Weird Electrical Events

Saturday July 22, 1989

These events might be off-topic, but they were so strange I want to record them here. My best friend and I went on a very-strenuous nine-mile hike. For most of the hike the temperature was around 80 degrees Fahrenheit and the humidity was 85 to 90 percent. It rained for about 40 minutes and we got wet, but we had gotten much wetter on many previous hikes. Although we heard distant thunder during the rain, there was no nearby lightning.

After the rain we were descending a steep slope. My friend was a few feet behind me. We both heard two popping sounds a couple of seconds apart. They sounded like they came from the air about two feet above and slightly behind my head. We were both startled. We agreed on the location of the sounds and on their description. My friend's initial thought upon hearing them was that I had stumbled into a live electrical wire. My initial thought was that small explosives (like cracker ball impact firecrackers) had exploded above my head. We discussed what we had heard but we were unable to determine a cause. The air space above and around us was clear. We continued our descent. A few minutes later we heard the popping sound again. This time in my peripheral vision I thought I saw a disturbance in the air at the sound's location. My friend thought he saw something in the air too, but he was unsure.

Later that night several strange electrical phenomena occurred. In retrospect we realized there were possibly-related events preceding the hike. I had gone to sleep early that morning after reading about astral projection and giving myself suggestions to visit my friend astrally, and to make him aware of my visit.

A chronological list of unusual events on that Saturday follows. The times are approximate.

3:15 AM - My friend was awakened by an incomplete ring of his bedside telephone.

12:30 PM - While driving to my friend's house before the hike my car's tape player failed to eject a tape at the proper time. I had to work to get the tape out. The last time my tape player had held onto a tape like that had been about two years before.

7:50 PM - During the rain my electronic pedometer's LCD display went blank. The display had never gone blank before during hikes in the rain.

8:20 PM - First pair of popping sounds.

8:25 PM - Third popping sound.

8:30 PM - My friend turned on his camera to take a picture and it automatically rewound the film as if the last picture had been taken. The camera had never rewound the film prematurely before, although it had gotten wet in the rain on previous hikes.

9:05 PM - The microcassette recorder I carried on hikes stopped working. It had been wet on many hikes and had never failed. (Later, even with new batteries, the tape recorder no longer worked.)

9:25 PM - My friend's car horn honked by itself on the highway on the way to dinner after the hike. It startled both of us. There were no other cars in sight.

10:45 PM - After supper we couldn't get the car's seat-belt warning light to go out. We unbuckled and buckled the seat belts but the warning light stayed on. Then I inserted a tape in the car's tape player and the car's door-open alarm sounded once, and the seat-belt warning light went out.

11:00 PM - The tape player started letting the tape slip, badly distorting the music.

11:45 PM - As I drove home from my friend's house my car's left headlight burned out.

11:55 PM - Putting my gear away after I got home I noticed the LCD display on my camera was blank. The camera had been much wetter in the past. Once I had even poured water out of the lens well. I dried the camera in a cookie tin with a drying agent, but it wouldn't work even with a new battery.

Follow-up: The microcassette player never worked again. The pedometer's display came on with a new battery, but the pedometer never measured distances accurately again. The camera cost $76 to get repaired at a shop. I had to use pliers and a vice-grip to unscrew the battery cap on my metal Brinkman flashlight that I'd taken on the hike. I had to use so much force that the metal case was damaged. The only electrical device I had that survived the hike was my Casio digital watch.


Copyright 2008 Jon Maloney