Monday, July 25, 2022

Plastic-Pushing Poltergeist?

I continue to get strange observations in my back yard, where there very recently occurred the spooky anomalies I described here and here. The latest anomaly involves mysterious movements of a trash can. 

Here is the normal appearance of the backyard of the house I live in: 

There are two trash cans that we always keep next to the right wall, in the space between the tool shed and the planters, as shown above. On July 23 my wife noticed one of the trash cans in the position shown below, and scolded me, saying I had left the can in the wrong place. I had not put the can in such a position, but had put it next to the wall earlier that day, in the same position as shown in the top photo. My wife and I were the only ones in the house on this day. The wind was only 9 miles per hour. 

The can has two wheels on one side, but none on the opposite side; so you can only roll it by tilting it, and pulling it. Our back yard is flat, and the can would never roll by itself. The next day (July 24) I noticed a similar anomaly. The can had been moved more than a meter away from its previous position. I found the can in the position shown below:

I did not mention this to my wife, who never would have moved the can to such a position. She's very much a "put things in their conventional positions" type of person. 

Before July 23 we had lived in this house for several months, and had not noticed any such anomaly. You can come up with a natural explanation for the movements, although it would be very far-fetched. You would imagine some dog coming under the fence, and then moving the empty cans, for some unknown reasons. But the odds of that occuring on two consecutive days would seem to be negligible.

As photographic evidence of something like a poltergeist, this post is far weaker than the much better example given here.

Postscript: On January 13, 2023 I found in the morning one of the two trash cans in the middle of the backyard, overturned. Its top was underneath the back gate. A check of the wind speed on the previous night showed it was only about 5 miles per hour, too slow to explain this event as the result of a wind gust.  On January 26, 2023 I woke up in the morning to see the backyard just like it did in the second photo above, with one of the trash cans greatly misplaced.  On January 28, 2023 I went out about noon to bring one of the trash cans from outside of the gate, where it had been placed to allow a trash pickup. As I always do, I put the trash can back next to the other can, and placed the can's top back on it. About 3:00 PM I noticed the trash can about a meter or two from where I had placed it a few hours ago. Now the can's top was off of it, on top of the other can. There was no noticeable wind on this afternoon. 

On April 3 I found both trash cans in the middle of the yard, overturned. I had noticed them against the white wall when I finished a long walk an hour earlier, and hand noticed no unusually strong wind on that walk.  

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