# Ghost In The Machine



## sebastian (Aug 11, 2004)

Hi,

Is there anyone out there that can give me a scientifically plausible explanation of what happened to me a few nights ago:

I have a laptop and a PC. The PC i use solely as a backup and to do writing on. The laptop i use for the internet and basically everything else. The other night i was on my laptop when my PC started to "wake up". The keyboard lights flashed and i could hear what i assumed to be the hard drive whirring (or whatever the noise is that hard drives make when they start up). Then there was silence. I furrowed my brow and was appropriately perplexed as i had not nudged the mouse or, as far as i know, there wasn't any earth tremors or anything like that. But whatever, i surmised. These things happen.

~ 45 mins. later. It wakes up again...this time i grimace noticeably and take a giant swig of wine (although the latter part is incidental, as i take giant swigs of wine in regular intervals of about 5 mins. at any time after 8 pm.) I move my mouse to activate everything so i can shut off the damn machine only to realize that it isn't responding. Hmmm...weird. But then, i calculate in a sudden burst of rationalism, it is an older machine and has been known to act all trippy in the past so i'll just reboot it and shut it down, and that will be that. Fine. Done.

~ 30 mins. later. The machine is completely shut off (in fact, i suspect it always was). I have SHUT DOWN the computer. This isn't ambiguous. I worked with computer hardware for 2 years and know my way around a computer...what i mean is, i'm not some fool who mistakenly just HIBERNATEd my machine. I shut it off. 30 mins. later...it wakes up again...the keyboard flickers, the hard drive does a little gigabyte shuffle...and then silence. I perspire and check the label on my wine bottle to make sure i haven't gone for that wacky Mayan variety that induces hallucinations like this. All is well...except for the ghost in the machine.

I unplug the computer in a flutter of frustration, cursing the audacity of a cosmos that will allow such inexplicible madness to occur so unabashedly. I putter half-heartedly on my laptop, inching my eyes to the right of the screen to examine the deactivated and electrically severed other machine to my side. It's turned off. It's unplugged. I've heard of quantum tunnelling and the borrowing of energy and all that...i believe in mystic forces and cosmic wonderment. I feel like i'm in that "Cat came back" short where i'm going to have to end up obliterating the computer to ashen rubble before it will stop "waking up" so inappropriately. I wait. I spend a tremulous hour doing things on my laptop...when all of a sudden... ~ 35 mins. later...guess what happens..............................................................

nothing.

Whew. Thank God. I most likely would have crashed my head through a television set or something if something had happened.

Anyway, can anyone out there explain why this might have happened the first three times?

Thanks,

s.


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## Dreamer (Aug 9, 2004)

lololololololol

That woke me up. I was really on the edge of my seat waiting to see if it was .... A L I V E, A L I V E O H! :shock:

My answer:

It's a conspiracy.
You can't beat the system.
The tyranny of the inanimate object.
Computer curse. (see below)**

lolololol. I'm sorry. But this did give me a laugh. Since my antivirus program no longer updates itself (presumably because I added Webroot Sysweeper) I will now go to the "Intelligent Updater" at Norton and let the dowload of 2 hours commence. Once a week. No rhyme nor reason. However, this obviously happens to everyone or they wouldn't have this "fix" that they sent me about 5 months ago.

I will NO LONGER repair my computer, or add or subtract ANY software unless the machine simply doesn't turn on one day.

I have things backed up on 2 flash drives, and one Zip Drive. Note, the computer decided, yes IT decided, that I cannot copy to CD anymore. I believe that was programmed into the computer when I got it so I would have to buy my flash drives which will fail soon and I will have to buy 2 larger flash drives.
Apres moi le deluge. 8)

I feel for ya' dude, but I can't help ya'.
lololololol

Will I change anything? No I have a curse, a computer curse**, and I have live witnesses .... oh I'll add that. It's Voodoo and Hoodoo!


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## Martinelv (Aug 10, 2004)

Sebastian, I think I may have said this before, but I'll say it again.

You are a very strange man. But I love you for it. In a platonic kind of way...not rolling around in a vat of man-sweat kind of way.

