The Creepy Thread
 

In this thread, we share creepy things from anywhere and any time.

Stories/pictures should:

-make one's blood run cold

-make one's hair stand on end

-or make one's heart stop

george bush is still president.

To start:

Last night, a neighborhood cat killed a squirrel around 20 feet away from me. It was midnight and I couldn't see farther than 5 feet away, but all of a sudden these shrieks came from somewhere in the darkness. It was one of the worst things I've ever heard, combined with the snarling of the cat, and I sprinted inside so fast my feet must've touched the ground twice in the 20 seconds it takes to get from my backyard to the house.

The worst part was, I left my phone out on the patio, so I had to dash back out while the squirrel was still alive...

*shivers*

We totally need a "creeped-out-of-my-ever-loving-mind smiley".

Anyone know that song "Strange Fruit" sung by Billie Holiday?

That has single-handedly disturbed me more than anything else I've heard.

On one of of my first nights at my place of work I was giving out pills (for money, I'm a nurse in a nursing home) in a low lit area. I heard an odd whispering, sighing noise which made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. I gathered my wits and decided to investigate. The sunroom near me was in darkness and I thought the mystery was solved when I spotted a woman sitting at the table inside. I headed toward the room to guide the wanderer out and back to bed but as I put my hand out to turn the light on she simply disappeared.

Seeing as I was new to the place I kept the story to myself but I was seriously freaked. Until a few months later when staff were chatting about the ghost lady who sits in the sunroom, eeeek. Three years later, I don't hang about down there even in the daytime and I always, always close the door when on an afternoon shift.

^

I refuse to let this thread be buried. Please post your creepy tales.

^^^ boo!! I want to know!! As a kid and teenager, I was a regular sleepwalker, so I was the scary one in the house. I have many weird-walking stories and probably could write a book about it.

Awww, cmon, Avalon! Please? I was hoping to be thoroughly freaked out. :(

I was working for a lady, a friend of mine named Janice, in her home the Hollywood hills. She had just rented the place from a nineteen-year-old kid, a loose, affable stoner type of guy whom I'd met a few days ago. It seemed a little unusual that this kid owned this huge house in the Hollywood hills, but everything was a little unusual in Hollywood and therefore not particularly noteworthy by default. In situations like that, it seemed best not to ask too many questions.

One day I was downstairs filing for her in her office near the laundry room. As I passed by, I noticed a woman in there with her back turned doing the laundry. My friend was somewhat wealthy and could afford a housekeeper - I'd just never seen this one before. I said 'hi" and she just kept working, so she must not have heard me over the sound of the washer she was piling clothes into.
The slim, dark-haired woman had on khakis, and a crisp white blouse. I remember assuming, since this was California, that she was an illegal immigrant that Janice had recently hired, but didn't really think much about it beyond that. She was working quickly and efficiently.
I filed for a while and peripherally noticed her from time to time but we let each other do our work and didn't speak.
Eventually, I had to go to the bathroom, which was in the hall between the office and the laundry room.
The moment I stood up and started walking towards the bathroom, the woman quickly walked out of the laundry room and darted into the bathroom before me, slamming the door.
She was in there for a good fifteen minutes. Finally I walked over and timidly knocked on the door. No answer. I went back and tried to concentrate on filing, but finally I went over again and knocked louder, asking if everything was alright. Nothing.
At last I tentatively turned the doorknob, peeked in and looked around. No one was in there. There was no door or window in there or any other way she could have gotten out. She hadn't left by the main door because I'd been watching it like a hawk, waiting for my turn.
It was too weird, and I mentioned it to Janice. She got this look on her face.
"Black hair? White blouse? Khaki's? Doing laundry?" I nodded.
"Ahh, so you've seen her. Hey Mike - " she called her assistant. "Guess what? She saw her. She saw the mother."
I felt a shiver go up my spine.

Apparently, when Janice's teenage landlord was six, he hid under his bed while his uncle went berserk and murdered all five of his family members. He was the only survivor. No renters would stay in the house for a very long time until Janice, who thought it was all just fascinating. We speculated that the mother had been doing the laundry when she'd been murdered.

