nivek
As Above So Below
Strange Cases of Haunted and Possessed Machines
In earlier times, back before modern technology, the paranormal was often ensconced within objects such as houses, other buildings, and various items. In more modern times, as our technology has grown, spooky stories of the paranormal have moved past haunted houses and Ouija boards to seep into the realm of the very machines we use every day. Here we get into an eerie and often sinister world of machines run amok, powered by bizarre spiritual forces beyond our undrerstanding.An early account of a machine that was either haunted, possessed, or both, brings us back to the year 1949. It revolves around a dairy farmer by the name of Lawrence A. Wilkinson, who owned a dairy farm in a sparsely inhabited rough and remote area near the sleepy little village of Tarcutta, in New South Wales, Australia. Life on the farm had been quiet and noneventful for years until one day when a group of visitors to the farm witnessed in broad daylight a milking machine that just spontaneously partly disassembled itself, with the parts then hovering in the air momentarily before being flung away with great force. Some of these parts were quite large and heavy, including a two-pound brass part and a 65-pound cast iron axle, some of which were hurled hundreds of yards away.
Over the coming days more and more parts would come loose, float through the air, and then violently go careening off into the distance, and this was witnessed by at least sixteen people including Wilkinson himself. Each time the farmer would go about repairing the machine, and each time the parts would once again mysteriously lift off and go flying through the air, only seeming to get more violent and intense the more he tried to fix it. The manufacturer of the machine sent a representative, but he could find no cause for the phenomenon and unfortunately did not witness it in action, no doubt sending him away a skeptic.
The strangeness continued unabated, and the machine began turning itself on and off, even operating when it was disconnected from a power source. It got so bad that Wilkinson took to laboriously milking his cattle by hand rather than be anywhere near the possessed machine. It had gotten to the point where it was dangerous to be around, and on one occasion a heavy brass plate had flown off of it to barely miss Wilkinson’s son’s head. This did not stop droves of curiosity seekers from coming to the farm to see the haunted machine throwing off its parts. One witness would say of it:
As word of the mysterious haunted milking machine spread in the press, various engineers, inspectors, scientists, and even a government team came out to examine the thing, but none could find any defect or reason for the bizarre and frightening phenomenon and all of them went away stumped. Three independent experts on milking machines and three other farmers who used the same exact brand and model of machine would all testify under oath that Wilkinson's machine was in perfect working order, and scientists from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) could find no sign of anything wrong with the machine, nor any evidence of trickery or a hoax. The mysterious milking machine kept on with its bizarre behavior for several years until one day it just stopped. What was going on here?
While a haunted milking machine is certainly pretty outlandish, most supposedly haunted machines and devices can be found closer to home, in things we use every day. One of these is haunted television sets. In 1988, three children of the Travis family were watching TV at their home in at Blue Point, New York, when the image of a woman’s face materialized on the screen to superimpose itself over the program. The children called for their mother, who came and saw it for herself. The TV was unplugged but the image remained, and would apparently stay there for a full two days.
In 2000, a terrified couple in Detroit, Michigan came forward to claim that they were being harassed by their haunted TV. Charlotte and Judge Smith claimed that their television would suddenly turn on by itself, after which death threats and racially charged hate messages would appear on the screen, looking as though they had been typed on a keyboard used to select movies from the couple’s TV satellite system. The TV could apparently communicate as well, because when Charlotte Smith yelled “Shut up” at the television, an immediate reply on its screen read “Shut up Charlotte.” Police investigated but could find no explanation, yet after they left the house, the screen message allegedly read “Police was here.” The TV also had the disconcerting habit of springing to life in the middle of the night at high-volume, or suddenly changing stations on its own.
Experts could find no cause for the phenomenon, and even the FBI did an investigation, labelling it as a possibly hate crime against the couple, since the Smiths are black, but they could find no way anyone could have done it. In the end, their best guess was that someone was using a radio-frequency remote control to type the messages, but there was no evidence of this. What are we dealing with here? Was this someone hacking their TV to mess with them or something more paranormal in nature? Who knows?
In addition to haunted TVs, there have been reports of haunted or possessed computers as well. In 1984, a man renovating an old cottage in Dodleston, Cheshire named Ken Webster was testing out his new word processor when strange things began to happen. It began displaying cryptic messages and poems that neither he nor his girlfriend had written, with the words frequently being typed out as they looked on in astonishment. Most of the messages were not understandable, but when they were shown to a linguist it turned out that they were mostly written in a Late Middle English dialect dating from around the 1500s. Greatly intrigued, Ken began answering the messages and found that they were being written by a man named Tomas Harden, who claimed to have lived on this same site over 400 years earlier. Weird, to say the least.
