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Is Your Office Haunted?
WormholeFiend writes "You know Halloween is around the corner when websites like Forbes.com releases a story wondering about the supernatural. From the article: 'Maybe the spirits have decided that spooky mansions and creepy battlefields are passé. Maybe they want to cash in on the glamour of corporate life. Maybe they just wanted the sushi.'" Anyone out there have any encounters with a spiritual Milton?
The article didn't shed much light on paranormal experience nor did it even lead me to be much more curious. In my opinion it's mostly goofiness.
However, the article did contain a gem, and delivered as a parting word of wisdom:
Nicely put, and 'nuff said.
Don't look to the mainstream for anything of value about any subject.
They're just in it to put cash in their pockets.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Well I imagine that many offices are "haunted" with the high rate of mental illness in IT and people who just generally make shit up.
With this crazy looking thing: Jack-o-lantern computer
It has a built in motherboard, case fans, dvd burner, internet, wireless keyboard and mouse, the works. Pretty powerful for just being a pumpkin IMO... They even posted the instructions on how to build your own if you are so inclined Heh..
You wouldn't do it right? Because you know you'd be out $1000.
No, I wouldn't do it because I'd have a bunch of pseudo-scientists clambering over me for my delicious bounty.
No, nobody's doing it because it's stupid.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
It's already been done. So if you are the "brilliant scientist" with evidence, just give the the amazing randi" a call and you can be a "brilliant scientist" with a million dollars.
Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.
At my office, some mysterious creature keeps "watering" the floor of the men's restroom. Does that count?
They shouldn't put up just money. With the rising inflation in the US, $1000 dollars may be the equivalent of toilet paper by tomorrow, and less valuable than that a week later.
If they are truly sure, then they should put their genitals on the line. Indeed, such a skeptic could offer to cut off his own penis if he is proven wrong. Even better, he'd have to eat it. Just to be kind, he could be allowed to smear some relish on it first.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Erm, isn't the point of calling ghosts and the like supernatural specifically because they don't comform to the laws of nature (And as such, any science based around it).
"I may be full of crap about this game, and I may be wrong, and that's fine." -Jack Thompson
I guess it would depend on your definiton of the fact that Ghosts exists...I don't think that they've been scientifically proven to exist, as well I am pretty sure more than a grand has gone into trying to do so. ...a haunted stapler ....a copier possessed by the devil himself .....thats just business as usual around here, pal.
Here at MIT, we regularly see ghostly figures walking around in distress at 4 in the morning. We call them grad students.
Having worked for many years in London, I have been in more than one haunted office. The most recent was an international bank that built their plush new London offices over what turned out to be an important Roman site (discovered when they dug to create the foundations). Lots of strange things happened in the basement server rooms, ops reporting that they had seen figures even though they were there alone during the night, peoples voices and such like.
but it is filled with dispirited souls
$1000 is a pittance compared to the fame you'll achieve for even being connected to scientific proof of ghosts. Obviously people would put up $1000, and for more, if only to make much more money off the book deal and talk show appearances. I'm just James Randi would be honestly happy for the JREF to part with their million to be a part of something so momentous and significant to our understanding of the world.
English is easier said than done.
Hmmm..... zombies... sinister whispers... The Boss That Wouldn't Die...
Seems there's a chance...
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
Here's a better idea: If you can repeatably show "evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event", James Randi will pay you one... MILLION dollars.
If you're willing to put a time limit on it, I will gladly enter into a $1000 wager with you on whether or not ghosts or other similar phenomena will be proven to be real in that time frame.
Bullshit. I don't need to put up a measly thousand when James Randi's foundation has already put up a million dollars for scientific proof of the supernatural. No one to date has claimed the prize. Not even in the 41 years that it has existed.
Now thats absolute crap...I know several people who aren't religious but still believe that there is residual energy left from a person. Whether you want to call that energy a persons soul is another matter entirely, but a blanket statement like that leaves no wonder that you post AC.
AFAIK, my installation of OOo is just fine, but all you MS lovers out there using Office XP - you better watch out. It's been statistically proven that BSODs occur at a higher frequency on Halloween...
Tell you what: I'll bet you $1000 you can't scientifically prove they exist within, say, a year.
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl
Why not drop the time frame and spend the money, since no one, even with an infinite amount of time and resources can prove something that doesn't exist. It would be worth restricting 'super natural' or people will start pointing to any unsolved scientific fact , like the two slit experiment, as being 'super natural'.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I also know several people who are not religious and they believe in Santa Claus. Of course, all of them are under six years of age, so we might want to forgive their irrational ignorance this one time.
Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.
This doesn't have much to do with the truly paranormal, but it does have to do with office Halloween tricks that go severely wrong.
At a firm I once worked at we had a jokestress named Maria. She was pretty good natured, and every Halloween she's pull some sort of a prank. Usually they were quite benign, such as a plastic skull in the coffee container, or some such.
However, one Halloween she decided to go a bit further than usual. She thought it would be entertaining to dress the photocopier up as a Hawaiian skeleton (I'm not sure why). So she bought much white paper, and some flower necklaces, and stuff like that. She dressed the photocopier up, and some people were amused by it.
Just before lunch a slight problem arose. Some of the flowers had gotten sucked into the machine through the paper intake. Apparently some of the flowers jammed something inside, and things started t really go wrong.
Jim, who was one of the systems administrators able to fix copier problems, thought he could get it unjammed. So he opened the side panel of the machine to work on it, but apparently forgot to turn the power off. The paper feed mechanism somehow caught onto his tie, and started pulling him in.
Luckily somebody was around kick out the power cord, but not after the machine was even more broken, and the toner tank ruptured. Jim was covered in that awful powder, and he ended up tracking it all over the office on his way out. Maria was swiftly dismissed.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Shameless plug... if you're under the impression that your neighborhood is weird or that your house creaks only on satanic holidays, check out this map of haunted places to double-check that you've chosen the right place to live.