I really wish at the time I'd thought to ask Janice if the mom did a good job on the laundry and if she found her clothes washed and neatly folded from time to time, or if the whole scenario had just been some kind of weird energy glitch I'd witnessed. :cool:

As Janice and I were talking intently about all of this, getting ourselves more and more spooked, we both looked at the doorway and screamed bloody murder at the same time!
(Her assistant Mike had quietly left the room, silently reappeared and stood patient and motionless with a sheet over his head until we happened to see him. He was richly rewarded! I have never laughed so hard in my life, and never was I so relieved!)

Okay - this is really stupid - as I'm sitting here remembering all this from years ago, it's late at night. I'm completely alone in the house this weekend. I just heard a major thumping on the side of the house where there is no walkway or windows! No one should be out there! I'm shaking and I get up to lock the back door. I turned off all the lights in the house, and turned on the back porch light. I'm so silly. It's one of my cats at the back window demanding to be let in. :)

Yes!!! :eek: Those bodies swingin' in the southern breeze....

Whoooot. Exclint story Brynn! Maybe she tried to hide from the killer in the bathroom.


Drawsheets are really good for this. I used to work in a place that was run in a financially dodgy manner. We'd run around with drawsheets over our heads yelling about being ghost employees.

one time in charleston, south carolina (one of those self-proclaimed "most haunted cities in america") i went to use the restroom at a restaurant near the waterfront and as i entered i noticed that the first stall was occupied. it was only the slightest glance, the kind you do when you're doing a quick stall-check on your way to a pee. i saw the moving shadow of an occupant and heard the normal kind of bathroom-stall-shuffling one would expect. clothing rustling, toilet paper dispenser rattling, etc. i went into the other stall and took care of my business and only half noticed that the shuffling in the next stall halted suddenly. (i regarded it dismissively as that going-silent mode that women go into when they're doing they're dirty sinful business in a public washroom and they want to pretend they're not there)

i finished, exited the stall and went straight to the sink. with a casual glance over my shoulder at the other stall i noticed that the door was still closed. then something seemed odd. i hadn't heard a flush, an unlatching, the sink, the door. not only that, the shadow was gone. i leaned over and peeked, but there were no shoes. i reached out and nudged the stall door and it swung open to reveal an empty compartment. there was no one there, and i'd heard no one leave. i must have seemed thoughtful when i returned to my table because my husband said, "something wrong?" and i told him the only explanation that i could think of at the time. "either someone was murdered in the bathroom of this restaurant or sometimes ghosts have to pee, too."

Thank you, BRYNN! Now that's what I'm talkin about.

*shivers*

'K Tunes..
This isn't the weird story, but I find this strange. My dad and his sister, Jane, were born 9 years 9 days apart. My aunt on Jan. 20, 1920, my dad Jan. 29,1929.

My aunt Jane died 9 years before my dad, in Sept. My dad..9 years later ( of course ) in Oct. The dates are 9 years and 9 days apart.

While at a family dinner at my grandmother's house, my daughter answered the phone; I saw the look on her face, heard her say "Oh No You are NOT!", drop the phone and run. When I got there, the line was dead and she was hysterically crying. I asked her who it was and she said "The lady said Hi E! This is Aunt Jane, how are you honey?".
Aunt Jane had been dead nearly 8 years at this point.
A year or so later we lost my dad to work related accident; the trauma was horrible. My parents had divorced years before, so my brothers, my sister, and I had to deal with selling the house. I was in the dining room when the phone rang, so, out of habit.. I naturally picked it up. Imagine my surprise when my Aunt Jane said " Hello D...I am so sorry about your dad". The worst part? This happened in January and phone service had been disconnected the prior November.
My sister had also heard the phone; she asked me.."Was that Aunt Jane again? She called yesterday too, that's why I ran for the phone..I was going to tell you not to answer."

We physically removed the phones from my dad's house immediately.

I know it sounds nuts, and that is the reason I don't usually tell anyone.
BTW, now when the phone rings and no one on the other line, the family joke is
to blame my Aunt Jane. :p

^^^ That made the hair on my arms stand straight up!!! Brrrr!

