« 053: The Five Faces of Jack Maratre | Main | 055: Old World Order » July 16, 2003

054: Ghost Noise

Strangely enough, I've been thinking recently about electromagnetic phenomena and mobile technology (specifically an article from the Fortean Times which I can't find now and which our very own Alasdair Stuart seems to have read as well (see his "After The Tone" story in the X Minute Theater section of WORD). The basic gist of these two items was that ghosts exist in specific wavelength spectrums and that all of our carving up of these bands for mobile and wireless technology has led to a certain amount of interference and, in some ways, death for ghosts. You see, they can't survive with all the noise we're making.

Here's the strange bit. I upgraded my network at home to wireless. Went 802.11g because that's what all the cool kids are talking about on the schoolyard, and the installation went smoothly enough once I got the terminology all figured out. Everything worked fine. For a while. Now, three nights running, my wireless signal craps out between 9:00pm and midnight. Any other time, it works just fine, but during those three hours, it is like a large void has descended upon my house and the ether just doesn't want to vibrate for my signal.

I'm lying in bed last night, my brain still working over the details and possibilities as to why this might be happening, and I remember these thoughts about ghosts noises on the electromagnetic spectrums on which we are encroaching. There may not be any technological answer to my problem. For three hours every night, the ghosts are howling in my neighborhood. I'm lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering what sort of Tobe Hooper style Poltergeist event has occurred to leave such a psychic scar on my street. And then I start to wonder what sort of sacrifice is going to have to be made in order to silence the noise.

It might just be easier to put the long Cat-5 cable back and hard-wire the network again. We always say there is a certain amount of Voodoo involved in IT work; there might just be too much required this time around.

Posted by Teppo at July 16, 2003 09:46 AM

Comments