Happy halloween...
Greg
Loopsh of fury.
Several times a day my anus makes a scary sound and an ill wind bursts forth and emanates a foul odor. It's got to be evil spirits!
Strangely, consuming good spirits, like Jack Daniels, makes it even worse!
Filled to the brim with zombies I say! Zombies at the desks! Zombies on the desks! And no brains to be found! Thats why I work in the warehouse.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
when I hear 90% of radio ads saying stuff like "COME NOW FOR PHANTASMAGORIC SAVINGS!!!" or "GET YOUR CAR NOW WITH A GHOSTLY LOW PRICE" and other idiotic uses of "scary" words.
That would be the case, yes. But it's actually defined by the current body of scientific knowledge. Fire was magic at one point ; )
I'm a little bit surprised that no one has mentioned Amazon.com yet -- but my understanding is that their headquarters is haunted by a number of spectres. For those who are unfamiliar with the building it's a remodeled hospital that was built back in the '30s. The most common 'sighting' sounds a lot like a "who farted" kind of joke. One of the elevators, apparently, will fill with an unbearable stench -- some riders have been known to nearly vomit when they smell it -- while others are unable to smell it at all. Before amazon moved in the building's owners had recieved so many complaints about the smell in this elevator that they hired teams of investigators to find the source of the contamination, tracing back the ventilation shafts, and so on.... No cause has been found and the reports continue.
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
James Randi has offered one million dollars to anyone who can prove the existence of anything supernatural or paranormal. No one has claimed the prize, and I say no one will. There may be things we don't understand the nature of yet, but there is no such thing as supernatural or paranormal.
How ya like dat?
Hrm, something smells fishy about the Randi foundation... from the linked site:
No one has ever taken the formal test, as one must first pass the preliminary test.
Apparently they can arbitrarily set rules and conditions for the preliminary test which most people refuse for some reason. Also, it is worth noting that should the Randi foundation ever actually have to pay the million, they would cease to exist. Just a couple of points to consider...
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
If you really think ghosts and all are fake, then how about this: put up, say $1000 of your own money to the first person to scientifically prove they exist. You wouldn't do it right? Because you know you'd be out $1000.
James Randy aka "The Amazing Randy" (a retired stage magician) has put up 1000x that -- a cool 1 million to the first person that can demonstrate any of these paranormal claims. If someone could get a ghost to strut around for the test, I'm sure they could pick up a bit of spare change.
Being psychotic means you are either hallucinating (usually visually but sometimes auditorially and olfactorily) or experiencing delusions, or both. A psychotic mind like this may tailor hallucinations to the storyline of delusion. It does not take a New Orleans's flood of serotonin to start believing you are among ghosts or other supernatural things, or even that you are one of those ghosts; and when you start seeing things, no matter how smart you are to realize this is impossible, it's time to call the ghostbusters because that is what you believe you're experiencing. Even after the episode ends and the flying saucers are gone, the memory of the episode holds it to be as vivid as you thought while experiencing it.
Wrapping up, all's I'm sayin' is that whereas the belief in the supernatural is something is associated with less intelligence and seeing ghosts in this particular instance is possible if you have one of these diseases, and almost 20% of the population does (many of whom don't comply with being medicated), it is resolved that people who report this stuff are either just goofing or they were nuts. OTOH, if you're alone and you don't know you're crazy, from an existential perspective you might as well write off the ghosts as being ghosts. There's a little Satre for you.
Its the spectre of open source.
All the powers of unix are pressed into struggle to exorcise this spectre: GNU and BSD; Apple and Linux; hackers and crackers; script kiddies and my grandmother who can't even use an aol client and wishes she could have her old typewriter back.
Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as open source by its opponents in Richmond?
It is high time that open source advocates openly publish their views and their aims and meet this nursery tale of open source with a party manifesto.
. . .
Brrr . . . spooky . . . .
Happy Halloween!
I'm laughing at clouds.
You know you can turn that "Clippy" guy off right?
I have to disagree. A simpleton does not have to be religious.
I can't imagine a much worse fate then having to hang out at work forever after I die.
I looked at the title of this story and thought to myself: Who would have submitted something this stupid?
I glanced down and low and behold: Zonk.
..in a train station that was a waypoint for moving the dead in the American Civil War, as well as being the site of a new bride's suicide. At night. Graveyard shift. Still creeps me out.
It keeps sticking the staff in the ass and seems to show up bent out of shape on your chair.
Somebody told me it came from the computers and calls itself Clippy.
No, no one's doing it because we'd then have a big debate over whether they evolved or were intelligently designed.
An anti Open Source mouthpiece for the Micros~1 ogranization is all.
For some reason my office is haunted on pay day. Everyone disappears and the pay cheque net value has a bunch of ghostly stuff in it reducing it's value. The ghost told me tax freedom day was June 29th this year but expecting it to be extended towards October 30th after the liberals get a majority government in February.
Or maybe that was my breath talking, at $13mmdf at the NYMEX hub the heat will be low in the office this winter.
when i moved into my new house i thought it was haunted >. whenever i go upstairs and turn in a 90 degree angle into the bed room, i can see in the corner of my eyes a shadow going up the stairs. it's so freaky and i can see it all the time. after a while nothing happend and i think it is just a optical illusion than a ghost because it only happens at the stair case when i turn a certain way. but the experience was frightening the first time. that was my one and only (fortunately) "ghost" encounter. i laughed at the last part of the article, so many people hate M$ lol...
If you really think ghosts and all are fake, then how about this: put up, say $1000 of your own money to the first person to scientifically prove they exist. You wouldn't do it right? Because you know you'd be out $1000.
I think that ghosts exist outside the realm of science. I personally have seen a ghost on one occasion and some other form of spirit (not including alcohol) on another. On several other occasions I have seen what I believe to be a ghost but I am not sure. I place them in a category of events that include UFO sightings and religious apparitions (of, say the Virgin Mary).