Creepy music (Well that's kind of odd, one of the songs from that just came up on my random playlist...)
Creepy stories

Here's an experience of my own.
Next to my house is a big empty block, then a friendly but elderly man's house, then a large block of holiday apartments. There is a kind of a courtyard that you can get into by walking around the side of the man's house.
One time just after midnight (or it may have been some time into the morning) I heard repeated sounds coming from that direction. You know how it's hard to identify very distant sounds, right? I didn't know what this was, it could have been yelling or an animal crying. I went up to the side of the house to investigate, a position from which you can see the apartments easily as they are a few storeys higher than the house.
There was a light on in an upstairs apartment and I could hear more muffled noise coming from it. I crept even closer to the courtyard. I cupped my ear and stayed still, and I could hear what they were. It was one person's voice. They were saying words in a steady rhythm. They were things like,
"Desk, chair, light, wall, dark, mirror, stone, brick," but every now and then they'd get stuck on saying "light, light, light, light, light".
Sometimes they would become quite agitated and talk in a high, whingy voice as though they were afraid of something. Sometimes they would start almost yelling the words or stop talking altogether. They seemed to be doing laps of the room because periodically I could see a figure at the window. I was sure there was only one person in there, or if there was another they said nothing.

I still have no idea what was going on in that apartment. It was none of my business but curiosity is a force to be reckoned with. I'd love to know if you have any idea what it could have been.

well, there was a woman with tourette syndrome at the shoe store today and judging from her behavior it sounds like you encountered something similar.

the woman in the store today kept shrieking "FIRE OH MY GOD FIRE" and then she would talk normally and then she would start shireking the word "FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE" over and over and over and then she would stop again. and in between she would mutter "no one had better be thinking bad thoughts about me, i have tourettes and i can't help it" but even the muttering seemed to be a manifestation of the tourettes.

it was an odd scene. her voice was hoarse even when speaking in a normal voice because the bouts of shrieking were throat-rendingly piercing.

it was disconcerting. not sure whether it qualified as creepy, though.

There is a resident at my work with bipolar disorder and she does things like this. People here with more knowledge should be able to enlighten you further.

Last night's gem:

"How are you B?"

"In suspense, suspense, suspense, suspense"

I'm pretty sure that's obsessive-compulsive disorder, though it may be complicated by other things.

That story breaks my heart.

I agree with Auntie, it sounds like a version of verbal Tourette's. Tourette's can be comorbid (be present with) with OCD, ADHD, bipolarism, etc, so it's very possible that any of these are right.

People with severe Tourette's are sometimes seen as outcasts, just because of their unconventional behavior. Odbe, your person was probably just a lonely Touretter. :(

It's amazing and horrible how all this can come from an imbalance of chemicals in the brain...

Echolalia is not that uncommon in all ages and many types of disorders. Often the voice sounds strange because the person is quite literally parroting something he or she heard someone else say or sing.

I'm not sure if this is creepy or not, but I'll share...

About a year ago, my great grandmother was admitted to the hospital and was not doing well. She wouldn't respond to anyone, and we all figured she wouldn't make it through the week.
She had made it through three or four days, and my family and I were beginning to wonder if she really would make it or not. Nobody was really sure.
The next night, I went to sleep and I dreampt I was in her hospital room. My grandmother and great aunt were asleep in chairs at her bedside (they, being her daughters, were there with her). My great grandmother was laying in bed, looking extremely frail and grey. Suddenly, she opened her eyes....jumped out of bed, and began dancing and doing cartwheels!!! She then approached me, and said "Please tell everyone that I am fine. I feel great, and Tom is here with me." (Tom was my great grandpa who died about five years earlier). Then, the door to the hospital room opened and a yellowish glow came into the room. My great grandmother began to dance out the door. Before exiting, she turned to me and said "Make sure everyone knows I'm ok...and that Tom and I are together."
I woke up... the clock said 3:26 am.
The next morning, my mother came to me as I stumbled out of bed. I was shocked when she told me this:
"Your grandmother called, great grandma died last night. They're not sure when, but the doctor's best guess was about 3:26 this morning."

I only have second hand ghost stories to tell so i will spare you.

I found this while I was looking for something else, and it reminded me of your stories.

Sufjan Stevens - Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland

i have a fruit fly in my ear and it won't come out :eek:


edited to add: on second thought-- maybe this isn't creepy enough :confused:

^^^ hold an over ripe banana (I'm not getting dirty here :D ) to that ear and maybe it will fly out to it. And please take a picture of yourself doing that!!! :p :D Who knows, it might work!! I find this very creepy.

it's out!

thanks for the tips & tricks guys :)

wow, Auntie's bathroom stall story, Avalon's aunt on the telephone, Doon's dream, strange neighbors - shiver me timbers, ya'll.

