This is probably a poltergeist story more than anything.
When I was 12 (1976) and living in Colorado, I had several
strange things happen to me, but the most persistent was
our smoke detector taunting me. It was in the upstairs
hall, about 30 feet from the kitchen. It would never fail,
I would start cooking something and it would go off, even
if all I was doing was boiling water. And I didn't have to
use the gas stove either. The same thing happened when I
used the microwave purchased around the time I was 14.
As annoying as that was, what really aggravated me was the
fact that someone else - anyone else - could literally burn
stuff in the kitchen without so much as a peep from the
stupid thing. It got to be a family joke. If the smoke
detector did go off when someone else was cooking, all they
would have to do was yell out, "I'm not Mandy!" and it
would immediately go silent.
I began disconnecting the battery so I could cook in
peace. Being safety conscious, I would reconnect it
afterwards. One day, I decided I didn't want to go to the
trouble, so I went ahead and cooked dinner - but I made
sure I was very quiet and careful about it.
I was just taking the last pork chop from the stove when it
went off. Feeling excited with victory, I turned off the
stove and ran upstairs to do some taunting of my own while
it buzzed at me. I finally told it that it was just
jealous because it couldn't have any of my wonderful food.
It stop buzzing. But as I walked back down the stairs, it
did a short "BEEP". My mother said it was its way of
sticking its proverbial tongue out at me.
It still continued to taunt me until 1979, when we moved to
Texas. I made some comment about finally being free of
that stupid smoke detector, when my dad started teasing me
about bring it with us. I told him if we took it, I was
going to take after it - with a pair of wire cutters.
I have no idea if the smoke detector did anything similar
to anyone in that house later. It was a newly built house
when we moved in and we lived there about 3 years before we
got the smoke detector. I wonder if it may have been
something controlled by my own subconscious, because some
of the other things that happened during that time -
Having a door shut before I actually touched it. I checked
to see if there was a breeze or something, but all the
windows upstairs were closed. I honestly thought I had
touched it, but my eyes said differently.
Being able to locate certain disturbing book from their
presence - even if someone had moved them in my absence.
Being attacked by of all things - a black butterfly. I was
used to butterflies landing on my shoulders when I did my
paper route, but this guy landed on my red shorts and would
not let go of me. My mother and I tried to brush it off
without hurting it and it would try to fight us off with
one leg. Finally Mom took it off with a screw driver and
it began coming at us like it was in a WWII dog fight. I
ran inside and let Mom deal with it.
I have read one theory that poltergeist activity happens
around preteens not because of spirits, but because the
changes in hormones causes an increase of energy around
the "victim". That could explain some of what I
experienced.
Don't know about the butterfly.
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