In 1985, Ken Webster and his girlfriend, Debbie, had recently moved into and were renovating a rundown, dilapidated 18th Century Meadow Cottage in the village of Dodleston in Cheshire, close to the North Wales border. From the beginning they experienced various paranormal phenomena in the house such as mysterious footprints in the dust that seemed to walk up the walls, flickering lights, and moving objects, but things really took a turn for the bizarre when they set their computer up. Pretty much as soon as the computer was turned on there began to appear a series of strange and threatening messages that would types themselves up on the screen. The writer appeared to be able to see both Ken and Debbie and at first asked mostly innocuous questions asked about who they were, but over the coming days the messages would only get more sinister and ominous, with one of these messages appearing in an archaic version of English, which read:
The couple took to questioning the presence trying to find out who it was and what it wanted. They managed to find that the entity called itself Thomas Harden, and that he was friends with a “friend from 2109,” who also apparently inhabited the computer because Ken was able to make contact with them. The mysterious “friend from 2109” would type out:
Strange, indeed. It’s even stranger when you remember that this was 1985, before the internet was commonplace, and in the case of Ken and Debbie their computer was not even connected to a network to begin with. In fact, the old house had nothing to connect to. The messages would apparently continue for years before one day Thomas said that he was being forced from his land and was leaving, but that he would leave a book for his friends in the future. He was then never heard from again. The friend from 2109 continued communications for some time after that, before also vanishing into the ether to leave the computer an inert object once again. Oddly, the book Thomas promised has never been found.
In 1987 an Amstrad computer was installed in a Stockton, California architect's office and wasted no time in freaking everyone out. The computer functioned normally during the day during working hours, but at night its screen would glow and display incomprehensible gobbledygook in English. These messages would flash across the screen before abruptly vanishing, to be followed by an eerie groan, after which the computer would turn itself back off. This would apparently happen even if the computer was unplugged, and examinations of it could find nothing wrong with it. The computer was so spooky that some people refused to even come to work, so it was discarded. It remains unknown what happened to it. A rather odd little tale involving a possibly haunted computer was related by Reddit user and IT tech expert “LegendArie.” The commenter says:
All of the cases we have looked at here are pretty eyebrow raising, but there are examples of even weirder, perhaps one could even say absurd, haunted machines. Take for instance the haunted elevator at the historic Palace Hotel, in Southport, in the United Kingdom. The hotel itself was torn down in 1969 after 112 years of operation, but it seems as if something didn’t want to leave. Shortly after being demolished, the hotel’s elevator, which was still standing, began inexplicably doing its rounds, going from floor to floor complete with flashing floor-indication buttons and opening and closing doors. It was totally baffling because there was no intact source of power for it. The mysterious elevator appeared in the news, even going about its inscrutable journey from floor to floor on camera for the BBC, but no explanation could ever be found and it was eventually disassembled and scrapped.
There are actually supposedly a weird number of haunted elevators to be found, and many of these haunted elevators are located within places with a long and storied history. In Easton, Maryland we have the Avalon Theater. Built in 1921, it was at the time considered to be the epitome of opulence, with an enormous dome, leaded glass doors, a full extravagant ballroom, and all of it adorned with ornate decorations, all of which earned its reputation as the “Showplace of the Eastern Shore.” Even so, the theater would go through several periods in later years where it fell into disrepair and was closed down, before finally being completely and beautifully restored and renovated to what it is today. It is now well known for its live performances and state of the art sound system, but it is also known as being quite haunted, in particular the elevator.
The notorious elevator of the Avalon Theater is known for all manner of weirdness. It will open and close its doors for no reason when no one is around, as well as ascend or descend without having any bottoms pushed. In more extreme cases a ghostly woman in old fashioned period clothing is said to exit the elevator and inexorably make her way to the theater only to vanish into thin air. The owners of the theater have had the elevator looked at by an elevator service company on several occasions, but nothing has been found to be technically wrong with it. The lore is that it is being haunted by a young actress by the name of Marguerite, who was purportedly murdered in the elevator in the 1920s on her way to a Vaudeville show at the theater, meaning perhaps she is forever tethered to this place. Whatever the reason is, the Avalon Theater’s elevator reportedly continues to display a mind of its own to this day, and the ghostly Marguerite is also known to haunt the projection room and other areas of the theater.
Another historic building with its own haunted elevator is the Adolphus Hotel, in Dallas, Texas, one the tallest buildings in the state in its day and built in 1912 by beer magnate Adolphus Busch, patriarch of the Anheuser-Busch family. Legend has it that the 19th floor of the building was the origin of tragedy in the 1930s, when a jilted bride killed herself there by hanging. The entire floor is said to be haunted by her restless, wandering spirit, but it gets really spooky where the elevator is involved. The woman’s face will apparently appear out of nowhere in the elevator mirror, and the doors open and shut on their own without warning or apparent cause. Guests have reported the button for the 19th floor being pushed by unseen hands, and the elevator will allegedly often go to the 19th floor no matter what button is pushed by a guest. Creepier than all of this is that there have been reports of people getting stuck in the elevator at the 19th floor, after which the doors refuse to open and the horrified victim waits until the doors just open of their own accord, sometimes for up to 20 minutes later. As with the Avalon Theater, no mechanical problem with the elevator has been found.