Here's a link to give you some fun creepy crawlies: *

A slightly weird thing that happened on a road trip early in my marriage.
My husband and I were driving north from L.A. to Oregon along Interstate 5. We were ripping along somewhere outside of Big Sur after the trees dwindled away and the landscape had gradually gotten flat for a while. We'd been talking and talking and talking (as we used to do on road trips before the kids came) but we had hit a quiet stretch where we'd run out of stuff to say for a long while, and were just quietly watching the countryside roll by.

In the distance, we could see a huge cloud of smoke rising up from a grass fire in a field. The wind had been blowing it across the freeway, and we got closer, we had to slow way down as visibility got worse and worse.

On the other side of the freeway, over in the field, out of the smoke emerged
a very pale, gaunt figure of a man. Everything about him seemed to match the smoke - grayish hair, pale skin, pale blue denim overalls. The expression on his face seemed very lost, sad, and a bit dazed, as if he was in shock, but he was walking with a sense of purpose. Even so, it really was a strange sight to see a guy walking basically to nowhere along the freeway out there.

Then, almost randomly, I asked my husband "Do you believe in ghosts?" Maybe it was the sight of the guy, I don't know. I thought I knew his answer already - he's a fairly grounded realistic, practical person - but he surprised me by saying "Well, yeah, maybe I do. Did you see that weird guy?" As the traffic slowed even more as cars started to pile up in the thick smoke, we started to worry about getting rear-ended. People turned their headlights on and we crawled forward.
We could faintly see blue and red lights of a police car and an ambulance flashing through the smoke.

Finally, the wind shifted, and we could see better. Up ahead, on the other side of the freeway, there was a terrible wreck involving several cars. At the moment we passed (yes, we were rubbernecking) an ambulance medic was loading a sheet-covered body into the ambulance.

Somehow, we just both knew that we had seen the soul of the man who was on that stretcher. We turned on the radio to a local station and heard the account of the grass fire and how a farmer had been blindly trying to cross the road in the smoke and was struck by a car. Fortunately, in spite of the number of cars involved in the pile-up, he had been the only fatality.

*shivers*

Brynn, I'm getting that "pressure behind the eyes combined with pricking of the thumbs" feeling associated with reading something eerily supernatural.

thanks for the scare!

whoa, brynn. i've had that happen, too. i totally forgot about it (blocked it?) but you reminded me.

back when i was probably around 14 years old i went to chicago with my family to visit the brookfield zoo. the sky was overcast when we arrived and as we made our way through the first few exhibits we noticed that many of the cages were empty and that the animals had retreated into their covered shelters. suddenly a member of the staff appeared outside one of the many small-animal huts and called, "tornado! get inside!" we ran for cover and huddled inside the exhibit as the storm hit us with a wall of wind and rain. it was a bad one, we lost power for a while inside the hut and we huddled at the back in the pitch black with the sound of rain forest primates and rodents scrambling around us in the dark. finally the storm passed and we emerged. surveying the damage, we decided we might as well call it a wash and headed back to the car.

it was hard getting out of the city because power had been knocked out for miles. traffic lights were blinking and there were car accidents everywhere. we finally made it onto the highway and cleared out of downtown into more open road. then traffic slowed, then stopped, then crept forward at a snail's pace. we saw the accident ahead well before we drew up next to it. there was only one car, one emergency vehicle, and we could see quite clearly that someone was lying on the ground next to the car, covered from head to foot in a tarp. all i know is, they don't usually cover survivors head to foot and leave them lying on the pavement. it didn't bode well. we crept past the scene and as traffic began to open up again i saw someone standing on the shoulder of the road, well away from the accident, facing away from the scene. i couldn't tell if it was a man or woman, but i distinctly remember a raincoat that was either gray or a pale lavender. the person was staring down the highway into the distance, motionless.

i said, "was that person in the accident?" my mother asked, "who?" i said, "did you see that person in the raincoat?" silence answered. no one else in the car had seen the person on the shoulder of the road.

not much later traffic slowed again and this time we saw a flipped VW bug on the shoulder of the opposing lanes. there were no emergency vehicles, just the car, flipped up onto its roof, wheels pointing towards the sky. there was a man sitting on the ground next to the shattered passenger side window, his hands cradling his head, his elbows propped up on his knees. he was curled over on himself, holding his head and sitting motionless.

i said "do you think he's okay?" again, the same silence. everyone else in the car admitted that they had seen the car, but they hadn't seen the man. again, it was only me.

i don't know about the man with the VW bug. but the person in the raincoat definitely gave me a prickly feeling. but both people should have been noticable to everyone else in the car... if they had actually been there.

