Backwards clock
 

I have a small mantle style clock. For the past year it's finally been working right but for the two years prior we had a strange thing going on with it. It ran backwards. If you could watch it in the mirror and pretend that the 9 was a 3 and visa versa it actually kept time. It was creepy because every once in a while it would stop and start going clockwise but it never lasted more than a few minutes. One would think that things had been connected incorrectly except that now for almost a year it had been going clockwise and keeping time correctly. Any idea what could cause this? For the time when it was going backwards we were having a lot of hardship in our lives financially and healthwise. Now we're doing fairly well - it almost makes one wonder if there is a connection somewhere. Thoughts? Anyone know the inner workings of an analog clock and how it could run backwards and keep time??

that is one amazing clock, i doubt you have a link with a clock though

Neat!

I think I've heard of this before. An electric clock is basically a stepped-down electric motor. Electric motors don't really have directionality, they can run in either direction. That means that the right amount of resistence can influence which direction it starts running.

Not as poetic as your explanation, though!

ooo man... i wanna get a clock that runs backwards... would be awesome...

i'll haveta try to find a clock at a thrift store and make it run backwards...

You can BUY backwards clocks. I used to get a magazine that had a bunch of cool things in it and a backwards clock was one of them. Interesting thing.

Weird aside: there's an analog clock here at my work that doesn't function. Yet every day it displays a different time. And it is always at the top of the hour. I'd think that someone is changing it in the night but it is suspended high up and in an awkward place to reach. Kinda strange.

I'm not sure how well this will help but I remember that my cousin bought his son this train one year for Christmas. The kid was very excited, they took it out of the box and put in the batteries. When he turned it on and put it down on the track, the train ran in reverse. They looked to see if there was a forward or reverse switch but there wasn't any. He opened up the little plastic flap that held the batteries and noticed that he had put them in backwards. When he put them in the right way, the train then ran forward like it should have.

backwards train?
wow. now thats creepy

we had a clock at work that just suddenly one day was running backwards. I stopped it and reset the time, and it was fine for a while, then suddenly started going backwards, then after a bit it'd go the right way again... wierd.

man! tres weirdness. i have many clocks. in every room.
never a backwards one.
have i been cheated? or not?

that is really cool and unholy story - esq and i think i'll write it into my next story.

Sounds like a good name for a band though lol. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Backwards Train!

AC motors always run in the same direction, DC motors switch direction depending on the direction of the current. This clock must have had a DC motor to be able to run backwards, which would make sense as it probably ran off batteries.

It would seem likely to me that during the times when you were in emotional and financial turmoil, you were paying less attention to trivial matters and just put the batteries in the clock the wrong way round, especially if that's the way they had been put in previously.

[serious tone] its obviously possessed. [/serious tone]

The reason I checked this thread is because "backwards clock" means something to me but not what Raeanna74 meant. I used to live in the suburbs of Detroit before moving to West Michigan 10 yrs. ago. My Great Aunt who is Scizophrenic (sp?) spent 20 years in a mental institution in Northville MI. before it was closed (not exactly sure what year it closed). Jump forward 20 yrs. (from when she left) and my family moved to Canton MI, which is only about 5 minutes from the facility my Aunt was in.

By this time the facility had been abandoned for 20 yrs. and was something of a "haunted" area to the local teen population. Trust me, "area" is apt, there are multiple buildings strung over quite alot of acres in this complex. All the buildings are connected by a network of "tunnels" underground that contain the utility lines for the complex. Therefore the popular name for the site is the "Northville Tunnels". There are many scary/freaky things I could say about this place, but what I wanted to has to do with the thread topic.

When I was a teen-ager, I happened to end up at the tunnels with a few friends. We had flashlights and proceeded to inspect the buildings on the grounds (which affected me because I actually had a relative that had lived in those conditions). Can you say "Blaire Witch"! It was scary and freaky as. Skip over the rest of the spooky trip.

As we were making our way back to the car past yet another building (the last it would turn out), we noticed something unusual. The building was a long rectangle with a doorway directly in the middle. We went inside the doorway (or vestibule) and there was a ladder tacked to the wall that went up to a, say, 3' x 3' opening about 10-12 ft. up.. From there you looked down into the main body of the building (the rectangle) that had no visable means of escape. In other words, one way in and no way out. We had no concept of what this building was used for. As we were leaving it and on our way back to our car, someone called for the rest to look. We did, and above the "doorway" in the middle of the building was a clock (external like Big Ben). Not a normal clock though, this one only had nine hours and was in reverse (as in 1 o'clock was 11 o'clock).

Was this some kind of torture device (mental) used on the patients? I have no clue and yet, 18 yrs. later it still bothers me because it was so odd and backwards and unrational. This was a mental facility that was (supposedly) meant to heal people or at least maintain them and yet that one building (among others I won't go into) suggested some very disturbing things were happening besides help.

I know I deviated from the original post but I couldn't help but post my "backwards clock" story.

Ali