Light bulbs fixed themselves

IamtheWalrus

I went out last night, and when I came back (sober) 2 bulbs in my flat that were not working are now working. I hadn't noticed that they were back working before I went out - just when I came back. I live alone in a rented flat. The only other people who have access to my flat are the letting agent and my landlord.

If it's not a ghost, how do I rationalise this inexplicable event?

mark17j

could be a wiring issue with those lights, get them checked out.

KERSPLAT!

Maybe a loose connection, have a qualified electrician check it out

SpaceTime

I would suggest you contact an electrician that sounds like loose wiring and could be a fire hazard.

I'd also suggest you visit : boards.ie's electrical forum : http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=1018

vicwatson

Letting agent or landlord

Kidchameleon

I think the op was trying to be funny. Well done op

IamtheWalrus

Kidchameleon wrote: »

I think the op was trying to be funny. Well done op

Honestly wasn't. Before I became an atheist I would have been spooked by what happened, possibly thinking it was supernatural. Now I don't believe in that stuff I'm after a plausible answer.

Didn't realise wiring would do that...

Thanks for the head's up by the way the rest of you.

Pherekydes

Similar problem here, op. I get the blame when things go wrong in my house, but no credit when things get fixed. I think it's the elves, or the gremlins, or the angels, or gods. Definitely not me...

goose2005

How many gods does it take to fix a lightbulb? One.

"I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." - Jn 8:12

" But ye [are] a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light" (1 Peter 2:9)

Clearly God has called you by means of this sign.

IamtheWalrus

goose2005 wrote: »

How many gods does it take to fix a lightbulb? One.

"I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." - Jn 8:12

" But ye [are] a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light" (1 Peter 2:9)

Clearly God has called you by means of this sign.

You mean John and Peter surely?

vibe666

I had an outside light that would randomly decide to work or not whenever it felt like it.

Never did figure out how, but pretty sure it wasn't just God fcuking with me for being an atheist.

TwoShedsJackson

goose2005 wrote: »

How many gods does it take to fix a lightbulb? One.

"I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." - Jn 8:12

" But ye [are] a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light" (1 Peter 2:9)

Clearly God has called you by means of this sign.

It takes only one God to make the lights stop working too, but as usual he only gets the praise, never the grief for causing the lightbulbs to fail/typhoon/cancer in the first place.

IamtheWalrus

TwoShedsJackson wrote: »

never the grief for causing the lightbulbs to fail/typhoon/cancer in the first place.

Everyone knows the gheys invented cancer.

Brian Shanahan

goose2005 wrote: »

How many gods does it take to fix a lightbulb? One.

"I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." - Jn 8:12

" But ye [are] a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light" (1 Peter 2:9)

Clearly God has called you by means of this sign.

Yeah, this is a god who created sunlight before he created the sun. I wouldn't have him around to do the wiring OP, he'd probably wire up your house to Fukushima.

SpaceTime

vibe666 wrote: »

I had an outside light that would randomly decide to work or not whenever it felt like it.

Never did figure out how, but pretty sure it wasn't just God fcuking with me for being an atheist.

Usual cause :

Some loose connection that's opening and closing as the fitting gets hot/cold. So, when the light's been on for a while the connection gets hot due to the bulb and expands and the light goes off.

Or, it only works in very cold weather

In most cases you're better off consulting an electrician or at least a priest who's got electrical qualifications or is handy with wiring!

Zillah

The "freaked out" hypothesis is pretty amazing though. Honestly, if there's a ghost in the house...they're going to do absolutely nothing for 99% of the time, then fix two broken light bulbs and go back to sleep?

The Glass Key

Admit it OP you walked in the wrong house and were so taken by the fact the bulbs had miraculously cured themselves that you didn't notice.

_Redzer_

It was Jesus. Obviously

vibe666

SpaceTime wrote: »

Usual cause :

Some loose connection that's opening and closing as the fitting gets hot/cold. So, when the light's been on for a while the connection gets hot due to the bulb and expands and the light goes off.

Or, it only works in very cold weather

In most cases you're better off consulting an electrician or at least a priest who's got electrical qualifications or is handy with wiring!

that's the thing, there was no rhyme or reason to it at all, even over 6 odd years living there i never figured it out. sometimes it would just randomly turn on without anyone touching anything after months of not working.

i became convinced that the electrician had somehow wired it up to something in next doors house! :pac:

MrPudding

vibe666 wrote: »

that's the thing, there was no rhyme or reason to it at all, even over 6 odd years living there i never figured it out. sometimes it would just randomly turn on without anyone touching anything after months of not working.

i became convinced that the electrician had somehow wired it up to something in next doors house! :pac:

You sure there was no movement detector?

MrP

nozzferrahhtoo

IamtheWalrus wrote: »

Honestly wasn't. Before I became an atheist I would have been spooked by what happened, possibly thinking it was supernatural. Now I don't believe in that stuff I'm after a plausible answer.

Alas without independent access to the scene it is unlikely anyone here can help you. This is one of my fave You Tube videos of all time. I think it should be disseminated to all schools at an early age in every country.

In it at one point he speaks about how he was in a room with his neighbor. A lampshade started moving about and his neighbor declared it to be a ghost. There was no way to explain it except it was a ghost.

