Touch lamp turning on by itself...
 

Well, first of all, I have this touch lamp in my bedroom. You know, the type that when you touch it, it turns on. And this one has three different settings. So, touch it once, it's dim. Touch it again, and it's kind of bright. Touch it again, and it's completely on. I've noticed that sometimes when I come into my bedroom, the lamp is on. I didn't leave it on, and I know that I had it off. Has anybody else encountered this? I'm not exactly "paranoid" about it, just curious, but I felt that this would be the best place to ask other people about this experience.

You have a short in your electrical.

My parents had this kind of lamp when I was kid...lightining would set it off. I'd guess some sort of electrical interference is the cuprit.

Does it have a hard switch too?

Seems like the lamp is really doing you a favor. I would not want to walk into a dark room!:)

I think that if this happened to me though, it would freak me out.

Not trying to be a smartass here, but do you have a cat? We have a touch lamp that the cat has figured out how to operate (as well as a laptop, it sometimes seems).

Yep. I got my mom one of those for mothers day a few years ago. Did exactly the same thing. I don't know what causes it, exactly, but it kinda freaked me out also.

We had one in the bedroom and any power interruption would turn it on. You could always tell if the power had went out in the middle of the night because the light would be on and the clock would be flashing.

I had a cordless phone that would cause them to switch on and off. Once we figured it out you could recreate the problem at will. I got rid of the lamp rather than the phone.

The durned things are always doing that!!!

Slight hijack.

I used to live in an apartment in a really old building. I had this bookshelf stereo system that every now and then would turn itself on just completely out of the blue and these incredibly loud garbled distorted voices would be shouting out of the speakers and then the stereo would shut off.

Many times this would happen in the middle of the night, waking me up and freaking me out. It happened once when my girlfriend (now my wife) was over and it freaked her out completely to where she wouldn't stay there that night.

Since I am skeptical about the paranormal I decided to see if I could figure out what was causing it. I noticed it seemed to happen when semis drove down the road in front of the building. Then a few weeks later I understood some of the gibberish, something about "Highway 45". It turns out it was truckers with super-powerful CB's, somehow the stereo interpreted that as a signal to turn on, and these truckers voices would blast through at full volume.

So what does that have to do with this thread? I don't know. I guess it shows that weird stuff can turn electrical devices on and off.

Touch lamps turn on by themselves after current has been restored to a dead circuit (like after a power outage or a short).

Ah, I see! It must be power bumps then. Power bumps occur a lot more often than some people realize. I learned this at my last job working at a semi-conductor fabrication plant. Any time you see the lights flicker, that's a power bump. Sometimes you don't even notice them, but I guess it's enough to reset the circuit on my touch lamp.

YAY! No crazy weirdness!!! I'm glad for you man, especially after reading about other people's probs in this paranoia section!! (like the running feet and perfume...brrr....!!!) Sheesh! Amen power shortage! Praise Jah! :wink:

I saw this and I had to reply. I was five and I never stopped playing with those touch lamps until I figured out the mechanism that made it work. And...

Even simplier than power spikes. Since the way of inductance went out to make those buggers turn on and off (ie had a little charge and an electroscope to measure when that slight charge entered from the lamp to your body), they usually use radio transmittors to make them work. You know how when you walk to close to a portable radio in just the right way you lose reception? Well a radio field is emmitted around those and when you touch it, you just became a large antenna to drain its power.

Those sensors weren't the best of things because of power spikes, and still bad without. So anything that created a radio signal, like your cordless phone, cellphone, and even your TV when you turn it on and off could make a strong enough signal to trip it. And yes, you can imagine 5 year old me holding a bloody lamp near a TV and using various means to create static on me to tap them, use various metals to trip it, and then growing board when the home computer broke and could take it apart before we threw it out!!

my brother has one of these lamps in his room and opening ang closing the door can turn it on and off. the door is about 25 feet away from the lamp too. maybe that happens to yours.

No man its definitely a ghost :) Im sure it has to do with electrical interference or something.

I am sure it's a problem with the electrical outlets. You should have it checked out.

I have a couple of those. One will turn on by itself, while the other doesn't. I chalk it up to faulty wiring in the lamp itself.

My cat learned how to turn it on too. Whenever that fat furball got hungry, no matter what time of night it was, TAP.

Fucking cat.

More likely, the speakers were powered, and the length of the speaker wires was the CB wavelength multiplied by .25, .5, 1, or 2. IF the voices werre garbled but recognizable, it was probably a little bit off from the multiple.

That reminds me of the movie "White Noise." Interesting idea, good potential, mediocre movie.

I can definitely see how this would scare the hell out of you though. When I am awakened suddenly, I am generally disoriented and confused.. So to have random noise coming from a stereo I knew wasn't on earlier would definitely cause me to go bonkos.

Neat story, thanks. :)

what he said...

Mr.SelfDestruct, It actually turned the entire stereo system on. When it lost power and then the power came back on it reverted to a 'demo mode' that showed all the pretty colors available in the display and the "ghost voices" caused the same effect.

It isn't paranormal stuff, you just have a short in your electrical. I guess if you have had other things that are wierd going on, you might be able to connect the dots. But I think their are any other dots to connect to this small dot.

do u have a clock beside it? the radio can screw with it i heard

I don't like touch lamps, nor sound lamps. Seems like loud belches or farts turn the sound ones on, as well.