• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

What Is The Best Way Of Finding Lost Objects?

Peni, you might want to try calling on St. Anthony. He always helped me when I had lost something and he never made me wait.
Click to expand...

Our grandmother always made us say a prayer to St Anthony if ever we couldn't find something, haven't done it since I was a wee lad.
I've been rushing around like an idiot trying to find my wallet this morning with no success. Perhaps I'll call on his services for old time's sake ...
 
In relation to the above post I'm afraid St Anthony failed me this time. However I thought I'd have another look round this morning as I really needed to fill up my car, I checked all the pockets in a jacket I'd searched at least twice and found my wallet in an inside pocket.
Strange ...
 
I have also had the same problems throughout my life. My ex used to get really teasy when I'd say so-and-so has vanished, "It's not VANISHED, things don't vanish, you just misplace them or someone else moves them." Often they were never seen again, but invariably the objects were small, never bigger than a book, which brings me to the most recent.
A few weeks ago I was accross at the ex's to collect the boys and noticed an old book called 'the Dark side of Nature' on the bookshelves. Having read the thread on ft on things of ft interest I thought I would like to take it with me, but felt it only fair to wait till I saw her before taking it. Next time over I explain and my ex agrees, go to the shelf and, guess what? It's vanished! Every-one agrees they have not moved it and this section of shelving only carries old ( as in 'proper bound') books from 1700 on), and is rarely looked at. No amount of appealing to the goblins has produced a result :mad:
 
It happened with my keys the other day. I went to the spot where I had left them only a few minutes before they were gone. Ten minutes later they were back and in the exact same spot I had left them originally.
 
i know this is similar to an urban legend, but i swear this happend to my mate tony.

A couple of years ago he used to comute to work and cycle to the railway station.

On returning back to the station one evening he found he bike had been stolen.

Eventualy he managed to claim a new one on his insurance and stared cycling to the station again.

six months later he went to collect his new bike on the way home and realised his old bike was in the nieghbouring rack. Thinking he would catch the thief he waited nearby.

after an hour or so of waiting he realised that it was still locked with his lock. tried the combination and it worked.

he re-locked it and went home on the new bike.

he still swears blind that it hadn't been there. he did travel every day so its hard to believe that he never saw it.

His wife told me and I told the rest of our mates, we still take the P**s.

I don't know if he ever whent back for the old bike. could still be there.
 
More Magic Formulas

I know of two formulas used when you can't find a lost object:

1. Little mouse, little mouse, you've played enough, now please give it back.
2. Teufel gib die Pratzen weg, sonst kommt der Engel und schlagt Dir sie weg! (this is a really old one)
 
It seems that there are several 'lost and found' threads but this is the only one I can find!

Right, where's my Walkman radio? Haven't seen it since the house repairs started in the summer. My bumbag disappeared at the same time so, hmmm, they may be together.

The BF had one of those drug-smoking pipes, not a bong, more ornamental, and it's vanished from a shelf leaving a ring of dust.
It was a gift years ago and has never been used so he wasn't hallucinating! ;)
 
I have a friend, about whom I've posted on a thread called 'Strange Stories' who swears by 'dowsing' or 'divining' when trying to find lost objects. He reckons to have a 95% success rate.

Basically you attach a small weight, like a pebble or piece of crystal to a lenth of chain or cord, let it drop straight down and become perfectly still. You are then meant to 'ask' for guidance in finding the object (or on any subject for which you need an answer) You must tell it to either move in a circle for yes (or no) or swing from side to side for no (or yes) - the choice is yours.

I would just issue a word of warning - perhaps it would be better not to be too flippant if you ever decide to try this; I tried it, very much with tongue in cheek. It served me right as I had to buy a new hi-fi system as the one that was playing during this exercise blew up ....... (See 'Strange Stories')
 
Lovely timing this thread being bumped up.

The BF has just cleared off my CD shelving, stacking up in nice neat high rows all the albums I have to replace since some incredibly unkind person broke into my car and stole my original copies.

We've come across one we both know wasn't in my car (we remember only ever listening to it indoors when I was a music writer), which went missing from my tiny apt. and which we'd both forgotten about...

... And I've just remembered asking the fair folk to return a cassette tape in my car ages ago and having it work so ...

Off to home tonight for a little experiment. :D
 
My gym bag has disappeared. It's one of those big bright pink girly Nike ones and I last saw it on Thursday at the gym. It's not there, it's not at home and it's not in the car and I haven't taken it anywhere else.

This is a tall order for the goblins. :?
 
I wrote off the gym bag, having eventually worked out where it went.

At the time I had to park my car on the road and that day I made several trips between it and the house to take in shopping. I'm fairly certain that at some point when I was out of sight of the open car boot the bag was stolen.