The video author looked around, found a convection heater, turned it off, and the lamp stopped moving. Problem solved. However had the video author had no independent access to the scene the neighbor who was telling him anecdotally about the event and saying "You can not explain this, so it must have been a ghost" may never have mentioned the heater. So the author would have had no way to resolve the situation factually.

I had a very similar situation to that, and yours, mixed. In that someone else had weird bulb behavior. He was entirely baffled by this and I asked him every question I could think of trying to find data to explain it. I simply failed. He was even considering supernatural explanations.

Then one day several weeks later he off hand mentioned that his landlord wanted to put the rent up because the apartment upstairs still had not been let out. Something went off in my head and I asked "When did they move out exactly?". When he told me I said "Right lets go". We went back to the building and got access to the empty apartment. I turned on all the lights in the apartment and then went to HIS apartment.

Loe and behold his weird bulb issues were back. It seems that some issue with the wiring meant that when the lights were on in the other apartment, things went awry in his.

So while I praise the desire to find a rational explanation for your event.... you may simply have to accept you might not find one. There may be one all illuminating (see what I did there) piece of data that you simply will never get unless it happens to fall suddenly into your lap like it did with me above.

bogwalrus

In many ways electricity is God so with a skewed view this could be explained as an almighty power just having an identity crisis (should I be creating light or darkness) . All 240 volts of it. Yeah my god has 240v while the American god only has 130v.;)

The Glass Key

Could be you had a load of mates around and that fixed it?

You know what they say, "Many hands make 'light' work".

/gets coat

IamtheWalrus

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Alas without independent access to the scene it is unlikely anyone here can help you. This is one of my fave You Tube videos of all time. I think it should be disseminated to all schools at an early age in every country.

In it at one point he speaks about how he was in a room with his neighbor. A lampshade started moving about and his neighbor declared it to be a ghost. There was no way to explain it except it was a ghost.

The video author looked around, found a convection heater, turned it off, and the lamp stopped moving. Problem solved. However had the video author had no independent access to the scene the neighbor who was telling him anecdotally about the event and saying "You can not explain this, so it must have been a ghost" may never have mentioned the heater. So the author would have had no way to resolve the situation factually.

I had a very similar situation to that, and yours, mixed. In that someone else had weird bulb behavior. He was entirely baffled by this and I asked him every question I could think of trying to find data to explain it. I simply failed. He was even considering supernatural explanations.

Then one day several weeks later he off hand mentioned that his landlord wanted to put the rent up because the apartment upstairs still had not been let out. Something went off in my head and I asked "When did they move out exactly?". When he told me I said "Right lets go". We went back to the building and got access to the empty apartment. I turned on all the lights in the apartment and then went to HIS apartment.

Loe and behold his weird bulb issues were back. It seems that some issue with the wiring meant that when the lights were on in the other apartment, things went awry in his.

So while I praise the desire to find a rational explanation for your event.... you may simply have to accept you might not find one. There may be one all illuminating (see what I did there) piece of data that you simply will never get unless it happens to fall suddenly into your lap like it did with me above.

Ah you can't be a good dollop of rational thinking.

SpaceTime

bogwalrus wrote: »

In many ways electricity is God so with a skewed view this could be explained as an almighty power just having an identity crisis (should I be creating light or darkness) . All 240 volts of it. Yeah my god has 240v while the American god only has 130v.;)

Actually it's only 230V. Ireland and the rest of EU used 220V and Britain used 240V for many years probably to spite the French or something. We split the difference and called it 230V some time in the 1990s.

The US uses 120V and 240V ... Different plugs for both voltages thankfully!

But there's one other rational explanation : rats, mice or old decrepit wiring.
Rodents sometimes chew through insulation on wires in your attic.

There's always a wiring explanation to dodgy lights. Usually it's down to low quality workmanship or prehistoric wiring! Either way... Get it checked before it causes a house fire.

robindch

SpaceTime wrote: »

The US uses 120V and 240V ... Different plugs for both voltages thankfully!

Cuba's the weirdest I've seen -- US and UK-style sockets and anything between about 90 and 250V shows up, assuming that anything does to start with.

SpaceTime

You'll get some strange stuff in developing countries with various odd combinations of standards.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_electricity_by_country

Generally best not to plug your laptop in as it won't be supernatural forces that burn out your charger. It'll be the voltage spikes!

A very large % of the world tends to just adopt and adapt European CENELEC standards as they're a fairly open book and were designed to cope with harmonising European countries' systems over the decades. So, all of Europe, Russia/exUSSR, India, China, Australia, NZ, most of Africa, large part of Latin America etc use 230V 50Hz. A few other places use US standards and then a few places use odd mixtures of the two with a 127V 50Hz(an old abandoned Euro standard) thrown in for a laugh.

Then Japan's out on its own with 100V 50Hz and 100V 60Hz depending on which part you're in! You can get a nasty surprise if you buy some Japanese equipment and bring it home and use it with a US power adaptor or use it in the USA and discover it burns out! Same plugs as the US, but significantly different voltage. I know a few people who destroyed imported games consoles and audio equipment by doing this!