A Skeptic Would Say, "It Must Have Just Fallen Out of Your Deep Pocket"

 A few minutes ago I had a fond thought of my late father. A few seconds later I went into the bathroom. Standing, I was surprised to hear the sound of a pen falling to my left, landing on the ground.

How to explain this strange event? I had used the pen earlier to mark on a calendar that I had taken a pill. After I do that, I normally put the pen back in my pen holder cup on the living room table. Conceivably I could have failed to follow my normal habit, and left the pen in my pocket. And conceivably the pen could have fallen out of my deep jeans pocket that is about six inches deep, the same size as the six-inch pen.

But what is the chance of both of those things happening? I'm reminded of when I was questioned as a young boy for walking in the halls during classes without a hall pass you were supposed to get before doing such walking. I claimed that I had got such a pass, but that it "must have fallen out of my pocket."  Some school authority made a skeptical face, saying something like, "Come on -- things don't just fall out of your pocket." 

An alternate explanation here is a Potential Spiritual Manifestation involving some power with the ability to make mysterious movements of matter, with the event being related to the thought of my late father. 

Like a Teleportation

A few minutes ago I picked up my house keys from the ledge in front of my TV set. Before I could take another step, I noticed something very baffling. A wristband that I keep on the same ledge somehow fell to the ground, landing about 4 feet (1.3 meters) to my right and about a foot behind me (I heard it landing on the floor). I keep the wristband on the same ledge (in front of the TV) where I keep my keys. I have failed to come up with any credible-sounding scenario that can naturally explain the event. 

The only thing I can think of is that the mere action of picking up the keys somehow caused the wristband to be violently ejected to the right, so that the wristband would land four feet away, to the right. The scenario seems unbelievable, and I failed to notice anything unusual in front of me.  

An alternate explanation is a paranormal one, that the incident is a supernatural omen. The wristband was a "Do Not Resuscitate" wristband I wear on walks, to specify that if my heart ever stops, I do not want CPR to be attempted. A spooky event involving such a wristband might be an omen of my death in the not-too-distant future.  

Below is the wristband as I saw it on the floor. 

Postscript:  The next morning I woke up and moved around in a living room for several minutes, without noticing anything unusual. I then noticed a rubber band in the middle of the small living room floor, the appearance of which I cannot account for.  This is a type of anomaly I have seen more than 31 previous times, as discussed in my posts here, with all of the cases involving rubber bands.  My policy is to immediately pick up all out-of-place small objects on the floor as soon as I see them, making such events baffling. No windows in the room were open. 

I had an interesting dream the day after the wristband incident. In the dream I stood in front of a surface on which my house keys rested. Then suddenly in the dream there was an extra set of keys in front of me. In the dream I had the idea that the keys belonged to my late sister, and that the keys had teleported in front of me. Then in the dream my late sister appeared, smiling.  In real life I once witnessed the most astonishing event suggesting a teleportation of keys, an event I describe in my 2018 post here. 

Post-postscript: On May 3, 2026 I saw yet another example of the phenomenon of the mysterious appearance of a rubber band. It occurred at about 12:15 PM in a room I had occupied alone for two hours. I had been working in the room for two hours, on the couch, facing the TV. Suddenly I noticed the rubber band in a very noticeable position, on the floor  in front of the TV stand. I had not touched any rubber band or anything on the TV's ledge for hours. My long-standing policy is to immediately pick up from the floor any small objects such as rubber bands, coins and pens, as soon as I see them. So how could the rubber band have got to the position I saw it at? No windows in the room were open. Once again, I am baffled. I have now seen an effect like this more than 32 times. 

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. 

It Was Just As If They Teleported In Front of Me

 I will now give you a very fresh observational report of some spooky events I observed within the past hour (I started writing this account immediately after the events occurred).

After awaking, I showered and dressed, and walked into a living room (there was no one else on the floor). At first I noticed nothing unusual. But a minute or so later I noticed a pink rubber band on the floor, in front of the TV set. The rubber band had not been there when I went to bed last night. I am in general very careful to pick up from the floor any objects such as coins, rubber bands or pens that I see there, as soon as I notice them. 