Whoever nicked it was probably rather disappointed with the faded sweaty underwear, damp towel and battered trainers it contained. :lol:

My current frenzied search is for a CD case with a couple of dozen CDs and DVDs inside, comprising all my family photos. I took out to show someone the snaps on Boxing Day and although I do believe I got it home, I haven't seen it since. :(

The household fairies haven't turned it up yet. Any other ideas?
 
escargot1 said:
I wrote off the gym bag, having eventually worked out where it went.

At the time I had to park my car on the road and that day I made several trips between it and the house to take in shopping. I'm fairly certain that at some point when I was out of sight of the open car boot the bag was stolen.

Whoever nicked it was probably rather disappointed with the faded sweaty underwear, damp towel and battered trainers it contained. :lol:
Click to expand...
It was probably targeted by a gang who supply knicker-sniffers....

(Probably get a high price in some quarters! ;) )
 
Yes, I thought that too, I didn't want to mention it though, I know that Scarg is of a delicate nature! :)
 
Putting out chip pan fires, more like. Or oil refinery fires.
 
I found my CD case after several days' frenzied searching. It was in a corner of my bedroom under a stool where I keep houseplants.

Dunno how it got there but I'm not complaining. :D
 
escargot1 said:
Putting out chip pan fires, more like. Or oil refinery fires.
Click to expand...

If only they had thought of using a pair of draws at Buncefield - would have saved all that horrible foam going in to the ground round here.
Oh, sorry, are they still denying that, must try to keep up.........

:roll:
 
All right, we have been missing our calculator for months now - since summer at least. We've been making do because when we're upstairs we can use the one on the computer and when we need one downstairs, it's almost always because I can't do math in my head and act as DM at the same time, so I borrow a calculator from a player. Last week, when cleaning out a storage room, I found a calculator, identical to the one that's gone missing, but it will only display the number zero, and we remembered having a calculator that malfunctioned and was replaced with a similar one, maybe ten years ago now. (I'm impressed by the battery in this thing, btw.)

This weekend, because it would be cold in our house, we were putting stuff together to take to the home of a player who has central heating and my husband looked everywhere for the calculator, but couldn't find it. He had more math to do once we got home, and looked in even more places, and still couldn't find it. I said we'd have to put "calculator" on the grocery list and then once we bought a new one, the old one would turn up and we'd have one for each of us, which he agreed was a good plan.

Today it turned warm, so I reached down to turn off the panel heater that keeps my legs warm at the computer, and felt a lumpy plastic thing on the floor behind it. Yes, there was the calculator, between the panel heater and the paper shredder. And no, it wasn't the one I found in the storage room, because I did math on it.

Now, remember the calculator has been missing since summer. I quit my job in October and the first thing I did was work organize the study. This entailed, among other things, buying the paper shredder and lots and lots and lots of sweeping under the desk, as reorganzing a study and shredding paper involves sweeping up broken/shredded paper bits. Moreover, everything under the desk - the shredder, the panel heater, the surge protector, the stuff the cats throw there - has been picked up and moved around, swept, cleaned, replaced, tidied away, etc., multiple times in my ongoing effort to maintain control of the space, as has everything on top of the desk. The calculator has not been down there this whole time, nor was it hiding behind the computer tower waiting for a cat to throw it to the floor.

It's now sitting on the computer tower waiting to be taken downstairs and put with the gaming stuff. To remain there, how long?
 
It's your household zombie, don't you know? ;) He stuck the calculator behind the panel heater for you to find.

When we loose something at my house, like the TV remote for instance, we politely ask our house zombie to bring it back and in another day or two we find it.

I guess I should elaborate--our basement rooms were kinda creepy at night, and the children complained about a zombie being in the basement, rather than a ghost. We jokingly began asking the zombie to help us find lost items, thinking the kids wouldn't feel so creeped out if they thought he was nice and helpful. And more than a time or two, he has been! :lol:

I wish I knew how things turned up where they do....then I wouldn't have to search so hard for things sometimes!
 
My ex and myself live in different houses, but as she has the kids, I am a regular visitor. About two weeks ago she had lost one of the sets of keys for her car. As we talked about where she had seen them last and the option of asking out loud for their return, we both heard keys falling to the floor outside the room that we were in. We went out and looked and nothing. No bleeding keys anywhere. She eventually found them a few days ago in a coat pocket hanging in the bathroom.
However, in the summer, my son came to live with me, now that he's back living with his mum, he asked where the TV in his room had gone. We didn't take it with us, and both his mum and sister deny moving it. So, all I can conclude is that some fairies have moved onto bigger things, or that they like X Factor.
 
I have lost my watch - it's not in any of the usual places and I expect I've put it somewhere 'safe'. I shall formally ask the fairies for help this evening. Will report back.
 
I lost my sunglasses this year and the pixies found them and put them on the passenger seat of the car for me after I'd turned the house over and searched the car too.
 