My own theory is that there is some occult boundary that exists between the unconscious aspects of ourselves and the manifest world that science studies. In this model, UFO's,* ghosts, etc. exist in this aspect of us and are a part of the human condition.
* There are structural similarities in stories of lights seen in the sky and related abductions even if material aspects of the descriptions vary with the ages. These have lead me to believe that the storylines are universal while the descriptions of the beings behind them exist only in our minds.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
It was when I worked one summer at Bucsh Gardens in Tampa. I looked for the ghost and couldn't find it and asked alot of employees about it.
Rumor has it that Crown Colony house is haunted with a little girl who choked on some chicken a few decades ago on the third floor. She can be seen towards halloween waving to guests and is occionsally reported by employees at other times of the year.
I asked about this from people who worked at the Crown Colony house and results were mixed. More likely rumors but one security supervisor who refuses to go in at night said he hired an African Vodooist as a security guard. He can hear hear spirits and said heard the cries of a girl. Also plates have moved and the beer fountains occasionally go off on their own with no explanation.
The other is an appiration of a someone lieing down ona bench near the old brewery at the hospitality house. Turns out a guy drank a large amount of beer and died with a heartattack on the bench.
I don't know about these rumors but they are interesting to say the least. I do not know if its psychological but I do get a very errie feeling of uncomfort when I enter the colony house on the top floors.
http://saveie6.com/
When I read the title I just thought: "No I don't use MS Office"
There's no need to sue anybody if you have a haunted house. In fact, I'd love to buy a house that was actually haunted. That way I could win the million dollar prize.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
One time, I was alone in my office and I smelled a fart that wasn't mine.
Our office is in a old train station / depot..
I have been working the night shift on and off for the past four years here and most of the time it just seems like a empty building.. But every once in a while you can look out the window of the computer room in to the hallway and see a shadow pass and no one here out there or even in the building..
I have walked down the hallway and had cold chills run up my back. The wost spot is when your in the bathroom and you can here doors out in the hallway open in shut and no one is here except for me and the other operator that has to stay in the computer room. (manned 24/7)
The worst account I can remember is from a exworker named Sheneika, she left the computer room and went to the bathroom,, about 3 minuets later she came running in to the computer room cussing the other worker for banging the hell out the the bathroom door.. Ted said he didnt do it ad didnt leave the room.
So they start checking the sercurity cameras. ( I work in a lottery office)
So they look at the cameras and watch Sheneika walk down to the bathroom and about 3 minuets later she comes tearing out of the bathroom running full steam back in to the computer room.. Ted never heard any noise but she said it was like some one kicking in the door.
This place will give you the creeps.
This Sig for rent.
(Bob is a analyst at a security operations center for an ISP. He sent me this email and I decided I'd pass it on to you guys for review. Is this even possible? I'm not sure, but it sure did freak Bob out. He can't bring himself to go back to the SOC anymore, and he's looking for telecommuting jobs on Monster. --Alice)
Alice,
I know you're gonna think I'm crazy but you're the only one I can think who would possibly listen to what I'm about to say without immediately dismissing it. Please, read my whole account of what happened to me tonight before writing me off.
I went into work last night for the graveyard shift. Yeah, graveyard shift on Halloween, haha. We'd just ramped up to 24/7 ops the previous week so this was going to be my first night alone in the SOC. I was pretty excited at first, since I wouldn't have any of these other knuckleheads in my hair while I was doing some hard core analysis, you know? I logged into my station, started some queries for deltas in the previous 24, and went to get some coffee, since it was going to be a long night.
Little did I know...
After returning to the SOC with my joe, Carol gave me the briefing on the days events (in a nutshell, nothing - apparently all the s'kiddies were gearing up for Trick or Treating and not harassing us). She did mention something that didn't show up in any of the reports though - a general "weirdness" to the traffic in the DMZ. She couldn't really qualify it, but she said she though something kind of odd was going on. Okay Carol, I'll keep my eyes open (as I roll them back into my head). She punched out and I was all alone.
Or was I?
I threw some tunes on WinAmp and started to rock out while pouring over the output of my earlier queries. My attempts at scripting up some rudimentary anomaly detection in our aggregation console appeared to be woefully inadequate or simply functioning properly with a dearth of anomalies when I saw it.
A new host in the DMZ.
A host which had apparently come up at midnight local, October 31st. Who the hell stands up a box in the DMZ at *midnight* on a Saturday night? It had to be the mouth-breathers in development relying on the assumption that no one would be monitoring the network over the weekend. Heh, nice try chumps, but you've just tweaked the wrong BOFH. To cover my bases, I looked up the latest network diagrams for the DMZ. Just as I thought, nothing authorized or even submitted regarding a new box in the DMZ. Finally, after months of slaving away over reports I was going to get to demand someone take a box down. I could feel the power coursing through my fingertips as I began to compose the flame to end all flames.
"Dear clownboats,"
I hesitated. What would they come back with? I needed more ammunition to stave off a possible counteroffensive. I decide to scan the box, to see how much risk these "developers" were actually exposing my DMZ to. A quick nmap returned results the likes of which I had not seen since my days at that dot bomb in Sunnyvale.
"Remote operating system guess: Linux 2.0.35-37"
W
T
F
Two-oh? Was this some sort of prank? These guys are dullards to be sure, but no one is this stupid. It's gotta be some sort of security through ob-fu or something. I had to know. Telnetting quickly confirmed my worst fears.
Trying 10.31.10.31...
Connected to 10.31.10.31.
Escape character is '^]'.
Red Hat Linux release 5.2 (Apollo)
Kernel 2.0.36 on an i486
login:
I stared, dumfounded, at the prompt's ever-blinking cursor. I tried to wrap my head around what I was seeing. Red Hat FIVE DOT FSKING TWO? Even if this was a honeypot, this was ridiculous. What were they trying to do, find out which kiddie has the oldest sploits?
