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Clocks & Watches Stopping / Malfunctioning

A

Anonymous

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Wristwatches, NDEs and death.

Someone I know discovered a relative dead at home and touched their body. Since then, whenever they have worn a wristwatch it has stopped after 2 or 3 days of wearing it. When it's removed it starts again. I know that this is 'normal' for people who have experienced a NDE, but this is someone who hasn't.
Can we therefore assume that death generates some form of energy that affects the normal flow of electrical energy and that this can be captured and transfered.
 
Nope. Sounds to me like they're wearing cheap, maybe second-hand wristwatches that contain accumulated dust that stops or slows the watch - move it (like when you take it off and throw it down) and the dust shifts enough for it to start working again for a while. It's happened to me and I've never had an NDE.
 
Annasdottir said:
Nope. Sounds to me like they're wearing cheap, maybe second-hand wristwatches that contain accumulated dust that stops or slows the watch - move it (like when you take it off and throw it down) and the dust shifts enough for it to start working again for a while. It's happened to me and I've never had an NDE.
Nice theory, but it doesn't matter what watch they wear. No one can be that unlucky. They also seem to have become very prone to getting electric shocks off all kinds of objects that you wouldn't expect to get electric shocks from.
 
Red Dalek said:
Nice theory, but it doesn't matter what watch they wear. No one can be that unlucky. They also seem to have become very prone to getting electric shocks off all kinds of objects that you wouldn't expect to get electric shocks from.
Well, I have to say that that also happens to me sometimes! For instance, I was once shopping in Sainsbury's with my husband - going through the electric-goods department, I started getting shocks off the trolley and had to get hubby to push the trolley for me! That hasn't happened since (though I now try to keep clear of the electrical department!) but I regularly get shocks off our car. Last October, my six-month old computer suddenly suffered a total failure - first the hard drive went, then the motherboard; the symptoms indicated an electrical burn-out, but how that occurred, we couldn't explain. So far, this computer seems to be OK.
This electrical stuff only started happening to me a couple of years ago, and I can't think of an explanation. But it doesn't seem to be connected with death or NDEs.
 
I think everyone gets them from cars, I do anyway. I find the instance of the shopping trolleys interesting though. Certain clothes materials can build up a level of static that presumably the metal trolley would release. Could this be the case in your instance Annasdottir?
 
I've thought of that already. But I avoid nylon clothing/fabrics and we have mostly wooden flooring in our house. And in the Sainsburys incident, the shocks only came when I moved off a carpeted section of the floor (which has since been taken up and replace with plasticated flooring).
I'm willing to believe that the computer was a victim of a freak electrical surge, but no other electrical equipment in our house suffered - including a second computer in the same room, hooked up to the same power socket and generally kept switched on at the same time.
But my present wristwatch is working OK!
 
Don't cheap carpets have nylon in their composition?
 
Yes, true. But the shocks came when I was well away from the carpet and on some wooden flooring, over a period of several minutes. I'm not sure about the mechanics of electricity - is this how a static discharge shock would work?
 
I always get shocks off the trolley when I'm shopping in Sainsbury's, quite painful ones . The floor is some sort of stone composite . Also lesser ones in Tesco's but rarely in Safeway's . I though it was to do with the plastic wheels keeping the build up of electric in the metal of the trolley which will occasionally discharge onto the pusher .
 
As far as I know, the build up of static electricity depends on how well insulated you are from the ground, in other words the insulating quality of your shoes, and to a lesser degree, the humidity of the air around you. So if you have good insulation, the charge that you pick up (from friction, tv sets, video monitors etc) can be held in your body for quite some time.
 
Thanks for that, B. So it looks like my shocks are explicable, after all - what a disappointment. It's not due to some mysterious paranormal force emanating from my local Sainsburys, just bloody computers!!! (Again)
 
In my own shock experience, relative humidity played a pretty large role. When I travelled to Tucson, AZ for work, I would discharge myself on the car before walking about 30 feet over paved parking lot to the front door. I'd usually get another pretty good shock when I reached out for that metal handle. Annoyed the heck out of me.
 
I get shocks from cars when I wear rubber soled shoes. Especially in summer. I think that is normal. Quite a jolt sometimes. I now touch the ground as I touch the door or body getting out - provided that nobody is around to see.

I gave up on battery powered watches and now have a rather nice (Russian) wind up Poljot Aviator thanks to my geek girlfriend.

Quartz watches always failed on me even with new batteries. They'd start working sometime after I took them off. I assume that kinetic charging electric watches would be the same. Psion organisers etc - I gave up on for similar reasons. Always had power problems.
 