Struck by this anomaly, I picked up a camera I keep on a little ledge in front of the TV. I raised my camera to photograph what I thought was a single rubber band on the floor. I was surprised to see there was now a second rubber band right next to the pink rubber band: a larger brown rubber band. It was as if the larger rubber band had been instantly teleported to the spot right in front of me. I had very clearly looked at the pink rubber band, and I am certain that when I first saw it there was only one rubber band on the floor area in front of the TV (the area shown in the photo below). 

A few seconds later I noticed there were now three rubber bands on the floor, right in front of the TV set. There was now a third rubber band about a foot to the left of the first two rubber bands. 

What I saw was like objects being instantly teleported from one spot to another, just as if the rubber bands I keep on the TV ledge were being teleported to the surface of the floor. As I reported in a series of posts labeled "rubber band anomalies," I have seen more than a dozen previous similar anomalies involving rubber bands. But none of the previous incidents seemed as dramatic as what I saw today. 

I speculated earlier that rubber bands may have a symbolic meaning. Being very expandable, rubber bands may symbolize some expansion of the mind that may occur in an afterlife. 

Below we see the rubber bands. What I saw was: (1) first no rubber band noticed on the floor; (2) then a single rubber band on the floor; (3) then a few seconds later two rubber bands on the floor; (3) then a few seconds later three rubber bands on the floor. This all happened in a period of maybe two minutes, during which I was alone in the room, and did not touch any rubber bands. I had not yet opened any window in the room, and there was no fan running, ruling out blowing air as an explanation. The area shown below is about 3 meters from the window, and today is not a windy day where I live. 

A conceivable hypothesis to explain these events is some invisible spirit or power quickly moving small objects around. 

Postscript: On October 5, 2025 there was another similar event. I woke up and noticed no rubber bands on the floor near the TV. About 30 minutes later I noticed a blue rubber band  on the floor, in front of the left edge of the TV, in front of the black leg shown in the photo above.  I had taken a photo the night before, which showed the same blue rubber band a meter away, in the middle of the ledge in front of the TV. How did that rubber band get half a meter lower, and also one meter to the left? I can't explain it. There was no one else in the room; the nearest open window was about 4 or 5 meters away, and the wind on this day was only 5 miles per hour where I live. 

Weird Weekday

I'll skip telling you another "light that seemed to mysteriously turn on by itself" anecdote matching my experience of this morning. But I will mention something very strange that happened this afternoon. I went to the Post Office to drop off a package and buy a book of stamps. As soon as I got back home, I put back my credit card in my wallet, and started searching my pockets for the book of stamps. I could not find the stamps, which I distinctly recall putting in my pocket. I looked all around for the stamps, and could not find them. I scolded myself for being careless, thinking that I must have dropped the stamps on the street.  Then after going to the other side of the first floor I found the missing stamps, lying strangely on the floor, positioned in a way that seemed to exclude any "falling out of the pocket" possibility. I have no explanation for how they got there. It was rather like teleportation had gone on. 

Looking for some possible metaphysical symbolism here, it is easy to find some. The stamps have on them the word "Forever." And we possibly have some "other side" symbolism, perhaps referring to the Other Side of an afterlife. 

This morning I had only one dream: after I went to the other side of an office floor, a US President told me something roughly to the effect of, "When it is Game 6 or Game 7 of the World Series, you have to go home." In life after death symbolism, the phrase "going home" often symbolizes returning to some heavenly home, where the soul may possibly have pre-existed. The reference to Game 6 or Game 7 of the World Series refers to a date of about November 1. But it is unclear whether the date is a date of this year or some other year. 

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. 

Orbs Passing Through Heavy Matter?

Charlton Templeman Speer claims to have witnessed a variety of paranormal phenomena at seances of William Stainton Moses, a 19th-century figure greatly admired for his scholarship and moral character. One thing he claims to have witnessed is something resembling teleportation. He states this:

"The passage of matter through matter was sometimes strikingly demonstrated by the bringing of various articles from other rooms, though the doors were closed and bolted. Photographs, picture-frames, books, and other objects were frequently so brought, both from  rooms on the same floor and from those above. How they came through the closed doors I cannot say, except by some process of de-materialisation, but come they certainly did, apparently none the worse for the process, whatever it might have been."