I did what any sane security professional would do in my situation.
I typed "root".
The box retorted with "Password:"
I reiterated, "root".
[root@zion root]#
A chill crept out of my keyboard and up my spine as I realized that
My company's HQ is an old VA's hospital. I don't work in that particular building, but I've heard the 'older' side of the building haunted. The building has a 'main' portion and a newer front that was built onto in part to hold the older part up and give it structural re-enforcement.
... the crazy people. Doors are apparently thicker than all the other floors. I've never spent enough time in the building to investigate that however.
One of the floors was apparently for
Perhaps I should go visit there... tonight... at 2am... dun dun dunnnn
If you can't accept the Randi foundation as fair and unbiased in testing the paranormal, what alternatives do you think are better?
.... proving that 99.9% of the claims of having ESP, paranormal "powers" and so forth are fraudulent. If they were only able to find one real psychic after all these years, that wouldn't really change much for them, other than Randi having to admit that he finally found 1 isolated instance of someone having a power he never before believed really existed. That would probably make them look MORE legitimate, as it would heighten everyone's interest in finding out who is a scam and who isn't.
It seems to me this is a group which has given more thought than anyone else to applying science and logic to the whole thing. I don't think they're necessarily less motivated to hand over their prize money than anyone else would be who offered something like that up? I mean, no - nobody probably wants to give away a million bucks that's earning them a tidy sum of interest in a bank account someplace. But the claim that the Randi foundation would just "go away" if they had to give away the prize seems blatantly false. They'd simply be able to continue doing what they've done
The building where I work is located on a site that is known as Gallows Hill. Hangings used to take place there many, many years ago. There have been reports from cleaners stating that whilst cleaning the building at night when the offices are mainly empty; a cleaner has had her feather duster removed form her hand by an unseen force and she has been repeatedly beaten round the face with it. Another report was from a cleaner who whilst cleaning the toilets was confronted by a man with a bloodied face - she ran screaming from the wash room (apparently) and when her colleagues investigated there was nobody there. Neither of the cleaners returned, they both quit. The office is now a complete mess.
My workplace is haunted by the evil spirit of my alive boss.
In this model, UFO's,* ghosts, etc. exist in this aspect of us and are a part of the human condition.
Its called imagination...
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
Click here or here.
I've had a couple of 'spooky' occurances at my previous job. I was often the last one to leave, so it was up to me to turn out all the lights and lock up. There was a spot in the hallway where if I came around the corner at the right speed, I'd see the outline of a human figure for a brief moment. The weird thing was, I could almost recognize the form. Somehow I recognized it as a coworker that had left the company long before that! I hadn't been in touch with him for over a year. Was he coming back to tell me something? Well, at least he was smiling, just as I always remembered him.
... same thing, doing my rounds, turning out the lights. Then I noticed the building across the street. There was a figure in the window that was standing perfectly still. I could barely see it, but I could definitely see its eyes. It freaked me out. This was in downtown Portland. This is an area of town full of 'historic' buildings, including the one I was working in. Was some spectre looming around? Well, it was easy to believe that considering it was night time and nobody else was about. Very creepy.
Another night
Welp, now for the anti-climactic bit. Niether were ghosts. The outline of a figure I saw? Trick of the eye. That corner had some boxes and loose stuff piled up. Looking straight on at the pile, it didn't look anything remotely like my coworker. I think what happened was a trick of my peripheral vision. As most of you know, the outer areas of human eyes are keen on detecting motion more than they are with recognizing images. Can't claim to be an expert on the topic, but I think the human brain is constantly looking to recongize patterns, and when it finds one that seems to be relevent, it fills in the blanks. Hence, I saw my coworker. If anybody's curious, he's alive and well.
I suppose I could go into a little more detail about my theory here. There's a technique called 'EVP'. It's used to record the voices of ghosts. If you ever get bored one night, do a search for EVP and find some samples. It isn't definitive proof of the existance of ghosts, but at the very least it's a fun way to kill an evening. (usually there are stories attached to these sounds...) I visited a site once that had a number of EVP samples. Unfortunately, ghost speech isn't terribly easy to make out. Though it does sound human, it's barely more than garbled garbage. What they did was they presented a sound and said "first you listen to it and then try to work out what it's saying, then click on this link to see suggestions of what people think they've heard." The reason they do this is to prevent you from being 'suggested' into believing what you're hearing. After listening to a bit, I worked out why. The sound file downloaded and looped over and over again. I couldn't make it out. Then I read the first suggestion. Suddenly, I was hearing it! Neat! Then I read the second suggestion. And.. wait.. now I'm hearing that one. They were two very different sentences. As a matter of fact, I thought I could hear a different inflection in the words used by the 'ghost' that time around! It was the same sound looping over and over again, but now it was sounding different. Okay, I took the scenic route to this point, but I think what I was hearing was not the sound directly, but my perception of the sound. My brain thought it heard a particular sentence, so that's exactly what made it into my conscience mind. I think the sight of my coworker was a similar phenomenon.
And the figure across the street? Somebody with an odd sense of humor. It's a cardboard cutout. For whatever reason, they put it up against the window on the 3rd story of the building. The light was dim enough that it was very tough to make out, but the next day I was able to see it quite clearly. I mentioned seeing his eyes. It felt like they were following me almost. Again, trick of the eye.
I don't know what I think about ghosts. I can't say I firmly believe they exist, I can't say they don'
"Derp de derp."
There's no such thing as the supernatural. Everything that exists, or is possible, is also as natural as everything else.
A programmer I used to work with told me about a weird experience he had while working for an old bank in a small town in southern Oregon. One evening he was working late, when he noticed the sound of someone typing on a typewriter. It was muffled as if coming from in another room, and kind of slow, like someone who doesn't type very well and uses one finger.
