When a Locked Door Opens Mysteriously

Readers of this blog who have read this series of posts know that it is not rare for me to report spooky events around my apartment. In the past few years, I have seen house lights turning on by themselves, a toilet 4 times flushing by itself, machines such as a TV and a sound machine often mysteriously changing their state or channel, a flashlight at the back of a tablet device often turning on by itself while the tablet was turned off, an electric toothbrush often  turning on by itself,  a phone repeatedly doing "phantom dialing" to my relatives, and numerous types of coin weirdness including a coin that rolled up on its edge from behind me while I was alone in my apartment.

What happened today was one of the spookiest things I have ever seen.  At around 10:30 my daughter went out of our apartment for a few hours, locking the door behind her as she always does. I stayed in the apartment, the only one inside it. About 30 minutes later I heard a sound from the door, a sound which sounded just exactly as if the cylinder lock on the door had unlocked.  About 20 seconds later, the door opened slightly (about as far as shown in the photo below).  I went to the door to investigate. There was no one at the door or in the hall.  When my daughter returned a few hours later, I asked her whether she had locked the door, and she said she had. The only two other people with the key (my wife and other daughter) were miles away, and we changed the lock nine years ago. Unlocking the door from the outside requires a key, and unlocking the door from the inside requires a turn of your wrist while you are grasping a brass knob.

So we have here a case of a locked door that unlocked and opened a few inches most mysteriously, apparently when no human was within a few meters of it.  Having got used to such anomalies, they never alarm me.

Postscript: The events such as this that I have reported (in this series of posts)  are nowhere near as dramatic as events described elsewhere in the literature of paranormal phenomena (see here, here, and here for some examples reported by world-class scientists).  Below is an astonishing account in page 7 of the latest edition of Edge Science magazine published by the Society for Scientific Exploration:

In press reports from 2010, Lalm kindergarten in Gudbrandsdalen (meaning Gudbrand’s Valley), Norway, appeared to be a veritable haunted house. Between April 26 and June 15, all 15 employees witnessed diverse objects— cups, mugs, stones, jars, etc.—flying through the rooms! Sometimes these items seemed to appear out of thin air. In addition, doors opened and closed by themselves, figures were drawn with crayons moved by no one’s hand (no human’s hand that is...), feathers used for decoration organized themselves into specific patterns, and so on. More than 90 seemingly inexplicable episodes occurred. And, interestingly enough, many of these events were observed by two or three adults simultaneously. In some cases, there were even as many as 20 witnesses.

Notice the mention of doors opening and closing by themselves, which is something similar to what I reported above (before ever hearing about this Lalm kindergarten).