Trivial teleports

For the past year and a half or so, strange events have been happening in my apartment, with each event spaced about a month or two apart.

A rubber band wrapped around my kitchen garbage pail (to hold the garbage bag) disappeared from the pail and reappeared wrapped around the middle of a tissue box placed next to the pail for recycling. The same thing happened with an empty oat milk container placed next to the pail. A picture fell off the wall with the hanging loop unbroken and the nail in the wall intact. My radio (not a clock radio) turned on by itself. A file folder filled with papers moved from the top shelf of a cupboard to the bottom of the cupboard by itself, without papers falling out. It was very stable and could not have fallen down.

A toilet paper holder popped out of its receptacle by itself, untouched, while I watched. Two small objects appeared on the carpet on separate mornings; a small off-white pebble and a ring about an inch in diameter made of twist ties twisted together. I bought a new plug for the bathroom sink and cut off the chain completely from the plug’s ring, since I didn’t need it. The next morning, a single loop of the chain had reappeared on the plug’s ring. A box of tissue paper disappeared from the master bedroom, but had reappeared when I brought a new box a few seconds later.

A clothes clip used for fastening curtains disappeared from its usual spot and reappeared a couple of days later on a table where I would never have put it. A round-tipped all-metal knife from my kitchen drawer appeared in the dish rack, lying flat. I didn’t put it there, and my mother, whom I live with, denies putting it there. A small one-piece can opener which I keep in the cutlery drawer repositioned itself from being in front to rotating 90 degrees and inserted into a crevice between two cutlery bins moulded into the cutlery tray. A small pot and a dessert bowl that I had put away the night before reappeared on the dish rack by themselves this morning [30 August] with the dessert bowl underneath the upside-down pot.

A cabinet door opened by itself behind my back, a few seconds after I passed it by. The door had been properly closed and held in the closed position by a magnetic clasp. Furthermore, the door frame provided friction which would further prevent the cabinet door from opening by itself; I know because I checked. In short, there is no way that the cabinet door could have ordinarily opened by itself, and I did not brush against it.

My medicine cabinet door slid open by itself while my back was turned; I heard a sliding sound before I turned around to look. A drinking glass that I had placed upside-down on the dish rack to dry, was right-side up when I glanced at it a few minutes later. While I was doing the dishes after lunch, I felt something fall on my feet. I looked down and saw that it was a small towel. It had been stored in a kitchen cabinet behind a closed door, a few feet away from me. It seems to have teleported from there to just above my feet, where it fell.

I was paying for some things at Pharmaprix, and the cashier gave me back my change of three dimes and the receipt. There were people behind me, so to avoid delaying them further, I did not put the coins in my change pouch right away. Instead, I put the receipt and coins in the palm of one of my hands, closed that hand into a fist to hold the receipt and coins, and walked away. About 15 seconds later, once clear of the cashier, I opened my hand. The receipt was there, but the coins had disappeared. On a hunch, I looked in my change pouch, and there were three dimes, neatly stacked against each other.

I was doing Friday clean-up, and I took out the step-stool, bag bin, and garbage pail from the kitchen and put them in the living room so that I could wash the floor with a wet rag wrapped around a broom with a straight brush head. I then decided to partially vacuum the living/dining room first. After vacuuming, I put away the vacuum cleaner in the hallway storage cupboard and took a broom from that same cupboard so that I could clean the kitchen floor. I wanted the one with the beige brush head, but it wasn’t there so I took the broom with the red brush head instead. When I returned to the living room with the red brush headed broom, I saw the broom with the beige brush head in the living room, propped up against the wall next to the kitchen.

Here’s why I think that the broom with the beige brush head teleported from the storage closet to the living room: I have absolutely no memory of retrieving it from the closet and putting it in the living room; if I had done it, I would have put the broom in the kitchen where it would be needed, not in the living room; I would have noticed it in the living room before going to the cupboard to retrieve the other broom. It seems to me that this was a poltergeist event, with the beige-headed broom being teleported to the living room during the few seconds while I had left the living room and walked up the short hallway to the storage cupboard. The timing of the teleportation had to be precise.

I am prepared to sign a sworn statement stating that all of the above events have actually happened.

Jeffrey Beer Cote St-Luc, Quebec, Canada

My medicine cabinet door opened by itself behind my back