After a while he got up for a stretch, and when he walked around the office he noticed everybody else had gone home. When he went back to his desk he heard the typing again, and realized that was coming from behind a door that he had never seen opened. He went over to the door and opened it, and found that it was a closet containing some boxes of files. On top of the pile of boxes sat an old black manual typewriter.
The frustrating thing is that there was no paper in the typewriter, and instead of rolling a piece of paper into it he just shut the door and went home. He never mentioned this to anybody at the bank because he was afraid they would think he was weird. I would love to have been there and put in a piece of paper to see what it would say. On the other hand I might have been to freaked to stick around.
My computer is full of Gremlins. Does that count?
It's impossible to show that something supernatural exists because of this. Once it's proven it's not supernatural anymore.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Full article
A woman I know used to do a lot of security jobs. When she was working for the City of Portland there were lots of rumors that the courthouse was haunted. The upper floors were spooky at night, and nobody particularly liked working the late shift there. One night one of their security guards was making his rounds when he saw someone in a sort of hooded robe standing at the far end of a hallway, apparently messing with a door as if trying to unlock it. The guard said something to challenge the person, when the figure suddenly rushed down the hall at him as if flying. He braced himself to get tackled, but whatever it was either went by him or through him, and when he turned to give chase there was nobody there. No sounds of fleeing footsteps, no doors opening and closing, nothing.
The other thing is that this guy was a real veteran security guard who had worked there for many years, very level-headed and dependable. But that night he left the building and went home without even clocking out, then called in to say that he was quitting and never going back. He wouldn't even report to the building during the daytime to turn in his keys and other stuff. His supervisor had to go to his house and pick them up.
Residual energy? The body contains quite a few joules, but I doubt that's what you had in mind.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
---
There's a spider on your shoulder
that's no spider, you are being touched by His Noodly Appendage.
Many of the buildings at Hickam AFB in Honolulu still have the spalling from the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The PACAF NOSC is (was) in one of these buildings. I was told while I was there that in the room the NOSC occupied 6 men lost their lives during the attack. Allegedly there were sightings after hours of these men.
Even if it isn't spooky it's certainly both sobering and historic.
-- Cerebus
Of course they want corporate life. They're discorporate now and they don't like it.
(Hint: look up the definitions of "corporate".)
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
My former office was an old Victorian house on a bluff overlooking the waterfront. It was originally built by the mayor of my town, and for twenty years it was the best restaurant in town. The woman who owned my company bought the building, and she had me oversee the extensive renovations to make it into an office. Great work if you can get it. I loved this building. I even got to pick out my own office (naturally, I got a water view - not bad for being the IT geek).
But everyone in town "knew" the house was haunted. I talked to several people who used to work there when it was a restaurant, and one of my friends actually lived in the upstairs part for several months. He told me that one night, he heard a loud crash from the kitchen area downstairs. He started to go down the stairs to investigate, and heard a series of identical smashing noises. When he got to the kitchen, a box of fluorescent bulbs had been opened and smashed all over the place. He said he sometimes heard strange noises and often felt uncomfortable there.
A former waitress told me that several times, she would set down a tray of dishes in one place, turn around, and then when she turned back it would be moved. The former owners told me all kinds of similar ghost stories. Every Halloween the local paper mentions the building as being the most haunted place in town.
One day, a van full of soldiers on leave from a nearby base pulled up. Apparently, they'd seen my office on some TV show about haunted houses, and had come to check it out. I gave 'em the full tour. One woman, as soon as she set foot upstairs, turned around and went outside to wait in the van. Freaked her out, I guess.
Now, geek that I am, I was always the last person to leave the building at night. And very often, I stayed until the wee hours, all alone in the building. And not a damn thing ever happened. No weird sounds, no smashing bulbs, absolutely nothing.
Although I had to admit... I didn't mind going into the scary old basement when I was alone at night, but going upstairs at night used to freak me out something fierce. Dunno why, it was beautiful and well-lit, but damn, it was just creepy. Daytime wasn't so bad, but at night - forget it.
One night, someone forgot to close a back door properly, and the alarm went off late at night. I showed up to deal with the cops. Since a door was open, they insisted on checking out the building. The cop knew the reputation of the building and was a little spooked himself. When we got upstairs he really got nervous - he told me that he just didn't like it up there. He couldn't believe that I'd work in such a spooky place late at night by myself. I'm like, you're a COP. Which of our jobs is more dangerous?
I like to think that we did such a good job restoring the house that the ghosts took off. Or maybe I scared the ghosts off. Who knows. I'm still a little disappointed, though, that nothing ever happened while I was there. I figured if there were strange things going on all the time, I'd set up a bunch of webcams and such... but nope.
Oh yeah, later, I found out that one of the previous owners had passed away in one of the upstairs bedrooms. On the other hand, the first owner died when he fell down the basement steps, and the basement, aside from just being a spooky old basement and crawling with spiders as big as your hand, wasn't nearly as ooky as the upstairs. So go figure.
Why, yes, it is... by my boss.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Yes, by specters of intelligence dead and gone, by the skulking shades of competence from days past, by the ghosts of genius too faded and faint to make themselves heard any more...
I figure by 2030 or so my 6-digit UID will be something to brag about.
Maybe whatchoo need is an OfficePoltergeist....
Bob Park had this to say:
"Here's the picture: a few thousand years before it was known that blood circulates or germs cause disease, doctors who had never dissected a frog, claimed that yin and yang could be balanced by inserting needles into the right points, among the hundreds of points strung along 12 meridians....Scientists suggest the needles stimulate release of endorphins. Jalapeno peppers do the same thing. So it wouldn't matter where you stick the needles would it? Then who needs an acupuncturist?"
