud. They like to be appreciated.

b) ask for the items to be returned.

it works more often than not, but only if you're nice.

Why does it work?
I don't know. It probably has something to do with giving your brain a break, diverting your attention from searching for whatever has gone walkabout and then opening your perceptions to seeing what's actually there.
 
On a more scientific note. Did anyone notice that 2 of these occurences have involved people dropping/throwing things? Maybe said objects could use the kinetic energy (or other energy e.g thermal etc. pardon my phys) imbued upon them to change dimension.
 
I got a TB test recently. I had to photocopy the card and give it to one of my teachers to prove I didn't have tuberculosis before I could go teach in schools (for the class). Anyway, I put the card safely in a pocket in my bag. I went to get it before the next class so I could photocopy it and it wasn't there! I panicked, looking everywhere I could think of before giving up. The next day it turned up on my floor. My guess: It fell out of my bag and I didnt' see it when looking the first time. You never know though.
 
Ghostly thief?

I too have experienced items going missing, then turning up in odd places.

I live alone in a 200 year old cottage and have been experiencing a wide range of paranormal phenomena there ever since i moved in 4 years ago.

One of the strangest things to happen was when I was preparing for a date. I'd bought some very nice new lingerie and had put this out on the bed along with the clothes I intended to wear that evening. I left the bedroom for the day and returned later on to discover that the knickers were missing! (bear in mind I lived alone)

I searched high and low for the missing undies, but couldn't find them anywhere - and I was in no doubt whatsoever that I had left them set out on the bed with the other clothes.

Fast forward to a year later.... I was clearing out my spare room in order to prepare for a temporary lodger moving in. As I moved my old clothes from the wardrobe there, I found the knickers hanging up on a clothes hanger (And no, I am not the kind of person that hangs their underwear up!)

Do I have a ghost stalker?
 
OMG, salmon, what a creepy thought!! :shock:
However, this thread has made me recall an incident that happened to me and a pal in, I think, 1978. We were sharing rooms in an old house and getting ready to go out, and being Goth types at the time this naturally took about 6 hours, tons of make-up and a bottle of vodka to get us in the mood. Alan, my friend, was just about ready to leave the house; we were sitting on chairs opposite each other and I was fiddling about adding just a touch more corpse-like shading to my cheekbones when I dropped the powder compact. It never hit the floor, just sort of "turned" in the air and disappeared as if it had gone into a fold in space. We both gawped at each other and said, "Did YOU see that?" Obviously, the boggarts were sick of us pratting about and wanted us to get on with having a good time ;) and, no, it never turned up.
 
When I was a kid there was a magic press in my parents bedroom on which stood a statue of St. Anthony. Every Tuesday afternoon my sister would bring me into my parents room where, after I prayed to St. Anthony she would open the door to reveal toys and bits and bobs I had lost throughout the week! I became sceptical with age of course, but early on it was a most wondrous thing!
 
FrancesFelixe said:
It never hit the floor, just sort of "turned" in the air and disappeared as if it had gone into a fold in space.

Reminds me of Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. Doesn't Mike the martian raised earthman make things "disappear" in a similar matter? It was ages ago that i read it, so apologies if I'm not being very specific.

I have had a number of things go missing in mysterious circumstances (the most bizarre was probably when every single teaspoon in our house disappeared - this caused a number of rows between the bf and myself), but the most recent was a signed copy of one of my favourite books. I freaked out about it for months, and refused to admit to myself that I had somehow lost it. Then one night I snapped and was tearing the house apart looking from it. My bf calmly walked over to one of our bookcases and pulled the book in question out from behind a stack of books, saying "did you look here?" Of course I HAD looked there, and what's more a few weeks previous to that I had taken ALL the books out of the case and rearranged them. I was so desperate to find this book that there is no way I could have found it and forgotten that I had done so.
 
My b/f is useless at finding things, he will be looking for something for ages and every time I can find it almost immediately, it's like the thing he is looking for becomes invisible to him.
A few weeks ago he was in the middle of one of these frantic searches (my LOTR dvd of the second part of Return of the King) when I could stand it no longer and told him to get out of the way so I could find it. 2 hours later we had checked EVERY dvd & cd case we have, and turned the place upside-down looking for it. I'm really upset because it's my fave film ever and I can't afford another one. I must admit I did giggle a bit at the Fortean side of the incident, politely asked for it back, made my boyf ask politely for it back but it has not yet appeared :cry:

I feel quite certain the next time I'm looking for something important it will turn up, it always seems to happen that way.
 
cassandra78 said:
My b/f is useless at finding things, he will be looking for something for ages and every time I can find it almost immediately, it's like the thing he is looking for becomes invisible to him.
A few weeks ago he was in the middle of one of these frantic searches (my LOTR dvd of the second part of Return of the King) when I could stand it no longer and told him to get out of the way so I could find it. 2 hours later we had checked EVERY dvd & cd case we have, and turned the place upside-down looking for it. I'm really upset because it's my fave film ever and I can't afford another one. I must admit I did giggle a bit at the Fortean side of the incident, politely asked for it back, made my boyf ask politely for it back but it has not yet appeared :cry:

I feel quite certain the next time I'm looking for something important it will turn up, it always seems to happen that way.

Just a thought, do you rent DVD's? Maybe you accidentally put two discs into ne case and returned it. Youcould try calling your local video/dvd shop?