Although......


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## Homeskooled (Aug 10, 2004)

I'm not sure what to say, Sebastian, but if my memory serves correctly, last year Martin's computer printed him out a smiley face during a tough time in his life quite randomly. Who knows? My house last year, filled with 10 other college guys, would have boxes knocked over in our basement and footsteps coming up the basement stairs.....when noone else was home. We all heard these things independently of each other. I have no reason to discount the idea of hauntings. None whatsoever. And I have some personal, subjective experience to back up the possibility of it (along with thousands of years worth of eyewitness accounts before me). Incidentally, Malachi Martin, an ex-Jesuit priest, wrote an excellent book on possession from the case files of exorcists in Rome. I recommend reading it. He's an excellent storyteller and novelist, so some of the five stories contained therein get a little too detailed, verbose, and dramatic - but that being said, the theology behind the book, the reasons that these people became possessed.....it has a ring of truth to it. You wont find axe murderers, rapists, etc...among the five victims. It was just insidious evil (and in one case, insidious intellectual evil and pessimism) which had crept into their minds and hearts and ultimately led to their enslavement. There are different grades of posssession, ranging from oppressed, to obsessed, to possessed (in which the devil controls more than 50 percent of the will in a person), and perfect possession, which I hate to even discuss. A perfectly possessed person cannot be exorcised - they welcome the possession and do not thirst for God or freedom. Most exorcists say that they have never met someone perfectly possessed, although one or two supposedly have, and they were "normal" seeming businessmen, etc....Think Devil's Advocate (the movie). CS Lewis once said that most evil today is propagated by well-dressed men in business suits who spend most of their days walking on thick carpeting. I tend to agree. In any case, I recomend the book for those who doubt the existence of evil, hauntings, or regard exorcisms as antiquated or barbaric ( they could, in the Middle Ages, and in modern day evangelical Protestantism, still be quite barbaric, but Catholic exorcisms after Vatican II have been well documented and usually work with psychiatrists and medical professionals). I also recommend any book by the monk Thomas Merton - he had a very simple "anti-religious" mysticism about him, and his books are filled with wisdom. His life story, as told in The Seven Story Mountain, is also quite beautiful. You would like him, Dreamer. He was a Trappist monk, but flawlessly incorporated Buddhism into his Christianity.

Peace
Homeskooled


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## comfortably numb (Mar 6, 2006)

Throw some holy water at it see if that helps. If not call in a priest to perform an exorcism. Sometimes i think my computer is possessed to.


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## Dreamer (Aug 9, 2004)

Homeskooled said:


> I'm not sure what to say, Sebastian, but if my memory serves correctly, last year Martin's computer printed him out a smiley face during a tough time in his life quite randomly.


ROTFLMAO

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

Poor Martin, no one will leave you alone anymore, LOL. Barb after stinging barb.

Home thanks for the book recommendation.

And sebastian, seriously, there *is no answer -- at least in MY haunted computer.* I have had so many computer problems over the years that make NO sense, none. And I started with an old DOS Dell dinosaur waay back in the 1990s -- that damned thing worked.

It was when Windows took over ..... when I had to keep upgrading and upgrading and upgrading......... :shock: 
I've even taken computer courses (Pascal programming if you can believe it), and have "assembled" a computer in a class. I lost the guy somewhere at the point where we were booting from BiosSys sp? I think I passed out. The software is all HOODOO. LOLOLOL

My guess, is somewhere in your computer, there is a 011000111 that is in the wrong place. Period. You will never find it, ever, in your entire lifetime. It IS alive. :shock:

Man, I'm laughing so hard at this.

Thank you all. It's so good to laugh. And it's a beautiful day out today. I may buy a potted plant for the balcony.

L,
D
You guys are one endless hoot. 8)


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## enngirl5 (Aug 10, 2004)

My computer wakes up at night randomly too. It's probably all the porn you're looking at.

j/k. My computer recently crashed the week that I had mdterms. It all of a sudden shut down and said "Windows has been corrupted." It said to put a Windows CD in and reinstall it but that didn't work so I had to get a new computer, which I needed anyway. I don't look at porn online anymore. Much.