He has a point. Clinical trials suggest that acupuncture controls pain. However, acupuncture claims to work by controlling the balance of yin and yang. This is the paranormal part. You have to control for the endorpine release as well as the placebo and regressive effect. Since practitioners claim yin and yang are beyond the measurement of science, then it is by definition, paranormal.
from http://skepdic.com/acupunc.html
"The NCAHF issued a position paper on acupuncture that asserts, "Research during the past twenty years has failed to demonstrate that acupuncture is effective against any disease" and that "the perceived effects of acupuncture are probably due to a combination of expectation, suggestion, counter-irritation, operant conditioning, and other psychological mechanisms." In short, most of the perceived beneficial effects of acupuncture are probably due to mood change, the placebo effect, and the regressive fallacy. Just because the pain went away after the acupuncture doesn't mean the treatment was the cause. Much chronic pain comes and goes. An alternative treatment such as acupuncture is sought only when the pain is near its most severe level. Natural regression will lead to the pain becoming less once it has reached its maximum level of severity. Also, much of the support for acupuncture is anecdotal in the form of testimonial evidence from satisfied customers. Unfortunately, for every anecdote of someone whose pain was relieved by acupuncture there may well be another anecdote of someone whose pain was not relieved by acupuncture But nobody is keeping track of the failures (confirmation bias)."
Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.
There's a local nursing home which is supposedly haunted. I've never been there, but know someone that works there, and it positively creeps him out.
It's an older building, one of the first hospitals in the area. It's now a nursing home (as already stated). It's got three wings: the main wing, south wing, and west wing, forming an L shape. The whole building (being a nursing home) has had the doors and windows wired to detect escapees.
The west wing is permanantly closed off. It's been like this for about 10 years. According to my friend Brandon, the employees won't even go near the wing's entrance at night. He (and another friend who used to work there) said there'd be weird shit that would go on randomly at night: door alarms would go off, lights would mysteriously get turned on, and various other odd stuff like that. Typical "haunted" stuff.
Supposedly the west wing used to be used to house crazy people, back before such things took more of a "subdued" treatment approach.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
When I was attending Junior High a long time ago, our social science teacher would tell us stories about how the school was haunted by a ghost that had followed him from a previous job. He went on to say how the ghost was very mischevious and that he would make doors fly open and objects fly. We all laughed and thought his stories were amusing, but we never thought they were real.
Until one day... during my science class, a vial which was located on an upper shelf inexplicably *levitated* itself to the middle of the classroom in such slow motion that everyone's attention was immediately diverted to this strange phenomenon. Without warning, the vial then flung itself into the chalkboard at the front of the classroom at an extremely high speed, shattering itself.
That poor science teacher never came back after that. Although I don't believe in ghosts at all, even to this day, I can't explain how in the world something like that could happen, or how something like that could be engineered.
Back when I was in my 20's, one of my research jobs was at Colo. States Anatomy Dept. Next to my lab was the human lab. At the time, the cadavers were stored in 2 portable cadaver coolers that had been used for body transportation from Viet Nam. That is each cooler had had some odd 20K bodies come through it (including several guys that I grew up with).
Not a big deal, but behind back, when I was at my desk, was an HPLC that would moving slowly, but under high pressure, you discover that it creaks. Needless to say, at 4 am, weird thoughts would go through.
Besides, you never know what happened at places that you work at. There is a soupersalid northeast of me, that used to be a Chuck E. Cheese's. where nathan dunlap worked. Likewise, kids are back in the Columbine school.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Forbes has the offices one floor below us. Sheesh, I guess that's what I get for stopping by on a Sunday.
... okay, I read that as "delicious booty"
...Bad Graphics Ghost?
It would be more accurate to say that the existence of the Randi challenge means that there aren't any people who can reproduce a provably paranormal phenomenon on demand. Not that there are no "ghosts" for example, ghosts are for an example notorious for their habits of only showing up when and where they choose and only revealing themselves to people who aren't likely to be believed. There's nothing about the Randi challenge that disproves that your uncle Edwin's best friends third cousin didn't really have a premonition that he shouldn't go to work the day the train derailed and killed everyone on riding it that day. All it suggests is that this person can't reliably replicate this on demand. This sort of thing is actually very damning evidence against the Silvia Browne and John Edwards of the world, but says next to nothing about the reality of one time or non-reliable paranormal events. I'm not even suggesting that those non-reliable events aren't the result of selective thinking, or selective memory or that they really are paranormal in some way. However that there are several prizes to be won with a repeating, provable paranormal power that haven't been claimed isn't proof that no one has ever seen a ghost. Or more accurately that ghosts don't exist.
paying the top marginal rate of tax, plus withholding?
;)
Ugh, no thanks.
We have a regular instance of paranormal activty. Often in the morning, I'll start a pot of coffee and come back to get a cup later. Sometimes, when I come back, all the coffee is gone leaving just an empty pot and a faint chill in the air. The scary part is that I ask around: nobody took the last cup! Spooky indeed.
Good ghost story:
:).
I work at Illinois State University and used to work in Williams Hall, which supposedly is haunted by the first librarian @ ISU - Angie Milner. It makes for a pretty creepy building to work in anyway, but I was doing a hardware upgrade one night and ended up @ the building at midnight. As I was leaving, I rounded a corner to go to the door of the parking lot and caught something in the corner of my eye...specifically a figure standing in a doorway...and I ran out of the building at the point
--pete
You, sir, are an idiot.
This strange light was only know about by a few hunters in the area until around my high-school years. Then a small group of my friends and I found out and would visit the place a few times each year. The word spread and it became a bit of an attraction and even became part of an initiation ceremony for a fraternity at a nearby college. Several of our parents even saw it. This was all in the 90's. Since then the area has been logged and the road has been blocked off.
I personally saw the light several times. And I know about 2-dozen more that have seen it...kids, youths, adults, professionals, a youth pastor, etc. I am a mechanical engineer so I have studied physics and thermodynamics and have a pretty good grasp on the physical phenomena that might have caused this. I have also studies various "swamp light" phenomena. But I cannot find a plausible explanation for what I saw. I'm not saying that the light was supernatural but I am saying that it is very difficult to explain. For example, I have seen:
Seeing the light was one of the coolest experiences of my life. I hate that the area was destroyed by logging. Even on nights when we didn't see the light we could still scare the crap out of each other just because of the surroundings.