Besides also describing numerous inexplicable scents and mysterious music, Speer tells us that orbs were seen rising up from the ground and apparently passing through a heavy table.  We read this:

"These lights were of two different kinds— objective and subjective. The former usually resembled small illuminated globes, which shone brightly and steadily, often moved rapidly about the room, and were visible to all the sitters. A curious fact in connection with these lights always struck me, viz., that looking on to the top of the table one could see a light slowly ascending from the floor, and to all appearance passing out through the top of the table — the table itself apparently not affording any obstacle to one’s view of the light. It is a little difficult to explain my meaning exactly, but had the top of the table been composed of plain glass, the effect of the ascending light, as it appealed to one’s organs of vision, would have been pretty much the same as it was, seen through the solid mahogany. Even then, to make the parallel complete, it would be necessary to have a hole in the glass top of the table, through which the light could emerge. The subjective lights were described as being large masses of luminous vapour floating round the room and assuming a variety of shapes. Dr. Speer and myself, being of entirely unmediumistic temperaments, were only able to see the objective lights, but Mr. Stainton Moses, Mrs. Speer, and other occasional sitters frequently saw and described those which were merely subjective. Another curious point in relation to the objective lights was that, however brightly they might shine, they never, unlike an ordinary lamp, threw any radiance around them, or illuminated the smallest portion of the surrounding darkness — when it was dark — in the slightest degree."

Strange Events Shortly After Learning of a Sibling's Death

Many a person reports strange inexplicable events around the time of a loved one's death, such as a clock mysteriously stopping at the time someone died. Prior to this year, I had only one such experience around the time of a loved one's death.  The experience was that within an hour after learning of a sibling's death, I observed an inexplicable shower of leaves. While working a short distance from the edge of a park to a pond, within an hour of learning of a sister's death,  I saw during 60 seconds about 100 to 200 leaves fall from the trees, even though it was only September 24th (long before leaves tend to fall in my area), and even though there was no unusual wind.  Returning four days later to the same spot, and keeping track of how many leaves fell, I saw only one leave fall during three minutes. 

Yesterday evening (April 18) I heard of the unexpected death of a  sister. There followed two very hard-to-explain events. 

The first event involved my Samsung tablet device. It suddenly froze up.  I turned it off, hoping the problem would go away when I turned it back on. But it was then impossible to turn the tablet device back on. I must have pressed the "on" button 30 times, without it turning on. Then finally I was able to turn the device on.  I checked the battery, thinking that maybe I had been low on charge. But I found instead it was still 85% charged.  I can't explain this strange behavior of the device, which I have never seen before. 

The next morning (today, April 19, 2021) something else very strange happened. Shortly after waking I was very surprised to see a 10-inch-long scroll in a particular corner of my apartment, parallel to the left edge of a black bookcase. I opened the scroll (about two inches in width) and found two portraits of my daughters that some artist had made years ago. I was very delighted to discover the portraits, which I do not remember ever seeing before. But hanging unresolved was the question: how did they get in that spot? My wife was as baffled by their appearance in that spot as I was.  Neither of us (the only ones in the apartment that day) had done anything related to the bookcase that might have caused the portraits to appear where I found them. We had both barely touched the bookcase on the previous day. My wife said she last remembered the portraits being in some other place in the apartment, in a drawer on the opposite end of the large black bookcase. 

The position where I found the scrolled-up portraits was very plainly visible from the place on the sofa where I sit most of the day, about three meters away, so I should have noticed them in such a spot on the previous day, but did not. To make things all the more baffling, I took a few photos of my living room around midnight at the end of April 18, and upon examining such photos on April 19 I saw they showed the paper scrolls parallel to the left edge of the black bookcase (where I discovered them on the morning of April 19), in a position where they should have been very visible to me during the evening of April 18, when I sat for hours three meters away from them, but failed to notice them. It is as if near the end of April 18 the scrolls had been inexplicably teleported to the position parallel to the left edge of the black bookcase, where I noticed them very quickly after waking up on April 19. 

