House Possessed

A string of weird goings-on in my house lately has made me wonder if I'm being stalked, going crazy, or my house is possessed.


My favorite button-down shirt and my light spring jacket are missing. Neither can be found hanging up in my closet, which is the only place I keep such things. How do you lose a jacket? I'm not one of those people who's constantly misplacing things. In my house, everything has a place, and since I live alone, it stays there. So it's always weird when I can't find something.

My house has been making weird noises lately. Yeah, I know, all houses make weird noises. But this is a new weird noise, and it seems to happen around the same time in the evenings. It's like a loud bang. A friend of mine was over the other night and it happened when he was here, and even he asked what it was.

I googled "house noises" and got this. It doesn't really apply to my text, but it was too good not to post.

My roommate, TiVo, has been acting very strangely lately. TiVo lies to me. It tells me that it can't record a program that I told it to record because "the tuner was not available." Bullshit. It recorded shows on the same channel before and after that program, and it wasn't recording anything on another channel at the same time. Why do you lie to me, TiVo?

Lately the lies have taken a sinister turn. Last week TiVo told me it couldn't record something because "Someone in your household would not allow the tuner to change the channel." WTF? This was in the middle of the night when I was asleep, so I know it wasn't me. It also deleted something I hadn't watched, blaming it (again) on "someone in [your] house."

Is this an update on the old urban legend: "The phone calls are coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE!"? The person messing with my TiVo is coming from inside my own house!

The weirdest thing happened with the portal to my attic. It's in the ceiling in my garage. The last time I was up there was some time last year. Whenever I go up there, I make sure that the trap door is shut securely.

So I was a little freaked out the other day when I looked up and saw this:

The door had been moved and was no longer flush in the groove. WTF? Has someone been up in my attic? How? Why? The door is too heavy to be the result of the wind or a critter or something like that. And I know I wouldn't have left it like that, because I'm anal about these kinds of things.

I remembered one day last fall when I came home from work and found my (automatic) garage door completely open. I entered the house cautiously, but nothing appeared to be missing. I assumed I just spaced out and forgot to shut it in the morning when I left. But now I worry that someone could be messing with me.

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Combine these incidents with some email paranoia I've been having lately: Four or five people have not responded to messages. In addition, on an online dating site I've had six consecutive women simply ignore or disappear from conversations. Aside from making me think that maybe I have the online dating equivalent of a booger hanging off my nose, it makes me wonder if someone's hacking into my online shit and deleting things.

I came to this theory after watching a story on the Colbert Report about Anonymous, an organization of hackers associated with Wikileaks who can apparently get into any private accounts and wreak havoc.

That report scared the shit out of me, because it made me realize that none of us is really safe when people are determined to take you down.

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There are lots of possible conspiracy theories as to what's going on:

• My house is possessed.
  
• Someone is harassing me.
• Some Anonymous-level hacker has taken an interest in me for some reason.
  
• I'm into some split personality psychosis like the dude in Fight Club.

However, there's a principle in science that states the simplest explanation is usually the most likely.

All of these things could have a simple explanation. Maybe I left my shirt/coat somewhere when I was traveling. TiVo is probably having software problems. (It's been acting weird since I had to get a cable box last fall.) And most likely, people are not responding to my messages because they are busy or not interested.

It's just the cumulative effect of them all happening at once that's putting conspiracy theories in my head.

And the attic door... well, I don't know what the fuck's going on there.