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Street Light Interference

Watch connection, indeed!

I was home on a break from university some years ago and tried out the "mind influencing pendulum" test with my dad. The pendulum is suspended between two people. Using thought only, one person tries to push the pendulum ini a circle; the other person attempts a back-and-forth motion. I was trying for clockwise and did get the pendulum to move, but after a few small circuits, the pendulum's path suddenly became a half circle followed by a completely linear motion, like so:
    --
  -    |
 -     |
 -     |
  -    |
   --

My dad just laughed, although I found the incident rather creepy. My dad couldn't wear electronic watches at all. And, I seem to have a talent for boggling electronic cash registers if I stand too close to them.
 
You know how with some radios if you stand in a certain place in the room it's in it can broadcast interference? I wonder if it's the same thing with street lamps, but more specialised?
 
This used to be an area that had alot of coverage a few years back. Not read the thread mentioned by ringwraith yet but I remember that it used to be called sliding or rather people who did it were called SLIders (street light interference).
If you google slider street light there seems to be quite alot of bumf still on the net so your obviously not the only one.
 
electric charge

When I was little, me and my family went to a science museum and they had an exhibit about the electric charge of the human body. There were two metal plates that you put your hands on and it would measure the electricity your body gave off (I was little though, I may be remembering this wrong). Everbody tried it and the needle would jump a little, not very exciting, but when my mom tried the needle flew way up. And I know that her mother couldn't wear wristwatches for the same reason.
Maybe you've got a high electricity level and it interferes with the light wiring.
 
Re: electric charge

Mosquitoe said:
When I was little, me and my family went to a science museum and they had an exhibit about the electric charge of the human body. There were two metal plates that you put your hands on and it would measure the electricity your body gave off (I was little though, I may be remembering this wrong). Everbody tried it and the needle would jump a little, not very exciting, but when my mom tried the needle flew way up. And I know that her mother couldn't wear wristwatches for the same reason.
Maybe you've got a high electricity level and it interferes with the light wiring.

This seems to link with my previous post suggesting that people can have electrical charges on the bodies which affect street lamps etc. Once again - any electrical engineers out there who can comment?:confused:
 
And Mark has just produced a piece on it in today's Grauniad:

It's electrifying

Mark Pilkington
Thursday July 29, 2004
The Guardian

You are walking down a lit street at night, deep in thought. Up ahead, a sodium street lamp casts an orange glow. As you approach, the light flickers for an instant, then switches off, only to come back on again once you have passed by.

Many of us will have experienced this, and it is reported often enough for parapsychologists to have given it a name, Street Light Interference (SLI). Those who feel that they are repeatedly affected refer to themselves as Sliders.

The majority of Sliding incidents are easily explained. When common sodium and mercury vapour streetlights wear out they "cycle" - flicker on and off - owing either to changes in the consistency of the vapour inside them, or to ageing electrodes. At other times, the light-sensitive cells that operate them can develop glitches, leading to whole banks of lights behaving peculiarly. On witnessing this, our pattern-detecting minds make the connection and assume that we have interfered with the light.

That, at least, is the rational answer, but naturally there are complications. Some Sliders claim to affect other electrical appliances, merely through proximity to them. Light bulbs, televisions, computers, watches and fridges may malfunction, often permanently.

Sometimes referred to as High Voltage Syndrome (HVS), cases have been recorded as far back as 1837, when a young American woman found herself dramatically charged with electricity for five months. Anyone she passed her hands over would be painfully zapped with static electricity. More recently, in 1976, after breaking his arm, 12-year-old Vyvyan Jones of Bristol found that he could illuminate light bulbs by touching them. Televisions and lights would also flicker in his presence. In 1983, Jacqueline Priestman, of Manchester, claimed to have blown up 30 vacuum cleaners, five irons and two washing machines. She also caused televisions to change channel. Another Mancunian, Mandy Boardman, got through six vacuum cleaners and six TVs in three years. Her friends said she always gave them a shock when touching them.

What causes people to retain so much static electricity is unknown, but it is not necessarily a modern condition. Despite the massive increase in electricity use, recorded instances don't seem to have risen that dramatically in the past 150 years.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/farout/story/0,13028,1270978,00.html
 
Ok! ... Here's a dumb one - Street Lamps (Lights)

Please excuse this newbie if my queries are redundant but I've reasonably searched past threads to no avail pertaining to what it is that currently tickles me gray matter ..... anyway:

Why is it that street lamps either turn on or off when I pass near them. I don't think it's a matter of timing or my travel schedule as this oddity does occur at random times and locations - Anyone else seem to have the ability to effect the electric in such a manner? :confused:
 
Re: Ok! ... Here's a dumb one - Street Lamps (Lights)

bc42 said:
Please excuse this newbie if my queries are redundant but I've reasonably searched past threads to no avail pertaining to what it is that currently tickles me gray matter ..... anyway:
Well, there's this thread.. have just merged your query onto the end :).
 