We also have the Kennesaw House of Marietta, Georgia, which was originally erected in 1845 as a storehouse for cotton from the plantations of the area. It is one of the oldest buildings in Marietta, and at various times has served as a meeting place for Union spies during the Civil War and as a war hospital and morgue for the Confederates, seeing much suffering and death during this dark time of dread. It now houses a museum, and boy is its elevator ever haunted, with all manner of weirdness emanating from it, even though the building itself is only a mere 3 floors high. The most common type of strange report is that the elevator will open for no apparent reason to disgorge injured or maimed Civil War soldiers, and some have even claimed that the elevator sometimes reveals a scene of a bloody Civil War hospital permeated by writhing bodies and the wailing and screams of the damned, as if it is some sort of portal to a former, macabre time. There have also been reports of what appears to be a spectral Civil War era surgeon who will ride the elevator along with horrified guests before blinking out of existence before their eyes.
Still another historic building with its own ghosts is the famous Algonquin Hotel, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The 181-room hotel was originally conceived of as being a luxurious residence hotel, but when it opened in 1902 it did so as a regular lodging hotel. The hotel quickly acquired a reputation for having notable literary and theatrical guests, and it became the main meeting place for a ragtag group of secretive journalists, artists, playwrights, authors, publicists and actors called the Algonquin Round Table, also ominously referred to as “The Vicious Circle.” It was rather like a secret society, with these influential artists coming together to exchange ideas and witticisms, as well as to discuss all manner of issues behind closed doors at the hotel’s Rose Room over daily lunches.
The group met from 1919 and continued these regular clandestine meetings for over a decade before they fell into decline and were suddenly shut down in 1932, shortly before the Rose Room was removed altogether. It are these members of the enigmatic Vicious Circle who are said to still haunt the premises to this day, for some reason making themselves particularly known in the elevators. Ghostly figures of some of the circle’s more prominent members have been seen here, and perhaps even more creepily it is sometimes reported that a disembodied voice will croon the song “I’m in the Mood for Love” on the elevator.
Moving along we come to the Weinstein dorm, of New York’s historic New York University (NYU). According to a report on The Black Sheep Online, the dorm has long had complaints from students that the elevators seem to move, or are at least perceived as moving much, much more slowly than usual, sometimes even slowing down or speeding up as someone is riding it. It was enough to capture the attention of paranormal investigators, who believe that ghosts or something altogether stranger may be at work here. One of these investigators, a Paul Angler, has explained his own theory on the dorm’s weird fluctuating elevator speed:
What is going on here? Speaking of haunted dorm elevators, the one at Denton Hall, at the University of Maryland, is also said to be incredibly haunted. The lore says that a student once got her head caught in the elevator doors and was decapitated, giving way to ghost stories ever since. Here the buttons push by themselves, doors open at will, and the elevator is sometimes supposedly rocked and jostled by some inexplicable force. Disembodied voices whispered into the ears of those who ride the elevator and the distinct feeling that someone else is there even when no one is are also not uncommon, and many who know of this alleged haunting refuse to ride the elevator at all.
Lastly we have a curious account of a haunted elevator given by a witness on the site Your Ghost Stories, who claims her bizarre experience happened at the Hilton Hotel in Seattle, Washington. She says that she was in the city with her mom in order to attend a pageant at the time. One evening they decided to get some sodas from a vending machine that was way down at the end of a long hall, and the witness says of what happened next:
Next we have a supposedly cursed refrigerator. In 2022 there was an ad distributed all over London from someone trying to get rid of a fridge that was claimed to house the owner’s stepmother’s soul. According to the owner, his stepmother died of a heart attack, after which the fridge began acting up and talking to them. The owner would tell the South West News Service:
Haunted fridge anyone? At least it was listed as free! Over in Seattle, Washington, there is an allegedly haunted soda vending machine. On a mundane, innocuous corner in Seattle’s Capitol Hill area there sits an old-fashioned, sun-bleached Coca Cola machine. The lone machine has seen better days, faded and not a little worn and banged up, and it would be easy to walk by it thinking it was just trash, but for years it has apparently been dispensing drinks. This is not the strange part. What is weird is that the sodas are all in outdated cans, no one has any idea of where they come from as no one has ever been seen to maintain or stock the machine, and there is a button with a “?” that will randomly spit out a drink from a seemingly limitless number of possibilities, including drinks that have been discontinued for years or in some unconfirmed cases drinks that don’t even exist. What’s the deal here? Haunted or some elaborate, nearly two-decade long prank?
Even more oddball is a supposed haunted sewing machine. It involves a man only known as “James,” whose grandmother had been a seamstress her whole life. She had left her cherished vintage sewing machine to James in death, and when he fell on hard financial times he was thinking about selling it for some extra cash. That was when something extraordinary happened. A report from MostlyGhosts says of it:
To wrap everything up here, we have an assortment of other bonkers haunted machines detailed in Dr Lyall Watson’s book The Nature of Things - The Secret Life of Inanimate Objects (1990), which gives some really rather head scratching examples, such as:
Is there anything to these stories? What is the meaning of it all? One idea is that this all comes down to what is known as "spiritual attachments," wherein certain ghosts and spirits tether themselves to an object and follow it around to cause trouble for anyone unfortunate to be around it. Whatever the case may be, they are all pretty damn strange accounts to be sure.
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