Spooky Systems

On the night of August 5, 2023 at around 9:10 PM a ceiling smoke detector went off in a room  with closed windows, a room I was in. The smoke detector was a state-of-the-art electrically powered ceiling smoke detector that had been installed about 18 months ago during remodeling. There was no smoke or vapor in the room, and no one had cooked in the house or showered nearby during the past hour; nor was there any smoke anywhere in the house, where no one smokes.  For hours no one had even made coffee or tea in the room where the alarm went off. The very modern smoke detector stated something like "Smoke has been detected on the first floor," even though there was no smoke. It was not any electrical problem, and the TV and lights in the room continued operating normally.  The cause of this spooky event is a baffling mystery. The detector (an expensive Nest Protect model) is shown below. No such anomaly had occurred in the 18 previous months, or in the ten days since August 5.  The next day a relative reported that the death of her husband had occurred on this very night of August 5, 2023.

Today at about 12:05 AM I saw the latest in many cases I have seen of the little green light in my  modern-type GFCI outlet in a bathroom going off for a second or two, and then turning back on. I have seen many cases of this happening, as recorded in my post here.  Later today there was a new twist I have never seen before. I used the bathroom about 8:00 AM, without noticing anything unusual. The green light on the outlet was still on. Having had difficulty getting back to sleep in the middle of the night, I slept until about 9:50 AM. When I entered the bathroom at 9:50 there was no power in the bathroom, although nearby electric clocks displayed the time normally. Trying to turn on the two different bathroom lights, I got no lights; and the green light on the GFCI was off. Apparently between 8:00 AM and 9:50 AM one of the white buttons had mysteriously been pressed, something that shuts off all power in the bathroom. I pressed one of the two buttons to restore the power in the bathroom. There was no one else but me on this floor after 8:00. The outlet is shown below. How the button got pressed is a spooky anomaly similar to the smoke detector anomaly. The GFCI outlet is shown below. 

To read about many other spooky events I saw (some far spookier than the ones above), see my "Spookiest Observations" post here (which includes some videos I took of devices acting in very spooky ways), and the post here.

Postscript: Another day, another spooky system. This time it's my Simplisafe home security system. It has a control system screen which normally looks black and blank whenever the alarm is off. Tonight (September 7) my wife pointed out that the screen was flashing on and off, even though the alarm is set to off. I witnessed the effect myself, which I have never seen before with this system.  

Post-postscript: The mysterious shutting off of the GFCI outlet occurred again on January 29, my late father's birthday, at the very instant I was thinking about my late father, as I describe here. There was also another spooky event with the smoke detector, which I describe in the March 1, 2024 postscript of the post here. 

Post-post postscript: I cannot recall any case of the smoke detector shown above going off mysteriously, with a vocal indication of smoke, during the time between August 5, 2023 and September  15, 2024.  Then on September 16, 2024, around 5:50 PM, the smoke detector went off, flashing red, with a voice from the alarm saying that there was smoke in the bedroom. But there was no smoke anywhere in the house, and no one was cooking. It was not any electrical problem, and the TV and lights in the room continued operating normally.