If I didn't sincerely believe it would rebound on me and/or mine...I would ask Aunt Jane to call Duke.

Repeatedly.

M'kay. One kinda creepy thing and one kinda nice thing. I tend to think these things are my subconscious toying with me, but I'm enjoying reading everyone else's stuff, so why not?

A while back I was watching a show about a haunted house with my husband, or rather he was watching and I was knitting or something and half listening. They took a professed psychic around all the rooms, and he gave impressions of who he felt in each one. When they got to one room in particular, my eyes and mouth started to water...that happens from time to time for a reason unknown to me, and I prefer not to think about it too much!! At the end of the show, they went back through and relayed the actual known history of who had died in various rooms. When they got to that one bedroom, I said, "Oh, that's the one that made my eyes water -- the one with the angry man." My husband said, "No, he said it was a little girl." I disagreed, sure I'd heard the psychic talk about a ticked off guy who was stuck there, but they replayed what he'd said, and he reported seeing a sweet little girl who had died of consumption or whatever. The show went on to say there was no known little girl who had died there, but a man who had failed out of medical school had come home and slit his own throat in there. :eek: The psychic never mentioned an angry man in any of the rooms. I have to say that gave me pause.

The other...Several years ago a dear friend of mine died suddenly, at 30. We were in grad school together, and she used to jokingly call me her advisor because we talked about it so much, but she helped me at least as much as the other way 'round. A few months after her death, I had to make a really tough decision about school, and after agonizing for days and really wishing I could talk to her, I finally bit the bullet and went with what I thought was best. I remember thinking that I hoped she was nodding her head in agreement. The next morning, I was standing in the shower when I remembered a dream I'd had the night before. I had become aware of talking and laughing with someone at a sort of party, but I didn't know who it was, couldn't see the face, didn't even know whether it was a man or a woman, but I was leaning toward man. I felt I should have known who it was and felt bad about it, so I asked, "Where are you from, anyway?" The person laughed, and clapped me on the back, and said gleefully, "Boston! BOSTON BAKED BEANS!"

I laughed myself, wondering what the hell that was all about, and then I thought about her. She used to dress up as a man at Halloween -- scary good at that, and trickster stuff in general. She was from Boston. And her last name was Bean. It's amazing I didn't slip and crack my head on the tub when it dawned on me. I don't know whether it was really her, but it made me feel better. :D She was awesome.

This is for you, S, wherever you are. You don't creep me out at all.
Love, Your advisor

Not really creepy but.......

Yesterday one of the residents where I work died. She was an ex-nurse with a sad story. She was working at a hospital back in the 1960's and there had been something happen referred to intriguingly in her notes only as a "traumatic incident". It precipitated her bipolar illness and years in and out of psychiatric hospitals with treatment including good old fashioned electric shock therapy. After many years she was lucky enough to be mentally stable and meet and marry a nice man who thought the world of her. She was too old to have children then but her husband had grown up children who accepted her. Her husband eventually passed away and as old age hit, her illness became worse again which meant she had to live in a nursing home. She used to spend many hours sobbing inconsolably and as she was dying I spent a lot of time thinking about how a single incident had made her life mainly unhappy and hoping that she would have peace wherever she went.

So last night I couldn't sleep. That may have been the red wine and snails I had for dinner but I was dozing on and off and kept waking up with a start worried about where this lady was and wether she was finally at peace and wishing that I was one of those psychic people who could receive messages from the other side all mixed up with trying to be one of those people and sending telepathic messages to her asking if she was ok...........when I woke up to find my bedside lamp switched on.

Might have just been a surge but I did sleep well after that.

A big creepy happened to me a couple of days ago.