I can't wear a watch. I tried for years. Cheap watches. Expensive watches. Supposedly unbreakable watches. They all stop after a month or so. The most spectacular was the Swatch that imploded as I climbed a mountain.

I also get electric shocks off lift buttons, escalators and sundry inanimate objects... and sometimes when I shake hands with people. And my hair stands on end at the hint of a comb or brush.

Funny, really, because I've always had this weird pylon/electricity phobia. :confused:
 
Hi

Apologies if anyone's already posted about this, but I have a question.

I have a friend who stops clocks. Does anyone have any theories/experiences/explanations for this? My friend seems to be OK with digital clocks, but whenever she's in the presence of a clockwork timepiece, it will at some point stop working, sometimes never to be started again.

Excuse the pun, but this isn't a wind - up. It means she can't wear a watch. People have given her them or clocks as presents and sooner or later, they stop. She's tried to have them repaired before, but the makers are completely baffled why they can't be repaired - there's nothing wrong with the mechanics of the timepieces that they can identify, they just somehow have stopped. And it's not a case of her overwinding them or anything obvious. She's even "broken" clocks in other people's houses without even touching them - it seems her very presence knackers clockwork.

I'd appreciate anyone's ideas on this,

Cheers

S
 
I can't offer a theory, but I do have the same experience. I gave up wearing a watch (clockwork or quartz) years ago as they simply don't work with me.

Looking around the room now, there are three clocks in view: video: 17:50; alarm clock 17:49: computer: 17.48. I just go by the average..

Jane.
 
... and the FT clock seem to be a few minutes ahead of me! Must be why I'm always late :D

Jane.
 
I have a friend who has the same experience. He says it's his 'magnetic field' interfering with the mechanisms!

It's mainly when he wears a wrist watch. I wonder if any of these people have anything of signifigance in common which would help support his 'magnetic field' theory. For eg, my friend is a very calm person, and exudes a soothing effect as soon as he walks into a room. He is also a genuine guy. Also, and maybe more significant, he gets frequent ailments i.e headaches, earache etc. (caused by his electric/magnetic field?)anyway, I'm full of strange theories about things, so, as usual, I (And my friend) are probably completely wrong, and it's more likely that he just keeps buying cheap watches which go wrong because they are rubbish.
 
My grandfather couldn't wear a wrist watch and carried a pocket watch until he died in 1974. He said that he had "too much electricity in his body". Obviously your friend has a squillion times more, to be able to have an effect on mechanisms at a distance. I seem to remember a thread in IHTM containing experiences of people having similar effects on TVs, radios and hi-fis. (Can't be bothered to look for it - lazy or what?)
The pocket watch still works but has to be rewound every couple of hours in order to keep it going - a bit like me, in fact.:D :D
 
My mother had a school friend who could stop clocks at will by staring at them - if they were bored they used to go into the Bristol museum and stop all the Grandfather clocks . I think clock-stopping girl was the daughter of a medium .
 
Magnetic interference

Saker, has your friend ever tried to measure the magnetic flux in her body? this can be done with a magnetometer. In the lab I work in, I very often work with high electrical current. This results in a powerful magnetic field. This does the same to a watch with an analogue movement or a clockwork timepiece as your friend does. I would be interested in knowing how much electromagnetic energy a person like this could produce.
 
Oddly enough, we were just talking about this in mIRC...

I can't wear Quartz watches. They stop. My record was taking one out of the box, whereupon it stopped as soon as I touched it. Made taking it back to the shop a bit awkward but it serves them right seeing as I asked for a clockwork watch. Digital watches slow down and use batteries very quickly. I had a digital watch once - I was replacing batteries every 4 - 6 weeks and it was loosing about 5 mins a day. 'Normal' quartz watches stop working between seconds to a couple of hours of contact with me. Which is all a bit of a pain as no jeweller in town stocks clockwork watches. In fact, one didn't know what I meant when I asked for a swiss action watch. And I'm very VERY tired of them trying to sell me a quartz watch when I specifically ask for a wind up one.

Oh, and the digital radio clock in the bedroom. I've noticed that when I glance at it the second : flashing between the digits hesitates briefly before starting again, then it'll stop for a while until I look away. I haven't noticed any other clock around doing this, but I do tend to avoid handling battery clocks etc, so maybe that has something to do with it.

My Dad can't wear a kinetic watch apparently, as his heartbeat affects the watch in some way. Which is rather odd.