Re: Re: Ok! ... Here's a dumb one - Street Lamps (Lights)

stu neville said:
Well, there's this thread.. have just merged your query onto the end :).


Oops! ..... Sorry! ..... Thanks!!!

Funny thing, damned street lamp out front flicked out when I was doing a search then my monitor flashed a picture of Jesus etched in a bar of my bath soap. Should have continued a proper search but I couldn't seem to put the soap down without trying to cleanse my soul! :)
 
OK, I must reply to this because it happens to me a LOT and has for quite a few years now.

I can make certain street lights go out by driving under them. Skeptics say "Yes but they have sensors that cause them to go out." That may very well be true, but how do the sleptics explain it when i WALK by the lights and they go out?
Also, I have problems with any electrical parts on my vehicle, including the headlights. I constantly cause cars, stereos, and cell phones to go crazy or quit working altogether.

Most recently I have had a very horrible effect on the computer. My boyfriend is on the verge of telling me it is off limits to me because it works fine for him and I get the blue screen of death just by turning it on. I am not exaggerating.
Since I moved in with him, I have broken almost everything he owns simply by being near it.
Recently I have read that people who cause this to happen (SLIDERS) have an abnormally high amount of static electricity about them. This is definitely true in my case...i get alot of small electrical shocks quite frequently.

P.S. tonight after fixing my cell phone that I made go haywire because of my SLIDER-ness, my boyfriend made me de-magnetize myself before I turned the computer on!
 
Redhead said:
P.S. tonight after fixing my cell phone that I made go haywire because of my SLIDER-ness, my boyfriend made me de-magnetize myself before I turned the computer on!
:shock:
And how did he do that? And did it work? I think we should be told!
After all, there are a lot of afflicted people out there. :D
 
How did he do it? He made me touch a giant magnet that he has, then he made me touch something metal to "ground" myself.

Did it work? Computer is still on and I don't see the much-dreaded blue screen of death.

However, I only affect the computer MOST of the time, not 100 % of the time.( must depend on my level of static electrcity at the time). I will know if the magnet thing works for sure after several times of doing this.

I think "Static Guard" spray might work just as well.....
 
Streetlight Weirdness

This used to happen to me all the time with a streetlight by my parents' house. It wuld turn off when I walked under it. If I returned later and walked under it again, it would turn back on. A friend of mine could do this with a streetlight by our high school. We affectionately referred to them as "our streetlights." I have walked past the one my friend could turn on and off and had it do the same thing for me, so I wonder if maybe those lights were just faulty. Weird all the same.
 
OMG, Redhead had me laughing, remembering what I did to my poor husband when he helped me put in my CD writer. Before he touched the computer, I rubbed him with a bunch of dryer sheets, and stuck them down his shirt, etc! Poor man!

He has this 'electrical' syndrome.... he gets shocked by cars the most. He would completely drain our cell phone when he took it, and I'm wondering if it wasn't wishful thinking, too, so I couldn't check up on him! :) Seriously, it would be fully charged, and he would come home 3 hours later, and it would be dead. And he hates to talk on phones, so no, he wasn't on it at all. I would take it to work with me, and it would stay charged for weeks.

PS... If you think you're 'electrical'... don't ever let an acupuncturist hook you up with a tens unit. The needles were fine, it's just when she hooked up the electrical unit ...whoa!
 
Update: Since implementing the ritual of touching the magnet and then touching the metal casing of the computer tower to demagnetize myself, the computer has given me much less trouble.
So maybe it works?

Also, I gave my son an electronic organizer and EVERY time I am in the room with it, it plays songs and won't stop. If I am not in the same room, it stays quiet.
 
last night I ran under a street light and it flickered out when I was directly under it - not much but it was strange.
 
This has happened to me a few times recently, I soon found out I wasn't super speshul, but rather the street lights in this town are particularly duff.
 
Last night I was chatting with my mother at her recently-redeveloped sheltered housing complex. I pointed out a doorway which was originally a large window, through which my late father and I used to watch the building work with some fascination.

Through door, on a distant opposite wall, was a fire exit sign which flickered wildly as I pointed towards it.

Mother said 'Funny, it's never done that before! It's your Dad, telling us he's still here!'

We laughed and it suddenly stopped flickering. A lovely moment! :D
 
It happened to me in the village I used to live in with one streetlight in particular, no others did it. I told my wife about it and she was a little dismissive, until it went out every time I walked underneath it with her! Quite bizarre...
 
I've been formulating a theory which works especially well when you consider that usually people turn off specific streetlights for a while.

I wonder if, as either the bulb starts to fail or the electronics do, they become more susceptible to subtle human electromagnetic fields and thus, are relatively easy for certain individuals to turn off.

As of late, there are a few outdoor lights which I seem to affect, but they might be getting old and I can't say whether they turn off when I'm not around....
 
Had this happen quite often both in the UK and New Zealand. In New Zealand where street lighting is poorer in quality it is much more common, black outs are also more common and whole areas can go out in storms a little like living back home in the 70's.

Another regular occurrence as well are when whole rows of street lighting can go out and parts of towns can be left in darkness at night for weeks until someone comes around to fix them.

Saying that I seem to stop a lot more lights than others and it does not matter from what angle I approach, time, or if I'm in a car, walking, jogging or cycling.

I read a suggestion that some lights were on a trip device and would go off when sensing vibration of someone/something approaching to save money. I think this sort of defeats the purpose of street lights no?

I'm surprised that we've never had a street light engineer come on and explain what they think is going on.

I think some street lights that flick on and off now and again are on timers and I think some are dodgy and need repair - the other 95% are down to my amazing mental powers. :lol:
 
Could not find a better thread to post ...

Because of Pynchon in Public Day 2013 I've been re-reading some Pynchon books.
http://uair01.blogspot.nl/2013/05/pynchon-in-public-day-8-may-2013.html

And so I re-discovered the great paranoid story of "Byron the bulb":
http://lukedanger.blogspot.nl/2009/02/story-of-byron-bulb.html

And researching this I came upon this urban legend:
It's been a while since I've seen a story on it, and I'm much too lazy to google and find out, but there was a light bulb in a gas station somewhere that had been burning for at least 75 years, the last I heard.

One of those chestnuts the evening news used to dig out back in the days B.O.--before O.J., after which news became nothing but pandering to the lowest common denominator.
http://dees2.blogspot.nl/2007/05/byron-bulb.html

Does anyone know about this?
 
Searching further I found a pointer - or just a perpetuation of the urban legend:

The story of Byron is the cautionary tale of revolutionaries everyhere who get compromised (as in Lot 49) or who simply give up and accept the power structure as it is (Byron). But Pynchon's description of the process through the "allegory" of Byron is, to use a pun, brilliant. As for the flow of information, go back and read McCluhan and Norbert Weiner -- Pynchon's inspiratons.

Oh, and there really is an immortal light bulb, burning still (going on 112 years) in a fire-station in Livermore, California.

http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/195...through-thomas-pynchons-byron-the-bulb-story/
 
I'm sure there was an eternal light bulb or two mentioned in one of those UK TV magazine shows, like Nationwide or That's Life, where you'd get some little old lady who had stayed in the same house for two hundred years or whatever, and had the same lightbulb in her hallway all that time. They've probably all been replaced by the energy saving kind now. The bulbs, not the old ladies.
 
I have heard tales of light bulbs from the 30s lasting for 50 years and more. My impression is that before the advent of planned obsolescence light bulbs routinely burned for decades.
 
Round these parts they turn the street lights off at midnight!
 
Round my way they've started to convert the streetlights to LEDs. I wonder how that will affect the world of streetlamp interference.
 
This evening, I was sitting at the edge of the woods pondering a nasty problem and thinking what to do about it. There was a lone streetlight across the way and I was sort of gazing towards it. I thought "maybe I should do (so-and-such)" when suddenly the streetlight began to blink rapidly, flared up bright then went out.

A superstitious person might call it an omen instead of a coincidence, I'm a superstitious person, so...:p It did feel like a sign telling me not to go with the idea I'd had, which is probably for the best after all.

No wonder I have trouble solving problems, if I take advice from streetlights.:lol:
 
bunnymousekitt said:
This evening, I was sitting at the edge of the woods pondering a nasty problem and thinking what to do about it. There was a lone streetlight across the way and I was sort of gazing towards it. I thought "maybe I should do (so-and-such)" when suddenly the streetlight began to blink rapidly, flared up bright then went out.

A superstitious person might call it an omen instead of a coincidence, I'm a superstitious person, so...:p It did feel like a sign telling me not to go with the idea I'd had, which is probably for the best after all.

No wonder I have trouble solving problems, if I take advice from streetlights.:lol:

:lol:

I hope it guided you in a good direction :)
 
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