I lost both the rubber feet from my netbook a few weeks ago. Found one right away but not the other, even though I searched on and off for several days. Hadn't taken the netbook out so the foot should've been around the sofa somewhere, but it was gone. :(

Found it today, stuck to the underside of a tray that I sometimes use to carry TV snacks on. It has been used, washed, wiped and hung up several times since the foot went missing.

So now I have both feet I'll be glueing them back in. ;)
 
Anonymous said:
i'm a christian, it might go against my faith but... i'll give it a go, i'm itchen to get back my ac adapter for my cd player
i'll post the findings
Click to expand...

In that case say

Saint Anthony
Saint Anthony
Return to me
What doesn't belong to thee
 
In our house we ask our old Labrador, Honey to "bring whatever back, because we need it".
She died in 2004, but when she was alive was a devil for pinching things!
So far it has worked for a pack of new socks- missing for 6 months, my daughter's calculator - missing for at least 6 weeks and a ring - missing for 4 weeks. We had done all the usual turning out of drawers and looking everywhere, everything reappeared in places we had already looked.
Sadly though, she seems determined to hold on the spare set of house keys (keys were always her favourite things).
Naughty Doggy!
 
Saying 'car keys' out loud may help find them
It is an age-old problem that can baffle even the most dexterous of minds on an almost daily basis.
By James Orr
3:31PM BST 18 Apr 2012

But now scientists suggest our ability to find where we left our car keys or put down our wallet may be significantly increased by saying the objects name out loud.
Research indicates that hearing an object’s name can improve our effectiveness in searching multiple places for that particular item.

In some instances the technique of talking out loud helped a “visual search” to such an extent that seemingly “invisible” objects suddenly became “visible”.

Assistant Professor Gary Lupyan and Associate Professor Daniel Swingley, who co-wrote the research, said: “When participants are asked to find a visual item among distractors (other objects), hearing its name immediately prior to searching improves speed and efficiency of searching for the named object.
“Hearing an object name can…improve the ability to attend simultaneously to multiple regions of space containing the named objects and even make an otherwise invisible object visible.”
The research, entitled “Self-directed speech affects visual search performance”, was published earlier this year in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.

Academics recognised that people often talk to themselves but that very little was understood about why.
They reasoned that one possible explanation for this “seemingly odd behaviour” was that language was not just a tool for communication.
In addition, researchers claimed that speech could alter “ongoing cognitive (and even perceptual) processing in nontrivial ways” - effectively allowing us to concentrate better.

In one experiment, scientists chose 26 undergraduates from the University of Wisconsin in the US and asked them to find 20 coloured drawings among a set of 260.
Participants were required to either read the name of the target out load prior to the search or to begin looking for the item without speaking its name.

Researchers found: “Speaking the name of the target immediately prior to the search made search significantly faster and more accurate.
“The benefit of speaking the name of the target may have arisen through an increase in selection confidence once the target was located.”

In a second similar trial 12 undergraduates from the University of Pennsylvania were again asked to locate specific items among many others but this time they were instructed to either remain silent during the search or to “keep repeating this word continuously into the microphone until you find the target.
The scientists found: “Saying the object’s name during the search resulted in significantly higher accuracy.”

Assistant Prof Lupyan and Associate Prof Swingley concluded: “An important question is whether self-directed speech affects the process of locating the target per se, or only aids in identifying it once it is located.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... -them.html
 
One of my few great talents seems to be the ability to find lost objects.
I'd used various methods, from asking for the object aloud to pendulums and divining rods (as well as just looking for it in the most logical place :p)
Sometimes just mentally "feeling" around for it is enough.

This was put to the test by my husband, who liked to live dangerously with only one pair of contact lenses and no back-up pair of glasses. :roll:
and he's legally blind, so I was always called upon to find lost contacts in all manner of places. I swear, the things would just pop out randomly without warning.

I'd managed to find contacts in the carpet, among the laundry, in the garbage pail, in the grass...all over the place. One day he lost his contact down the kitchen sink and he was sure it went down the drain. I was really desperate that time and had to use something heard on the Oprah Winfrey show - I asked the angels to bring it to me. I felt a bit silly, as I figure angels would have more important work to do. But I did it and suddenly knew where it was - I checked under the sink and found a small leak where two pipes joined together. I ran my finger around the edge of the joint and tah-dah, there it was.

My husband was impressed, but I'd had enough and marched him down to the eye-doctor and made him get a pair of glasses ASAP. And I made the landlord fix the leak. :D
 
You see, in theory there are infinite angels and i'm sure a lot of them are twiddling their thumbs...
 
Some comedian years ago had a routine about finding things. He asked why people who are looking for scissors make scissoring motions with their hands.

I'd never done that in my life, but after that I started right away. :lol:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top