Simple people talk of people, better people talk of events, great people talk of ideas.
Here in my lab, we regularly see ghosts on our PCs, especially after they are plagued with spyware, worms and virus. Perhaps the PCs got too sick and died? Oh, by the way, ghosts are named "Norton".
w00t
I remember one of our windows servers used to reboot by itself for no apparant reason. When we went to check it out the rack was locked! Weird!
Task Mangler
Restrooms are spooky, spooky places. Last week one morning I had just walked into the restroom when I overheard a guy in the stall whose orifice was definitely haunted.
Needless to say, I fled -- else I would have been swiftly overcome by the evil lurking in that cursed place!
No, nobody's doing it because then we couldn't argure on Slashdot about why nobody's doing it.
Tell you what, I will give you $1 million dollars if you prove evolution is real. Whoa, slow down. Here is your one celled organism, you have 2 weeks to "evolve" a monkey. What? You need more time?
Point is - if I get to set the test I can always prove you wrong...always. If you really look at the sub-amazing Randi's tests they all are shell games that the house wins. It is no big deal if I offer a million dollars if I know I will win from the get go.
Sera
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
Crookes was torn between science and his own need to believe in an afterlife. The evaluation of Home happened after the death of Crookes beloved younger brother which might have affected Crookes devotion to science in the face of spiritualism.
It should not be forgotten that this was a time where many people were looking to science to prove that the afterlife existed. The scientist who could prove such a thing would stand to gain a lot, especially in his own time.
Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.
that orlando restaurant the article mentions is actually one of my favorite sushi spots, and i can vouch that it is quite good! reasonably priced, too, which probably explains the supernatural appearances.
>>>> "Why are there signs that tell you how to get to psychic conventions"
...
There are no signs! Tell me, what did you see
Its called imagination...
Why would the structure of a narrative merely limited to one's personal imagination remain relatively universal across culture and time?
Note I am talking about the structure of the narrative. The descriptions of the creatures involved, and specific details are filled in with culturally consistant ideas. So I don't doubt that there is a personal component to it, but there must be something transpersonal in some way, shape, or form.
I think that Carl Jung would have argued that some of these themes are common to us because of some inherent wiring in our brain (he writes at length about commonalities in the a priori self). My own perspective is that this limited perspective that Jung provides, while more defensible, strikes me as incomplete.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
You know, I would consider it far worse if a person who believes that you will go to hell if you don't believe _doesn't_ approach you about converting. It would be like standing by and watching people jump off a cliff without saying anything. That would be inexcusable. Next time somebody tries to convert you, thank them kindly at the very least.
British Telecom Labs at Martlesham Heath are Haunted, well maybe. One of the engineers doing an all nighter reported seeing a group of airmen walking down the corridor, apart from the fact that airmen were a pretty rare occurence in the labs the thing that most freaked him out was that their legs dissapeared into the ground from the mid-thigh down.
We did some research. Martlesham Heath was a former WWII airbase. The building where the ghostly apparition was seen was the site aircrew mess - only, and here is the rub, the current building's floor level was 1 meter higher than the old building so the ghosts were still walking around on the old floor level.
Needless to say I never did overtime and my boss never asked.
Gee it would be cool if you were a Microsoft-paid Astroturfer.
Why not, at least it would explain a lot what's been happening in our company:
...come to think of it, even the word deadline starts to make sense now...
The whole sales department is acting like a bunch of zombies. All the coders are propably direct descendants of Count Drakul - at least they react to UV-light similarly. The customer support group must be all ghosts, as we all know they must exist (as we've heard them), but nobody's ever seen them - or been able to take a photo of them. And we do hear Strange Noises from The Office Upstairs during late (last)night rush to catch up before next mornings deadline...
If all else fails, pull the plug and get out...
The Life is out there...
You know, I would consider it far worse if a person who believes that you will go to hell if you don't believe _doesn't_ approach you about converting. It would be like standing by and watching people jump off a cliff without saying anything. That would be inexcusable. Next time somebody tries to convert you, thank them kindly at the very least.
Ah, but what happens to those people who are *never* approached about converting and have never heard of the religion in quesiton or had the option of converting? The answer I often get from reglious types is that those people will not go to hell, because they weren't aware of the option to convert. Now, here's the kicker. If I were such an unaware person, I'd not be going to hell. But, by approaching me about converting, you may have now doomed me to hell. You don't get a thank you for that! You just committed me to hell, mother fucker!
Hmm, I have this argument with my friends quite often.
Friend: "I don't really believe in God so I'm not really religious"
Me: "You do essentially believe in the same thing though don't you so you may as well be religious"
"No, I just think there's something else out there and I mean when we die where does all the energy go - there must be something"
"It would be nice if there was 'something' after death but you have to admit it's just wishful thinking on your part and you may as well substitute God for 'something' just there."
"No man, it's no 'God', just something - you know energy can't be destroyed so where does it go ? It must go somewhere, perhaps change into something else"
"Your energy goes to feed the worms and nourish the soil, that's it. Admit you are religious"
"No, Im not I just believe in, you know something else when you die. It can't all just end"
"That's how religions start, admit - go on. Your are religious aren't you. Go on, say it, say it"
"No, I'm not man. You just don't get it."
ETC, normally they end up getting quite annoyed.
Now thats absolute crap...I know several people who aren't religious but still believe that there is residual energy left from a person.
You're correct. Instead of "religious simpleton," he should have written "fucking moron."
MS Windows -- forget about the ghosts!
May Peace Prevail On Earth
I call it "The Restore Ghost". It restores old bugs I know i fixed. When I check the source code I know exactly where the problem is because I already fixed it. No, is not Deja-Vu, I clearly remember I fixed it.
