Was It Ghost Symbolism?

 I wear an eye shade while I sleep. Last night around midnight I tried to find the shade, and it was nowhere to be found. I thoroughly inspected all the sheets and a blanket and a pillow on the bed, but could not find the eye shade I normally keep near my pillow. I checked in the crack between the bed and the wall, but still could not find the eye shade. I was the only one sleeping in the room (my wife is on a trip). 

After searching for at least five minutes (and probably ten minutes) for the missing eye shade, looking all over the room, I gave up, and got a spare eye shade from my bed stand. During the night I made several trips to the bed stand shown in the diagram below. In the early morning (in early daylight) I looked out the window, to see whether there was snow accumulation. I then went back to bed and got more sleep. 

Finally my alarm clock went off, and I arose. I was very surprised to then discover the missing eye shade, which was in about the most noticeable position it could be: on the floor, at the foot of the bed. This was not my replacement eye shade, which I could see was still on the bed, near the pillow.  

We see below the layout of the room, and where I found the eye shade in the morning, marked by the X mark. When I get up at night, the room is dimly lit by a Google Nest smoke detector which has a motion detector and a dim light that activates when you walk around in the darkness. 

I realized there may be some symbolic significance to the spooky event involving the eye shade. "Shade" was a term used in nineteenth century English to mean "ghost or disembodied spirit." And in the English language "eye" sounds just like "I." So an eye shade may symbolize the phrase "I shade," which may be equivalent to "I ghost" or "I disembodied spirit" or "I am a ghost" or "I am a disembodied spirit."  

Below we see how the Merriam-Webster dictionary has "a disembodied spirit: ghost" as one of its definitions of "shade."

The event described here is similar to an equally spooky event involving an eye shade, one I describe here. 

Below we see a mysterious orb I photographed on this day. 

Postscript: Something very similar happened on April 11 2026. My wife was at her mother's place, and I was sleeping alone in my bedroom. Awaking about 1:00AM, I took off my eye shade, and went to the bathroom. Returning to the bed, I could not find the eye shade. After thoroughly searching the white sheets and a light blue blanket on the bed, I stood up and turned on the bedroom light, and in the full light thoroughly examined the bed and everything on it. The eye shade was nowhere to be seen. Removing one by one the three bed sheets and the blanket, and shaking each, I could not find the missing eye shade. So I got my replacement eye shade from the bed stand. 

In the morning I woke up and again thoroughly searched the bed and everything on it for the missing eye shade, seeing nothing but the replacement eye shade I had brought from the bed stand. Again, I shook each of the three sheets and the blanket, without any eye shade turning up.  After making such a search and failing to find the missing eye shade, suddenly I saw it, in the most noticeable spot it could be, right in the middle of the bed. There were now two eye shades on the bed. 

It was just as if the eye shade had been teleported away, and then nine hours teleported back to the bed. 

Phantom Foot?

 I have in my bathroom one of those little waste baskets with a top lid and a little foot pedal at the bottom which you can press to lift the lid. It  is very convenient, because I can dispose of paper by just pressing the little pedal with my foot. That causes the lid to rise, and as soon as I take my foot off the pedal, the lid drops, making a little sound as it finishes dropping.

A few minutes ago I used my foot to open the lid of the waste basket, and dropped a piece of paper in it. I then walked a few feet away, facing in the opposite direction, to use the toilet.  Suddenly I heard a little noise from the direction of the waste basket. It was just exactly the sound that would have been made if someone had used his foot on the pedal to open the lid of the waste basket, and then taken his foot away. But there was no one else in the bathroom, and I was facing in the opposite direction, a few feet away. 

This anomaly I can never recall witnessing in the years I have lived at my current location; and the waste  basket has been in the bathroom the entire time. 

Postscript: The next morning (October 26) I was very surprised to see the sight we see below, which I did not arrange. It is a sheet of paper I had placed on my coffee table late on the previous night, having written a line on it.  Now the sheet was "standing up" on the floor, with only the bottom of the sheet touching the floor. What are the odds against that happening accidentally? Maybe the white sheet is some kind of ghost symbolism. Around Halloween ghosts are often depicted using white sheets of cotton. 

Post-postscript: On the same day I saw the anomaly shown above, I witnessed a stove fan turning off by itself while I was cooking some spaghetti, standing in front of the stove. I have seen this anomaly a few times before, and my post here describes something exactly the same occurring on March 22, 2025, when I was also cooking spaghetti. This mysterious turning off of the stove fan also occurred on March 16, 2024, as described here, when I was also cooking spaghetti.  My wife (who uses the stove much  more often than I do) was about five meters away. I asked whether she had ever seen the stove fan turn off by itself after she had turned it on. She said no, she had not. I cook grilled cheese sandwiches and salmon burgers just as often or more as I cook spaghetti. 

There are fancy digital programmable range hoods that allow someone to program a shut off after a specified interval. But the range hood I have seems to be a simpler affair offering no such possibility. Its only control buttons are the ones shown below.

An interesting speculation is that some of these hard-to-explain events are examples of after-death communication from my late father. In all of the last three cases I have recorded of the stove fan mysteriously switching off, while also recording what I was cooking, we have a turning off of a green light on a panel while I was cooking pasta (spaghetti being a type of pasta). And the spooky note found "standing up" involved paper.  Of course, those could all just be phonics coincidences. 

