Thursday, March 04, 2010

A ghost keeps switching channels on my TV...

Let me start this post by saying I'm not afraid of ghosts, because I don't believe in them.

Logically they don't make any sense, much like alien abductions, the Bermuda triangle, love at first sight and the moon landings.

But that doesn't stop me getting scared when I think there is one in my house at night - particularly when I'm in on my own.

I've always been fairly interested in odd happenings, which I think stems from a childhood enjoyment of ghost stories. The Yorkshire Evening Post recently did a series of visits to famous landmarks around Leeds, which was very interesting until it turned to its own offices in Wellington Street which I occasionally have to spend time in. I stopped watching.

So when strange things started happening in my own home, my irrational fear overcame the voice in my head telling me there must be a reasonable explanation. It all began when I was home alone last Wednesday night. I was wandering around the bedroom with the BBC 10pm news on in the background. Suddenly, the channel changed. I was confused, but put it down to the cats standing on the remote control on the bed, and put the news back on without thinking about it too much.

A few minutes later, the channel changed again, going up several stations. The remote was sitting in front of me, well away from any interfering cats. "That's very odd," I thought, and put it back on the news again. Almost immediately, the main menu came up and it started scrolling through the channels, settling on Sky Three.

The way our television is set up in the bedroom is that it can be controlled via the Sky+ box from either upstairs or downstairs. You have to watch the same thing in both the living room and bedroom, but you can change the channel in either location. So, when it started appearing to behave independently, my first thought was that my other half might have come home without me hearing him. I looked out of the window - sadly, the car was not there, so he must have still been out.

When the channel continued to change, I went downstairs - perhaps the remote had a book or something else resting against it and pressing one of the buttons. But on entering the living room I saw it there, plain as day, sitting untouched on its own on the arm of the sofa. I went back upstairs carefully, checking around each corner for ghosts on my way.

Luckily, my other half did return home not long after. Unluckily, he was out the following night when it did it again. It happened a few times over the following days, but never when he was in the room - so naturally, he pretended to believe me while subtly trying to ascertain how the buttons had been accidentally pressed without me realising. Twitter was similarly helpful, with various friends either accusing me of sitting on the remote or making unnerving jokes about ghosts having a penchant for Sky Three.

Finally, after days of very nervous television watching on my part and sceptical, tolerant sighing on my husband's, it did it in front of him on Monday evening. The channels changed, the menu came up, it scrolled through and suddenly we were listening to an Irish radio station. Success. He finally believed me - and was equally baffled.
After a couple of days, we decided the reason behind it was probably some sort of interference from our neighbours' television with our digital sender, which allows us to change the channel from upstairs as well as directly in front of the Sky+ box. All cleared up and not a ghost to be seen.

Still, if it happens when I'm on my own for the night in a few weeks' time, I'm decamping to my parents' house. One hundred miles away.

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