In all my own years haunting cubicles in this life, I have never met anyone haunting them in the next. I guess only people with souls can become ghosts.
This didn't happen in my day job office, but a "place of work" of another kind. My wife was chair of a local charity, which is a toy library - it lends toys instead of books. They had wangled a total refurb of their premises from a local firm, who do a project for charity each year. This year, it was our turn, and all we had to do was to clear out all the toys and old shelves to give these guys space to build and paint.
The library has three interconnecting rooms in a shared-use building, all charities. The old shelves were metal, and I went down one night to dismantle them. Just before I left, my wife told me that the place used to be a funeral parlour. Sure enough, one room had metal-lined walls, and there were two enormous metal-lined doors lying in a back corridor.
It was November, the raid was dripping all around, and the heating system was making very strange noises. Very spooky. The shelves were held together by square bolts, so I had to use an adjustable spanner. I soon got into the groove, and had an efficient system for dismantling the shelves. I'd work with the shelves upside down, and the metal shelves would form a tray that I'd keep my tools in.
So, it's night, spooky noises, dull lighting, no music, and my thoughts turn to the fact this used to be a funeral parlour. Then, I get a big suprise: the spanner, which was set to the correct size for the square nuts, was fully open - about 25 mm instead of 10.
Lots of silly thoughts went through my mind, especially curious ghosts examining my tools. I checked where my car keys were, mentally planned my exit route, and, a little spooked, I carried on working.
All was fine for about five minutes, until the spanner didn't fit again - and this time, it was fully closed! I was so, so close to legging it, but I told myself that there was no such thing as ghosts, that any tortured spirits would haunt their homes and not the funeral parlour they lay for a few days. So, I stuck it out, although I was very "observant" from then on.
An accident as I packed up provided an explanation. I stepped over a toolbox, and landed on the adjustable spanner. It slid forward and the little adjusting wheel moved - closing the spanner jaws. When I'd been working on the shelves, sometimes my spanner would slide along the shelf, and it must have closed on one occassion, and opened on the other one.
I'm so glad that I didn't run out of there in fear, especially after the spanner moved for the second time. I kept telling myself that there is always a logical explanation for all events, and it turned out that there was!
Note to ACs: I won't mod you up, even if you are being funny or insightful. So take a chance! It's not real life!
So they have a million already, and more coming in. I'd say that suits them just fine. Why would they lose that on the gamble they might make more? Or are you a psychic now? Showing off your fortune telling abilities? I'd say they are ultra conservatives which means they don't like risks. Oh and by the way, with the process you keep prattling on about like a stuck record, where is their ISO number? What, no recognised quality standards? What a shock.
And its forty, you illiterate moron.
What a turkey.
Is your mom a psychic or something?
gp is quoting aristotle, parent is throwing "your mom" jokes around. if this ain't trolling i dunno what is.
mod this down as flamebait
Well for me as a person that works with shamanism this subject is very real. I have been places where the energy is so bad that people dont get to do any work. After ive been there the energy and productivity has changes. Offcourse this might be just coincidence or placebo?
There have been several occasions when I was working alone late at night in the office, that I'd heard and saw out of the corner of my eye someone moving, that was so real seeming that I had to search the whole office just to make sure someone hadn't broken in. Now I'm used to creepy sounds at night, that big flat roof absorbs a lot of heat during a day, and as it slowly cools at night, it gives off a lot spooky sounds; but every once in a while something genuinaly spooky happens to give me a delicious adrenaline rush. The ingrate never seems willing to any any work woth or for me in exchange for an occasional scare.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
In all seriousness, don't consider bending it slowly with your bare hands with the intent to bend it a perfect 90 degree angle in any way comparable to slamming into it at high speed. Notice how the primary bend is right up on the string. Have you ever stood in the way of a cat on full rampage and had it plow into you? Those things can pick up serious momentum. And if that's a part of your bed at just the right height for a curious cat to stand on and try to look out the window, I would not look any further. I have had cat damage to blinds look virtually identical to this.
the only spirits in this here home office are stowed away in the fridge: captn' morgan and jack daniels and the spirit of the good old grey goose
--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com/
When you say "There's no such thing as the supernatural," on what basis do you make that statment?
How can you prove that they don't exist?
Are you saying that non-material things are non-material, or that the non-material does not exist?
What about duty, honor, love? Do they exist? Are they natural?
Slashdot is a poor place to make an absolute negative assertion.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Bendor: Even though the computer was off and unplugged, there on the monitor was the windows logo.
Fry: That's not scary.
Bendor: It is if your a lasor printer.
Some of the door 'slamming' or closed doors being 'thumped' happens because buildings breath. It's somewhat like blowing across a bottle to make a tone, but ultra low frequency. It's more like bottles connected to bottles. You could probably work something out with a fluid dynamics simulation. The wind doesn't need to be that high to get an effect, but most newer or 'renovated' buildings are too noisy to hear the smaller movements, though. (I measured a lot of 'quiet' rooms in the US at 25 decibels) Caves with a single entrance breath, too, and the frequency can be used to determine the volume.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I would say that simply because a person is not given the option of converting doesn't necessarily mean that they will automatically be saved. I don't think they are ruled out, but I think God weighs the person's heart. He knows if that person, when confronted with the gospel, would accept or reject it. That's my theory anyway, but I can't say I completely know the mind of God. All I know is that He is just and merciful. Thus, if somebody can be saved, they will be saved. If they reject God, they won't be saved. Anybody who truly seeks God with an open heart will find Him; He will reveal Himself. If a person puts restrictions on Him and says, "I won't believe in a god who _________," then they set themselves and their own understanding as god, rather than allowing for the possibility that God is not something that can be understood completeley by the human mind.
How do you define natural?
I obviously read what you wrote, because I quoted it. I think you may fail to have understood the depth of my questions. Did you read and think about what I wrote?
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?