Things don't disappear for me but a friend of mine put a £10 note on his bed whilst counting loose change from his pockets. When he went to pick it up, it was gone. He did the usual check, under the bed, taking off the bed sheets etc and even pulling the bed away from the wall and looking behind it. No luck. So he went out minus £10.

When he returned, there was his £10 sitting in the middle of the bed.
 
Just a thought, do you rent DVD's? Maybe you accidentally put two discs into ne case and returned it. Youcould try calling your local video/dvd shop?

Like in Trainspotting?

'Returned it? What d'you mean, you f*ckin' RETURNED it?' *


*Scottish accent here, rising in pitch

:lol:
 
My Dad gave me a watch a few years ago, but after I'd been wearing it a couple of months it disappeared. I did all the usual stuff, including searching the ravenous sofa, but eventually had to give up.
A good couple of months later my wife and I were watching TV one evening when there was a noticeable "thunk" sound coming from upstairs. When I investigated, you've got it, lying square in the middle of the bedroom carpet was said watch. Strange but true. (Time was still accurate, by the way.) And no, it's not a wind-up.
 
We've just moved into a two bedroom apartment and been here about two and a half months. After we moved and got unpacked my wife and I celebrated with a drink from some very old whiskey glasses I keep around for special occasions and for sentimental reasons. The next morning, we found that one of the glasses had disappeared. My wife swears she didn't break it and promised that if she had done anything with it, she would have told me. We've never found the glass.

Strange thing was, we also had three plastic juice glasses that we constantly used. One day we found we only had two of the glasses. The third had disappeared. About two weeks later, a second of the glasses ended up missing. Both my wife and I haven't a clue on what happened to them. We keep a fairly neat home and besides, there aren't many places in a small apartment like this for these things to hide.

Move ahead a couple of weeks. We had finished a late dinner and I washed the dishes and left them all in the drainer to dry. The next morning I got up early, began to make the coffee. I look in the sink next to the drainer and what do I see? The second of the plastic glasses, turned upside down in the sink. Now I knew I washed the dishes the previous night and knew that nothing was there. I haven't a clue on how it got there, and the wife subsequently got a bit spooked over it.

The week before Christmas, I went to a locked area where we put the artificial tree. On the floor next to the box was---you guessed it, the third plastic juice glass.

My only wish is that whatever has been taking the glasses would eventually return the whiskey glass. Not valuable, but I always rather liked it.

A minor thing, but odd.
 
Happens to me all the time. You have to ask nicely for it back. Or screaming out 'I really need it now!' and bursting into tears sometimes works too..they obviously feel sorry for me. Anyway, the thing usually turns up when I ask for it. Either in a place I've already looked, or an utterly ridicolous place where the thing has no reason being and that I get a sudden urge to search (I mean, honestly, why would my bus pass be in the bathroom?). And now that I've realised there's something in my flat that likes to tease me by stealing stuff, I find that I chat to it, and tell it things, like bee-keepers do to bees. I think I want it to like me so it'll stop stealing my stuff five minutes before I have to go to work.

It's a good thing I live alone, isn't it? Or maybe not....
 
I just lost my medication. :x Tonight is going to be bad (have to work NYE).

When my co-workers ask, "What are you on?" I say "Nothing! That's the problem!" :p
 
BENS4 said:
A good couple of months later my wife and I were watching TV one evening when there was a noticeable "thunk" sound coming from upstairs.

Got any cats living with you? I once had a roommate whose cat stole shiney objects. (We found them all in a little bunch under the roommate's bed when we were cleaning up to move out.)

Tangent7 said:
We've just moved into a two bedroom apartment and been here about two and a half months.

It's possible that a previous tenant has keys to your apartment. (Creepy idea, I know.) Or, prehaps the apartment manager has a very odd sense of humor?
 
Cling Film.

Something nicked my cling film from the kitchen. I know I hadn't just used it up as I specifically remember the tedious and annoying process of opening up the new roll & fiddling about with the stuff to get it ready for using. This was on the 22nd Dec.

I was away from the evening of the 22nd until the morning of the 27th, then on Friday I went looking for the cling film only to find that it was gone completely, leaving only an unopened roll sitting in the cupboard. It was only when I had to go through the bloody annoying process of 'readying' it that it hit me.

I looked everywhere, including unlikely places like in the freezer, down the back of the sofa, etc. Not a peep. Gits. Now I know that there was nobody in the flat whilst I was gone - the only people with keys are myself and the landlord (who was abroad at the time) - and I live alone, so where the feck is my cling film!

Maybe 'the borrowers' have a new fetish or something.
 
Maybe someone wants to wrap up Roy Orbison?
 
ElishevaBarsabe said,
Tangent7 said:
We've just moved into a two bedroom apartment and been here about two and a half months.

It's possible that a previous tenant has keys to your apartment. (Creepy idea, I know.) Or, prehaps the apartment manager has a very odd sense of humor?[/quote]

ElishevaBarsabe:
The previous tenant was a lady of advanced age that went to a nursing home and quickly passed away. She had been in this apartment for over 3 decades. As for the apartment manager, he lives miles from here and I can't imagine him coming all the way down here to steal plastic cups. As for the possibility that something ghostly is happening with the elderly lady, I can't say. All I know is that my cats don't seem to be bothered by anything unusual (you know, like staring at something I can't see or meowing for no reason). The cats seem very happy to be here.
 
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