Reese

Maybe I'm paranoid, I just finished doing a sweep of my house following a phantom smell which existed only in a 2-3 ft area of my living room... At least, I guess it was a phantom smell. There was no one else around to confirm or deny it's existence.

Do you ever smell something odd and look around the house trying to find the source? It doesn't have to be smoke, any smell is good enough for this thread.
I didn't used to but a few years ago I was walking by my uncle's house(he lives next door to me.) and noticed a little smoke coming out of his car garage. It was just a little smoke -H e's a mechanic and smoke isn't unusual when dealing with front-end loaders and Log Skitters and varies other 30 year old heavy machinery. I don't know why but I went to investigate. I knocked on the front door but no answer, I was going to peek in the door and as soon as I opened it I was blasted in the face with a wall of smoke. It melted the plastic ceiling stuff on the porch before I even got fully away from the house. The same stuff that hit me in the face was melting thick plastic almost instantly. Scary shit thinking back on it. Then a year or so later we smelled smoke and found the hot water heater breaker thing had caught fire and melted itself. Lucky it didn't spread. Ever sense then every time I smell something I start looking for stuff prone to fires. I check the toasters, breaker box, hot water heater and anything else pulling a decent load like computers, tvs, game consoles.. I love the smell of burnt PCB in the morning.


That is all, Carry on.

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Plan9

I think I read somewhere the "phantom smells" are part of the long term memory process. I'll hafta look for the article.

...

I swear I can smell military CLP (gun oil) if you put a drop of it on a table in a room.

Sometimes I'll stand in the garage and see if I can smell it from the ammo cans in the corner.

My brain is way tuned into that stuff after working in a arms room for a year and having it saturate my soul.

I'm guessing I'll eventually develop cancer from it.

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lostgirl

I have done this many times. There was a foul smell in my kitchen a few weeks ago, I could not figure out. I finally found a couple of rotting potatoes in the dark recesses of my cupboard. I don't remember putting them there. I am usually really good about keeping things clean and organized.

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ItWasMe

Cybermike, is this 2-3 foot area of your living room near a window or door, by chance? Lately I've smelled barbecues, backyard burning, field burning (small country town, farm land surrounding us), and one 'campfire' in a neighbor's yard. Could it be anything like this coming through your living room window? I realize you posted after 10pm, but sometimes the smells can linger.

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gladiator

i can smell food , from our neighbour's house which is a bit away from us, i think this is too bad, as it makes me very hungery

ratbastid

We have four cats, a dog, two hedgehogs, three fish, and four chickens. The chickens live in the backyard, apart from that, they're all indoor critters. We spend a HUGE amount of our lives chasing strange smells. We also have a line-item in our budget for Nature's Miracle enzymatic cleaner...

Martian

Bloody hell, rat, you ought to charge admission to that zoo.

Most of the smells around here are food related and thoroughly my fault. I cooked some shrimp on the electric grill on Sunday and was smelling it for the rest of the night.

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Cielamara

I think my new jeans smell like sulfur.

My mother says I'm imagining it.

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PonyPotato

I swear I smell wet kitty litter over here on my desk, but I can't figure out where it's coming from.

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fresnelly

My sneezes smell like pussy.

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thespian86

haha well done.

Yeah, I lived in Toronto; home of the phantom smell. It's sausage, then sewer, then an unidentifiable perfume, then the lake, then a car. It's never ending.

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kramus

As a kid, twice I woke up from weird dreams of alarms and urgency and did a heart-pounding search until I found smoldering items in my parents house. One was a towel against a wall heater one floor down in a bathroom. The other was my baby brothers pillow which had fallen against a space heater in his room. Whew.

I had an electrician in because when I smelt heated plastic I tracked down a hot outlet cover. Old worn wiring was thisclose to igniting.

I had a gas guy in because of the smell coming from a valve by my hot water tank. He told me I shouldn't have been able to smell the gas, but it was so evident I had to do something about it. Yup - pinhole leak beside the pilot light.

A while back I stopped in the middle of a very pleasurable interaction with my Lady because I smelt scorched plastic. Turns out the candles placed around the room were causing the new air conditioner's casing to brown and bubble up. Moved some candles, then went back at it.

Years ago I tracked down yucky potatoes in the apartment next door - I had been left the keys to take care of the guys mail. Got to take care of his mess as well

Of course there was the time I found leaking coolant dripping onto the exhaust when driving the car - that stuff turned to steam and the smell was pretty nasty the way it caught in your chest. No one else in the car seemed to notice, though. Go figure.

If I smell something off in the house, I always track it down, no matter what time it is.

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snowy

I have a more sensitive sniffer than any of the people I live with. I smell things long before they catch on. This is sometimes a good thing--I catch the dirty catbox before my roommate says it stinks. But sometimes it's a bad thing; my SO doesn't catch on to the fact that the trash needs to be taken out before I do.

I thought I was smelling a phantom smell of smoke at a client's house until I realized what I was smelling was a downdraft through the chimney and fireplace, which they hadn't swept out in a while. That was a relief.

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Reese

hmm, It wasn't near a window, but now that I think about it, It was near a vent which leads directly outdoors through my central air unit.

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JStrider

I get phantom burning smells sometimes... sometimes its related to just having had a bloody nose and having blood drying in my nose... but sometimes it just seems to be random...

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Ninja

Peaches, I think its one of my favourite smells so I don't mind (If I'm in the same room as them, I can smell them)

genuinegirly

I'm glad that our next-door-neighbors seem to have moved out.
They obtained a new puppy in early January. Nearly all winter our apartment smelled like poorly-cared-for- puppy poo. It was worst within three feet of the wall adjoining theirs. Once that smell was gone, I couldn't believe how less irritable I was in the apartment.

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