All I can think of is that I do have a tendency to give people shocks occasionally, sometimes even by kissing them! (And I mean static shocks here, people!) So whether this has something to do with my effect on watches, I don't know. One jeweller I spoke to knew what I meant - in fact he was the only one that acknowledged the problem with quartz watches. He said it is very rare, but not unheard of.
 
Helen said:
Oh, and the digital radio clock in the bedroom. I've noticed that when I glance at it the second : flashing between the digits hesitates briefly before starting again, then it'll stop for a while until I look away. I haven't noticed any other clock around doing this, but I do tend to avoid handling battery clocks etc, so maybe that has something to do with it.

I've noticed this too, on those clocks with big red LED numerals. I think it's just something with a retinal afterimage. They also seem to float around oddly as you glance away from them. I don't think it has anything to do with your quartz quandary.

Casio makes a G-Shock model called the "Gaussman", and it's supposedly highly resistant to magnetic fields. I wonder if that would survive on you?
 
Slightly off-thread, but connected:

We have friends of the family who were on the local T.V. news around 15 years ago due to their constant electrical shocks when they touched just about anything.

The memory is a bit hazy now but I remember a professor (I think from the University of East Anglia) in their kitchen with some device which measured electrical charge - some sort of perspex box with thin metal foil inside it that rose when the box was touched.

When they touched it, it shot to the top of the box.

They were definately building up a charge somehow, perhaps friction between nylon carpets / plastic shoe soles / something else building up a charge?

As far as I remember they had no problems with clocks or any other electrical devices.

The effect disappeared over time and no longer affects them.
 
The instrument you describe, Lockers, is an electrometer, used for measuring electric charge.

What surprises me is that this is a very old-fashioned (19th century) type - there is a wide variety of more modern (and accurate) ones.

Some info on electrostatics here.
 
The Fault Lies In The Clocks, Not In US

Given how common is the belief that people are somehow stopping watches and clocks of all types, and the lack of common element other than an assumption of cause-and-effect, it might be more rational to blame the shoddy manufacturing of the clocks and watches.

Just a thought.

On the other hand, both my wife and I do this same thing. Are we simply being sold crap watches all the time? I've long since stopped wearing one, but she can't live without knowing what time it is. She continues her frustration.
 
Thanks for that Rynner.

I guess that as it was a TV news report (not much happens around here, thank goodness), the editor / reporter wanted something more visual than a screen with a load of numbers on it in order to show their charge.

Anyway, back to the thread, are there not some people who can do the opposite to those people mentioned previously and start watches and clocks when they have been stopped for ages. What's going on there?
 
Bogus Explanation

I once heard an explanation for starters of watches that struck me as probably bogus. It was that the person's hands warmed the watch, and so set it working again.

I find this unsatisfactory because I don't think warming would reach the inside mechanisms, nor even the battery. (Often warming a drained battery will give it a spark more life.)

This was probably one of those CSICOP desperate debunkery attemtps, I can't quite recall the source. Think it was on TV though and I think, too, it was something to do with Uri Geller.
 
Hmm, strange. I've experienced clocks stopping with death, which is odd when you experience it first hand. It's usually something you hear about but never see.

Anyway, my watches seem to last forever! I had one of those TV remote watches, and it kept accurate for ages, and I only needed to replace the battery once in about four years, despite all the fun I had with it, confusing unsuspecting TV watchers ;). Eventually the strap broke on it, and that was the end of that, really.

Oh, and the digital radio clock in the bedroom. I've noticed that when I glance at it the second : flashing between the digits hesitates briefly before starting again, then it'll stop for a while until I look away. I haven't noticed any other clock around doing this, but I do tend to avoid handling battery clocks etc, so maybe that has something to do with it.

I experience that too, with clocks just as often. I always wondered about it.

On another related note, I seem to have very accurate abilities for telling the time without a watch. Sometimes I'll guess the time then look at my watch, and usually I'm only a few seconds to a minute off. It's quite handy really :).
 
Clock Time

If you think about it, clock time is so artificial and arbitrary that it's remarkable that a person can learn to gauge time by it that accurately. And I've known people who can do this very well. Maybe we all can if we just let ourselves.

Usually, for me, time is meaningless. A moment can seem hours and hours can seem an instant, and I've never a clue when something happened or how old I am, or my kids, and the like. I'm clock-time impaired, and very much convinced time is subjectve.

Like the images frozen at the blue event horizon of a black hole, any given instant can also be eternity for us. Maybe that's all that happens when we die, eh? Our experience of time just freezes and our last instant becomes an eternity.

Spooky thought.
 
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