The photo below shows the paper scrolls just as I found them on the morning of April 19, and the photo is taken from the spot 3 meters away where I sat through most of the afternoon and evening of April 18. You can see how clearly noticeable such scrolls are from such a spot, from which I never noticed such scrolls on that day. 

See the pdf file here for a discussion of many accounts similar to the account given above, some of which seem to involve objects mysteriously appearing, and some of which seem to involve objects mysteriously showing up in unexpected places.  Such cases have been studied by Mary Rose Barrington of the Society for Psychical Research. 

In the book Advances in Parapsychological Research, page 122, we read the following written by CUNY psychology professor Gertrude R. Schmeidler (who uses PK to mean psychokinesis, although the events described do not seem to be caused by the people witnessing them):

"Many cases of apparent spontaneous PK are reported by persons who say they have had only one or a few such experiences. A clock stops, a picture falls, glasses shatter, a chair starts rocking when no touches it and there is no air current or floor vibration, and the odd event coincides with a crisis that makes it meaningful. Many cases are reported to coincide with death or with a dangerous accident to a loved person at a distant place..."

On the same page we read an example of this. We read an account of three siblings in three separate houses who all heard about 2:00 AM a window shade rolling to the top making a loud noise. The

next morning they found their mother had died. 

Baffling Appearances

Pockys are a tasty brand of snack food consisting of a long, thin coated biscuit.  When I woke up on August 29, I found on my kitchen counter a sealed envelope of Pockys, like you find inside a box of Pockys. No one else was in the apartment. I asked my wife whether she had left this treat for me. She said she hadn't, and that it must have been one of my daughters. I asked one daughter whether she had left the treat for me. She said no, and that it must have been her sister. I asked my other daughter whether she had left the treat for me. She said no, it must have been her sister who did it. So everyone else in the household denied having left the pack of Pockys in the kitchen.  I haven't bought the product in many years.

The next day something equally strange happened. I was sitting at the top of an apartment stairway, tying my shoes, when suddenly I heard a set of keys falling down the stairs, just as if they had fallen from my body. I assumed that they must have been my apartment keys, and that they had somehow fallen out of my pocket. When I walked down the stairs to get the keys, I found a set of keys I had never seen before. They were not my apartment keys, which were still in my pocket. No one else was in the stairway.

Since Pockys sounds like "Pock-keys," we have the "keys" sound in both of these strange cases of unexplained appearances.

Below are the keys that seemed to appear out of nowhere, One of the keys looked very old, and had the word "STAR" at the top.

The only imaginable natural theory I can think of to explain what I observed with these keys is the theory that someone might have previously dropped the keys at the top of the stairs, and that I might have kicked the keys before even seeing them. But there are three reasons why such a theory doesn't work. The first is that anyone dropping a key on the hard concrete of the stairs would have heard a distinct "klink" sound alerting him that his keys had dropped. The second reason is that I would have noticed a set of keys at the top of the stairs when I sat down at the top of the stairs. The third reason is that when I tested various foot movements such as I might naturally make when putting on my shoes at the top of the stairs, after putting the keys at the top of the the stairs, the result never caused the keys to fall down more than one step. But what I saw were the keys falling 8 or 9 steps. I am sure that when I heard the keys falling down the stairs, I had not made the vigorous type of kick someone would have to make to propel the keys all the way down the stairs. My feet weren't even moving when I heard the keys falling.

Baffling Pockys on one night, and baffling keys on the next. Suppose we subtract the "keys" sound from the "Pockys" sound -- we then get a "Pa" sound reminding me of my late father.

Postscript: The "STAR" key was made by Star Key Industries in Brooklyn.  The company is referred to in this link, which suggests the company went out of business. The STAR logo shown on that page is the same as on the STAR key I found. A check of the New York corporate database says the company went out of business in 1998.

If the keys had been house keys dropped by a resident of my apartment house, the key ring would have included a key to the apartment entrance door. But neither of the keys matched my key to the apartment entrance door.  Very strangely, the keys were sticky, and a hair was attached to one of the keys, with the hair sticking to a sticky glue-like material on the key.  I wonder whether there is any connection between that fact and the incidents reported here.

I was surprised that someone in late 2022 expressed interest in seeing another photo of the keys shown above. Here is an additional photo I took on Feb. 1, 2023: