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Unlocking A Mystery (Vanishing Keys)

gattino

gattino

Justified & Ancient
Joined
Jul 30, 2003
Messages
2,523
A vague title but a pun was obligatory.

I know there have been many accounts on these boards of objects vanishing often mid air and turning up elsewhere later (or not at all) but I'm not sure if there was a specific thread. So for now I'll just plonk here the incident my sister reported happened on Sunday just gone.


I was away for a weekend and she was staying here with our dependent mother. She has her own copy of the house key on her bunch of keys, but of habit and convenience took and used the one that is kept in the lock behind the front door most of the time. So she had both her own bunch and hte individual house key in her pocket when she briefly left the house to go over to the local supermarket. Leaving the shop she out of habit gets hold of her bunch of keys in readiness for approaching her car. She retrieves both the bunch and hte individual key - this is a point I questioned her on several times to confirm she actually physically saw it at that moment with her own eyes and didn't just assume it was there - and she drops the key, as it falls to...well...where? She saw it leave her hand but it never arrived anywhere, nor made a sound of making contact with the ground. She took of and brushed down her coat. Nothing. Went through her shopping bags. Nothing. Took the stuff over to the car, put them in the boot and took everything from its bag one by one. Nothing. She returns home, using her own copy of hte key to get in obviously, and further searches, including taking off her own shoes even. Nothing. The mystery of a key that seemed never to have hit the ground left her bewildered.


The professional care workers come out to the house shortly after and she tells them of the mystery. When they're leaving one of the carers sincerley asks her colleague if she knows where they've put THEIR keys as she can't find them, which coincidence caused amusement.. a trivial detail , as presumably they did find them, but my sister insisted on throwing it in as it a potentially relevant one. They head out to their car, then immediately come back..."is this your key?" they ask. It was sitting on the pavement directly beneath the garden gate.


Yet, and she is absolutely insistent, my sister did not drop it on her way out to the supermarket as she held, felt and saw it in her hand at the shop itself, and watched it drop from her hand.


Devil's advocate: could it have fallen on to some part of her clothing or bags where she failed to spot it only to dislodge itself as she re-entered the house? Can't rule it out, but I wasn't there and she insists she searched everything thoroughly. Further, she tried dropping the key on the spot several times to hear the sound it made and is insistent she would have heard the noise that resulted without the slightest difficulty.

And she throws in this intriguing detail. That a few hours earlier she had been confounded and confused by the digital clock on her dashboard saying 15:47...had she knocked something inadvertently? When she looked away and looked back again it had returned to the correct time of 12.47. The relevance of this is that in retrospect, based on the tannoy announcement in Tesco warning of the imminent early closing, she estimates the key vanished sometime around 15.47.
 
Hmmm. To start, I'll be the bastard and mention that yes, I have on occasion "lost" something only for it to turn up in the folds of my shirt or somewhere rather unlikely.

The clock thing, well, 2 and 5 on a digital clock are the same but reversed, so that's "technically" easily explainable, especially since the minutes were the same.

That being said, I've also been present (and had happen to me) when something "dropped to the floor" only to never be found again, amongst witnesses, no less and, at that, ones who are wholly intolerant of Fortean doings.

So there's my input: things that are explainable unless they happened to you and a couple of worthless anecdotes which would seem to confirm the universe's perverse in-joke in making things disappear right in front of you.
 
Oh I'm personally convinced the most likely explanation is that she did inadvertently transport it on some part of her person before it dislodged itself. But as I wasn't a witness to any of it that's mere supposition on my part with no evidence, so have to downgrade my conviction.

The reasons I give it any credence as a "fortean" event is the recollection that such mid air vanishings have been reported on here several times by other people, and my sister's emphatic insistence that she had managed to rule out the mundane explanations.


As you say only personally experiencing a thing is persuasive to most of us. When the same thing happens to someone else we immediately assume we know better about a sequence of events we didn't witness than the people who were there.It's annoying when I'm on the recieving end so I have to remind myself to resist the temptation to do the same. Ask speculative questions, I tell myself, but always remember they're rarely too stupid to have considered it and always know better than I do.
 
Keys often seem to be the subject of these disappearing/appearing stories, more than other personal objects. They're important - we need them every day and alway want to know where they are. Library books and driving licences go missing and re-appear in unlikely circumstances too.

This isn't the case with socks or packets of tissues, say. We don't feel anxious about things like that. But keys, library books, important papers, they can cause panic if they go missing. We notice them.

I'm not saying it's not weird, but it's probably human error rather than Boggarts. ;)

(Although I've certainly been reduced to asking them in desperation!)
 
escargot1 said:
Keys often seem to be the subject of these disappearing/appearing stories, more than other personal objects. They're important - we need them every day and alway want to know where they are. Library books and driving licences go missing and re-appear in unlikely circumstances too.

This isn't the case with socks or packets of tissues, say. We don't feel anxious about things like that. But keys, library books, important papers, they can cause panic if they go missing. We notice them.

I'm not saying it's not weird, but it's probably human error rather than Boggarts. ;)

(Although I've certainly been reduced to asking them in desperation!)
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One of the Coalettes has a bluetooth bleepy thingy on her keys as the Boggarts hide them all the time. The keys have yet to turn up where she thought she put them.
 
Well, since one of mine didn't involve keys, I might as well put it here....

We were having a meeting of 20-30 people in a small office and someone had 3d-printed a heart gear (one of these....)
and we were passing it around, marveling at how smooth and bloody neat it was.

Someone next to me was rotating the gears and a larger one popped off. It hit the floor (we all heard it) and we all immediately looked. We looked behind us, backed up our chairs, looked again...nothing.

By sound, I estimate that it landed pretty close to me (within 5 feet, probably under the tables), but it was nowhere to be found. The area under the tables was pretty clear. The heart pieces were bright red (as in the link), the floor was mottled white tile.

After the meeting several of us got down on all fours and scanned everywhere. Apart from the tables, there was nothing it could have rolled under.

Fast forward a year later and we moved out of that building. I, personally, was one of the ones to clear out that office and it never did show itself. I'm still waiting to be poking around in the ceiling of our new place and have it randomly drop out of the rafters....

Yes, I considered that someone might have nicked it, but I seriously doubt anyone in that group would have done so; also, when I say we immediately looked, I mean it. Promptly, right that second. I doubt anyone would have had time to bend down and grab it.
 
Coal said:
One of the Coalettes has a bluetooth bleepy thingy on her keys as the Boggarts hide them all the time. The keys have yet to turn up where she thought she put them.
Click to expand...

You can outwit the buggers though. I cured my missing keys problem by installing them all on ski pass lanyards. When I go out I wear the keys round my neck, unclipping them to unlock and lock doors and gates or drive the car and then re-clipping them immediately afterwards.

Each set of keys - 'master', bike locks, garden/sheds etc - has its own lanyard and they're all left on hooks when not in use. I NEVER carry a key in my pocket. Since starting this system about 12 years ago I can count the number of times I've lost keys on one hand.

That's Scargy 1, Boggarts 0. :D
 
escargot1 said:
You can outwit the buggers though. I cured my missing keys problem by installing them all on ski pass lanyards. When I go out I wear the keys round my neck, unclipping them to unlock and lock doors and gates or drive the car and then re-clipping them immediately afterwards.

Each set of keys - 'master', bike locks, garden/sheds etc - has its own lanyard and they're all left on hooks when not in use. I NEVER carry a key in my pocket. Since starting this system about 12 years ago I can count the number of times I've lost keys on one hand.

That's Scargy 1, Boggarts 0. :D
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I just have a big collection of nerdy crap on my key-ring. Mini toolkit thing, bottle opener, blanket pin, USB drive, tiny pen-knife etc... little buggers can't carry it. Or not quietly anyway.
 
Yup, my 'master' keys have the gadgets too.

A few years ago women were being given little bells on clips to put on their purses, allegedly to discourage pickpockets. (Funny, I didn't see men being given this advice.)
I bet the boggarts hated all that.
 
escargot1 said:
Yup, my 'master' keys have the gadgets too.

A few years ago women were being given little bells on clips to put on their purses, allegedly to discourage pickpockets. (Funny, I didn't see men being given this advice.)
I bet the boggarts hated all that.
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Heh.
*glingle glingle*
*scargy runs out of room shouting "The little f*ckers are after my keys again..."*
 
On a more serious if only slightly relevant note, I've very rarely rolled up a newspaper for any reason. Once when I did, probably to ram it into the already over-full cycling bag, my dog charged under the coffee table and cowered.
Rocky was a biggish boxer/Staffie cross so he rocked the table and knocked a few things off in his panic.

I was puzzled by this unusual behaviour. Worked out that the ex must have rolled up the paper to hit him with it.

What a git. I've have divorced him just for that, after first treating him to a rolled-up Guardian myself. :mad:
 
escargot1 said:
On a more serious if only slightly relevant note, I've very rarely rolled up a newspaper for any reason. Once when I did, probably to ram it into the already over-full cycling bag, my dog charged under the coffee table and cowered.
Rocky was a biggish boxer/Staffie cross so he rocked the table and knocked a few things off in his panic.

I was puzzled by this unusual behaviour. Worked out that the ex must have rolled up the paper to hit him with it.
Click to expand...
My last dog - which I had from the age of 13 to 26 - had been found seemingly abandoned and was given to us. It was a perfectly content happy dog (though I never ever managed to stop it barking incessantly whenever it escaped into the street) however from day one we discovered that when lifting or pointing a toy gun at anyone it would growl furiously and nervously. One has to guess how it knew what the object was and why it provoked that reaction.
 
Good post, did the same thing with a bin key ,at the Hospital I work at ,putting out the sealed bags after the operations are finished for the day,each bin holds about 9 household size sacks I had opened the bin with the key in my right hand,my left hand holding the lid up, still with the key in my right hand I start picking up bags and dropping them in the bin,after 3 bags the key follows a bag I hear it hit the inside of the bin (the bins are about 3ft x 4ft and bright yellow with no place to hide anything) cursing I lean in and take out the 4 bags ,no key! I the check the bags,all sealed ,I look underneath, all round ,in my pockets ,and under the closest cars ,nothing ,this was daylight the key being grey metal L shaped,and 4inx4in ,
 
gattino said:
Oh I'm personally convinced the most likely explanation is that she did inadvertently transport it on some part of her person before it dislodged itself. But as I wasn't a witness to any of it that's mere supposition on my part with no evidence, so have to downgrade my conviction.
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Especially since, if it had lodged somewhere on her clothing/shoes or even on/in a bag, that might have been lower to the ground than however she tested dropping it where it was found - the noise then wouldn't have been as loud and she might not have heard it. Also, her attention may have been somewhere else - including thinking about where she could have dropped the key! - and/or there might have been another sound at the same time. The conscious mind can only handle so much at once.
 
I went up to visit the Aged Parent this weekend gone and while packing I couldn't find the key to his house. I thought it was still in my bag from last time and I checked it two or three times, opening and looking and also running my hands in all four pockets (it has a zipped and a non-zipped pocket on each side). Nothing. I gave up as it is not really necessary, just nice to have my own. Then as I was about to leave, I opened the bag to check I had the usual contingent of purse, phone etc and there it was! o_O
 
Bags with loads of pockets are fun but they confuse me. When I've searched one for something and not found it I have to start again from the other side. Then I wonder if I've turned the bag round in the middle and missed it again, and so it goes on. Best way is to turn every pocket inside out. Or buy another of whatever you've lost.
 
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Yup, I recently misplaced a little make up bag full of nail-hacking equipment. Couldn't have gone far but I ripped the place apart looking for it, even getting up in the night and rifling through the front room again.

No sign, so I re-ordered the main thing I'd been after (awesome podiatry file) and before it arrived I spotted the missing bag on the coffee table in full view.
 
escargot1 said:
Bags with loads of pockets are fun but they confuse me. When I've searched one for something and not found it I have to start again from the other side. Then I wonder if I've turned the bag ring in the middle and missed it again, and so it goes on. Best way is to turn every pocket inside out. Or buy another of whatever you've lost.
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Lol.
Mine is actually pretty straightforward. The pockets are more like dividers, two on each side so I just have to sort of leaf through them like drop files. Plus the keyring is quite chunky, it is shaped like a whisky cask and the bag is quite small. It really was odd!
 
Did you put the bag down on a table and carefully press down on each bit of it, an inch at a time? I've been reduced to that.
 
Another key mystery.
Once my mother came to stay overnight and brought with her a smallish shoulder bag containing three or four zipped compartments. Before going to bed she noticed that her own house key was not in the front zipped pocket where she usually keeps it. We had the bag emptied, upside down, pockets turned inside out and....nothing.

Morning after she was fussing around going on and on about having to have a new key cut and ask my dad to pick her up, etc, when I just lazily shoved my hand into front pocket of her bag and voila! It had returned.

Remains a mystery.
 
One of my weaknesses is little shoulder bags, the more pockets and zips the better.

Each bag is supposed to carry a lip balm, a pack of tissues, a bottle of hand wash and a nail file. Then I pile in my keys, phones and maybe a little purse.

If I'm in the house and want a tissue or file or lip balm it's no good raiding any of my little bags because they won't be there. These items can only be accessed from the bags while I'm out. Mad.
 
In my relief job I have a large bunch of keys of different sizes. One key in particular had a habit of working it's way off the keyring which was quite alarming as it opened a fair few places.

Since replacing the keyring the key now behaves itself and has stopped it's bids for freedom.

I put this down to the weight of the keys weakening over time a cheap keyring.
 
hunck said:
I take the opposite stance - always keep your keys in your pocket. Don't put them down anywhere. Of course it only works if you have pockets.
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We have to carry a vital tool at work that we'd be stuffed without, and I tell new recruits 'Don't put it down! If you need two hands, put the tool in your pocket!'
 
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