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## noobiedoobiedo (May 2, 2006)

Hi,

Im a computer technician of about 14 yrs or so, etc and here's my professional thoughts :

Computers suck.

Side note : I`m changing jobs.


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## Martinelv (Aug 10, 2004)

Dreamer my sweet, you know I love being attacked. Whipped and so forth. :wink: BRING IT ON!

Regarding that smiley face thing. It certainly was strange, but almost certainly (possibly) a coincidence. It's never happened again. My rational mind tells me to ignore it, but something, something, tells me otherwise. I think it's indigestion.

I've had far rougher times since and that b*****d printer hasn't even given me so much as a wink. But I guess you only get one obscure spiritual message during your life-time. Except you crazy yanks who keep finding images of Jesus in the middle of a potato and such like. It seems to happen on a daily basis over there! Hmmm. Maybe 'he' is trying to tell you guys something.


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## Epiphany (Apr 28, 2006)

Yeah...my computer has done this. About 2 years ago it started itself up a couple of times.

It started doing all kinds of other weird stuff and I put it down to the same as enngirl...corrupted by some of the porn sites I'd been peeking at. 

I ended up buying a laptop.


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## zhqhqn (Aug 15, 2005)

my laptop did this two nights ago (Dell laptops do this all the time for no reason), and my startup sound is a cat miaowing. my girlfriend woke up briefly and miaowed at the computer and fell back asleep. I still haven't told her...


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## sebastian (Aug 11, 2004)

Homeskooled,

Just finished that Malachi Martin book last night based on your recomendation. I'll post something about it in the Spirituality section in a few days (when i have more time) as it inspired several questions that i'd like to throw out to ya'll. But in short, damn can that priest ever write! Setting aside the credibility aspects or the various spiritual implications of the alleged exorcisms, i have to say that i'd read another MM book just to enjoy his actual writing. I was quite impressed. As to the rest, i'll post later. Thanks for the recomendation!

s.


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## Homeskooled (Aug 10, 2004)

Oh, well your welcome, Sebastian! I like to read Malachi Martin myself, but I dont consider everything he says in that book reputable. Its far too detailed and dramatic. That being said, I think that alot of the detail _is_ what the eyewitnesses told him, and I think that it overall captures the spirit of an exorcism into prose form well, and its demonology is pretty accurate. If you really want to read a book I agree wholeheartedly with (to be frank, its sort of _me_ in book form) read _Everthing you ever wanted to know about Heaven - but never dreamed of asking!_ by Peter Kreeft. It lines of up with Catholicism (he's a theologian in good standing at Boston College), but it also lines up with my views on salvation, God, joy, the nature of Heaven, the nature of sex, the nature of Hell, ghosts, etc....while basing his conclusions on Greek Philosophers, Thomas Aquinas, CS Lewis, and the Bible, among other sources. I asked for this book for my birthday when I was 12, and read it and memorized. I just bought the book again (my parents threw it out - it tells one something about their spirituality) and upon rereading, realize how much Peter Kreeft and I have in common. Other spiritual classics I highly recommend to enlighten one's mind and lighten one's heart are _Deus Caritas Est : God is Love_ by Pope Benedict the XVI, _Pope John Paul the II: In my own Words, Memorial Edition_ compiled by Liguori Press, _New Seeds of Contemplation_ by Thomas Merton, and _Crossing the Threshold of Hope_ by Pope John Paul II, in the order they've been listed in this paragraph. Spirituality is something that is difficult to put into words, but every couple centuries, people write something about it worth reading. I actually think the 20th century was especially rich with them - where there is much evil, so too is there a need for much good. I think this century will see a transformation of Christianity to the Spirit of the early Church once more - small, uncorrupted by the trappings of knowledge or wealth, and permeated by a spirit of love and selflessness. Rather than seeing an evil apocalyptic time, I think that great good awaits all of us living in this century, on the world stage, and most importantly, on a personal level...

Peace
Homeskooled


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