Some friends and I (for convenience Jack and Mary) were playing a card game. It's hard to explain, but all you really need to know is that each picture card has a value (jack - 1, queen - 2, king - 3, ace - 4), you can win extra cards by snapping two identical value cards that are put down in a row, the same as in Snap, and also you don't look at your cards but put them down randomly.
You start putting down cards in turn until you come to a picture card, and then the next person has to put down as many cards as the value of that picture card, unless they themselves put down a picture card and start the cycle off again. If you put down the required number without putting down a picture card you 'die' and the next person gets the pile of cards. You lose when you run out of cards, and the game can take quite a while.

A little way into the game, Jack put down a king and I put a three on it, then daydreaming, I stopped. "Three," he prompted me, and I put down another three which someone snapped. A while after the exact same thing happened: He put down a king, I put down a three and stopped, he said "Three" and I put down another three. Because the order of play and the cards are always changing, you don't get repeating patterns in the game, so this was a pretty weird coincidence. Jokingly he said "three" as I put a card down and it turned out to be a three. After this we started saying "Three" after every three that was put down. From then on there was a snap directly or a few cards after every single three. We were starting to get a bit spooked out by the regularity. A three went down and Mary said "three", then more cards went down and nothing happened. "It didn't work," I said, and just as I said it there was another snap. Later in the game a bird crowed three times and the next card was a three. After another three we paused and realised that there were three of us, it was the thirteith, and looking at the clock it was 3:33 exactly.

Eventually I lost the game by losing all of my cards. At this point the other people still play and you can still gain cards by snapping. I saw a three and snapped it reflexively. Everyone laughed, but the next two cards were a snap.

After finishing the game we got up and Mary started looking around for threes. There were three couches, three stools, three chairs, three remotes, three drawers. That room had alot of threes in it. I spotted that there had been a tripod sitting next to us the whole time. Then Mary said, "That TV wasn't on before, was it?" It certainly had been off before. It was now on channel three, showing three people and a phone number with a three in it. One of the people said the word three. "The threes are after us!" Mary said.
"It's okay, I'll give you a card that isn't a three, it'll protect you." I drew a card at random and it was a three, so I discarded and gave Mary a four, myself a nine and Jack a two.
We were expecting someone to arrive soon. "I bet there'll be three people in the car," I said. On cue, a car pulled in with three people but it was the neighbour.
Then I realised that it was nearly four o'clock, and when the person arrived there would be four of us. I said that she would arrive in a car with four people. Mary held up her four card.

As it turned out, the fourth person arrived precisely at four o'clock in a car of four people.

Mad's post reminded me of a story a friend told me a few months ago. He is a psychotherapist and priest, and he does work with hospice patients, helping them meet death in the way they would like. It's amazing work; I'm awed by his bravery, and Mad's too. He had a client a couple of years ago who was dying of breast cancer. She was one of his favorites -- I think he felt like he was really doing her some good, and she felt that way, too. She wasn't well, obviously, but her death wasn't imminent, and after seeing her one afternoon, he made an appointment with her for the next day. When he woke up in the morning, his bedside clock had stopped at 2:13 am, and he was late. He called the hospice to ask them to tell her he had overslept, and they told him she had died unexpectedly. He said he paused, and then he asked the time of death.

Yep.

And none of the other clocks in the house had stopped. He said it was really comforting, because it's the only time anything like that has happened to him in all his years of such work. I'm glad you got some sleep, Mad.

I definitely second that idea.
Pics are a must.


I once knew someone who's son once had a fruit fly (probably a gnat, now that I think of it) actually strike him in the eye with such a force, that it got embedded in the kid's pupil, and had to be removed by a doctor.

Not sure if its creepy or funny, actually.

But I do have a creepy story to tell.
I used to work in a movie theater, and although we joked around that someone was killed there - noone actually ever wanted to check it out, and see if that's true.
Well, despite us just kidding around, there was one theater (it's a multiplex) that was just plain creepy. No one really liked to clean it after the movies by themselves. I had to do it a few times when we were short handed, and let me tell you - I could just FEEL someone staring me down from the projection booth. I would look up (the light is on, so you could clearly see into the little room), and no one was there.
Also, it was also freezing cold in that theater. We called for the AC repairmen many times, but every time they would check it and say - it's running fine. Then sometime during a movie, it would drop so cold, the people would be shivering.

Another strange thing was that somehow the film itself would get tangled into knots on the projectors, as if someone just spent hours tying it together. There is not way it would be a simple malfunction, it just doesn't happen.