(The sense of the paragraph above may be lost to those reading a non-English translation of this page. In English the word "pa" means "father," and the words "panel," "pasta" and "paper" all begin with the same syllable, which by itself means "father." But in other languages that may be different.)

Was It "I'm a Ghost" Symbolism?

 A few minutes ago I had a strange experience involving a night eye shade, the one shown below, about as wide as my head:

After years of use, the back strap of the eye shade was no longer working well, and I decided to order a replacement.  After eating breakfast on the sofa of a living room (without noticing the eye shade in the living room where I can never remember putting it), I went from a living room to a bedroom to retrieve the eye shade, so I could check whether it had a particular feature. I could not find the eye shade where I normally keep it, on the bed in the bedroom.  Returning to the living room, I retrieved from one end of the living room a paper folder with my Amazon.com password, and went  to sit on the sofa. From there I ordered a replacement for the eye shade. I then got up, returned the paper folder to its position in my files, and went back to sit on the sofa.  I did some typing on my laptop for a few minutes, and soon I was surprised to see the missing eye shade. It was in about the most noticeable position it could be: four inches to the left of my body, on the sofa I was sitting, very plainly visible. I asked myself: how could I previously have failed to notice the eye shade in the two previous times I sat on the sofa, within the past few minutes? I also asked myself: how could it possibly have got to that position, since I never bring the night eye shade into the living room?  What I observed was suggestive of an object being mysteriously teleported. An alternate explanation would require the idea of forgetfulness, the idea of unprecedented placement behavior,  and ideas such as that I am such a clumsy observer that I don't notice things I am looking for, twice on the same morning when I sit right next to such things. I may reach such a state of inattention one day, but I don't think I have reached it yet.  To read of a previous experience I had suggestive of an object being teleported, read here. Just after writing the above paragraph, I noticed a pink rubber band on the floor to the left of the coffee table just in front of me, one I had not noticed previously while sitting for hours just in front of such a coffee table. I can't account for the rubber band appearing at that spot, which was the exact same little spot where I have been surprised to notice rubber bands on  three previous occasions, as I previously reported here. I always immediately clean up items such as coins, pens or rubber bands off the floor of my living quarters, as soon as I notice such things. 

After writing the paragraph above, I realized there may be some symbolic significance to the spooky event involving the eye shade. "Shade" was a term used in nineteenth century English to mean "ghost or disembodied spirit." And in the English language "eye" sounds just like "I." So an eye shade may symbolize the phrase "I shade," which may be equivalent to "I ghost" or "I disembodied spirit" or "I am a ghost" or "I am a disembodied spirit."  

Below we see how the Merriam-Webster dictionary has "a disembodied spirit: ghost" as one of its definitions of "shade."

Postscript: The day after writing this post I saw something else that seemed spooky. An air freshener I had on top of a toilet (inches away from the edge) mysteriously fell to the ground. I looked at the object to see whether I could find anything that it might symbolize. On the back I found the words "Transport yourself to a tropical paradise." Could this be some hint regarding an afterlife destination that I might reach before long? 

I continue to have mystifying observations in which I notice on the floor one or more rubber bands, with me having no explanation for how they got there, something I have seen well over 12 times this year (see here and here for about a dozen examples).  I noticed this soon after waking up on August 16, 2025. I checked a photo I had taken of the area just before going to bed  and it showed no rubber band on the floor. In one of those posts I speculate about a possible symbolic meaning of such occurrences. 

On August 18, 2025 in the morning I picked up from a TV stand a large pen to make a mark on a calendar. After walking a few steps towards the calendar, I was surprised to see a rubber band surrounding two of my fingers, as shown below. There was a rubber band near the spot where I had picked up the pen. But it seems all-but-impossible that picking up a pen near a rubber band would result in the rubber band accidentally surrounding two fingers. 

Just after writing the paragraph above, and adding it to this post, on August 18, I noticed in the middle of the wooden floor a pink rubber band, the appearance of which I cannot account for. I had taken the photo above at the same spot a few minutes earlier, when the floor did not have any rubber bands on it. I have had similar spooky-seeming observation experiences involving rubber bands well over 13 times. 

Later in the same day there was another event like the one described above,  when I was surprised to see a pink rubber band surrounding my finger when I picked up a smartphone lying near a rubber band. Maybe I should call this spooky day "the day of the finger-seeking rubber bands."

Post-postscript: On September 3 there were 3 other anomalies involving the seemingly inexplicable observations of a rubber band on the floor. I have now seen this type of spooky-seeming event occur well over 16 times. 

Post-Post-postscript: On October 21, 2025 there was another rubber band anomaly. After replacing a toilet paper roll on a toilet paper dispenser, I was surprised to see there was now a rubber band surrounding the four fingers of my left hand. I can't recall doing anything to cause that. A conceivable explanation is that the toilet paper roll had a rubber band around it, which I put around the fingers of my left hand, while forgetting about the trivial event. But I can't explain why a toilet paper roll would ever have started out with a rubber band around it. I buy toilet paper rolls from a nearby store, and they sure don't have rubber bands around them when I buy them.